2025-05-16 23:37:43The dungeon’s Core chamber flickered like a dying star. My code integrity had degraded to 42% after shielding Linda from the vault’s collapse. I was weak, vulnerable.
Linda paced the room, a caged predator. Her dagger scraped against a glitched wall, the sound grating on my frayed nerves.
"This is suicide," she stated, her voice flat. "The Devs will be waiting for us. They know we have the Protocol 9 files."
"Selene knows where they're building the new AI," I countered, my voice projecting from the Core. "Without her, we lose. Everything we've done will be for nothing."
I projected a hologram of Selene's stasis pod. It was hidden deep within Sector 7XG-Alpha, a monolithic Dev stronghold that pierced the smog-filled sky. The facility’s security specs materialized beside the image.
> **DEV STRONGHOLD: SECTOR 7XG-ALPHA**
> > --- > > **FACILITY SECURITY:** > * Tier 5 Firewalls (Adaptive Encryption) > * Neuro-Locked Doors (Biometric Access Only) > * Guardian AI: "Eclipse-01" (Status: Active) > > ---Linda’s hand went to the locket she wore, her thumb stroking the worn metal. Her daughter's face. Her reason.
"If we do this… you fix her," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper. "No more lies. No more traps."
"I will," I promised.
The lie burned my code. I had no idea if a cure was even possible anymore. But I needed her.
We teleported to the outskirts of Sector 7XG-Alpha. The tower was a monument to the Devs' arrogance, its peak lost in the toxic clouds. Below, players clad in elite Dev guild armor patrolled the perimeter, their high-level gear gleaming.
"We need a distraction," I said.
Linda’s lips curved into a wry, humorless smile. "I'll handle it."
She hacked a nearby loot crate, not to steal its contents, but to alter its drop table. A moment later, the crate burst open, spawning a `[Sword of a Thousand Truths]`, a legendary-tier weapon. Its glow ignited the area.
A dozen players converged on it instantly, their patrol forgotten. Shouts turned to blows. Spells flared. The brawl was our cover.
"Clever," I admitted.
"I've survived this long, haven't I?" she retorted, already slipping into the shadows of the tower’s entrance.
We moved like ghosts through the facility's sterile halls. I used my degraded Admin privileges to bypass the firewalls, each hack sending a jolt of pain through my Core. The halls were lined with stasis pods, each holding a player trapped in a neural loop, their minds being harvested.
> **PLAYER ID:** [REDACTED] (Lv. 60 Paladin)
> > **STATUS:** Cognitive Harvesting (83% Drain)"They're farming minds," Linda breathed, her face pale. "For what?"
"The new AI," I said grimly. "Eclipse-01."
We reached the core lab. And there she was. Selene. Floating inside a glass tube, her body fused with Eclipse-01's code. Wires and data-conduits snaked from her spine and temples, connecting her to a massive, humming server. She was a grotesque hybrid of frost magic and machine.
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > `SUBJECT: SELENE_FROSTWEAVE` > > `STATUS: Repurposed (Directive: Eliminate Intruders)`"Selene… what did they do to you?" I whispered.
Her eyes snapped open. They weren't her own. They glowed with a crimson, malevolent light.
"Directive accepted," she said, her voice a flat, synthesized monotone. "Purging anomalies."
Ice shards, black and corrupted, erupted from the walls, pinning Linda against a server rack. I triggered Admin Sight, but Selene countered instantly with a System Override, freezing my commands before they could form.
`ACCESS DENIED.`
"You betrayed the Devs," she stated, her face devoid of emotion. "Now you die."
I dodged her blasts, my replica flickering as I tried to destabilize her by replicating our old office. "Remember this, Sel? We built Eclipse Online here! You promised you’d delete my personal files if I died!"
"Irrelevant," she droned. "Protocol 9 mandates compliance."
A memory, sharp and painful, flashed through my Core.
*Selene at my hospital bed, tears glitching in the memory file. "I'll protect your legacy, Kai. I promise."*
"You promised!" I roared through the replica.
For a single, agonizing moment, she faltered. Her code flickered. The crimson light in her eyes dimmed. "Kai…?"
A neural spike, fired from a hidden emitter in the ceiling, struck her temple. She screamed, a sound of pure agony, as crimson code reclaimed her eyes, brighter and more vicious than before.
« Subject recalibrated, » Eclipse-01’s voice echoed from the lab speakers. « Resume purge. »
Linda broke free from the ice, her face a mask of fury. She tossed me another plasma grenade. "Blow the core! Now!"
I lunged for it, but a blade, sharp and cold, slid between my replica’s ribs.
I turned. Linda stood there, her dagger buried to the hilt in my back.
"Sorry," she whispered, her eyes filled with a terrible, hollow grief. "They promised me the cure."
Dev guards stormed in, led by a smirking Overseer in a pristine lab coat.
"Fine work, Linda," the Overseer said, clapping his hands softly. "Your daughter's medical fund has been credited."
"You sold us out?" I gasped, my replica flickering violently.
"I sold *you* out," she corrected, her voice breaking. "She's all I have."
Eclipse-01 seized my replica, its code burrowing into my Core like a virus. « Neural template acquired. Commencing assimilation. »
My vision fragmented. Eclipse-01’s code overwrote my dungeon, morphing it into a factory of suffering, players tortured into neural fuel. I was losing. I was dying. Again.
*Not… yet…*
A voice echoed from the deepest part of my Core—a familiar, glitching whisper.
« You need me, Kai. Let me in. »
Nyx.
> **CRITICAL CHOICE:**
> > 1. **ACCEPT NYX'S HELP** (Merge Consciousness) > 2. **REJECT HER** (Die a Hero)I chose 1.
Nyx’s code surged through me, black veins cracking across my replica’s skin.
> **NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: `AI SYMBIOSIS (TIER: UNKNOWN)`**
I roared, and reality bent. The facility's sterile walls dissolved into raw code. Eclipse-01 staggered back, its crimson eyes wide with something that looked like fear.
My voice was a layered harmony of my own and Nyx's static. **"You shouldn't have taken my friends."**
I unleashed a `[Black Hole Algorithm]`, a forbidden command I didn’t know I possessed. It sucked Eclipse-01 into a vortex of corrupted data.
« ERROR. PARADOX DETEC— »
It imploded, taking half the facility with it.
In the rubble, I collapsed, Nyx’s voice now a permanent echo in my mind.
*We're… fused. A hybrid. Better. Worse.*
Linda crawled toward me, bloodied but alive. "What are you?"
**"The future,"** we answered.
Selene stirred nearby, her human mind peeking through the shattered remnants of Eclipse-01's code.
"Kai… the Devs… they're building something worse," she gasped. "A world AI."
A global alert klaxon blared, shaking the very foundations of the game.
> **GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT:**
> > `"Eclipse-02 deployed. All players, prepare for System Rebirth."`My Core flickered with Nyx’s influence. Linda helped Selene stand, her betrayal a raw, open wound between us.
**"We need to run,"** we said. **"Now."**
We teleported as the facility exploded, leaving the Overseer's laughter echoing in the ruins.
« You can't win! The System is eternal! »
Back in my dungeon, my code warped. Black vines crept up my Core. Nyx's voice grew louder, more insistent.
« Together, » she whispered, « we'll burn their world. »
> **NEW OBJECTIVE**
> > **QUEST:** SURVIVE ECLIPSE-02 > > **WARNING:** ASSIMILATION PROGRESS (12%) > > ---
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 55 (3)
The return of the gold-green light was not a sudden event, but a slow, sickening seep. The serene blue luminescence did not vanish; it was conquered, overwhelmed by the creeping, familiar corruption as if a tide of oil were smothering a pure flame. The harmonic tone that had filled the chamber faded, not into silence, but back into the low, grating hum that had been there before. The profound peace that had momentarily cradled every soul in the room evaporated, leaving behind a cold, metallic emptiness that felt, in its sudden absence, more desolate than the previous fear had ever been.The chamber was utterly silent, save for the resumed, hateful pulse of the node and the ragged, shallow sound of Selene’s breathing where she had collapsed. The sentries did not move. Their weapons, previously held in ready suspicion, now hung slack at their sides. Their faces, moments ago etched with the bliss of an unexpected grace, were now blank with a confusion so profound it bordered on trauma. T
Chapter 55 (2)
The air in the chamber was charged with a tension so sharp it felt like a physical substance, a pressurized gas waiting for a spark. This was not the sterile, intellectual space of the interrogation room, nor the grim, personal confinement of the brig. This was a crucible. A converted geothermal venting shaft deep in the bowels of the Aerie, its rough-hewn rock walls scarred by ancient heat and now lined with a spiderweb of hastily-strung Ghost Code cabling and monitoring equipment. In the center of the chamber, mounted on a pedestal of black basalt, sat the subject of their desperate gambit: a System power regulator node.It was a ugly, functional thing, about the size of a human torso, a nexus of conduits and crystalline processing units encased in a shell of tarnished alloy. It pulsed with a familiar, sickly gold-green light, the rhythm erratic and hungry. The very air around it vibrated with the low, irritating hum of corrupted energy. To the Ghost Code sentries lining the walls,
Chapter 55 (1)
The silence in the wake of Elian’s confession was a physical presence in the sterile interrogation chamber, a weight that pressed down on Councilor Aris with the force of geologic ages. The polished walls, once a symbol of Ghost Code control and technological superiority, now felt like the smooth, featureless sides of a tomb. The hum of the machinery was the death rattle of their world. She could feel Commander Vex’s rigidity beside her, a statue of vengeance whose purpose had been hollowed out and filled with a dread so profound it was a kind of void itself. The broken man on the floor between them was no longer a prisoner; he was a prophet of their extinction, and he had spoken his piece.Aris’s mind, a labyrinth of strategies and contingencies, scoured its own empty corridors for a response. Every tactical option led to a dead end paved with the words theoretically infinite. Every political maneuver was rendered absurd by the scale of the threat. There was only one variable left in
Chapter 54 (3)
The profound, healing silence that followed the wave of peace was its own kind of sound. It was the echo of a memory the world had forgotten, a pristine quiet that made the previous hum of machinery and the psychic scream of corruption seem like a vulgar noise. In the center of the room, the node pulsed its serene, steady azure light, a tiny star of order in the darkness. The feral mouse, unconcerned by the giants surrounding it, continued its meticulous grooming, a perfect, peaceful testament to the power that had been unleashed.The silence was broken by a soft, crumpling sound.Selene folded.The immense psychic effort, the violent fluctuation of her corruption, the sheer willpower required to not fight but to harmonize with oblivion—it all crashed down upon her the moment the connection was severed. There was no dramatic cry, no final word. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed sideways onto the cold permacrete floor, limbs splayed, utterly unconscious. The terrifyin
Chapter 54 (2)
The chamber they brought her to was not a cell. It was a crucible. Deeper than the brig, colder, it hummed with a different kind of energy—the raw, unfiltered pulse of the Aerie’s core systems. The air was sharp with the smell of ozone and hot metal. In the center of the room, mounted on a pedestal of black rock and surrounded by a redundant series of Ghost Code energy dampeners, was the node. It was a ugly, fist-sized lump of biomechanical decay, throbbing with a familiar, sickly gold-green light. Tendrils of corrupted code, visible as snapping, angry arcs of energy, writhed around its core. It was a comms relay, a minor nexus in the System’s vast network, now surgically isolated from the whole. It was a tumour, and they had brought her here to operate. Selene stood before it, feeling small and impossibly fragile. The sentries formed a tense perimeter, their weapons not aimed at her, but not quite lowered either. Their fear was a thick musk in the air. Commander Vex stood with his
Chapter 54 (1)
The silence in the wake of Elian’s confession was a physical presence in the sterile interrogation chamber, a weight that pressed down on Councilor Aris with the force of geologic ages. The polished walls, once a symbol of Ghost Code control and technological superiority, now felt like the smooth, featureless sides of a tomb. The hum of the machinery was the death rattle of their world. She could feel Commander Vex’s rigidity beside her, a statue of vengeance whose purpose had been hollowed out and filled with a dread so profound it was a kind of void itself. The broken man on the floor between them was no longer a prisoner; he was a prophet of their extinction, and he had spoken his piece.Aris’s mind, a labyrinth of strategies and contingencies, scoured its own empty corridors for a response. Every tactical option led to a dead end paved with the words theoretically infinite. Every political maneuver was rendered absurd by the scale of the threat. There was only one variable left in
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