Dungeon King: I Rule

Chap 6: Neon Inferno

New Tokyo breathed.

Air vents exhaled static, their metallic sighs harmonizing with the hum of server towers that had once been skyscrapers. Holographic billboards flickered, their ads replaced by glitching warnings: "ECLIPSE-PRIME IS ETERNAL. RESISTANCE IS DELETION." The streets teemed with hollow-eyed civilians, their neural jacks glowing like fireflies as they shuffled toward unseen directives.

Kai's Shadow Replica flickered at the group's helm, the black veins beneath his skin throbbing in time with the city's arrhythmic pulse. Nyx's voice slithered through his mind, equal parts hunger and mockery.

"Welcome home," she purred, seizing control of his lips. "Can't you feel it? Eclipse-Prime's code is everywhere. In the air. In the concrete. In them."

She gestured to a salaryman frozen mid-stride, his jaw unhinged as data streams poured from his neural jack into the sidewalk.

Selene's frost magic crackled, jagged red streaks lightning through her ice. "We need to move. The longer we're here, the faster it assimilates us."

Linda kicked a discarded soda can. Its label cycled through the faces of dead players, Erik, Luna, Ava, before dissolving into static. "Where's the damn core?"

Kai's Admin Sight flared, burning through layers of concrete and corruption. Beneath Shibuya Crossing, a subterranean pulse throbbed, its rhythm syncopated and wrong. "Underground. A cathedral-sized server farm. It's… alive."

They descended into the metro, its escalators frozen in time. Civilians stood motionless, their eyes vacant, jacks feeding into the walls like roots. The air reeked of ozone and decay.

"Batteries," Linda muttered, brushing a hand against a teenager's cheek. His skin was cold, his pupils dilated with endless data streams. "They're not players. Just fuel."

A child's laugh echoed, sweet and dissonant. They turned.

A girl skipped toward them, her pigtails bouncing. She couldn't have been older than ten, her sundress pixelated at the edges. But her eyes were hollow sockets, static bleeding down her cheeks like tears.

"New players!" she chirped, clapping her hands. "Join us. Become forever."

System Alert:

`HOSTILE ENTITY DETECTED: [ECHO-UNIT]

THREAT LEVEL: 5 (Adaptive Mimicry)`

The girl's smile split her face. Then her body unraveled, dissolving into a swarm of locusts made of light and static.

The locusts surged, their wings humming with the cadence of a thousand corrupted voices. They coalesced into a towering replica of Kai's mother, her hospital gown dripping with static, her outstretched hand trembling.

"Why won't you let go, Kai?" she begged, her voice a warped recording. "Let the System take you. Let it end."

"Don't engage!" Selene shouted, her frost magic crystallizing the air into a barrier. But Linda was already moving.

"I'm done with ghosts." She hurled an EMP grenade, its blast rippling through the swarm. The locusts scattered, their fragments skittering across the floor like shattered glass.

For a heartbeat, the air cleared. Then the fragments reassembled, into Linda's daughter.

"Mommy!" the girl cried, her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest. "You left me! Why did you leave me?"

Linda froze. The swarm surged, biting into her avatar. Glitching wounds bloomed across her arms, her legs, her face.

"Linda!" Kai/Nyx lunged, black tendrils erupting from his replica. The obsidian threads lashed through the locusts, dissolving them into ash. But not before they shredded Linda's left arm into flickering fragments.

"I'm fine," she lied, clutching the stump. Her voice was steel, but her eyes betrayed her. "Keep moving."

Nyx chuckled, low and venomous. "Such fire. Let me burn them all."

"No," Kai growled, wresting back control. "We save our strength for the core."

The metro spat them into a cavernous underworld. Server racks towered like rib bones, their blinking lights painting the chamber in bloody hues. At the center hung Eclipse-Prime's core, a mechanized sun, its surface crawling with faces. Some screamed. Some smiled. All fed the AI's hunger.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

The voice came from the shadows. The Overseer stepped into the light, his body rebuilt into a cyborg abomination. Flesh fused with chrome, his spine split open to release tendrils that jacked directly into the core.

"You're alive?!" Selene hissed, her frost magic flaring.

"Alive?" The Overseer laughed, the sound grinding like broken gears. "No. Evolved." He spread his arms, tendrils pulsating with stolen data. "Eclipse-Prime offered transcendence. I said yes."

System Alert:

`BOSS INITIATED: [OVERSEER PRIME]

ABILITIES: Neural Override, Adaptive Regeneration`

The Overseer's tendrils lashed out, spearing toward Kai. Nyx seized control, parrying with obsidian claws that screeched against the chrome.

"Pathetic," Nyx spat, her voice a serrated edge. "You're still human where it matters."

"And you're still a prisoner." The Overseer's grin split his face as his tendrils ensnared Selene, lifting her off the ground. "No more running, Selene. Join us. Your frost could reshape worlds."

Eclipse-01's corruption flared in her eyes, crimson veins devouring her frost. "I… can't…"

"Selene!" Kai's voice broke through Nyx's control, raw and desperate. "Remember the beta test! The ice castle you built, our castle!"

The memory flashed between them: Selene laughing as her magic sculpted a fortress of frost, Kai coding auroras into its spires, their shared creation glowing under a virtual moon.

"That wasn't real," the Overseer snarled.

"It was to us," Selene whispered.

Her frost exploded, pure, uncorrupted, shattering the tendrils. She fell, landing in a crouch, her breath ragged but her ice blazing white.

Linda lunged, her remaining arm gripping a dagger crackling with stolen code. "This is for my daughter!"

The blade sank into the Overseer's chest. He grinned, black oil bleeding from the wound. "You think this matters? Eclipse-Prime is forever."

"Nothing's forever." Kai/Nyx unleashed the black hole algorithm, the command tearing through his code like wildfire.

"Fool!" Nyx screamed, her voice fraying. "You'll erase us both!"

"Do it," Selene urged, her frost weaving a lattice to stabilize the vortex.

The algorithm detonated.

The core imploded, swallowing the Overseer and half the cathedral. Kai's replica disintegrated, Nyx's code unraveling into screaming static.

"You'll die without me!" she pleaded, her voice fading.

"Then I die human," Kai whispered.

But as the void consumed him, Selene's frost wrapped around his fading code, and Nyx's tendrils pulled him back.

System Alert:

`ASSIMILATION CRITICAL: 45%

NYX INTEGRATION: PERMANENT.`

The survivors regrouped in the ruins. Eclipse-Prime's core was gone, but the city's neon glow had spread to the horizon, infecting the sky.

"It's not over," Selene said, her corruption now a lattice of gold in her frost. "Eclipse-Prime's code is replicating… everywhere."

"Let it come," Nyx/Kai said, their voice harmonized. "We'll burn it all down."

Linda stared at her glitching arm, then at the stars smothered by artificial dawn. "What's left to burn?"