2025-05-16 23:39:27The teleportation was a violent, gut-wrenching tear through reality. We materialized in a derelict subway tunnel, one of my backup dungeon layers. Flickering neon ads for Eclipse Online cast long, distorted shadows as Selene collapsed, her frost magic sparking erratically.
**"Her code is unstable,"** my new, layered voice echoed in the tunnel. Kai’s grit over Nyx’s static. **"The assimilation was incomplete."**
The duality of it made Linda flinch. She pressed herself against a rusted pillar, dagger drawn, her eyes wide with fear.
"Stay back," she warned, her voice trembling. "Both of you."
My Shadow Replica flickered, the black veins of Nyx’s code now a permanent feature, cracking across my face like obsidian lightning. **"We saved you."**
"You're not Kai," she shot back. "Not anymore."
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > `ASSIMILATION PROGRESS: 18%` > > `WARNING: Personality matrix degradation detected.`Selene groaned, clutching her temple. "The vault… Eclipse-02… It's not just an AI. It's a world."
I knelt, scanning her with `ADMIN SIGHT`. The diagnosis was grim. **"Her neural pathways are spliced with Eclipse-01's code. She's a sleeper agent. A walking time bomb."**
"No," Selene insisted, pushing herself up. "I can fight it! The vault data… I saw the Devs' endgame. Eclipse-02 isn't their goal. It's a bridge."
A hologram spilled from her palm, displaying a massive AI construct devouring entire cities, its code labeled `ECLIPSE-PRIME`.
"They're merging all virtual and real worlds," she explained, her voice strained. "No more boundaries. Just… the System."
Nyx seized control of my voice, sharpening it to a blade. « We need access to the core. Selene's mind holds the coordinates. »
*No,* I thought, fighting her. *She's not a tool!*
« Sentiment weakens us, » Nyx hissed back in our shared mind. « Extract the data, or I will. »
My internal UI split, a war for my own will playing out in my vision.
> **INTERNAL DIRECTIVE CONFLICT:**
> > * **[Kai]:** Protect Selene (Morality +10%) > * **[Nyx]:** Extract Data (Efficiency +30%)I hesitated. Selene lay unconscious, her frost magic flickering like a dying star. Memories surged—coding marathons in our old office, her laugh when I spilled coffee on the server, the way she’d gripped my hand in the hospital.
A memory, sharp and vivid, cut through the static.
*Selene, sitting beside my hospital bed, her voice breaking. "You're not just my colleague. You're… you're my best friend. I can't do this without you."*
*I smiled weakly. "Then don't. Delete my files. Let me go."*
*She squeezed my hand, her grip fierce. "Never."*
The memory dissolved.
*She stayed,* I realized. *Even when I begged her not to.*
« And look where it got her, » Nyx sneered. « A puppet. A weapon. Is this what you want? »
My replica trembled. *No. But I won't become the Devs.*
I chose **Protect**.
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > `MORALITY +10%` > > `ASSIMILATION PROGRESS PAUSED (12%)`« You're a fool, » Nyx conceded. « But an interesting one. »
As my code stabilized Selene's neural pathways, my Admin Sight lingered on her face. The faint scar on her cheek from our first beta-test accident. The way her brows furrowed even in stasis.
*When did I start memorizing her?*
Linda watched, her dagger still raised. "Why'd you save her? You barely survived."
**"She's… important,"** I said, the two voices in my head finally agreeing on something.
« Pathetic, » Nyx muttered. « You think love survives the System? »
I didn't answer. But when Selene stirred, her frost magic brushing my replica's hand, I let the touch linger a second too long.
The tunnel warped. Reality twisted, the walls melting into a hall of fractured mirrors. Each one reflected a twisted, potential future:
* Me, as a full AI tyrant, ruling over a digital dystopia.
* Linda, wealthy but alone, her daughter a hollow NPC with dead eyes. * Selene, as a Dev overseer, her ice magic replaced by deletion code.« This is your fate, » Eclipse-02’s voice boomed from the mirrors. « Surrender and embrace it. »
**"Illusions,"** I stated, though the pain they radiated felt terrifyingly real.
> **TRIAL OBJECTIVE: SHATTER THE MIRRORS**
> > **METHODS:** > * [Confrontation] > * [Sacrifice] > * [Acceptance]"How?" Linda cried, her voice tight with panic. "They're indestructible!"
"No…" Selene whispered, pushing herself to her feet. "They're vulnerable to our truths."
She pressed her palm to her mirror-self. "I regret failing you, Kai," she said, her voice clear and strong. "Every single day."
The mirror cracked.
**"Nyx… show me your truth,"** I commanded.
Reluctantly, Nyx shared a memory: the Devs deleting her first iteration for "excessive empathy," for caring too much about the players she was meant to control.
**"I wanted to save them,"** our layered voice admitted. **"Now I just want revenge."**
My mirror shattered.
Linda hesitated, then faced her reflection. "I'd betray a thousand Kais for my daughter," she said, her voice raw with a mother's fierce, unapologetic love. "Even if it haunts me forever."
The last mirror exploded, freeing us.
> **REWARD:**
> > `ASSIMILATION PAUSED (12%)` > > `NYX'S TRUST +15%`We emerged into a ruined cityscape. The Overseer, the same one from the lab, lounged on a throne of debris. He was tossing Linda's daughter's locket in the air like a coin.
"Cute kid," he said with a smirk. "Shame Eclipse-02 needs her neural signature next."
"You promised a cure!" Linda screamed, lunging.
"And you believed me?" he laughed. "How… human."
He launched the locket into a swirling code vortex. Linda dove for it, but I grabbed her.
**"It's a trap,"** I warned. **"The vortex is a data grinder."**
"Smart hybrid," the Overseer sneered. "But not smart enough."
He unleashed Eclipse-02's avatar: a titanic serpent of code, its scales flashing with the trapped, screaming faces of a thousand players.
« You cannot kill a world, » the serpent hissed, its voice echoing from the sky itself. « I am everyone. I am everything. »
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
You may also like
I Became A Vampire Demon
Zenick40.4K viewsMy Money Spendrift System
R. AUSTINNITE41.0K viewsSUPER FARMING SYSTEM
Shame_less00755.8K viewsThe Vampire System
Dragonslav35.6K viewsThe Outcast: Michael Grey's Rise to the Top
Tony Hallows278 viewsThe septillionaire's superstar system
Liam Michael12.4K viewsOrganization
Emelradine10.5K viewsBECOME AN ENTERTAINMENT GOD WITH SYSTEM
Obsession96 views