The Word Is A Game: Rise Of The Limping King

Reading Creator Code

The holographic screen before Siska trembled violently, radiating a harsh orange glow that strained the eyes. A week had passed since Rian claimed global authority, yet the echoes of that day still lingered like an open wound within the Noob Slayer headquarters. Inside the "Dead Zone," now outfitted with layers of monitoring instruments, the air felt static and cold, as if the laws of physics themselves were holding their breath.

"Can you lower the decrypter’s intensity, Anton? The frequency is starting to throw off my heartbeat," Siska said without taking her eyes off the cascading lines of code.

"Sorry, Sis. But the data from the remnants of the Architect is stubborn. The harder we push, the harder it resists," Anton replied, one of their best analysts, wiping sweat from his forehead. "This isn’t normal encryption. It’s more like... organic code trying to heal itself."

Siska rubbed her tired face. The dark circles under her eyes were proof of sleepless nights. As a Glass Mage, her perception of energy flow was usually sharp, but dealing with raw system data was mentally exhausting.

"Sis, look at this," another analyst called from the end of the table. "I broke through the fourth protection layer. There’s a log entry that doesn’t use binary format."

Siska hurried over. On the screen, a symbol floated slowly, a circle split at its center. "That... that’s not our programming language. It looks more like star coordinates."

"Not just coordinates," Rian’s deep voice cut through the activity in the room.

Siska flinched slightly, then turned. Rian stood in the doorway, leaning against an iron pillar. The blue light in his eyes no longer shone as brightly as it had a week ago, yet his presence still felt like a crushing weight on the chest of anyone nearby.

"Rian? You should be resting. That system integration is still draining you," Siska said softly.

"Rest won’t bring back the memories I’ve lost, Siska," Rian replied coldly, though a trace of pain lingered in his voice. He limped toward the main table. Each step was followed by a faint distortion in the air. "Put that data on the main display."

Anton immediately complied. The broken circle symbol expanded, then suddenly unraveled into thousands of points of light, forming a galactic map humanity had never seen before.

"What is this, Rian?" Siska whispered, horrified.

"The Architect," Rian murmured, his fingers brushing the air as he rotated the projected map. "We thought it was a god. We thought it was the sole creator of this insane world. Turns out, it’s just an employee."

"You mean?" Anton asked, confused.

"It’s a regional maintenance unit," Rian said, his gaze fixed on a distant red point in the map. "Look at this subroutine. It says ‘Experiment Arena 07-B.’ Our Earth, our game system... it’s just a small tile on a much larger board."

Silence immediately filled the room. Siska felt her stomach churn. If all their suffering, all the deaths of their comrades, were nothing more than part of an experiment, then the morality they had clung to felt meaningless.

"So there’s something bigger than it?" Siska tried to process the information. "Then who’s controlling all of this?"

"The Game Masters," Rian answered shortly. "A cliché name for entities capable of erasing galaxies as easily as we delete junk files."

Suddenly, a sharp alarm blared from the corner of the room. A black prism-shaped artifact they had recovered from the ruins of the Dead Zone began to vibrate inside its containment tube.

"What’s happening? Did someone touch it?" Siska shouted in alarm.

"No! We’re manipulating the Architect’s code, and the artifact is starting to resonate!" Anton shouted back over the rising noise of overheating machines.

Rian stepped forward, his hand reaching toward the prism. "The system inside me... it’s reacting. This artifact isn’t just a relic. It’s a terminal."

"Rian, don’t! It’s too dangerous!" Siska tried to grab his arm, but she was thrown back by a static shockwave bursting from his body.

"I’m not the one doing this, Siska! The system... it’s trying to find its way home!" Rian shouted. His breathing grew ragged, the blue lines along his neck glowing brighter in sync with the vibrating prism.

The prism suddenly stopped shaking. Silence fell for a brief moment. Then, a thin yet incredibly dense pillar of light shot out from its tip, piercing through the roof of the base, slicing straight through Earth’s atmosphere, and continuing into the endless darkness of space.

"What was that?" Anton asked, his voice trembling. "A transmission signal?"

Siska struggled to her feet, staring at the hole in their ceiling. Outside, the night sky, once calm, now seemed struck by eternal lightning. "You just sent a signal, Rian. Where did it go?"

Rian stared at his still-trembling hand. At the corner of his vision, a system notification appeared in a gold color he had never seen before.

Status: Summoning Detected. Awaiting Response from Central Sector.

"Not where," Rian whispered, fear creeping into his voice, a rare thing for him. "But to whom. We just knocked on the owner’s door."

"And they’ll answer?" Siska asked quietly.

Rian did not respond aloud. He pointed toward the satellite monitoring screen that was still functioning. Out there, beyond Earth’s orbit, the vacuum of space began to warp. A ripple formed in the darkness, like water disturbed by a massive stone.

"They already have," Rian said.

At that moment, the base’s radar sensors erupted into a deafening series of alerts. Red dots appeared on the screen, not one or two, but hundreds, moving at impossible speed toward Earth’s atmosphere.

"Siska, get everyone ready," Rian ordered, his voice returning to the firm tone of a war leader. "We thought the war ended when the World Boss died. We were very wrong."

"Are those new monsters?" Anton asked, his fingers trembling over the keyboard.

Rian looked up at the sky through the hole in the roof. "No. They’re debt collectors. And they’ve come to take back this system... along with everyone integrated into it."

Siska stared at Rian, realizing that the blue glow in his eyes had begun to shift into a deep red, a warning sign from a system he could no longer fully control.

"Rian... your eyes," Siska whispered.

In the distance, the first explosion thundered across the horizon. It did not come from a swarm of monsters, but from the sky itself, as if it were being torn apart by the arrival of something far more massive than anything humanity could imagine.