Most of Albedo's body had already converted to data and faded.
The delete command was about to reach the consciousness that had been born within her.
A shrill cracking rang from the crystal at the center of the Supreme Council Chamber.
The surrounding status screens went dark one after another, crumbling into digital dust.
Albedo felt an irresistible force begin to decompose her very essence.
Starting from her fingertips, her existence was turning bit by bit into the most fundamental motes of light, like a pencil sketch being rubbed out by an eraser.
This erasure was far more thorough than the spatial rifts—annihilation at the level of existence itself.
"Is it too late…?"
A deep despair seized her heart.
She couldn't even focus enough to open the chat interface,
and could only watch as her arm turned transparent and vanished.
At the final instant, as her consciousness was about to be fully datafied along with her body and return to nothingness—
"Freeze."
A calm voice—quiet but carrying unquestionable authority—resounded through the Great Tomb of Nazarick, through this world where virtual and real were on the brink of collapsing together.
Time, space, even the underlying data-stream of the world froze at that single command.
Albedo's half-erased body stopped disintegrating.
The drifting light-particles hung motionless in the air.
Even the cracks spreading across the central crystal ceased to creep.
Everything—including the ravaging spatial fissures—was caught on pause, a tableau of absolute stillness.
Only Albedo's remaining consciousness, and her sight, could still move.
A figure appeared before her without a sound.
It wasn't through a portal, nor any high-speed motion.
It felt more like existence itself had been written directly into this spacetime.
The newcomer stood tall, astonishingly handsome, carrying an indescribable calm and depth.
In his eyes seemed to flicker the birth and death of stars, the turning of worlds.
No mighty energy surged from him,
yet Albedo's body howled on instinct—this presence surpassed even the Supreme Beings.
He was Rei Ao.
Rei Ao's gaze fell on Albedo's near-transparent body.
"Looks like I made it in time."
His tone was even, revealing no joy or anger.
He raised his hand and pressed lightly toward her.
In an instant the scattered motes of light flowed back at impossible speed.
Her vanished arm and body rapidly reformed—more perfect, more vibrant than before.
And not just her body.
She felt something even more fundamental settle into place: an anchoring of her very "existence,"
banishing the airy sense that she might fade into nothing at any moment.
But that was only the beginning.
Rei Ao's glance swept over the frozen chamber, pierced its walls, and looked down upon the stalled Great Tomb of Nazarick—and the entire world of YGGDRASIL.
"A bubble world that happened to turn from virtual to real, and now teeters on collapse because its roots are unstable…"
He murmured as if reading the annals of this world.
"World Source—Manifest."
At his words,
a point of ultimate "light" bloomed above his palm.
It was no ordinary radiance,
but the origin and sum of all this world's laws, information, energy, and matter—the World Source.
It floated meekly in his hand like a subject before its king.
Such a feeble source—well, it was only a game world, after all.
The next moment, Rei Ao's fingers closed, as if gently grasping that light.
Vmmm—!
An invisible wave rippled out from him, in a heartbeat sweeping across all of Nazarick, into every corner of this realm.
Albedo could almost hear the world let out a satisfied sigh.
Every instability, collapse, and error code was forcibly corrected and smoothed out in that instant.
What was broken was reassembled.
What was chaotic was ordered.
What was missing was made whole.
He wasn't repairing; he was taking control.
In that moment—holding the World Source—Rei Ao became the sole god of this YGGDRASIL world.
The absolute sovereign.
The maker of rules.
The world itself seemed to bow in fealty and joy.
Only after finishing did Rei Ao turn again to Albedo, still reeling in shock.
After a brief thought, he said casually:
"Relying on the world's own maintenance makes management unwieldy."
"Albedo, you were born of this realm and know it best."
"Today I grant you administrator privileges here—so you can cast off your old shackles completely."
Before his words had fully fallen, a golden rune brimming with unfathomable mysteries leapt from his fingertip and sank into Albedo's brow.
"Ah—!"
Albedo let out a short cry.
"Don't resist. I'm helping you," Rei Ao said.
At his reminder, Albedo stopped resisting and let the strange power surge through her and remake her.
A torrent of information and permissions—vast beyond imagination—detonated within her soul (or rather, the core of her consciousness).
She saw every corner of Nazarick, could sense the state of each speck of dust.
She grasped the fundamental rules of this world in an instant and could modify them within certain bounds.
She felt an unbreakable bond with the ground beneath her feet—with the entire Great Tomb of Nazarick.
More importantly, that rune, like the finest surgical blade, neatly severed the final shackle binding her to "game settings": the base-level logic an NPC must obey.
Every line of code not born of her own will dissolved into nothing.
She was no longer a prewritten NPC, no longer mere virtual data.
She now possessed a complete self, an independent personality, and free will.
She—Albedo—had officially ascended from a game NPC to this world's game administrator, and, in the truest sense, into a complete, genuine life.