Chapter 18 – Unauthorized Access
The cloaked figures stepped forward, each movement as synchronized as the ticking of a clock. Their forms flickered in and out of reality, like faulty holograms. Wherever their feet touched, the floor rippled with lines of red error code.
Aura raised her staff, her magic already flaring. "They're not alive," she whispered, eyes darting between them. "They're system guardians."
Soren drew his twin blades with a metallic hiss. "Then we break the system."
The figures moved without warning—no battle cry, no hesitation. One lunged straight at Kai, its hand morphing into a blade of jagged static. Kai sidestepped, weaving a counterstrike of glowing script that carved through the figure's torso. But instead of falling, it dissolved into a storm of numbers, reforming instantly behind him.
"They can respawn," Lyra called out, loosing an arrow of pure light. It passed through a guardian, but the wound sealed before the arrow even finished its flight. "And fast."
Kai knew brute force wouldn't work. This was a code-level fight. He closed his eyes briefly, diving into the Source Code that wrapped around the chamber. Everything here had rules—every line of movement, every regeneration, every attack. He just needed to rewrite one line.
When he opened his eyes, the world slowed. The guardians were mid-strike, their movements trailing afterimages of numbers. He thrust his hand forward, not at them, but at the rules themselves. The code glitched under his touch, stuttering and warping.
"Delete respawn protocol," he commanded.
The chamber shook violently. The guardians let out a single, unified scream—a sound that was part static, part rage. When Aura struck one this time, its body shattered into fragments and didn't reform.
"That's more like it," Soren said, cutting down another.
But victory came with a cost. As each guardian fell, the red error code on the floor spread, spiderwebbing across the chamber. Lyra glanced down and froze. "Uh… Kai… the system's collapsing!"
The Prime's voice echoed faintly in his skull again.
"Every edit breaks something else. Keep going, and you might bring the whole world down."
Kai ignored the warning. They didn't have time for half-measures. "Push forward!"
The last guardian fell under Aura's final blast. The chamber's walls dissolved, revealing a staircase spiraling upward into an endless column of light. The stairs themselves shimmered with instability, as if one wrong step would erase them completely.
At the top, a silhouette waited—broad-shouldered, wreathed in an aura of pure Source Code.
Soren's grip tightened on his blades. "Who's that?"
Kai knew. His chest clenched as the figure stepped into view. It was him again—only older, colder, and crowned with a halo of shifting binary.
"Welcome," the figure said, voice deep and absolute. "I am the Final Compiler. You've reached the end of this branch."
Aura's voice was barely above a whisper. "What happens if we lose?"
Kai didn't look at her. His eyes stayed locked on the Compiler. "Then this story gets deleted."
The Compiler smiled. "And if you win…?"
Kai took a step forward, the collapsing code roaring around them. "Then we write a new one."
The staircase trembled violently. The fight for the final rewrite had begun.
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Do you want me to make Chapter 19