"*Thud—!*"
Not the dull impact of hitting ground, but the stuttering lag of dropped data packets.
Lucian barely propped himself up before vomiting blood. The crimson liquid hit the glowing metallic junk pile and didn't spread—instead, it disintegrated into red pixel blocks that hissed and evaporated.
He raised his left hand.
His pinky and ring finger had turned semi-transparent, pixelating at a rate visible to the naked eye as the corruption devoured toward his palm.
On his retina, a blood-red countdown pulsed like a death warrant:
**[WARNING: Environmental Logic Conflict]**
**[Local Data Loss Rate: 32%]**
**[System Crash Countdown: 00:02:59]**
**[00:02:58]**
Less than three minutes.
If he didn't act fast, he'd become just another string of corrupted code in this electronic graveyard.
"*Cough*... hahaha!"
Not far away, Arthur lay sprawled among discarded graphics cards, limbs akimbo.
His expensive tailored suit hung in tatters, his face a canvas of bruises, yet his eyes blazed with manic intensity as he stared at Lucian's disappearing fingers.
"Karma! This is what you get for tampering with the script!" Arthur coughed blood while laughing hysterically, his expression twisted with euphoria. "Lucian, your cheat codes expired! In this new map, I'm immortal, and you... you're a virus marked for deletion!"
He struggled to stand despite his trembling legs, convinced he remained the protagonist here.
"When I recover my strength... I'll turn your peasant fiancée into a specimen!"
"Shut up."
Lucian had no time for this beaten dog. His gaze locked onto shadows deep within the scrap metal mountains.
Something was coming.
The tooth-grinding sound of metal scraping against bone echoed through the air.
"*Hiss—!*"
Dozens of torso-only shadows burst forth!
Abominations cobbled together from rotting flesh and rusted machinery—no lower bodies, spines trailing tangled wires as they scuttled spider-like on their arms at horrifying speed.
Red LEDs glowed in their empty eye sockets, pulsing with hungry anticipation.
They'd caught the scent of "food."
Arthur's nauseating concentration of "protagonist luck" blazed like a searchlight in the darkness to these glitched spawn of the wasteland dungeon.
"*ROAR!*"
The lead mechanical corpse launched itself forward, rust-stained claws aimed straight for Arthur's throat.
"Get back!"
Sylvia rushed forward, thrusting both hands out. "Ice Wall!"
But the expected barrier never materialized.
Water molecules in the air barely began condensing before the ambient radiation vaporized them into scalding steam that "*puffed*" directly into her face.
"*Ugh!*" Sylvia staggered backward, scalded and incredulous. "My ability... it's not working?"
**[Notice: Current dungeon prohibits low-temperature physics]**
This was a corrupted zone. Old rules were worthless here.
"Haha! See? Even monsters come to worship me!"
Arthur watched the approaching claws without dodging, instead spreading his arms wide with martyrlike fervor. "Come! Become my experience points! I am the Chosen—"
The corpse-thing opened its oil-dripping maw and bit down viciously toward his skull.
It wasn't here to give experience.
It was here to feed.
"Idiot."
A cold voice exploded behind Arthur's ear.
In the 0.1 seconds before steel fangs could close, a hand clamped around Arthur's neck.
Lucian.
His pixelating left hand hung useless at his side while his intact right hand gripped Arthur's spine like an iron vice.
"Stay quiet for a moment, battery."
Before the words finished, Lucian's right fingers suddenly split open!
Fingernails flew off as five data probes emerged, glowing with eerie green light like serpent fangs.
Arthur's fanatical expression froze. "What... what are you doing?"
"System maintenance."
Lucian's gaze was emotionless as he pressed down hard.
"*Squelch!*"
Five probes pierced skin without resistance, violently and precisely penetrating Arthur's spinal nerve cluster!
"*AAAAHHHHH—!*"
Arthur's scream transcended human limits.
This wasn't physical pain—this was the terror of having his soul formatted. He felt something being violently extracted from his core.
**[Connection Established]**
**[Target: S-Rank Protagonist Container (Damaged)]**
**[Executing: Forced Source Code Extraction]**
"*Bzzzzt—!*"
Blinding golden streams flowed through the probes into Lucian's body.
This was Arthur's "Chosen Luck"—the foundational code that had supported this world's operation.
As the golden light drained away, Arthur's plump skin rapidly withered and grayed. His radiant blonde hair instantly turned ashen like dead grass, his entire form deflating like a punctured balloon.
Meanwhile, Lucian transformed.
His semi-transparent left hand solidified instantly, pixels filled with real flesh and blood.
His pale complexion flushed with vitality. The weak data streams in his eyes exploded into twin green flames burning in his pupils' depths.
**[Entropy Decreased: 32% -> 5%]**
**[Energy Replenishment Complete]**
**[Temporary Permissions Acquired: Regional Administrator]**
"*Ahh...*"
Lucian tilted his head back, exhaling deeply with satisfaction that bordered on euphoric.
*Perfect.*
Like a dying phone plugged into fast charging—every cell in his body sang with renewed power.
The corpse-thing that had missed its target hung suspended mid-air, its electronic eyes confused. The delicious "food" (Arthur) had suddenly turned rancid.
It rotated its stiff neck toward the energy-rich Lucian.
"*ROAR!*"
Dozens of corpse-things adjusted targets, shrieking as they swarmed forward.
"Modern villains have to hunt their own meals."
Lucian discarded the eye-rolling Arthur like garbage at his feet.
Facing the approaching wave of rotting stench, he didn't even assume a combat stance.
He simply raised his newly-repaired left hand and snapped his fingers.
*Snap.*
**[Target: All_Hostiles (Range: 50 meters)]**
**[Action: Shift+Delete]**
No explosion.
No blood and gore.
The world simply went quiet.
Dozens of grotesque monsters froze mid-air, their outlines blurring before dissolving like pencil drawings erased by rubber, silently disintegrating into cascading green data rain.
Complete annihilation at the foundational logic level.
Sylvia stared in stunned silence as green light particles settled on her hair—cold and insubstantial.
This wasn't combat.
This was editing.
Lucian closed his eyes, brow furrowed as chaotic data fragments flooded his mind.
A forced memory insertion:
A sterile white operating room.
Arthur lay naked on the table, eyes vacant as a doll's. Figures in hazmat suits operated mechanical arms, forcibly implanting a glowing chip into his brain tissue.
Holographic displays flickered with cold annotations:
**[Subject 897: Arrogant Dragon-Type Template Implantation Complete]**
**[Test Objective: Chapter 37 Emotional Output Efficiency]**
The vision cut out.
Lucian opened his eyes, green flames slowly extinguishing in their depths.
He looked down at Arthur twitching like a dying dog at his feet, his gaze losing some mockery while gaining complexity.
"I see..." He crouched down, patting Arthur's withered cheek. "You never had even one second of free will."
This guy wasn't some Chosen One.
He was mass-produced emotional content—a USB drive loaded with "protagonist programming."
But in that data stream, Lucian had glimpsed a pathway—**[World Script: 13th Revision]**.
That thing lay at this wasteland's heart.
"Can you still walk?" Lucian stood, addressing Sylvia.
Sylvia snapped from her shock, tearing fabric to bandage her arm. "Where to?"
Lucian pointed toward the distance.
Through purple mist, a black steel fortress constructed from countless scrapped server towers pulsed with eerie neon light like a slumbering behemoth.
"There."
Lucian kicked the prone Arthur. "Bring our battery. That place has equipment to completely crack this 'body's' programming."
To turn the tables, he first needed to steal the "script" from this tin can.
The new map's game was just beginning.