The world came back in pieces.
Aaron stood in the aftermath of chaos, the heavy air of the Cartenon Temple thick with malice. The colossal sword meant to split him clean had frozen mid-air—just inches from his neck—as if time itself had hesitated.
He didn't waste the gift.
His one remaining leg tensed, balancing his mangled form with mechanical precision. Blood dripped steadily from the torn stump where his left leg had once been. His shattered left arm hung limp, bone jutting slightly under skin. Pain flared like lightning—but his mind?
Calm. Surgical.
He exhaled.
"Tch. That was close. Sloppy."
The blade above snapped downward again—time had caught up.
Aaron pivoted. Not fast. Smart. He dropped under the swing, letting gravity do the work.
The edge kissed air where his neck had been, smashing into the floor with a thunderclap of fractured stone.
Dust and debris flew. A second statue lunged through it. The twin-bladed sentinel.
Right flank. Five steps. Too wide. Predictable.
Aaron struck. One-legged, off-balance, but the move was flawless. His arm—coated in dense Armament Haki—slammed forward in a short, sharp arc. It wasn't about power. It was about timing.
CRACK.
The statue's jaw detonated on impact, chunks of divine stone sailing into the haze. It staggered.
Aaron didn't follow through. No flourish. He'd already moved—half-hop, half-slide—around the third statue's incoming spear. His missing leg threw off his rhythm, but he adjusted. Instinctual micro-corrections.
Not beautiful. Efficient.
Another breath.
The temple shuddered as the gauntlet titan—massive, brute force—charged from the back. The one that had nearly pulverized him earlier.
Aaron didn't flinch.
He turned to it. One arm. One leg. No time.
He grinned.
"Alright, big guy. Let's dance."
The titan's fist came down with the weight of a collapsing cathedral.
Aaron didn't move away—he moved through. His single leg launched him forward in a skewed corkscrew dodge beneath the punch, his body tilting just enough to miss the full impact as the shockwave tore a trench behind him.
But the edge clipped his ribs.
White-hot pain seared through his side as he was flung across the chamber, bouncing off the blood-slick floor like a broken toy. He skidded to a stop in front of the altar.
Cough. Spit. Blood.
He pushed himself up, trembling. Every nerve screamed. His stump was leaking warmth into the stone. His vision blurred at the edges.
"Move. Now."
Aaron didn't argue with himself. He pivoted into a crouch.
A blade cleaved down again—he caught it. Not with strength—with Haki. His broken arm braced against the descending force, dark coating flaring in resistance. Cracks laced through the bone, but the sword stopped.
"Try harder," he snarled, teeth bared in a bloodied smile.
He shifted his weight, barely enough, and the statue overcommitted. That was all he needed.
His good arm snapped up and shattered the thing's torso in a clean, brutal uppercut.
Fragments exploded outwards like shrapnel.
He didn't even watch it fall.
Aaron didn't fight like a warrior. He fought like a ghost with a vendetta—quiet footwork, misdirection, delayed momentum. Every motion was calculated in silence, no thought wasted on internal monologue.
The statues reformed their perimeter.
Aaron stood at the center, cracked and bleeding, surrounded by a graveyard of rubble.
He drew in another breath.
Black lightning crawled across his skin as Conqueror's Haki sparked again.
The temple felt it. Statues trembled for just a moment—whether from code or fear, he didn't care.
One-legged, bloodied, and smiling like the devil.
Aaron muttered low, almost reverent:
"I used to kill quietly. Shadows. Blades."
He raised his lone arm. Haki condensed along it like obsidian flame.
"Now?" He pointed toward the gauntlet statue.
"I kill with declarations and earthquakes."
Then he lunged—impossibly fast for a crippled man.
A blur of willpower and malice.
The fight wasn't over.
It was just getting personal.
---
Stone dust still hung in the air like smoke after a war. The shattered remnants of the last temple statue lay scattered, broken and lifeless, a testament to something impossible—a lone hunter who had turned the trial meant to kill him into rubble.
Aaron stood—or rather, knelt—at the center of the battlefield. Blood soaked the stone beneath him. His left leg had been severed cleanly at the thigh, and his right, while still attached, was mangled beyond use. One arm hung limp, the shoulder dislocated. His breathing was slow, ragged, every inhale a quiet war.
But his eyes... they burned.
Calm. Cold. Amused.
Aaron chuckled, just once, a dry rasp from his cracked lips. "So that's what 'welcoming committee' means in this world. Noted."
Then, silence.
No statues moved. No swords fell. No escape door opened.
Just him and the ruin.
[Gacha System Trial: "Peak Garp Template Experience" — Concluded.]
[Integration Progress: 7%]
[Warning: Excessive strain on host physiology.]
Aaron's mind flickered as the system's mechanical voice chimed in—distant, clinical, completely unimpressed by the fact its host had just obliterated an entire room full of ancient killing machines while half-dead.
"Strain?" he muttered with a cracked grin.
"That's just called cardio where I'm from."
His vision blurred. The burning adrenaline that had carried him this far ebbed from his bloodstream, replaced by cold tremors and a leaden weight in his chest. He could feel the moment his body gave out. Not a collapse. A surrender.
He slumped forward, arms refusing to move. Breathing became effort. Life became heavy.
[Vital signs declining. Cardiac rhythm unstable. Neural activity dropping…]
[Estimated time to death: 0.9 seconds.]
Aaron blinked up at the flickering ceiling, eyelids sluggish.
"Well," he rasped, "this got dramatic quick."
Then came the chime. Not the chaotic pulse of the Gacha system, but a cooler tone—structured, deliberate. A blue screen blinked to life above him.
[System Initializing...]
[Would you like to live?]
The temple's air chilled.
Aaron's mind—blurring at the edges—somehow focused at the words. He could feel something different now. Not power, but structure.
A code, trying to graft itself into him.
His brow twitched.
"Live, huh?" he muttered. "Bit late to ask."
But deep down, he knew—this was that moment. The turning point Sung Jinwoo had faced.
Still half-conscious, he let out a slow, bitter laugh.
"Yeah... sure. Let's dance."
[Confirmed. Blessing of the Great Spellcaster Kandiaru granted.]
[Healing all wounds. Status restoration in progress.]
[Status resistance: active.]
Warmth.
It wasn't gentle. It flooded him like a broken dam—raw life slamming into torn flesh. He felt bones snap back into place. Veins knit. Muscles regenerated. The pain didn't vanish; it screamed once more before it faded. But death? Death took a step back.
He breathed.
Deep. Steady.
Alive.
[Welcome, Player.]
[Tutorial Initialization: Commencing]
[Stat Calibration... Error Detected.]
[Warning: Combat Experience Exceeds Tutorial Thresholds.]
[Unexpected Stat Parameters Detected.]
[Trait "Devil's Tenacity" Unlocked.]
[Trait "Iron Resolve" Unlocked.]
[Error: Player violates Tutorial Integrity.]
The interface glitched. The neat blue UI flickered with static like a TV about to implode.
Aaron blinked.
"…Now that's more my speed."
[Rebooting system…]
[Memory Root Accessing — Unsecured Path Detected…]
[WARNING: Internal Mindscape Scan…]
Aaron's pupils narrowed.
Something was probing him. Not just stats, not just combat data—it was digging. Into memory. Into soul.
And then—
"Not yours," he growled.
A pulse surged.
But it wasn't from the blue system.
[GS:Critical breach detected. Unauthorized access to host mind. Intervention required.]
[GS :Releasing Limiters. Initiating Takeover Protocol.]
The Gacha System—silent until now—spoke.
Not clinical.
Not neutral.
Furious.
But not with Aaron.
["Heh… You actually let that rusty relic try to scan your mind? Bold. Or dumb."]
The voice wasn't synthetic this time.
It was sharp, female, alive. Like a seasoned gambler amused that someone tried to peek at her cards.
Aaron's lips curled upward.
"You're…talking now?"
["Talking? Please. I'm rescuing your sorry ass. Sit tight, Rookie."]
A purple interface flared into being over the flickering blue one, sweeping across the air with a glitchy surge. Sparks of code fragmented the blue system's control. The text windows of the Architect's interface distorted—unraveling like melted film.
[Override In Progress. Initiating System Seizure.]
[Possession Successful. Reconstructing UI.]
[Welcome to the Ultimate Gacha System.]
Aaron's eyes reflected violet.
The blue system's final message stuttered and died.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE. ALL FUNCTIONS—]
[TERMINATED.]
In the quiet that followed, a new logo blinked into place. Sleek, curved lines. Neon purple. Alive. Dangerous. And… smug.
["Tch. Can't leave you alone for one second, can I?"]
The voice again.
Feminine. Confident. Playful. But under the sass, there was something unmistakable—fierce protectiveness.
Aaron exhaled, sitting upright as his body finished healing.
"Well, hello to you too."
["You broke the damn dungeon. Crashed a decade-old divine protocol. And gave a death system a heart attack."]
A pause.
["…I'm so proud I could cry. But I won't. That's inefficient."]
Aaron raised a brow.
"You… are enjoying this."
["Who wouldn't? You just punched a hammer statue into gravel with one leg. That's premium content."]
He flexed his hands. Whole again. Stronger.
"So… what now?"
The new interface pulsed. Purple light washed across the ruined temple.
["Now?"]
["Now we make sure nothing ever tries to peek into that head of yours again. This mind? It's mine to manage."]
Aaron nodded once.
"Good. I don't like uninvited guests."
["Then we understand each other. Let's get started, Jinwoo."]
He tilted his head.
"…You're calling me that now?"
["You are him. Get used to it. You're no longer just the Devil."]
The purple UI shimmered.
["You're the first and last Host of the Ultimate Gacha System."]
Aaron's mouth curled into a thin smile.
"Then let's rewrite this game."
The chamber lay silent. The dust of shattered stone had barely begun to settle before a deep, all-consuming hush cloaked the ruins of the statue battlefield.
Jinwoo's body, broken and bloodied, lay in the center of the wreckage. His chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, consciousness flickering like a candle in the wind. The blessing of Kandiaru had stopped the bleeding, numbed the pain—but not the exhaustion. It was as though every cell in his body had been drained dry.
He slipped under.
Not violently. Not with struggle.
Just a gentle descent into blackness.
["Sleep would be wise, Jinwoo."]
The Gacha System's voice hummed through the edges of his mind, more amused than concerned.
["You've earned it."]
A faint smile touched Jinwoo's lips.
And he fell.
---
Elsewhere, hidden beyond mortal perception
—
A presence stirred within the fractured shell of the dungeon's system framework.
The Architect.
He did not appear, not fully. Merely an echo of his will—a fragment he had embedded in the ruins of this trial, left to monitor and shepherd the chosen vessel: Sung Jinwoo.
Now, something was wrong.
He could feel it. Sense it.
The system—his system—had activated briefly, according to plan.
Then it had vanished. Entirely.
"...No," the Architect murmured, his tone calm, but beneath that calm flowed a current of unease. "That... is not possible."
In all his eons of crafting, refining, watching, never had he seen a collapse this sudden.
His spectral form shimmered above the unconscious boy's body. The fragments of the blue interface were gone. No trails. No coding. No fallback prompts. Nothing.
It was like it had never existed.
He extended a thin sliver of thought toward Jinwoo.
"Perhaps… a misfire. A transient anomaly. Easily corrected."
He reached deeper.
He touched the boy's mind.
And then—
The backlash hit.
Not a resistance. Not an error.
A void.
And within that void—power.
Not refined. Not divine. Not monarchal.
But raw. Alien. Violent in its silence.
The Architect screamed.
Not aloud, but through essence—recoiling as if he had plunged his hands into a furnace made of sentience. Every code-thread in his consciousness flared in revolt.
What he had touched was not Jinwoo. It was something else. Something old. Something watching back.
He staggered backward, if such a thing were possible for his form.
"What…? What are you?"
The boy remained unconscious. Unmoving.
But that presence… was still there.
And now, it had noticed him.
His gaze darted across the remnants of the broken trial room. No interface. No quest flags. No inheritance sequence. No metrics. No hooks to reel Jinwoo back into the role of vessel.
The entire framework he had so meticulously laid, for decades—no, centuries—was obliterated.
Gone.
And worse…
He couldn't tell how.
The system hadn't malfunctioned. It hadn't been corrupted.
It had been eradicated.
Deleted by a force that left no trace of entry.
And now he couldn't even see into Jinwoo's soul.
No vessel. No bindings. No protocols. No strings to pull.
The Architect felt something he had not felt in a thousand years.
Fear.
This boy—this weak human who was supposed to serve as the perfect cocoon for the Shadow Monarch—was now an untraceable anomaly.
An error.
A threat.
"No... This cannot be... The Monarch entrusted me—"
He tried again to reassert access.
Nothing.
His privileges as system overseer were invalid. Revoked. Worse than revoked—he wasn't even recognized by the interface anymore. There was no interface left to reject him.
A chill rippled through his formless essence.
This wasn't Jinwoo ascending.
This was Jinwoo becoming something else.
A variable the Architect could no longer calculate.
And in the distance, echoing across the hollow spiritual plane that separated dimensions, he could already feel the attention of others beginning to shift.
If the Shadow Monarch learned of this...
No.
He had to flee.
Preserve what fragments of himself he could.
Warn the others.
Delay judgment.
Because this…
This wasn't a chosen one.
This was a catalyst.
The Architect's final thoughts before he unraveled himself into the cracks between realms were cold and desperate:
"We have not forged a vessel."
"We've unleashed a monster."
And then, silence.
The boy's body remained still in the dungeon ruins. Unconscious. Stabilized.
But now… wrapped in a faint, violet shimmer.
Like a cocoon.
Like a system reforming.
But not blue.
Not clean.
Purple. Twisting. Alive.
Awaiting its host to rise.
Awaiting the next move.
Awaiting the game to begin anew.
---
AUTHOR'S NOTE – System Update: Author.exe Activated
WHEW.
You survived Chapter 4. Are you okay? Hydrated? Mentally intact? No sudden urges to pull a Gacha in real life? (Please don't. Your wallet deserves peace.)
Now, let's talk:
🤯 What just happened?!
A) Aaron became HIM. 🔥
B) The System got hacked by a menace in drip.
C) That Architect needs therapy and maybe a hug (but mostly therapy).
D) I blacked out from the hype and now I'm somewhere near Chapter 7, send help.
💭 Be honest: How's Aaron doing so far as a protagonist?
⚔️ "Certified assassin menace. I'd trust him with my life and possibly my snack stash."
🧠 "Too smart. If he gets one more power-up I'm gonna start calling him Aaron.exe."
😂 "The sarcasm is elite. The confidence is dangerous. I am invested."
😬 "I need a support group for readers emotionally overwhelmed by Chapter 4."
📚 If you enjoyed this chapter...
🧨 Add this story to your Library so you don't miss when the next Gacha bomb drops.💬
Drop a comment! I read every single one (even the one where you call me evil for that cliffhanger).
📢 Share your theories, favorite lines, or which Gacha pull you'd want in this hellscape of statues and gods.
❓ One last question:
What would YOU do if a random screen popped up and asked you to "Sync With Host Consciousness: Sung Jinwoo"?
😎 "Yes. Immediately. No hesitation."
🤔 "Wait, are there dental benefits?"
🏃 "I'd RUN. I've seen anime. I know how this ends."
👀 "Depends... do I get a gacha system too or nah?"
Thanks for reading! Chapter 5 is coming—new madness, new rules, and Aaron might finally face something worse than statues:
Stay sharp, and may your pulls be legendary.— Author.exe, logging off…