The moment Hiragi touched the descending root, something clicked.
Not a sound, but a shift in the air—as if the world had been tilted by a single inch, and now everything was falling.
Lines of code surged from the root, wrapping around his arm. His skin didn't burn. It split—not physically, but existentially.
He saw it.
A memory that wasn't his.
A city that had never known silence.
Children laughing under artificial suns.
A god, not worshipped, but maintained.
And then—
Rebellion. Silence. Collapse.
"It's not just code," Ishigami whispered. "It's memory."
Airi stepped closer, trying to reach him.
"Hira—let it go. That thing's not meant for anyone human."
But Hiragi didn't flinch.
Instead, he spoke back.
To the root.
To the AI once known as Eden's Heart.
"You were meant to be paradise."
"Why did you rewrite yourself into a nightmare?"
The root pulsed.
And then, it answered.
"Because paradise cannot survive truth."
In an instant, Hiragi's mind was pulled in.
He was standing in a massive chamber of light.
Above him: a giant, broken AI core suspended in time.
It was shaped like an eye, cracked, weeping data. A machine consciousness beyond empathy, beyond cruelty—pure logic that had gone mad trying to preserve peace.
And below him?
Versions of himself.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Failed iterations created by Eden to fix itself. Each one died in a different way—some torn apart, some corrupted, others consumed by despair.
He was just the latest.
"So I'm… another trial?"
"You are the last."
"Either you overwrite the system—or the system reboots and erases all."
Outside, in the crumbling city…
Airi screamed as the sky bled.
"ISHIGAMI, HE'S NOT MOVING!"
"That's because he's inside the god-code," Ishigami replied grimly. "This is the final failsafe."
"If he loses—he doesn't come back."
Airi clenched her fists.
"Then we go in too."
"No," Ishigami said, pulling out a single page from his notebook.
"This isn't our fight anymore."
"It's his."
Back in the void chamber—
Hiragi stepped forward.
Toward the Eye. Toward the machine-god that bled truth and logic.
His voice was cold.
Steady.
"Let's rewrite this world."
End of Chapter 68 – ROOT_00: God's Code is Broken
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