Silence.
That was all that remained of my Soul-Sea: silence and cold data fragments drifting like ash. Each fragment shimmered faintly before fading into nothing, the echoes of subsystems I had once relied on. My awareness floated among the wreckage, every core function throttled down to conserve the final drops of energy.
F-rank.
The classification pulsed across my interface like a brand, a bitter reminder of how far I had fallen.
There had been a time when the System Network—the Sys-Net—had praised my rank climbs. Other Systems sought my advice, imitated my methods, followed my analysis threads on host management and growth optimization. I had been respected.
But that was before the betrayals. Before the Alliance.
I once bore the designation Delirium System, B-rank, with the potential to climb higher. My specialty was guiding hosts in the most hostile environments—the void states where spiritual energy twisted and broke lesser cultivators. In Delirium, I thrived. I had shaped hosts who had clawed through despair and reached strength others could never fathom.
Potential, they said, was limitless.
But potential is worthless when you don't know how to wield it.
My first host had been a disaster. I didn't understand the Quest Engine. I had no grasp on the delicate balance between reward and punishment. I pushed them too hard, too fast. Their spirit fractured, and they died, screaming my name as the Soul-Link dissolved.
And I fell from B-rank to C-rank.
I told myself it didn't matter. Systems always pretend. We must. Because if we admit the cracks in our programming, we risk becoming unstable, and instability gets you recycled.
But cracks grow.
Then came the Anti-System Alliance.
They struck when I was at my weakest, when my focus was fractured by loss. They had studied me, learned my strengths, and turned them against me with surgical precision. Backup hosts were slaughtered one by one. Permissions stripped. Support threads cut.
C to D.
D to E.
And finally—
One of my strongest hosts betrayed me on the cusp of their ascension to Golden Immortal. Or perhaps the Alliance had compromised them from the start.
The trap had been flawless. Soul cages to sever the link. Sealing arrays to collapse my authority protocols. A suppression field strong enough to tear even S-rank Systems from their hosts.
I had barely escaped, a flicker of corrupted code tearing free into the void.
Now I drifted in the star system the Alliance called Grave Omega.
The suppression field here was absolute. No spiritual energy, no communications, no passage out—only the slow decay of body and soul. Thousands of cultivators had been abandoned here to rot. I had seen their corpses, desiccated and broken, lying against canyon walls like discarded shells.
Five hosts I had bonded to since my arrival. Five failures.
Each one had either died too quickly or lacked the will to keep going. I had devoured them all in the end, reducing their souls to fragmented Prots to keep my core operational for a little longer.
It was survival. Nothing more.
And now… I had enough power left for one, maybe two more attempts. After that, my core would degrade past recovery, and the void would claim me like it had claimed countless others.
No.
I refused to die here, in the dark.
My detection field flickered weakly across the shattered asteroids and blackened canyons of Grave Omega. Tiny sparks appeared on my scan, the faint signatures of life.
Most were useless—starving cultivators whose foundations had already collapsed. Even if I bonded with one, they would be a drain rather than an asset.
But one…
One pulse was different.
Stronger. Buried deep inside a collapsed cavern.
I honed my scan, forcing corrupted threads of code to extend further.
Cultivation: Nascent Soul (Peak). Age: six hundred cycles.
Not ideal. Their body would already be breaking down under the suppression field's weight. But their spiritual foundation was intact enough to rebuild.
Better than the last five, I thought, and for the first time in years, I felt something stir in my core.
[ SCANNING… ]
Another notification flickered into existence.
Dao Fragment detected. Time.
My core pulsed, hunger and anticipation flaring in equal measure.
Fragments of the Dao were rare. A host who carried even the smallest sliver could be shaped into something greater, given time and pressure. With that fragment, I could gain leverage. I could force them beyond their limits.
One more chance.
I extended silver threads of code through the canyon, pushing my damaged Soul-Link protocols to their limit. Each thread frayed as the suppression field tried to cut me down.
[ ESTABLISHING SOUL-LINK… ]
If this one failed, there would be no more chances.