Chapter 1 — [Error_0001] You Have Been Deleted by God
The battlefield smelled like burning metal and wet ash.
Lance Corvin stood on a hill of corpses that had once been heroes. The world around him was tearing itself apart — lightning splitting the clouds, holy flames sweeping through the ruined city below. Every time the thunder struck, pieces of divine script appeared in the sky, like silver constellations rewritten by an angry god.
He spat out blood, half amused, half exhausted.
"Fantastic. Another apocalypse before lunch."
All around him, chaos reigned. Angels in white armor descended like comets, their wings cutting through the smoke. Demons crawled up from the broken streets, dripping black ichor that hissed when it touched the ground. And somewhere between those two armies — divine and infernal — stood Lance, a man who didn't even know which side he belonged to anymore.
> [SYSTEM MESSAGE]: World Purge in Progress. All unregistered entities will be removed.]
The words boomed directly inside his skull, as if the sky itself had spoken.
Lance raised his middle finger toward the heavens. "Yeah, yeah, message received."
He glanced at his sword — cracked, scorched, but still humming faintly with power. The last Archdemon he had killed had taken nearly everything out of him. His HP bar — not that he could see it anymore — was probably hanging by a thread.
"Unregistered entity, huh?" he muttered. "I've saved this damn city five times this month. You'd think the gods could at least give me a name tag."
Another thunderous voice echoed, colder, mechanical — like the universe reading from a terminal window.
> [Entity 'Lance Corvin' — Destiny Value: NULL]
[Error Detected: Existence without purpose.]
[Solution: Delete corrupt data.]
Lance blinked. "…Excuse me?"
Before he could move, a column of white light split the sky, blasting straight toward him. He tried to dive aside, but the light wasn't something you could dodge — it was divine code, rewriting the laws of existence.
He felt it slice through him — not his body, but his being.
Every thought, every memory, every heartbeat began unraveling into lines of broken script.
> [Process complete.]
[Entity Deleted.]
For a moment, he saw everything — the battlefield, the angels, the demons — all freeze in place, as if the universe had hit pause. Then it folded inward, collapsing into a single blinding point.
And Lance Corvin was gone.
---
Silence.
Then, the sound of static.
> [Rebooting deleted entity…?]
[Error: Target directory not found.]
[Dumping to /recycle/bin/eternity/]
When Lance opened his eyes again, he was floating.
The world around him was no longer fire and ruin. It was… wrong.
A black void stretched in every direction, filled with floating shards of broken landscapes — mountains sliced midair, fragments of glowing temples, pieces of dead stars. They hung like shattered mirrors, each reflecting a different sky.
He tried to stand, but there was no ground — just a transparent grid beneath his feet, flickering with code. Every time he moved, his boots made a faint, digital hum, like stepping on glass that wasn't entirely real.
"Okay…" He rubbed his face. "Either this is hell, or Windows crashed while I died."
> [Welcome to the System Recycle Bin.]
The message appeared in midair, glowing letters arranged in a perfect rectangle, like a pop-up notification from a divine operating system.
"Recycle Bin?" he repeated. "Wait—seriously? God deletes people and recycles them?"
He waved his hand at the message. It vanished with a faint beep.
Then a small icon appeared on the horizon — a spinning blue sphere surrounded by a faint, humming light.
Curiosity got the better of him. He walked toward it.
Every step triggered more glitches — chunks of the void rippled, text flashed in the air:
> [Object reference missing.]
[Texture data not found.]
[Runtime error: gravity.exe not responding.]
Lance laughed despite himself. "Well, I always suspected the gods were bad programmers."
When he reached the sphere, it pulsed brightly, projecting a holographic silhouette of a woman — her form made of code and light, eyes glowing like binary stars.
"Whoa," he muttered. "Either you're an angel or the world's sexiest antivirus."
The hologram tilted her head, scanning him.
Then, in a calm, melodic voice, she said, "You are not supposed to exist."
"Yeah, I've been hearing that a lot lately."
> "Identification required," she said. "State your designation."
"Lance Corvin. Former mercenary, part-time demon slayer, full-time victim of bad divine management."
The hologram blinked. "No record found."
"Shocker."
> "You have no destiny tag, no recorded birth event, no death timestamp. How are you even here?"
Lance shrugged. "Honestly? I'm starting to wonder that myself."
> "You were deleted."
"Yep. I noticed."
> "You shouldn't be capable of speech. Or thought."
He grinned. "Lady, I've been told that my whole life."
The hologram paused, then sighed — which was strange, given that she probably didn't have lungs.
"I am Aira, subsystem A-07, formerly a part of the Fate Correction Program. My job was to repair anomalies in destiny flow. Until…"
"Until?"
"Until the system decided I was one of them."
Lance nodded slowly. "So… we're both trash data."
"Recycled," she corrected. "There's a difference."
He chuckled. "Sure. You're the pretty trash, I'm the regular one."
Her eyes narrowed, but there was amusement in her voice. "You're remarkably calm for someone who's technically dead."
"I've had worse mornings."
> "You can't leave this place," Aira said flatly. "No one can. The Recycle Bin is the end. Souls dumped here eventually dissolve into base code."
"Sounds boring."
"It's death."
He smiled faintly. "Still boring."
Aira studied him for a long moment. Then, softly: "You really don't care?"
"Oh, I care." He looked around the void, eyes glinting. "I just don't plan on staying deleted."
Aira floated a little closer, her body a halo of dancing fragments. Bits of code spilled from her skin like digital dust. "You can't just 'undie,' human. The system doesn't make mistakes."
Lance smiled lazily. "Then what am I?"
Her glow flickered. "A mistake that survived."
"Cool title. Think I'll put that on a T-shirt."
He crouched and dragged a finger across the floor—if the translucent grid beneath them could be called a floor. Light followed his touch, leaving behind a glowing line that pulsed like a heartbeat. He lifted his hand, and the light stayed.
"Okay," he murmured. "That's not normal."
> [Access Denied: Unauthorized modification.]
The message flashed across the air. The line he had drawn blinked red, then blue, then began to multiply—copying itself over and over until hundreds of glowing threads were crawling away from his feet like veins of living light.
Aira gasped. "What are you doing?"
"Art project," Lance said, stepping back as the lines twisted into symbols that looked suspiciously like code.
The void trembled. The floating fragments of world—mountains, temples, stars—started spinning around him in slow orbit.
> [Warning: Unregistered command detected.]
[Auto-correction in progress…]
[Correction failed.]
Aira whirled on him. "Stop! You're destabilizing the sector!"
He grinned. "Sector? Lady, the whole place looks like a broken screensaver."
The air around them shimmered. The void's gridlines bent into curves, forming something like a horizon. The color shifted from pitch black to a deep, bruised purple, as if reality were trying to remember what the sky was supposed to look like.
Aira looked horrified. "You shouldn't have this level of access. You're not supposed to have any access!"
Lance tapped his temple. "Guess the divine garbage man missed a few files."
Then the ground beneath him glowed brighter, and a screen unfolded in front of his eyes—a translucent window filled with moving text.
> [Root Directory: /system/users/]
[File: lance_corvin.exe]
[Status: ERROR—File not found.]
[Debug mode: ON.]
He blinked. "Wait… I can see the system?"
Aira stared at him as if he'd just sprouted wings. "No mortal should ever see system code. Even the gods only interact with it through divine commands!"
"Then I'm special," he said. "Like a VIP… or a virus."
> "You're a bug," she said softly.
"Same difference."
---
The space shook violently, and both of them looked up. Far above, the grid sky cracked open—literally cracked, like glass breaking under pressure. Through it spilled white light, too bright to be holy, too clean to be natural.
Aira cursed under her breath. "The Cleaners. The system detected us."
"Cleaners?"
"Autonomous deletion protocols," she explained. "They erase anomalies that can't be repaired."
"Robotic exorcists. Great."
Shapes began descending through the light: tall, humanoid forms made of golden geometry, faces blank, eyes glowing like cursor points. They carried spears that looked like sharpened fragments of code.
One of them spoke, its voice both monotone and endless:
> [Anomaly detected: Rejected data cluster.]
[Executing purge.]
Lance drew his broken sword on instinct. "Okay, I may be a bug, but I'm not about to get debugged."
The first Cleaner raised its spear. The weapon released a ray of blinding energy that tore a rift through the void. Lance dodged sideways, barely missing it, and the shockwave sent him tumbling.
Aira darted toward him. "You can't fight them! They're pure code!"
"Then maybe I'll rewrite the code!"
He raised his hand toward the nearest Cleaner, not knowing what he was doing—only that his instincts screamed command it.
And somehow, the system responded.
> target: cleaner_001
attribute: active = true
The words floated before his eyes, glowing blue. He reached out and changed them.
> attribute: active = false
The Cleaner froze mid-attack. Its light dimmed. Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, it collapsed into a pile of glittering dust.
Aira stared. "You just—killed—an immortal algorithm."
He stared at his hand, trembling. "I… changed its value."
> [SYSTEM ALERT: Unauthorized root access detected.]
[Rollback initiated.]
"Rollback?" he echoed. "That sounds bad."
"Very bad," Aira said. "It means the system's trying to undo what you did. It will rewrite time to fix you."
The sky fractured further. The cracks spread like veins of lightning, and beyond them Lance glimpsed something impossible—dozens of other worlds flickering like windows on a massive monitor. He saw oceans of glass, cities of data, forests built from glowing lines of code.
"Okay," he muttered, "that's definitely not Kansas."
Aira grabbed his wrist. "We have to move. The rollback wave will delete everything here!"
"Where to?"
She pointed toward a swirling tunnel of light forming in the distance. "That's a system breach. It leads to an unindexed layer. We might survive there."
"Might?"
"Do you have a better option?"
"Fair point."
They sprinted—well, she floated, he sprinted—across the glitching terrain as more Cleaners descended. Spears of light crashed around them. The air shimmered with data distortion. Every explosion created new holes in reality, through which fragments of other dimensions could be seen.
One blast missed him by inches, and when the smoke cleared, his left arm flickered, showing pieces of translucent code beneath his skin.
Aira looked at him, shocked. "You're becoming… part of the system."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll charge rent."
Another explosion rocked the void. The tunnel of light ahead began to close. Aira extended her hand. "Jump!"
He didn't hesitate. He leapt, grabbed her glowing wrist, and together they dove into the swirling light just as the rollback wave hit behind them.
The void collapsed in on itself, erasing everything.
---
They fell.
Not through air, not through space—but through data. Streams of light and sound rushed past, like falling through the internet itself. Lance could hear whispers in the static—fragments of voices, memories, prayers, code.
> "System patch… version 12.9…"
"Access denied…"
"Do not let the bug escape…"
He felt something tugging at him, like gravity made of will. The light around him dimmed, solidifying into a new world.
He hit the ground—hard—but this time it was ground. Real dirt, under a real sun.
He groaned and pushed himself up. They were in the middle of a forest—except the trees glowed faintly, as if their leaves were made of glass.
Aira hovered nearby, looking half-transparent. "We're in an unindexed layer," she said. "The system can't track us here. For now."
Lance spat dirt and stood. "Good. I hate being tracked."
She looked at him, scanning his body. "Your code signature is changing again."
He glanced down. Faint blue symbols crawled across his skin, like glowing tattoos. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
"What does that mean?"
"It means you're evolving," she said softly. "The longer you stay out of the system's control, the more it will try to classify you. And since it can't… it'll make something new."
He flexed his hand, watching the light shimmer through his veins. "Guess I'm the world's first conscious malware."
Aira frowned. "This isn't a joke. If the system can't delete you, it will escalate. It will send the Overseer."
"The Overseer?"
"The god of gods," she whispered. "The one who maintains the code of existence."
Lance smirked. "Sounds like a fun boss fight."
Aira's voice was grave. "No one has ever fought the Overseer and lived."
"Then I'll be the first."
He turned toward the glowing forest, the symbols on his skin brightening. For the first time since dying, Lance Corvin felt alive—more alive than ever.
Somewhere above, unseen, the system whispered warnings.
> [Anomaly spreading.]
[Containment priority: maximum.]
Lance grinned. "Bring it on."
"Root Privilege"
The forest wasn't silent.
It hummed—a low, thrumming resonance that felt alive, like the background music of reality itself. Every tree, every leaf, every grain of dirt vibrated with code. If he looked long enough, he could see strings of symbols crawling across bark, glimmering faintly like veins of light.
Aira floated beside him, flickering slightly. "This layer shouldn't exist," she murmured. "It's not in the registry."
"So… we're off the map?"
"Worse. We're outside the rules."
Lance smirked. "I always wanted to be an outlaw."
He started walking, boots crunching on luminous soil. Birds—if they could be called that—flew overhead, their wings made of translucent polygons. A river ran nearby, but instead of water, it flowed with liquid glass, reflecting fragments of other worlds.
"This place is insane," he muttered.
"It's what happens when code writes itself," Aira said softly. "Fragments of forgotten worlds, orphaned subroutines, abandoned miracles… all dumped here."
"So it's Heaven's recycle bin."
"Exactly."
Lance crouched beside the glass river and looked at his reflection. His eyes glowed faintly blue now, the pupils sharp like data cursors. Symbols pulsed under his skin, forming patterns that rearranged themselves whenever he blinked.
He touched the water. Ripples spread—but instead of circles, lines of glowing text followed his fingertip.
> [Command Input Recognized]
[Please specify execution parameter]
He hesitated. Then, slowly, he whispered, "Show me the truth."
The river exploded with light.
Scenes appeared in its surface—fragments of memory, or perhaps data logs. He saw the moment of his death: the car crash, the blinding pain, the white void. Then, something else. A hand—not human, but made of light—pressing a key.
> DELETE: lance_corvin.exe
He clenched his fists. "So that's it. God literally deleted me."
Aira nodded grimly. "The Overseer doesn't kill. It removes errors from the narrative."
Lance gritted his teeth. "Then I'll be the bug he can't erase."
---
They walked deeper into the forest. The deeper they went, the less consistent reality became. Trees flickered between forms. One moment it was a forest, the next a city, then a desert made of golden cubes. Time stuttered. Gravity hiccuped.
Lance stumbled. "Okay, nausea warning would've been nice."
Aira frowned. "This instability means something else is nearby. Something powerful."
"Like a friend?"
"Like a system process."
Before she could finish, the world snapped. The sky inverted—dark below, light above—and something vast descended from the horizon.
At first, it looked like a sun. Then it split open, revealing a floating temple built from fractal geometry, spinning endlessly. Inside it stood a tall figure draped in digital fire, his face hidden beneath a shifting mask of numbers.
Aira went pale. "No… it can't be."
"Let me guess," Lance said, already tired of being surprised. "That's not the Easter Bunny."
"It's the Root Admin."
"The what?"
"One level below the Overseer," she whispered. "The system's ultimate enforcer."
The figure raised a hand. His voice was cold, mechanical, layered with countless echoes.
> [Unauthorized user detected.]
[Reinitializing containment protocol.]
Dozens of glowing chains burst from the ground, wrapping around Lance's limbs. He tried to pull free, but the chains bit deep, burning lines of code into his skin.
> [User lance_corvin.exe]
[Status: quarantined.]
Aira screamed, "Stop! He's not an error—he's a sentient anomaly!"
The Root Admin turned its mask toward her.
> [Sentience is irrelevant.]
Lance growled. "Buddy, you've got the personality of a printer."
The Admin extended one hand, and a blade formed—pure white light, humming with divine authority.
> [Execute: erase()]
He swung.
The world slowed.
Time itself seemed to glitch, freezing mid-frame. The blade hovered inches from Lance's chest.
Then—something inside him snapped back.
> [User privilege: Root Override detected.]
[Authority conflict!]
Every chain holding him shattered. His entire body blazed with blue-white energy, symbols racing across his skin like circuitry gone mad.
The Admin staggered back. "Impossible—"
Lance grinned. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
He thrust his hand forward—and the world obeyed.
> command: erase(admin.exe)
execute? [Y/N]
He didn't even hesitate.
> Y.
The Admin screamed in static as its form fragmented, the divine blade dissolving into pixels. In seconds, the once-godlike being crumbled into glowing dust, leaving behind only silence.
Aira floated back, eyes wide. "You… deleted him."
Lance's glow dimmed. "Guess I'm the admin now."
Then, from the void above, a voice echoed—so vast it shook the sky.
> [ACCESS OVERRIDE DETECTED.]
[Root Admin offline.]
[Deploying Overseer.]
The light in the forest flickered, dying one tree at a time. The ground began to fall apart, as if the layer itself was being uninstalled.
Aira's voice trembled. "It found us."
Lance looked up at the collapsing heavens, cracked his knuckles, and smiled.
"Then let's crash its system."