"Kneel, Lucian. Your breathing is annoying me."
The cold gun barrel pressed against his forehead, metal biting into bone. Rain hammered the warehouse roof like machine-gun fire. Lucian Ash's knees slammed into concrete, blood streaming from his temple, blinding his right eye.
The man before him wore pristine white designer suit—spotless in this filthy, rain-soaked night, just like his arrogant name: Arthur Kane. This world's absolute protagonist. The S-rank golden boy of destiny.
"Such a shame," Arthur lifted Lucian's chin with his expensive leather shoe, eyes cold as winter steel. "If you'd just handed over that coin, I might've let you shine my shoes. But now... the script says it's time for your exit."
*Script?*
Lucian's brain buzzed from blood loss. His vision blurred, but one thought cut through the haze like a blade: *Chapter 37. The chapter where the cannon fodder dies.*
"Next life, don't be born as trash who dies in Chapter 37."
Arthur's finger tightened on the trigger.
Death. He was going to die.
Rage, terror, and desperation crashed over Lucian like molten steel. In that split second, the world **shattered**.
The dim warehouse peeled away like old paint. Raindrops transformed into cascading green zeros and ones. Arthur's handsome face dissolved into ugly polygonal wireframes. Reality itself was just... *code*.
A crimson warning box exploded across Lucian's retina with a deafening electronic shriek:
**[⚠️ WARNING: PLOT EXECUTION IN PROGRESS]**
**[TARGET: Lucian Ash (Cannon Fodder)]**
**[DEATH COUNTDOWN: 00:00:03]**
Not a hallucination. Not madness.
Lucian stared at Arthur's gun. Floating above it, visible only to him, was a line of source code:
**[Weapon_Target: Lucian]**
Adrenaline exploded through his veins. The world became an editable document. Every surface, every object—all of it was just *data*.
Lucian bit down until his teeth cracked, reaching out with his mind—not his hand, but his *will*—and seized that line of code.
*Change it. CHANGE IT!*
The cursor blinked. Delete key pressed.
**[Delete: Lucian]** → **[Input: Self]**
The code flashed from red to green.
**[Weapon_Target: Self (Arthur)]**
"Goodbye, trash."
Arthur's smile was pure venom as he pulled the trigger.
**BANG!**
Muzzle flash erupted. The bullet screamed from the barrel at three times the speed of sound—then carved an impossible arc through the air. Physics screamed in protest as the projectile bent **180 degrees**, guided by an invisible hand.
Data streams went haywire. The bullet turned around.
*Splat.*
Flesh exploded.
"AHHHHHHH—!"
Arthur collapsed backward, clutching his face as blood geysered between his fingers. The rebellious bullet had blown his right ear into hamburger meat.
"My ear! My face!" Arthur writhed in the muddy water like a broken-backed dog, his white suit instantly transformed into a bloody rag.
A dozen black-suited bodyguards froze in place, yellow error messages cascading above their heads:
**[Error: Logic Conflict]**
**[System Logic Deadlock: Protagonist Injured]**
They couldn't process it. How could the cannon fodder—destined to die—wound the protagonist?
Lucian gasped, greedily sucking in the blood-scented air.
*I'm alive.*
Golden text materialized in the lower left of his vision:
**[ChaosEditor Activated]**
**[Narrative Energy Harvested: +100 Points]**
"Kill him! KILL HIM!" Arthur's scream was raw hysteria, voice cracking with pain.
The bodyguards' error messages snapped back to red **[ATTACK]** protocols.
*Run.*
Lucian didn't hesitate. Clutching his shattered ribs, he dove headfirst into the storm-lashed darkness of the alley.
---
Rain pounded harder. Neon light twisted in puddles like broken dreams.
Lucian collapsed in a dead-end alley, lungs working like broken bellows. He looked down at a puddle.
His reflection stared back—battered, bleeding, with a dull gray tag floating above his head:
**[Role: Cannon Fodder (Level 5)]**
He raised his eyes to the skyscraper across the street. On its massive holographic display, Arthur was giving a victory speech. The screen-Arthur was flawless, crowned with a blinding golden tag:
**[Role: Protagonist (SSS Rank)]**
"So that's it..."
Lucian wiped rain from his face, lips twisting into a savage grin.
Twenty years of bad luck. Twenty years of suffering. All because he'd been *programmed* as cannon fodder. Destined to take a bullet to the head in Chapter 37, just to make the "protagonist" look good.
"Fuck the script."
**[System Alert: Intense Hatred Detected. Narrative Energy +10]**
He needed medical supplies. Now.
Lucian staggered into a corner pharmacy, automated and empty. On the shelf, a bottle of military-grade hemostatic spray glowed with a red price tag: **$580**.
His pocket held two coins and soggy paper scraps.
"Insufficient funds. Please return merchandise," the mechanical arm announced in a cold electronic voice. Red scanners locked onto him. "Failure to comply will trigger security protocols."
Before, he would have bled out in the gutter.
But now...
Lucian stared at that electronic price tag. Green data streams flowed again.
If it was data, he could edit it.
**[Price: 580]** → **[Price: 0]**
Enter. Confirm.
The tag flickered once, then zeroed out.
"Payment successful. Thank you for your patronage."
The electronic voice turned honey-sweet. Red lights switched to green. The mechanical arm gently placed the medicine in his hands.
In this world's logic, it was a perfectly legal zero-dollar transaction.
Lucian sprayed the medicine on his wounds, ice-cold relief flooding through the fire. He glanced at the price tag—still displaying $0—and his eyes went arctic.
*If the world is a buggy game, don't blame me for using cheats.*
---
Lower District. Abandoned safe house, three levels underground.
Lucian locked the blast door and collapsed onto a moldy couch. Just when he thought he was safe, his system interface flashed from gold to crimson. Alarms shrieked like air-raid sirens.
**[⚠️ WARNING: HIGH-THREAT ENTITY DETECTED]**
**[SOURCE: Narrative Correction Bureau (NCB)]**
What the hell—?
*Bzzzzt.*
Through the fist-sized ventilation grate, something the size of a fly squeezed inside. A mechanical eyeball hovered in mid-air, its red laser dot painting Lucian's forehead.
The pressure it radiated made Arthur's gun feel like a water pistol.
The eye adjusted focus, speaking in a voice devoid of all humanity:
"Bug designation: Lucian located."
"Unauthorized survival detected. Illegal parameter modification detected."
"Initiating: Physical deletion protocol."
The eyeball's front panel split open, revealing a miniature void cannon. Blue death-light began charging.
No escape.
This was annihilation from beyond the world itself.
**[System Alert: Deletion Imminent]**
**[Time Remaining: 00:00:05]**
Lucian's hands shook as he stared at the charging weapon. His mind raced through possibilities, through code, through desperate hope.
*Wait.*
If this thing was part of the system... if it was here to delete bugs...
Then it was still just *data*.