The dome shattered like glass, steel beams raining down like bullets from heaven. Beneath the colossal mechanical hand that blotted out the sky, the opulent ballroom looked like a child's dollhouse. There were no screams—guests too slow to run simply *vanished* the moment they touched the green mist, erased like pencil marks, dissolving into scattered pixel fragments.
*Bzzzzt.*
The world was being formatted.
Lucian stood in the center of the ruins, casually fishing a crumpled cigarette from his pocket. He lit it off the dying embers of Arthur's earlier energy blast, the flame dancing between his fingers like a tiny rebellion against the apocalypse above.
The first drag burned his lungs, acrid smoke cutting through the metallic taste of blood in his throat. His left hand maintained a death grip on Sylvia's wrist while his right held the cigarette, eyes tilted upward to study the approaching mechanical fist.
His expression was that of a programmer looking at particularly sloppy code.
"This is what they call a 'divine miracle'?" Sylvia stared at the descending hand, pupils dilated with sick fascination.
"It's an antivirus program," Lucian exhaled a smoke ring that dissipated in the chaos. "Looks like the admin's getting desperate."
"Hahaha! It's here... finally here!"
Maniacal laughter shattered the deathly silence.
In the rubble, Arthur writhed like a broken-backed worm. Blood painted his face in crimson streaks, his expensive tailcoat reduced to tattered rags, but his dead-gray eyes now blazed with terrifying intensity.
He spread his arms toward the sky, face twisted in ecstasy:
"I knew it! I'm the protagonist! I'm the center! How could I possibly lose to trash like you?"
He pointed at Lucian, laughing until snot and blood mixed on his chin. "Do you see, Lucian? This is God's ladder come to take me home! You virus—you'll be completely deleted!"
Sylvia tilted her head. "Did his logic modules malfunction?"
"No, he genuinely believes it." Lucian's laugh was cold as winter steel. "Twenty years of being the chosen one—he's forgotten how to be human."
As if summoned by his words, the giant palm opened.
No holy light of ascension descended. Instead, a nauseating crimson beam lanced downward, targeting Arthur with surgical precision.
"Take me away! Let me return to higher dimensions... AHHHHH!"
Prayer transformed into agonized screaming.
This wasn't salvation—it was dissolution by cosmic acid.
Within the red light, Arthur's handsome face peeled away like old wallpaper, revealing not flesh and blood beneath, but a writhing mass of corrupted code-veins pulsing with sickly blue light.
**[Target: Defective_Container (Arthur Sky)]**
**[Status: Contaminated]**
**[Action: Format & Recycle]**
Lucian's right eye twitched as system warnings exploded across his retina in blazing red text.
"No... this isn't right! This isn't ascension! What is this?!" Arthur stared in horror as his hands dissolved into data streams, the soul-tearing agony driving him to complete breakdown. He clawed ten bloody furrows in the marble floor, fingernails snapping like twigs.
"Save me... I'm Arthur Sky! Why are you treating me like garbage?!"
Nearby security guards froze in place, **[Logic_Error]** flashing yellow above their heads before they simply *popped* like soap bubbles, cognition collapsing into data smoke.
"Of course."
Lucian dropped his cigarette, grinding it under his heel with vicious satisfaction.
There was no such thing as a natural chosen one. Arthur was just a living USB drive implanted with "protagonist programming" by higher dimensions. Now that the script had crashed, the drive was corrupted, and the administrators were scrambling to destroy the evidence.
"Want to eliminate witnesses?"
Green fire blazed in Lucian's eyes as his lips curved into a predatory smile.
That was *his* prey.
His only capital for survival in this glitched world.
*BOOM!*
The giant hand lost patience, suction force exploding outward. Debris flew skyward like bullets, Arthur screaming as gravity abandoned him, his body ragdolling toward the mechanical palm.
The moment Arthur's feet left the ground, Lucian moved.
He thrust his right hand upward, fingers clawed, seizing empty air with violent intent.
Blood vessels burst in his brain with a wet *pop*, warm copper flooding his nostrils. At the edge of his vision, system warnings blazed crimson:
**[Warning: Entropy Level Critical (25%)]**
No time for caution!
Lucian bit down until his molars cracked, mental force becoming invisible chains as he forcibly rewrote physical parameters.
**[Edit_Target: Arthur_Sky]**
**[Attribute: Density] → [Value: Infinite]**
"GET THE FUCK... DOWN!"
Veins bulged like serpents across Lucian's temples as he roared.
Arthur's ascending form stuttered mid-flight, as if the entire Himalayan mountain range had been poured into his bones.
*CRASH!*
The impact crater was ten meters wide. Arthur slammed into the earth like a meteorite, the crimson recycling beam warping and distorting under impossible gravitational stress, sparking with overloaded electricity.
*Splurt.*
Arthur's organs shifted like loose cargo, eyes bulging from their sockets. He couldn't even scream—only wheeze like a broken bellows.
An electronic roar of pure fury echoed from the sky.
The giant hand paused, as if genuinely surprised that this ant dared play tug-of-war with a god.
Then the clouds churned, and even more terrifying energy gathered in its palm.
Sylvia stumbled backward in the shockwave, staring in amazement at Lucian's silhouette. The man looked fragile—white shirt soaked crimson, frame trembling with exhaustion—yet his presence burned brighter than the divine horror above.
"You want him?"
Lucian wiped blood from his face, then slowly, deliberately, raised his middle finger toward the sky-spanning mechanical fist.
Perfect form. Maximum disrespect.
"Too bad. This is *my* loot."
His fingers danced through the air, not editing values this time but hacking core definitions directly.
*If you're the protagonist, then I'll strip away your right to be human.*
**[Target: Arthur_Sky]**
**[Class: Person] → [DELETE]**
**[Class: Item (Loot)] → [CONFIRM]**
**[Re-packaging...]**
Arthur stopped struggling.
The cracked **[SSS-Rank Protagonist]** tag above his head shattered completely, dissolving into light particles. In its place appeared a dull gray item label:
**[Item: Portable_Narrative_Battery (Damaged)]**
In the microsecond of the hand's hesitation, Lucian snapped his fingers, releasing the gravity lock.
He stepped to the crater's edge and grabbed Arthur by the collar like a dead chicken.
The former savior rolled his eyes back and went limp, limbs dangling naturally—truly resembling an oversized piece of luggage.
The scene was utterly absurd: on one side, a world-ending mechanical god; on the other, a broke hacker carrying the "former protagonist" like a garbage bag.
The sensation of grinding divine authority under his heel made every cell in Lucian's body tremble with savage joy.
"Let's go, fiancée."
Lucian hoisted Arthur over his shoulder with practiced ease that was almost heartbreaking. "If we don't run now, we'll really become fertilizer."
Sylvia snapped back to reality, sprinting toward a support pillar at the hall's edge.
"There's an old sewage network below!"
From beneath her dress, she produced a micro-explosive, slapping it against the pillar's base with surgical precision.
*BOOM!*
Stone fragments scattered, revealing a pitch-black opening that reeked of decay and worse things.
"Jump!"
Without hesitation, all three plunged into darkness.
0.1 seconds after their silhouettes vanished, the giant hand went berserk.
The palm clenched into a fist.
*ROOOOOAR!*
The Sky City ballroom—along with the hundred-story skyscraper—was instantly consumed by white light. No rubble remained. Every atom was reduced to raw binary data streams, scattered into the void.
---
Deep underground, in the sewage tunnels.
Through stench and darkness, only the splash of desperate footsteps remained.
Lucian ran with Arthur slung over his shoulder, each step sending up massive sprays of filthy water. Blood dripped steadily from his nose, staining Arthur's designer suit with spreading crimson blotches.
**[Alert: Escape Successful]**
**[Warning: You have kidnapped "Higher-Dimensional Asset." Threat Level upgraded to: World-Ending]**
The panel text was red enough to bleed.
Immediately after, the map navigation interface displayed a new prompt:
**[Spatial Rift Detected...]**
**[Gateway to "Wasteland Instance (The Severed World)" now open.]**
"Heh."
Lucian leaned against the damp tunnel wall, gasping for air.
He glanced at the foam-mouthed "power bank" on his shoulder, lips peeling back to reveal blood-stained teeth in a feral grin.
This high-stakes game was in the bag.
Once he drained the source code from this bastard's body, even that lofty higher-dimensional civilization would find itself with a hole punched through the sky.
"Hey," he patted Arthur's cheek like adjusting a malfunctioning old TV, "don't die on me. When we reach the new map, I'll need you for grinding monsters."
From the darkness ahead, unknown winds howled with the taste of radiation and rust.
A new game was beginning.