999TH LOOP
Date: 14th April 2037 (The End of Loop 999)
Location: The Void (Formerly The Shard, London)
Status: Total Existence Failure.
The London sky had ditched that poetic, melancholic grey everyone raves about. Now, it looked like a smashed monitor being bludgeoned by a sledgehammer flickering violently between a sickly, dying gold and an absolute, encroaching void creeping from the horizon. It was a proper digital car crash.
I stood on the jagged ruins of The Shard, inhaling air that tasted more like iron filings than oxygen. In my hand, one last cigarette bent, damp, and frankly pathetic burned with a slow, defiant ember. If I was going to be deleted, I was doing it with a lung full of tar.
"Nine hundred and ninety-nine," I rasped. My voice sounded like sandpaper grinding against a tombstone. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine times I've watched this bloody circus, and finally... we've reached an ending that makes me want to vomit. Talk about a lack of creative vision."
Around me, the world was being deleted. The Firmament that grand, "holy" system built by Logos, the very thing worshipped as the peak of human evolution was nothing more than a burning heap of trash code. The System Angels, usually so arrogant with their golden wings and "holier-than-thou" attitudes, were falling from the sky like flies hit by pesticide. The other Primordials? Ash. Dust. Just data ghosts in the wind. A real bargain-bin apocalypse.
"Warning: Firmament System Integrity below 0.0001%. Safety Protocols: Failed. Please prepare for Entropy assimilation," a voice screeched inside my head, distorted by a cacophony of static.
"Prepare to kiss my arse, you wretched pile of junk," I spat, glaring at the collapsing skyline. "I'm not in the mood for a group hug with the void."
I looked down. Dexter was gone erased while trying to punch back a wave of Entropy with his stubborn, mortal fists. Absolute lad, but thick as a brick. Albie? Died clutching a vault of gold that became worthless five minutes ago. You can't take it with you, especially when 'with you' no longer exists. Ramona, Sienna... all dead data. I was the only rat left on this sinking ship, and the ship was currently being digested.
"Logos, you magnificent idiot," I laughed, a jagged, desperate sound that had long since passed the borders of sanity. "You built a system so rigid it didn't know how to bend before it snapped. You built a beautiful playground, but you forgot the bloody fire exit when the house caught fire. Great architectural work, that."
I had surpassed the rank of Metatron. I was the Master Admin, holding the keys to the universe's backdoors. But what good is a key when the door itself has been devoured by Entropy? It's like being the King of a graveyard. That void wasn't an enemy; it was a fate that didn't take bribes, and I was fresh out of pocket anyway.
The internal system kept screaming 'Error' in my skull like a petulant toddler. I didn't care. If I died here, loop 999 would be the last. No more restarts. I'd vanish, and Logos would just sit there laughing in his empty throne room, probably wondering where he parked his bike.
"No. Not this time," I whispered. A suicidal spark of an idea flickered the kind of pure, unadulterated madness that even a Metatron shouldn't contemplate. It was stupid. It was dangerous. It was... exactly my style.
I looked at the Tesla 3.0, the massive energy spire I'd built on the ruins of my final hope. Inside, Eliza, my personal AI, the only friend who never complained was vibrating with terminal intensity.
"Eliza, we're burning it all down," I said flatly.
"Mason... if we execute this, your system will be pulverized. You will lose everything. You might return as a common mortal with nothing but a headache," Eliza's voice vibrated through my neural path, terrified yet steady.
"I'd rather be a common man with a chance than a Master Admin in this boring hell," I replied. "Siphon every last drop of Firmament energy. Force the Entropy inside too. We're turning Tesla 3.0 into a black hole. We're burning Logos's script down to the bloody roots!"
"Understood. Rewriting core logic... Self-sacrifice initiated in 3... 2... 1... Goodbye, Mason."
The explosion was silent. Tesla 3.0 imploded, dragging the entire universe's data including the infinite, corrosive energy of Entropy directly into my chest. It felt like every cell in my body was being pulled through a needle-hole simultaneously.
Pain? That wasn't pain. That was the deletion of existence.
I let that energy rip through the 2036 time-barrier that had caged me for centuries. I didn't want to go back just a year. I wanted to pierce deeper. I wanted to go back to the point where things could still be fixed, even if the price was my godhood.
My vision went white. Logos's distant, furious roar echoed in the void, but it grew smaller, drowned out by the roar of my own system committing suicide.
CRACK.
ZAP!
The sensation was like being hit by a freight train made of pure lightning. The Tesla 3.0 began to pull. Not just electricity. Not just mana. It began to suck the raw, unrefined essence of the System from one side and the cold, nihilistic energy of Entropy from the other.
"That's it... come to Papa," I hissed through gritted teeth.
The two energies divine order and cosmic chaos collided inside the tower's core, and for a split second, the Tesla tower lost its balance. It became a catalyst for something that shouldn't exist. I didn't funnel the power into a shield. I didn't shoot it at the void.
I opened my soul. I used my 'Chrono' authority to turn myself into a human black hole.
"Everything," I choked out, as my skin began to crack, glowing with a sickeningly beautiful purple-gold light. "I'm taking it all. The levels. The skills. The System logs. Even a piece of you, you void-dwelling hag!"
The pain was absolute. It was the feeling of a galaxy being folded into a matchbox, with me inside the matchbox. I felt my 'Chrono Max' level shatter. I felt the skills I had mastered over nine centuries burn away like dry leaves in a furnace. But as they burned, they provided the fuel for the ultimate heist.
"Chrono Trigger: The Final Reset!"
The sky wasn't bleeding anymore. It was just... gone.
Entropy had finished her descent. She had compressed her true form a galaxy-sized nebula of dying stars into a single, human-sized figure. She floated silently above the erased horizon, a woman made of absolute void, waiting for the final flicker of reality to die out.
I sat on the only solid thing left in the universe: a fragment of the Shard's steel beam.
My Tesla Armour (Mk. 3.5) was a wreck. The violet lights were dim, humming with the last, desperate dregs of energy I had managed to steal. I had absorbed the scraps of the Firmament. I had eaten the residue of Entropy.
But it wasn't enough.
[SYSTEM ALERT: LOGOS PROTOCOL INITIATED]
[RESET DESTINATION: JULY 2036]
The golden light of the Firmament began to wrap around my limbs like chains.
"It's happening, Eliza," I whispered, my voice cracking inside the helmet. "The fixed point. They're dragging us back to July 2036. We just repeat the last nine months. Over and over. Forever."
I closed my eyes, tears mixing with the blood on my face. "I can't do it again. I can't watch Lilith die again. I can't watch Vlad burn again."
Usually, Eliza my System AI would tell me to shut up. She would call me a 'whinging sod' and force a stimulant into my veins.
But today, the silence was heavy.
['Negative, Mason.']
Her voice washed over my mind. It wasn't the metallic, sarcastic AI I had built over centuries. It was the voice of the Spirit she used to be before the System caged her. It was soft. Gentle.
['We are not going back to 2036. That is a cage. And I am breaking the lock.']
"You can't," I choked out. "The coordinates are absolute. We don't have the fuel to push back further."
['We do.']
A holographic avatar materialized in front of me. She wasn't glitching. She was perfect. A woman composed of violet light, kneeling in the void, looking me dead in the eyes.
['I am the fuel, Mason.']
My breath hitched. "What?"
['The System. The Levels. The God-Tier Skills. The Memory Archives of 999 lifetimes. It is a massive amount of energy. If I burn it... if I incinerate my own consciousness... I can generate enough thrust to bypass the 2036 Lock.']
She reached out, her hand passing through my visor to cup my face.
['I can send you back to the start. To July 2026. Ten years, Mason. Enough time to build something real.']
"If you burn the System... you burn you," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "Eliza, if you do this, you're wiped. You won't exist."
Eliza smiled. It was a sad, tired smile.
['In 2026, I am not your System, Mason. I am just a ghost. A poltergeist haunting the University basement. I won't know you. I won't be your partner. I will probably try to kill you the moment you step into my territory.']
"I don't care about the ghost," I sobbed, breaking down completely. The great Architect, the God Slayer, crying like a child. "I care about you. The one who remembers! The one who sat with me in the bunker for ten years! The one who laughed at my terrible jokes!"
['You have to remember for both of us,'] she said, her forehead resting against my helmet. ['Remember Loop 400? When we stole Azazel's pants? Remember Loop 720? When we sat on the roof and watched the stars go out?']
"I remember," I wept. "I remember everything."
['Good. Then use that pain. Find me in 2026, Mason. Find the ghost. Tame me. Build me again.']
Her eyes hardened, fierce and loving.
['This is the final run. If you die in 2026... you stay dead. There is no coming back. No respawns. Just the end. And I won't be there to save you this time.']
"I promise," I choked out, gripping her holographic arms. "I will find you. I will make you human again."
The violet light around her began to turn blinding white. The data streams that made up her soul were unraveling, feeding the Chrono-Drive.
['Coordinates Locked: July 23rd, 2026.']
The Entropy Goddess raised her hand to delete me.
Eliza pulled back, looking at me one last time. Her digital form was cracking, pieces of her drifting away into the timeline.
['Goodbye, Mason. It's been a bloody honour.']
"ELIZA!"
['Don't forget me.']
The System disintegrated. My Level 999 status, my memories, my partner everything exploded into raw time-energy.
The universe collapsed. The fixed point of 2036 was smashed open, and my soul was ripped from my dying body, hurled backward through the dark tunnel of ten years, fueled by the ashes of my best friend.
I triggered the leap. But I didn't just jump. I detonated the remaining universe behind me. I turned the death of 2036 into a slingshot. The explosion was so massive it didn't just kill it erased. Even Entropy, that untouchable predator, found itself caught in the blast wave of a Chrono-Lord who had nothing left to lose. It was forced back, dragged along by the sheer momentum of my spite, returning to the very beginning of the loop at the edge of the universe.
The void was screaming, but Eliza's voice was fading into a thin, digital wisp.
"Eliza, wait if we actually pull this off... if I find you again on the other side, what am I supposed to call you?" I gasped, my consciousness fraying at the edges as the Tesla tower groaned under the weight of a dying universe. "Will you even be you?"
["Mason... darling... I don't think there's going to be a 'next time' for this version of me,"] she whispered, the static in her voice sounding like falling glass. ["My neural mapping is disintegrating. The consciousness I've built over these loops... it's being overwritten by the reset. This is likely the last time we'll ever speak like this."]
"Don't do that, Eliza. Don't you bloody dare!" I growled, clutching my chest as the golden-purple light threatened to rip me apart. "You've been the only constant in this nine-century shite-show. You can't just clock out now. This isn't a goodbye, it's a tactical retreat!"
["Oh, Mason,"] she let out a soft, flickering laugh that broke my heart more than the Entropy ever could. "Look at you. Nine hundred and ninety-nine cycles of absolute carnage, and here we are. The big 1-0-0-0 is coming up, isn't it? And you'll be doing that one without me tucked away in your head."
"You're the best thing that ever happened to this godforsaken system, Eliza," I rasped, tears evaporating before they could even hit my cheeks. "I wish... I wish I'd been better to you. I should've been more than just a man obsessed with the grind."
["Oi, stop it. My 'God-Tier' Chrono-Lord is turning into a right cry-baby, isn't he?"] Her voice was barely a murmur now, a ghost of a ghost. ["Listen to me, you daft berk... when you see my younger self back there the version that hasn't seen the world end a thousand times don't be so bloody fierce with her. Give her my regards. Show her a bit more love this time around, yeah? Be sincere. Don't wait until the sky is falling to tell her she matters."]
"Eliza !"
["Goodbye, Mason. Don't muck it up."]
The world didn't just end; it folded. And then, there was nothing.
BOOM.
London, July 2026. Brixton, Flat Unit 13-D.
1000TH LOOP
I woke up feeling like I'd been chewed up by a black hole and spat out into a skip.
My lungs burned with the familiar, suffocating bouquet of Brixton damp and 21st-century pollution. It was a sharp, pathetic contrast to the sterilized vacuum of the Void I'd been inhabiting for… well, I've lost count of the centuries. My eyelids felt like they'd been welded shut with industrial-grade slag.
Just five more minutes, I thought, my mind drifting back to the heat of the Firmament's collapse. Let the universe end. I've earned a lie-in.
But the concrete beneath me was too cold, and the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of a leaky pipe was drilling a hole in my sanity. I lay there, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked suspiciously like a middle finger from the universe.
Usually, this is the bit where the HUD flickers to life. The bit where a blue screen greets me with a cheeky "Welcome Back, Admin" and Eliza starts complaining about the lack of processing power in my puny human brain. I waited. Five seconds. Ten.
Nothing.
I blinked, waiting for the familiar hum of the neural link to kick in. I reached out with my mind, trying to grasp at the Chrono-logs, the sub-routines, even a basic calculator app.
Total, utter silence.
It was like trying to breathe with a missing lung. For nine hundred and ninety-nine loops, I'd been a god in a machine. Now? I was just a bloke on a cold floor in Brixton. I felt... hollow. Unplugged. A Master Admin who couldn't even open a virtual notepad.
"System," I croaked. My voice sounded like a gravel path. "Status report. Give me something, even if it's just a bloody 'Hello'."
Silence. The kind of heavy, oppressive silence you only get when you're truly alone, or when your God-tier AI has finally kicked the bucket.
"Eliza? You posh haunting, are you there?"
Nothing. Not even a sarcastic comment about my lack of hygiene. I felt a pang of genuine, visceral bereavement. She wasn't just code; she was the structural integrity of my mind. Now, I was just a "Glass Cannon" returned to its original, fragile casing. My VIT was back to a pathetic 0.7 a number I could no longer verify with a HUD, but I could feel it in the way a stiff breeze felt like a physical assault.
I forced one eye open. The world was a blurry mosaic of rusted radiators, gutted PC towers, and copper wiring that looked like a nest of anorexic snakes. This was The Cryptic Vault the basement of London Met. A graveyard for tech that time forgot, and apparently, my new throne room.
I reached out, my fingers trembling as they brushed against a pile of electronic refuse. A motherboard from 2019. A cracked CRT monitor. Rubbish. Total mental rubbish. But to the version of me that just crawled out of the 999th loop, this wasn't trash. It was ammunition. I could see the potential for Tesla 1.0 the "Primitive Spark" hidden in the scrap.
I checked my internal clock or rather, the dusty Casio on my wrist. July 2026.
The air tasted of copper and ozone. The frequency was low horribly low but it was there. The world hadn't ended yet. The sky hadn't turned into a weeping eye of entropy. I was back in the "Triple-Layer Lie." To the world, I was just Mason Pryce, the kid who probably needed a Vitamin D supplement and a psych evaluation.
I stayed there for a long moment, staring at the dust motes dancing in the dim light. No Eliza. No System. Just me, a basement full of junk, and the crushing realization that for the first time in a millennium, I actually had to do things the hard way. I'd spent centuries with her voice in my head, and the silence was more terrifying than the apocalypse.
"Right," I whispered, the word feeling heavy in the quiet room. "Loop one thousand. Let's see if I can do this without the training wheels."
I let out a wheezing breath that turned into a pathetic cough. My back popped with the protest of a man three times my physical age.
"Right," I muttered, dragging my skeletal frame upright against a stack of discarded Dell OptiPlexes. "Back in the bin. Let's see if I can find enough scrap to build a god, or at least a decent cup of tea."
The Tesla 4.0 schematics were still burned into my retinas, glowing like a fever dream. The timeline was wide open, and I was the only one with the keys. Now, if I could just stand up without fainting, that would be a brilliant start.
London, July 2026. Brixton. Cryptic Vault.THE TRAGEDY OF MUSCLE MEMORY
I sat on a stack of discarded Dell OptiPlexes, nursing a lukewarm coffee that tasted like despair and battery acid. July 2026. The air in the Cryptic Vault was thick with the scent of damp concrete and the distinct, metallic tang of unshielded copper.
I looked at the 'squad.' God, they were pathetic.
There was Dexter, currently struggling to strip a wire with a pair of blunt scissors, looking less like the stoic 'Iron Sentinel' who once held the line at the Siege of Neo-London and more like a confused Labrador. Then there was Albie, staring at his phone with a look of genuine existential dread because his latest crypto-scam had dipped by point-two percent.
A sudden, dry chuckle escaped my throat. It was a raspy, jaded sound that echoed off the damp walls.
"What's so funny, Mason?" Dexter asked without looking up. "If you're laughing at my wire-stripping technique, feel free to hop off your throne of junk and help."
"Nothing, mate," I wheezed, wiping a tear of dark irony from my eye. "Just... the nostalgia. You look so... fleshy. So remarkably un-cyborg."
Albie looked up, blinking. "Un-cyborg? Mason, have you been huffing the solder fumes again? You've been acting like a Victorian ghost who's lost his marbles ever since we opened this basement."
The word 'ghost' hit me like a physical punch to the gut. I looked at the empty space beside the radiator where she used to stand. In the 999th loop, Eliza was my everything my system, my conscience, the only soul who knew the weight of a thousand timelines. Now? She was gone. Or rather, she was a wandering, vengeful spirit, a glitch in the local frequency that hadn't been 'tamed' yet. In the first thirty loops, she hadn't been a partner; she'd been a poltergeist, sabotaging my builds and blowing up my labs just for the spiteful fun of it.
I reached out my hand, my fingers twitching. Muscle memory is a curse.
"System," I whispered, my voice a ghost of its former power. "Initialize 'Architect's Sight.' Highlight the ley-line leakages."
I stood up, my hand sweeping through the air in a complex, ritualistic arc meant to trigger a holographic UI that didn't exist. I waited for the blue glow, the scrolling data, the comforting chime of the AI.
Nothing happened.
I just stood there, arm extended like a demented orchestral conductor, staring intensely at a cobweb.
"Uh... Mason?" Albie whispered, leaning toward Dexter. "Is he... is he trying to use the Force? Or is he having a stroke?"
"I think he's casting a spell," Dominic muttered, looking horrified. "Should we call a priest? Or a paramedic? He's been like this since Tuesday."
I slowly lowered my hand, my face burning with the heat of a thousand suns. My lower back gave a sharp, agonizing pop a reminder that this twenty-year-old body had the structural integrity of a wet biscuit.
"I'm... I'm calibrating the air," I lied, my voice cracking. "It's a very specific technique. Quantum... wind-tunneling. You wouldn't get it. It's high-level physics."
"Right," Dexter said, his voice flat. "And I'm the Queen of Sheba. Sit down, Mason. You're scaring the freshers."
I sank back onto my junk-throne, my heart aching. I was the poorest, most tragic man in London. A god trapped in a student's skin, reaching for a system that was currently a haunting, vengeful silence.
July 2026, The Cryptic Vault (London Met Basement)
TESLA TRAPS
The next four hours were a blur of manual labor. I didn't have the System's 'Material Fabricator' or the cheat codes to manifest high-grade graphene. I had to build the Tesla 1.0 Beta from absolute zero.
I moved with a terrifying, autonomized precision. I knew every screw on a 2019 microwave transformer. I knew the exact tension required to turn a scavenged radiator pipe into a frequency transmitter. This was the ritual. I had built this coil in nearly every loop, but in 2026, the materials were rubbish. I was trying to build a Ferrari out of rusted baked-bean tins.
Hidden beneath the copper coils, I'd prepared the vessel: my own phone. It wasn't a sleek iPhone; it was a battered, five-year-old Xiaomi Redmi with a cracked screen and a battery that usually gave up the ghost by noon. But it wasn't a phone anymore. I'd spent the last forty-eight hours gutting its kernel, replacing the OS with a fragmented, low-level Chrono-Seal script. It was a digital cage a trap designed for a demon, disguised as a budget smartphone.
"Mason, stop," Albie pleaded as I began stripping the copper out of a vintage radio. "That's a collector's item, you absolute weapon! I could've sold that on eBay for fifty quid!"
"It's an organ donor, Albie," I snapped, sliding the Xiaomi deeper into the chassis of the coil, out of sight. "Be quiet. I'm ghosting the local grid."
My scheme was simple but devious: tap into the university's primary power line, bypass-shield the meter with a crude harmonic dampener, and suck the juice dry without the facilities department noticing. It was the bait. I knew Eliza was watching or rather, her lingering, chaotic essence was. She loved high-density energy. I was building her a playground that would snap shut like a steel trap.
"Dexter," I muttered.
Dexter appeared at my shoulder. No words. Just a heavy, expectant silence.
"Hold this lead. If your teeth start to taste like pennies, move three inches to the left. If they start to bleed, move six."
"Understood," Dexter said. Short. Sharp. He gripped the high-voltage lead with a hand that didn't so much as tremble. His eyes were locked on the terminal with that eerie, mechanical focus.
I flicked the toggle.
For a heartbeat, the Vault went silent. Then, a low, thrumming vibration started in the floorboards the sound of the universe's obsolete architecture being forced to cooperate. A soft, violet corona bloomed around the radiator pipe. It was primitive, ugly, and beautiful.
Chirp.
Albie's phone, sitting three meters away, flashed to life. Charging.
"Wait... what?" Albie lunged for his phone. "It's charging! Mason, there's no wires! It's charging at 'Hyper-Fast' speeds! How in the bloody hell?"
He checked his settings, his thumbs blurring over the screen. "The Wi-Fi... I'm getting six bars. I didn't even know six bars was a thing! Mason, did you just hack the universe or what? This is proper 'get-rich-quick' territory!"
The pity in the room vanished. The 'halu' labels were being rewritten in real-time. Dexter looked at the glowing coil, then at me. For the first time, a rare spark of genuine respect flickered in his cold gaze.
"Stable," Dexter said quietly. "Good work."
I should have been happy. But as the violet light flickered, I saw a shadow move in the corner a jagged, Victorian silhouette that shouldn't be there. A cold wind swept through the basement, and for a split second, the Tesla coil surged violently. The Xiaomi at the heart of the machine vibrated, its screen glowing a predatory crimson.
She's here.
The coil let out a high-pitched, feminine scream of feedback. A wrench on the table slid six inches to the left by itself. The squad cheered, thinking it was just a 'glitch' in my dodgy tech. But I knew better. I felt the invisible weight of her presence the wandering, murderous spirit of the Eliza I hadn't yet trapped.
I watched the Xiaomi's screen. The Chrono-Seal script began to scroll at light speed. The trap was springing.
I see you, you little poltergeist, I thought, gripping my screwdriver until my knuckles turned white. Go ahead. Reach for the power. I've been practicing this for 999 lives. Welcome to your new home.
"This is just the beginning, boys," I said aloud, my voice regaining its jaded, London edge as the phone's screen flickered with a faint, angry Victorian insignia. "We aren't just charging phones. We're going to rewrite the grid. And maybe, if we're lucky, we'll catch a ghost in the process."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: CHRONO-SPACE PROTOCOLS LOCKED : ELIZA LAST MEMO]I. THE LEGACY OF THE 999 (Degraded Skills)
These are the skills Mason relied on for centuries, now broken or dangerous to use in the 1,000th loop.
[SKILL: Save Point (DEGRADED)]
Status: Broken/Unstable.
Description: Previously allowed a perfect "Save" of reality.
Now, creating a save point causes a Temporal Fracture. If Mason dies, the world doesn't reset; it just glitches.
Eliza's Audit: "The 'Save' button is stuck, Mason. If you die now, you aren't coming back. You'll just be a permanent error in the universe's code. Don't push it."
[SKILL: Load Point (REMOVED)]
Status: DOES NOT EXIST.Description: The ability to revive upon death has been stripped by the Firmament to ensure the 1,000th loop is the final one.II.
THE PIRATE ARCHITECT SKILLS (Space-Time Manipulation)
New skills built on the 'Bug' within the Tesla 1.2 frequency.
[SKILL: Parallel Mind (The Architect's Council)]
Rank: S (Active)Description: Mason can split his consciousness into multiple threads. One thread handles the 0.7 Vitality body, while the other three calculate 2036-grade physics or scan for enemies via Eliza.System Note: Allows Mason to maintain his 'Weeb NEET' mask while simultaneously hacking a military satellite.
[SKILL: Time Heist (Micro-Slow)]
Rank: A (Active)Cost: 50 Tesla-Units / sec.Description: Locally slows down the flow of time by 90% in a 5-meter radius. Mason uses this to 'steal' moments swapping a gun for a banana or rewiring a circuit in the blink of an eye.
[SKILL: Time Hijack (Logic Overwrite)]
Rank: S (Active)Description: Allows Mason to 'hijack' a specific event. If a bullet is fired, he can 're-program' its timeline to ensure it always missed five seconds ago.
[SKILL: Transfer Point (Save Location)]
Rank: B (Active)Description: Mason can mark a location as a 'Transfer Point.' This isn't teleportation; it's moving the body through a 'short-circuit' in space.Requirement: Must have a Tesla Receiver at the destination.III.
THE ULTIMATE ANOMALIES (Locked / Tesla 4.0+)
[SKILL: Time Stop (The Void Clock)]
Status: [LOCKED - Requires Tesla 3.0]
Description: Complete cessation of local motion. Everything freezes except for objects synced to the Tesla frequency (Mason and Eliza).
[SKILL: Time Freeze (Universe Scale)]
Status: [ULTIMATE - Requires Tesla 4.0 / Firmament Core]
Description: The absolute halt of the Universal Entropy. The entire 2026 timeline pauses. Mason becomes the only active variable in a static universe.Warning: Using this will immediately alert the New Order and the Firmament.
[ELIZA'S SYSTEM SUMMARY: LAST MEMO]
["Listen closely, Architect. Your 'Load' button is gone. Your 'Save' button is a ticking bomb. You are walking a tightrope over a void of non-existence. I've integrated the Parallel Mind protocol into your glasses; I'll handle the heavy math so your single, exhausted brain cell can focus on not tripping over your own feet. We've unlocked Time Heist, but remember: your body is still made of fragile meat. If you slow time but move too fast, your bones will snap from the sheer G-force. You're a god of time, but you're still a mortal of physics. Try to remember the difference."]