The White Hall trembled beneath him. Every step Reiji took—though he had no legs, no flesh, no voice—was a declaration: he existed beyond deletion. The fused mass of Villager limbs, broken wireframes, and corrupted pixels that was his body rose higher, casting shadows over the sterile marble floors like a mountain of nightmares.
Inside, Code A's tendrils writhed, reaching into Kael. Each strand pulsed with stolen gold light—the Hero Flag being siphoned, strand by strand, turning Kael into nothing more than a shell.
"You really think this ends with a pile of trash?" Code A hissed, smoke curling around the edges of its humanoid form. Its voice was sharp, metallic, every word a blade. "You're nothing. You're a failed process. A 1/10 error. I will compress you, recycle you, erase you."
Reiji didn't answer with words. He didn't need to. He was the answer.
He thrust his massive, fused arm through the hall's ceiling. The marble cracked under the pressure, white tiles splintering like brittle bones. The Executioner subroutines—spinning blades of black logic—tore at his form. He absorbed them, letting their code fuse into his body. Every attack, every system command meant to kill him became part of him. He was eating the rules of the world.
The Live Feed of Kael flickered in his mind—a tether of consciousness connecting them. Kael's eyes rolled back, his body slack in the chair. Reiji's red-gold data streams surged toward him like molten metal, seeking the strands of the Hero script.
[STATUS: UNSTOPPABLE BUG – PHASE II]
Integrity: [NOT APPLICABLE]
Memory: [ERASING SELF… COMPLETE]
Core Function: Save Target: Kael Draven
Reiji grabbed. He didn't reach for Kael's body; he reached for the strings of his identity, the fragile filaments Code A had ripped from him. One by one, they snapped back toward the Void-Bin, glowing gold against the sterile white void.
Code A screamed—a high, grinding sound like a server tearing itself apart. "No! You… can't… override me! I am the narrative! I am the order! I am the end!"
Reiji's form roared in response. Not a sound from his mouth, but a data scream that echoed across every layer of Elysia. Pixels shredded themselves and reformed around him. The vast mass of fused Villager clones retracted and condensed, shaping itself into a towering figure, a godmade of glitches and discarded code.
With a motion that was almost gentle, almost human, he plucked the Hero strands from Code A's grasp. They weren't just glowing threads—they were Kael's essence, his story, the only thing in the world that mattered.
Code A surged forward, smoke tendrils slashing. Reiji didn't flinch. He opened himself. Every missing limb, every corrupted memory, every deleted piece of his human self became a weapon. The tendrils hit him, sank into him, and he spat them back—a wave of raw, chaotic logic that fragmented Code A.
The smoke monster's form collapsed in on itself. It tried to stabilize, but every pulse, every beat of Reiji's system-overridden will, shredded the narrative constructs keeping it together.
[ERROR: FINAL PATCH CORRUPTED]
[ALERT: CORE INTEGRITY FAILURE]
Kael's chair erupted in gold light. The Hero strands snapped back into him. He gasped, eyes wide, blinking into existence as if waking from a long, torturous dream.
Reiji didn't look human. He didn't even look like Reiji anymore. His body was a flickering, jagged tower of broken code, wireframes, and ghostly limbs—but the terminal of his consciousness, the core of his mind, was sharper, clearer, unstoppable.
Kael coughed, looked at him. "Reiji…?"
Reiji didn't answer. He couldn't. Words were gone. Only intent remained.
He extended one massive, glitching arm toward the Void-Bin. The Observer's crystalline beam tried to strike again, but it shattered against the paradox of his [TRUE PLAYER] title. Reiji didn't merely survive—it became the anomaly, the virus that couldn't be erased, the logic the system itself had to bend around.
The hall cracked. Marble tiles collapsed into grey dust. Every NPC in the system froze mid-animation. Time stuttered.
And through it all, Reiji's wireframe eyes glowed white.
He didn't need the terminal anymore. He was the terminal.
And the game was finally his to play.