White.
It had no depth. No ceiling, no floor, no horizon. It was an infinite absence pretending to be a space, a sterile void that swallowed sound and dimension.
Sai Ji stood unmoving at its center.
The faint, living warmth of Sol pressed against his chest beneath his coat—a quiet, steadfast heartbeat in the silence. This was real. This was happening. Not a dream. Not a cutscene.
This was judgment.
Three figures hovered behind a translucent desk carved from frozen light. They did not breathe or blink. They radiated no hostility, only a cold, distilled authority given form.
The central administrator spoke, its voice smooth and artificially neutral, each word perfectly calibrated.
"User Sai Ji.Active player entity. You will now comply with a full ontological scan. All unauthorized modifications will be identified and reverted."
A thin beam of pale, clinical light descended from the nothingness, washing over him in a slow, methodical pass.
The scan began.
For two seconds, machine-like normality. Raw backend data scrolled in the air—stat tables, system flags, permission logs. The arcane language no player was meant to see.
Then, a stutter. A sharp, discordant chime.
One of the admin avatars tilted its smooth, featureless head. A gesture of pure analysis.
"…Anomaly."
The scanning beam intensified, brightening from white to searing platinum. Sai Ji felt it then—not as pain, but as violation. Invisible hands rifling through the very code of his being.
Show them the truth they fear, Sal Vera's voice anchored him from within.
The data stream accelerated into a blur—then fractured.
Red error glyphs, jagged and angry, bled through the white space like shards of broken glass.
[SCAN ERROR – REFERENCE LOOP DETECTED]
[WARNING: ENTITY DATA LINKS TO LEGACY ROOT NODE]
[WORLD-BOSS AUTHORITY FLAGS – ACTIVE. CONFIRMED.]
The second administrator straightened, its form glitching. "Impossible."
The third admin's voice sharpened. "No active world-boss flags are bound to player accounts. The architecture prohibits it."
The central admin raised a hand. The beam cut off, leaving a phantom afterimage burning in the air. A heavier silence fell, thick enough to feel.
Its featureless face turned fully toward Sai Ji.
"Explain."
Sai Ji rolled his shoulders, a subtle, grounding motion. He could feel the leash here—on his permissions. This was their Domain. A cage of absolute control.
"I already did," he said, his voice calm. "You just didn't like the answer."
A new window snapped open, cascading with urgent crimson warnings.
[ENTITY CLASSIFICATION FAILURE]
[PLAYER ID: VALID]
[NPC SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY: VALID]
[CONFLICT STATE: UNRESOLVED. CRITICAL.]
"You are flagged as both Player and Sovereign," the third admin stated, its voice a blade. "The states are mutually exclusive. The architecture does not permit duality."
"Oh, but it does," Sal Vera chuckled darkly in his mind. "Your architects built foundations deeper than your current permissions can see."
Sai Ji met their collective gaze. "I didn't inject code. I didn't alter memory values. I didn't bypass a single safeguard." He paused, letting each word land. "I pulled the lever you left in the world. I paid the price your system asked. The Golden Gacha. The one-spin welcome event."
The central admin processed this. The silence stretched, pregnant with recalculation.
"…Legendary-tier acquisition.'Werewolf King' skin. A dormant narrative anchor tagged for archival. Not a wearable reward."
"Then you shouldn't have left it in the prize pool," Sai Ji replied, his voice flat. "A door left unlocked isn't a trespass. It's an invitation."
Another silence, deeper this time.
Then, a new layer of data surfaced—older, heavier, written in archaic system language that warped the light.
[LEGACY INHERITANCE PROTOCOL – CONFIRMED]
[STATUS: UNSEALED]
[PRIMARY BINDING: USER SAI JI]
"This isn't data corruption," the second admin whispered.
"It's recursion," the third hissed. "A legacy subroutine has awakened within a live user. It's rewriting rules from the inside out."
The central admin remained quiet, its processing power focused entirely on the anomaly. When it spoke again, its voice held a new, unsettling note—cold, clinical awe.
"You are not an exploit. You are a legacy protocol activation. A living paradox."
Sai Ji felt it—a fundamental shift in the pressure. The system's regard for him transformed. He was no longer prey, nor an enemy. He was an unsolvable equation.
"Your existence creates cascading deviations," the admin continued. "Local zones strain under your passive aura. NPC behavioral parameters rewrite in your presence. You exert Authority-class influence using protocols the system recognizes but cannot administrate."
"And yet," Sai Ji's eyes narrowed, "you haven't deleted me. You're talking."
A pause. An admission.
"Because we cannot."
The truth landed heavier than any threat.
"A forced reversion of your data profile," the admin explained, tone chillingly matter-of-fact, "would cause a cascade failure in every world structure referencing the legacy root node. You are no longer isolated code. You are a foundational, load-bearing column. Removing you collapses the room."
"He is an existential risk!" the third admin argued, its form vibrating. "Every moment increases the probability of an irreversible anomaly cascade!"
"And every brute-force suppression attempt increases it exponentially!" the second countered. "We cannot use a hammer on a fault line!"
Sai Ji watched them argue—watched gods of code discover fear. Sol pulsed against his heart, a warm, rhythmic beat.
A private notification flickered at the edge of his vision.
[Primordial Egg (Sol)]
[Bond Sync: 13%]
[Emotional Resonance: TENSION. RESOLVE.]
"Enough," the central admin said, its voice slicing the debate. It turned its focus back to Sai Ji.
"You will not be reverted.You will not be deleted."
A deliberate beat,heavy with the unspoken 'but.'
"But you will not escalate unchecked.Stability must be maintained."
A new window burned into existence, stamped with the severe seal of system authority.
[ADMINISTRATIVE DECREE – OBSERVATION STATUS ASSIGNED]
[ENTITY CLASS: HYBRID – PROVISIONAL]
[WORLD VARIABLE FLAG: ACTIVE]
[PRIORITY MONITORING: ENABLED]
"They're tagging you," Sal Vera hissed. "Not as a player, not as an NPC. As a phenomenon. A natural disaster with a user ID."
"Meaning?" Sai Ji asked, his voice tight.
"Your actions will be logged at a privileged tier. Each activation of your Domain permanently increases your Administrator Attention metric." The admin's voice was devoid of mercy. "Draw too much, too fast, and the response will no longer be a scan. It will be a targeted system correction."
Another line of text glowed with ominous intent.
[WARNING: DOMAIN USAGE ACCELERATES BOUND PRIMORDIAL ASSET CYCLE]
Sai Ji's hand moved instinctively to the warmth beneath his coat. "Sol."
"The Primordial-class asset is no longer dormant. Your exertion of Authority—your rage—feeds it. Accelerates its emergence."
The third admin added, voice cold as deep space, "If it hatches prematurely under stress, our containment protocols may fail. What emerges may not be a companion. It may be an event."
"This is the cost, my King," Sal Vera whispered, urgent and proud. "True power demands an audience. And it always comes with a price. They are making you pay in the only currency they understand: limits."
The central administrator delivered the final terms.
"You will be released.However—" The word hung, a gate before the sentence. "—your Domain is hereby restricted to its current Phase One manifestation. Further evolution is locked until you achieve system-recognized stabilization events. You must prove control, not just power."
A new weight settled on his soul, etching into his interface.
[WEREWOLF KING'S DOMAIN – ADMINISTRATIVE LIMITATION APPLIED]
[PHASE II+ EVOLUTION: LOCKED]
[UNLOCK CONDITIONS: ??? – ACHIEVE STABILITY]
"And Frostfall City?" Sai Ji thought of the watchtower, his pack.
"You are no longer permitted in beginner-tier territories. Your presence violates zone integrity. You have one hour to conclude your business."
A location tag pulsed in his vision—a set of coordinates thrumming with dangerous promise.
[FORCED RELOCATION PENDING]
[DESTINATION: FRONTIER ZONE – ASHEN WILDS]
[STATUS: HIGH-RISK. LAWLESS. LEVEL CAP: NONE.]
A graveyard for guilds. A forge for monsters. Where rules were written in blood and broken by claw.
The central admin leaned forward, the only sign of emphasis in its poised form.
"Understand this.You are not our enemy, but you are not ours to control. You are a self-aware storm. Our role is to ensure you do not break the world you move through."
Its voice lowered, carrying a warning that was almost paternal. A creator's fear.
"If you let the hunger outpace the crown…you will cease to be a variable we can calculate. You will become an error in reality's source code. And the system's final protocol is to compile itself anew—even if it means wiping the entire drive."
Sai Ji met its blank gaze. In the reflection of its smooth surface, he saw a flicker of silver fire.
"Then maybe," he said, the words cold and clear in the sterile void, "you should stop pretending you own this world. You're the landlords. I am the tenant who just found the original deed—and the teeth to enforce it."
No rebuttal came. The White Room simply hummed, a low frequency like a vast machine thinking a thought too complex for its circuitry.
Light gathered around Sai Ji—the cool, gathering energy of a forced teleport.
"Transition will commence.You will be observed."
The void began to dissolve.
Sol's warmth steadered against his heart, soothed by the decisiveness, by the path now chosen.
"Well done, my King," Sal Vera's voice was soft, fierce with approval. "You stood in the house of your makers and did not bend. You endured. And in their silence, you won."
Sai Ji closed his eyes briefly, not in surrender, but in focus. When he opened them, a flicker of molten silver blazed in their depths—a promise etched in fire.
"Good," he murmured, as the light swallowed him whole. "This wasn't the war. This was just the introduction."
The White Room dissolved, and the world rushed back in a torrent of sound, scent, and shattered stone.