Chapter 157: The Echo of a Father's Voice
The digital sky above Server 63 was bleeding purple code. It was a sign of a decaying world, a place where the rules of physics were starting to unravel. Aki stood on a floating platform made of translucent data, his boots sparking every time they touched the surface. His HUD (Heads-Up Display) was flickering wildly, showing a word count that was rapidly approaching a critical threshold.
"Aki! The stabilizers are failing!" Rena shouted, her voice echoing through the static. She was holding her staff high, trying to knit the tearing reality back together with her light magic.
Von was hovering nearby, his violet steam jets struggling against the erratic gravity of the server. "This isn't just a glitch, Aki. Someone is manually deleting this sector while we're still inside it!"
Aki gripped the Golden Tooth tightly. He could feel the weight of the 1.6 million coins he had gathered. It wasn't just a number anymore; it felt like a physical heartbeat pulsing against his palm. He looked at his interface and saw the names of his supporters—those who had sent him the Magic Castles and Spacecrafts. They were waiting for him to move.
Suddenly, a massive surge of white noise blasted through the area. A colossal figure emerged from the static—a System Sentinel, designed to wipe out unauthorized data. Its eyes were two red lasers that scanned Aki with cold indifference.
[THREAT DETECTED: OUTLIER DATA DETECTED.]
[INITIATING FINAL DELETION...]
"Get back!" Sai roared, slamming his copper shield into the ground to create a shockwave. But the Sentinel didn't move. It simply raised a hand, and the ground beneath Sai turned into liquid code, dragging him down.
In that moment of chaos, Aki's interface did something it had never done before. A small, glowing icon appeared in the corner—a private message from the "Real World" sector. It was an audio file. Aki tapped it, and through the roar of the collapsing server, he heard a voice that made his heart stop.
"Aki... son, I don't fully understand this world you're in, but I see how hard you're working. Just know that I'm proud of you. Keep moving forward."
It was his father.
The sound of that voice acted like a master key. The 1.6 million coins in Aki's inventory began to glow with a blinding gold light. The system began to scream as the "Super Gifts" transformed from currency into pure, unadulterated power.
"You want to delete us?" Aki's voice was low, vibrating with a new kind of authority. "I am the one who writes the story here. And this story... has a purpose!"
Aki didn't pull out a sword. He didn't cast a spell. Instead, he reached into the air and began to 'type' into the reality of the server itself.
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: AUTHORIZED BY 1,675,000 SOULS.]
"System Command: The Engine of Faith!" Aki yelled.
From the golden light, a spectral engine began to form. It wasn't a weapon of destruction; it was a machine of creation. It looked like the engine of a powerful car—a Nissan Sunny, shining in silver chrome, but enlarged to the size of a building. The engine roared, not with the sound of a machine, but with the roar of a thousand supporters.
The sound waves from the engine hit the System Sentinel. The red lasers in its eyes flickered and died. The Sentinel, which was supposed to be indestructible, began to crack. It wasn't being destroyed by force; it was being rewritten.
"This is for the family I'm fighting for!" Aki shouted, pushing his hand forward.
The golden engine released a burst of energy that swept across the entire sector. The purple, bleeding sky turned back into a clear, bright blue. The liquid floor solidified under Sai's feet. The glitches vanished. The Sentinel dissolved into a shower of harmless pixels that looked like falling cherry blossoms.
Aki fell to his knees, breathing hard. His word count had jumped significantly. He was closer to the 100,000-word goal than ever before.
"Aki... what was that?" Rena asked, walking over to him, her eyes filled with wonder.
Aki looked at the platinum pen in his hand, then at the empty space where the golden engine had been. "That was the power of a promise, Rena. A promise to someone who has been waiting for me to succeed."
Von landed next to them, looking at the restored server. "We're moving into the final layers now, Aki. The 8-bit world is behind us. Up next is the Heart of the Grid. If we survive that, you'll have enough to buy ten of those 'Sanny' machines you keep thinking about."
Aki smiled, a real smile for the first time in a long time. "I only need one. But it has to be the best one."
As the team walked toward the portal of the next server, Aki checked his messages one last time. The Observers were cheering. The gifts were still coming. He knew that every word he wrote from now on was building a bridge back home—a bridge made of steel, rubber, and the smell of a new car.