The world was too quiet. In the wake of Su Qingxue's erasure, the newly drafted reality of Chapter 11 felt like a house with the furniture moved out. The trees werethere, the mountains were there, but they lacked the "weight" of a finished story. If I pressed my hand against a tree trunk too hard, my fingers would sink into the unrendered wood like wet clay.
I stood on the hill where she had vanished, the violet ribbon on my wrist the only thing in this universe that felt 100% real.
[**SYSTEM STATUS: NARRATIVE ANOMALY DETECTED.**]
[**CURRENT COORDINATES: THE MARGINS.**]
[**OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE CHAPTER.**]
"Survive?" I laughed, the sound hollow and sharp. "I'm done surviving the script. I'm going to rewrite the writer."
I sat cross-legged on the half-formed grass. My mind, sharpened by 999 lives of villainous plotting and one life of heroic suffering, began to spin. I wasn't just a character anymore. When Qingxue gave me the **Regressor's Seed**, she didn't just give me her memories; she gave me her "Visual Permission." I could see the world for what it was—not stone and sky, but lines of syntax and descriptions.
If the Editor owned the characters, then I needed to stop being a character. I needed to become a **Virus**.
"System," I whispered, my voice calm, "Show me the source code of my own existence."
[**ERROR: USER DOES NOT HAVE ADMINISTRATIVE PRIVILEGES.**]
"I wasn't asking for permission," I snapped. I reached into my chest, touching the spot where the silver core pulsed. I didn't try to use its power; I tried to *corrupt* it. I forced my own dark, jagged mana into the silver light, creating a feedback loop of 'Radiant Corruption' and 'Chaos.'
The air around me began to pixelate. The grass turned into strings of binary code.
"If the Editor is at his desk," I reasoned, "he's looking at a screen. He's looking at a document titled *'I'm Trying to be a Villain, but the World Won't Let Me Die!'* He sees me as a cursor moves across the page. To get to him, I don't need to climb a mountain. I need to travel through the **Back-End**."
I closed my eyes and focused on the violet ribbon. It was a "Character Item," a piece of data that the Editor hadn't deleted yet. It was my anchor.
"Protocol: Overflow," I commanded.
I began to dump every memory of my 999 lives into the local area. I flooded the "Margins" with terabytes of unnecessary data. I visualized the burning of the Star-Crossed Kingdom, the betrayal of the Ice Empress, the taste of the poisoned wine from Life 66. I wasn't just remembering; I was **exporting**.
The world around me began to groan. The sky turned a sickly shade of "Loading Screen" grey.
**"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"** The Editor's voice returned, but it wasn't bored anymore. It was panicked. The white parchment of the sky began to wrinkle as if a giant hand were crumpling the page.
**"STOP THIS! YOU ARE INCREASING THE FILE SIZE! THE SERVER CAN'T HANDLE THIS MUCH UNNECESSARY BACKSTORY!"**
"That's the point, isn't it?" I grinned, blood leaking from my eyes as the data-dump began to fry my own brain. "I'm a Villain, remember? We love a good monologue. I have a thousand years of monologues to upload, and I'm going to put them all in the middle of this paragraph!"
[**WARNING: NARRATIVE STAGNATION.**]
[**FILE SIZE: 500GB... 1TB... 5TB...**]
[**STATUS: UNSTABLE.**]
The giant red pen descended again, but it was shaking. It tried to cross me out, but I moved too fast—not physically, but narratively. I leaped into the "Author's Note" section at the bottom of the world. I hid in the "Metadata." I became a footnote that refused to be ignored.
**"YOU THINK YOU CAN CRASH THE SYSTEM?"** The Editor roared. **"I'LL JUST FORCE-CLOSE THE PROGRAM!"**
"Do it," I dared him. "Close the book. If you close it now, you lose your WSA ranking. You lose your 'Power Stones.' You lose the contract. You're just as trapped as I am, aren't you? You need me to finish the chapter."
The red pen stopped.
For a long, agonizing minute, there was silence. I could feel the Editor's frustration through the "Margins." He was an entity that thrived on order, on "Standard Tropes" and "Predictable Arcs." My existence was now a middle finger to everything he stood for.
"Give her back," I demanded. "Give me Su Qingxue, and I'll stop the upload."
**"I CANNOT,"** the Editor whispered, and for the first time, I heard a hint of something else in his voice—fear of a higher power. **"SHE HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE 'TRASH BIN'. SHE IS BEING DE-REESED INTO RAW MANA TO FUEL THE NEXT PROTAGONIST."**
My heart—the real one—shattered.
"The Trash Bin?" I stood up, the golden aura of the 'Tragic Hero' flaring one last time, but this time, it was laced with the black fire of a man who had nothing left to lose. "Then I'll just have to go diving, won't I?"
I didn't wait for a response. I turned the Writer's Quill toward my own feet. I didn't write a path; I wrote a **Command**.
`DELETE FROM WORLD_LOGIC WHERE CHARACTER = 'LIN FENG';`
**"NO! DON'T!"** The Editor screamed.
The world beneath me vanished. I fell into a sea of "Discarded Ideas."
This wasn't the Null Zone. This was the graveyard of the book. I saw floating islands made of deleted dialogue. I saw half-finished monsters that had been deemed "too cliché" to exist. I saw alternative endings where I had died in the first chapter.
It was a nightmare of potential energy, a chaotic storm of "What Ifs."
[**LOCATION: THE TRASH BIN.**]
[**DE-REESING COMMENCING IN: 05:00...**]
I swam through the sea of dead text, my body feeling heavier with every second. The "Trash Bin" was designed to break down characters into their base components: Greed, Courage, Lust, Sorrow. I felt my 'Villainous' cunning being stripped away. I felt my 'Heroic' luck being dissolved.
"Qingxue!" I called out, but the sound was muffled by the "Static" of a thousand deleted screams.
Then, I saw it.
At the very bottom of the abyss, surrounded by a swirling vortex of red ink, was a glowing violet sphere. It was fading, the light becoming dimmer with every pulse.
Su Qingxue.
She was curled in a fetal position, her form flickering between the High Priestess, the CEO, and the girl in the white dress. She was being unmade.
I pushed through the static, my skin peeling off in digital flakes. My left arm disappeared, turned into a string of "0s" and "1s." My right eye went dark.
"I've got you," I whispered, reaching out with my remaining hand.
I touched the sphere.
The moment our data connected, the "Trash Bin" exploded.
Because we were "Bound" by the System—the Hero and the Villain, the Regressor and the Transmigrator—our combined presence in the 'Trash' created a **Logic Paradox**. The System couldn't delete us because we were "Primary Assets," but it couldn't keep us because we were "Corrupted."
[**CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE!**]
[**PARADOX DETECTED: THE TRASH BIN IS FULL OF VITAL DATA.**]
[**EMERGENCY RECOVERY INITIATED.**]
"What... is happening?" Qingxue's voice echoed in my mind. She opened her eyes, the violet returning for a brief, beautiful second. "Feng'er? Why are you here? You were supposed to stay in the new world."
"I told you," I said, my body now almost entirely transparent. "I'm the one who decides the ending."
Suddenly, a massive, blue light engulfed us. It wasn't the 'Holy' light or the 'Red' ink. It was the light of the **Operating System**.
The "Editor" was being overridden.
We were being pulled up, out of the Trash Bin, out of the Book, and through the "Hardware" itself. I felt the sensation of traveling through copper wires, of being processed by a CPU, of being a thought in a mind far greater than the Editor's.
We broke through the "Screen."
I tumbled onto a cold, hard surface. It wasn't marble or glass. It was... carpet.
I gasped for air, and for the first time in 1,000 lives, the air didn't smell like magic or incense or lavender. It smelled like stale coffee, old paper, and the faint scent of an overheated laptop.
I looked at my hands. They were solid. They had fingerprints. They had scars that weren't "rendered"—they were real.
I was in a room. A small, messy apartment lit only by the blue glow of a computer monitor.
"Lin Feng?"
I turned. Su Qingxue was lying on the floor next to me. She was wearing her black armor, but it looked ridiculous in this setting—like a cosplayer who had wandered into a library. She looked around, her eyes wide with a terror I had never seen before.
"Where... where is the System?" she whispered.
I looked up at the computer desk.
Sitting in a swivel chair was a man. He was wearing a hoodie, his hair was a mess, and his eyes were bloodshot from staring at the screen. On the monitor, I could see a Word Document.
The last line written on the page was: `The hand pulled me toward a bright, flickering screen.`
The man turned the chair around. He looked at us—two characters from his book, sitting on his IKEA rug—and he didn't scream. He didn't run.
He just sighed and took a sip of cold coffee.
"You guys are a lot taller than I imagined," the Author said.
I stood up, my legs shaking. I reached for my 'Blade of Providence,' but it didn't manifest. I was just a man. A man in a tattered, white-and-red costume.
"You," I growled, stepping toward him. "You're the one who did this. You're the one who kept us in that loop."
"Technically, the Editor made most of the bad calls," the Author said, gesturing to a red pen lying on the desk. "I just wrote the prompts. But you... you're the first MC I've had who actually managed to 'Buffer Overflow' his way into my living room. That's... that's WSA winning material right there."
Su Qingxue stood up, her hand going to her sword hilt. "Kill him, Feng'er. Kill him and the loop ends forever."
The Author chuckled, but it was a sad sound. "If you kill me, who finishes the book? If the book stays unfinished, the 'Webnovel' servers delete the file. And if the file is deleted... you both vanish. You're out of the screen, but you're still made of his data. You're 'Augmented Reality' at best."
I looked at the monitor. I saw the "Power Stones" count. I saw the "Comments." I saw **Abdullahi_Waheed**'s latest post: *'Wait, did they just break out into the real world? This is crazy!'*
"What do you want?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"I want to win the award," the Author said, leaning back. "And you want to be free. So, I have a proposal. I'll write you a 'Happy Ending.' A real one. I'll give you a world where there are no systems, no gods, and no fate. But in exchange..."
"In exchange for what?" Su Qingxue hissed.
The Author looked at the door of his apartment. Someone was knocking. A heavy, rhythmic pounding that made the walls shake.
"The Editor isn't just a program," the Author whispered, his face turning pale. "He's a real guy. My boss. And he's not happy that I let my characters escape. He's here to 'Collect' the assets."
The door burst open.
A man in a sharp, grey suit walked in. He wasn't carrying a pen. He was carrying a "De-Materializer"—a device that looked like a high-tech vacuum.
"Section 4, Clause 12 of the Contract," the Grey Suit said, his voice cold and mechanical. "Characters who manifest in the physical plane are to be liquidated immediately to prevent 'Reality Contamination'."
The Grey Suit pointed the device at Su Qingxue.
"No!" I lunged in front of her.
But as the device hummed to life, the Author didn't just sit there. He turned back to his laptop and began to type at a speed that was superhuman.
`Lin Feng realized that the 'Real World' was just another layer of the System. He looked at the Author's coffee cup and saw the 'Hidden Quest' notification...`
I looked at the coffee cup.
**[ITEM: THE CUP OF ULTIMATE CAFFEINE.]**
**[EFFECT: GRANTS 1,000% AGILITY IN THE 'REAL' WORLD.]**
"Drink it!" the Author screamed.
I grabbed the cup and slammed the cold, bitter liquid down.
Suddenly, the Grey Suit moved in slow motion. The apartment began to glow with blue light. The "Real World" was being "Gamified" by the Author in real-time.
"You're crazy!" I shouted at the Author.
"I'm an author!" he yelled back, his fingers flying across the keys. "Now, kick the Editor's ass so I can finish the chapter!"
I turned to the Grey Suit, my fists glowing with a "Real-World" version of my Villainous mana.
"Chapter 12," I snarled, "is where the characters fire the staff."
---
**CLIFFHANGER:**
Lin Feng and Su Qingxue are now fighting a "Meta-Battle" in the Author's apartment. But as Lin Feng lands his first punch on the Grey Suit, he notices something on the man's wrist.
Underneath the sleeve of the grey suit is a silver collar. Identical to the one Su Qingxue used to track Lin Feng.
The "Editor" is also a character.
Lin Feng looks at the Author, who is smiling a little too widely.
**"Wait,"** Lin Feng whispers. **"If he's a character... then who is actually writing this?"**
The Author's eyes turn violet.
**"The loop never ends, Feng'er,"** the "Author" says in Su Qingxue's voice. **"I just wanted to see if you'd recognize me in this skin."**
**[CHAPTER 11END]**
---