The giant face in the sky—The Architect—didn't smile. He didn't look angry. He looked like a programmer looking at a small mistake in a long line of code. As his image flickered against the clouds, a bright red box appeared in the center of everyone's vision. It wasn't a quest or a reward; it was a death sentence.
[AREA STATUS: CORRUPTED] [INITIATING SYSTEM CLEAN-UP...] [DELETION STARTING IN: 180 SECONDS]
The building beneath our feet groaned. It wasn't the sound of a building breaking under its own weight; it was the sound of reality being erased. I looked at the wall next to me. A section of the concrete turned into tiny blue cubes—pixels—and simply vanished. A desk in the corner blinked out of existence. Then a chair. Then the floor near the elevators.
"We have to go! Right now!" Maki shouted. She grabbed Megumi's arm, slinging it over her shoulder to help him stand. He was still dizzy from the Puppet Master's control, his legs dragging on the carpet.
"The elevators are dead, and the stairs are starting to vanish!" Nobara cried. She pointed to the hallway where we had just fought. A massive, bottomless black pit had opened up where the floor used to be. The "code" of the world was being deleted, leaving nothing but a void.
The Leap of Faith
I looked at the broken window where the Puppet Master had fallen. There was no other way down. Sixty floors was a long drop, but staying inside meant being deleted forever.
"Everyone, grab onto me! Do it now!" I yelled, my voice booming over the sound of the world falling apart.
Maki, Nobara, Toge, and the weakened Megumi huddled together in a tight circle. I activated the [Soul Link] and pushed it to the absolute maximum. I didn't try to make us light—I knew I couldn't make five people float. Instead, I focused on the air beneath us. I wanted to make the air dense, like a thick cushion.
"Don't let go, no matter what!"
We jumped.
As we fell from the 59th floor, the building behind us began to dissolve in a beautiful, terrifying waterfall of blue pixels. It looked like a giant puzzle being taken apart by an invisible hand. The wind screamed past my ears, and the ground was rushing up to meet us at a hundred miles per hour. I focused every bit of my energy, my third eye burning with a violet heat, into a [Gravity Cushion]. We weren't flying; we were sliding down the invisible layers of gravity like it was a steep, snowy hill.
[SYNC RATE: 28%] [WARNING: SOUL STRAIN DETECTED] [SYSTEM ALERT: ENERGY AT 2%]
The asphalt of the street was inches away. Just before we hit, I let out one last, massive burst of violet energy to slow our speed. We landed hard, tumbling across the street as the last of the Sunshine 60 building vanished into nothingness with a sound like a dying computer.
Whoosh. The giant skyscraper was gone. Only a flat, empty lot remained.
The White Knight
We lay on the street, gasping for breath and covered in dust. My heart was thumping so hard I thought it would burst. The silence that followed was terrifying. I looked up to see if the Architect's face was still in the sky, but the clouds were empty again.
Then, I heard footsteps. They were slow, steady, and calm.
A young man with messy black hair and deep circles under his eyes was walking toward us through the fog. He wore a clean white uniform and carried a long katana on his back. His cursed energy was so massive it felt like a cold ocean was standing in front of us. It was a power that made even the Zenin Patriarch look like a child.
[PLAYER IDENTIFIED: YUTA OKKOTSU] [LEVEL: ???] [RANK: SPECIAL GRADE]
"Stop," Yuta said. His voice was soft, but it carried a weight that made my [Gravity Anchor] hum in fear.
Maki stood up, her eyes widening behind her glasses. "Yuta? What are you doing here? Gojo said you were away on a mission in Africa."
Yuta didn't look happy to see his old friend. He looked sad, like he was about to do a chore he hated. "The System reached out to me, Maki. It told me that the 'Void-Walker' was a glitch—a virus that would destroy the world if it wasn't deleted. It gave me a Mandatory Quest."
He drew his sword, and the air temperature dropped twenty degrees. A terrifying, monstrous shape began to form in the shadows behind him—a spirit with giant teeth and a white dress. Rika.
"I'm sorry," Yuta whispered, looking directly at me. "But I have to collect your bounty to reset the Game. I have to kill you, Ren."
The Stand-Off
I forced myself to stand up, stepping in front of Nobara and the others. My hands were shaking from exhaustion, and my energy bar was almost empty, but I couldn't let my friends die here after we had worked so hard to save Megumi.
"Yuta, listen to me!" I shouted, the violet marks on my hands glowing one last time. "The System is lying to you! The Architect is the one deleting the city, not me! I'm trying to stop the game, not win it!"
"The System doesn't lie," Yuta said, his aura flaring into a blinding white light that pushed back the darkness of the night. "It only calculates. And it says you are the end of us all."
Rika let out a roar that shattered the remaining windows on the street. She lunged forward, her giant claws ready to tear through our Link and end Volume 3 right here.
"This is the real test, Ren," Valthazar hissed in my mind. "The Queen of Curses versus the King of the Void. Give me your soul, and I will show him who the real glitch is!"
I gritted my teeth. I wasn't going to give my soul to a demon, and I wasn't going to let a "Special Grade" stop us.
"Nobara, Toge, Megumi..." I whispered, feeling the Link hum with power. "Hold the line. We show him what a glitch can really do."