The wasteland hit Lucian like a freight train made of broken code and digital cancer. His body *screamed* as reality tore itself apart around him, pixels bleeding from his skin like luminescent blood. The air tasted of rust, ozone, and the dying dreams of deleted NPCs.
**[CRITICAL ERROR: Avatar Integrity Compromised]**
**[Pixel Degradation: 23% and Accelerating]**
**[Estimated Time to Complete Dissolution: 00:02:47]**
**[Warning: No Safe Zones Detected in Current Dimension]**
"Fuck me sideways," Lucian gasped, watching his left hand flicker between flesh and static like a broken hologram. The dimensional transfer had ripped holes in his digital soul, and this nightmare realm was devouring him from the inside out.
Arthur's laughter cut through the toxic wind like a chainsaw through silk. The golden boy had landed in a crater twenty feet away, his designer suit shredded into expensive confetti, but his trademark smirk blazed brighter than ever.
"LOOK AT YOU!" Arthur cackled, blood streaming from his nose as he struggled to his feet. "The mighty virus, dissolving like sugar in battery acid! This is divine justice for daring to rewrite GOD'S FUCKING SCRIPT!"
Another wave of pixel decay swept through Lucian's torso, making him feel like his organs were being deleted one byte at a time. **[Pixel Degradation: 31%]**. The countdown was accelerating like a runaway train.
"In this domain, I am IMMORTAL!" Arthur spread his arms wide like a messiah welcoming the apocalypse, his **[SSS Rank]** tag pulsing with renewed golden radiance. "This is a protagonist's paradise, designed for heroes like me to farm experience and collect harems! And you... you're just a bug to be squashed under my designer boots!"
Sylvia materialized beside Lucian in a swirl of ice crystals that immediately began to malfunction, her face pale as winter moonlight. "Your cellular structure is fragmenting at the quantum level. We need to find a stabilization matrix or—"
"Get your frozen hands off my property, ice bitch," Arthur snarled, his golden aura flaring like a miniature sun. "When I'm done exterminating this virus, I'm going to mount you in my trophy room. A perfect specimen of what happens to those who defy their betters."
The threat hit Lucian like molten steel injected directly into his veins. Rage flooded his deteriorating system, temporarily stabilizing his pixels through pure, concentrated hatred.
But before he could respond, the ground began to *shake* with the rhythm of approaching doom.
*Thud. Thud. THUD.*
Something massive was approaching through the digital fog—multiple somethings, their footsteps creating a percussion symphony that made the corrupted earth tremble like a beaten drum.
"Perfect fucking timing," Arthur grinned, his confidence absolute as a black hole. "The local NPCs have come to deliver my welcome gift. Experience points, rare loot, maybe a few legendary drops to add to my collection—"
The first Glitch Zombie shambled into view, and Arthur's words died like a strangled scream.
It had once been human. *Maybe*. Now it was a nightmare fusion of rotting flesh and exposed circuitry, its ribcage split open like a grotesque flower to reveal pulsing data cables where organs should be. Its face was a digital horror show—half-melted features flickering between different character models, eyes replaced by camera lenses that whirred and clicked with mechanical hunger.
Behind it came dozens more. An army of the digitally damned, their bodies glitching between states of decay and mechanical reconstruction like broken video files. They moved with jerky, unnatural motions, like marionettes controlled by a seizure victim.
And every single one of their corrupted eyes was locked on Arthur.
"No, no, this isn't right," Arthur stammered, backing away as the horde converged on his position with single-minded purpose. "I'm the protagonist! They should be attacking the virus, not—"
**[GLITCH ZOMBIE BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS COMPLETE]**
**[Primary Target: Highest Narrative Energy Signature]**
**[Secondary Directive: Consume Golden Aura for System Repair]**
**[Threat Assessment: EXTINCTION-LEVEL]**
"They're drawn to your protagonist energy like moths to a flame," Lucian realized, a cold smile spreading across his dissolving features. "You're a walking fucking beacon to every corrupted entity in this digital hellscape."
Sylvia raised her hands desperately, ice crystals forming around her fingers like frozen prayers. "I can freeze them, buy us time—"
The moment her power activated, reality *rejected* it with the violence of an immune system attacking a virus. Her ice shattered before it could form, the fragments dissolving into cascading error messages.
**[ENVIRONMENTAL RESTRICTION: Low Temperature Physics Disabled]**
**[Cryokinetic Abilities: PERMANENTLY NULLIFIED]**
**[Reason: Thermal Regulation Protocols Corrupted Beyond Repair]**
"The dungeon rules," she breathed, horror dawning in her winter-blue eyes. "They've stripped away my powers completely."
Arthur, meanwhile, had completely lost his golden mind. As the zombie horde closed in with mechanical precision, he threw his arms wide in delusional welcome.
"YES! Come to me, my minions! Grant your protagonist the power he deserves! I'll absorb your essence and become even more magnificent than—"
The lead zombie's claws raked across Arthur's chest like razors through silk, tearing through his shirt and drawing lines of golden blood that sparkled like liquid starlight. Arthur's scream of pain mixed with confusion as more undead hands reached for him, their mechanical fingers sparking with digital hunger.
*Time to collect my fucking prize.*
Lucian moved like lightning wrapped in shadow, his hand clamping down on Arthur's neck with bone-crushing force. The golden boy's eyes went wide with shock and primal terror.
"What are you—"
"Charging my battery, you magnificent bastard," Lucian said with arctic coldness, his right hand beginning to shift and change like living metal. His fingers elongated into needle-thin data probes that gleamed with malevolent purpose. "Thanks for the meal, *power bank*."
He drove his transformed fingers deep into Arthur's spinal column with surgical precision, piercing flesh and nerve like hot knives through butter. Arthur's scream could have shattered dimensions as Lucian's probes found their target—the golden core of protagonist energy that had defined Arthur's entire manufactured existence.
**[INITIATING FORCED DATA EXTRACTION]**
**[Target: Narrative Core Energy - 100% Purity]**
**[Method: Direct Neural Siphoning]**
**[Warning: Process WILL Cause Permanent Soul Damage]**
Golden light erupted from the connection point like a geyser of liquid fire, flowing from Arthur into Lucian with the intensity of a collapsing star. Arthur's body began to wither and shrink, his perfect features aging decades in seconds as his life force was systematically drained.
"NO! STOP! I'M THE PROTAGONIST! I'M THE CHOSEN—"
"You're a fucking battery with delusions of grandeur," Lucian snarled, drinking deep from the fountain of stolen divinity. "And I'm running on empty."
The energy hit his system like pure heroin mixed with lightning and the tears of angels. His dissolving pixels snapped back into perfect 4K resolution, his health bar filling to maximum and beyond. But more than that—he could feel new permissions unlocking in his mind, administrative access flooding his consciousness like digital enlightenment.
**[POWER ABSORPTION: 100% COMPLETE]**
**[Narrative Energy: 10,000/10,000 - MAXIMUM CAPACITY]**
**[New Authority Gained: Regional Administrator (Temporary)]**
**[Pixel Degradation: COMPLETELY REVERSED]**
**[Status: GODMODE ACTIVATED]**
Arthur collapsed like a deflated sex doll, his once-perfect body now a withered husk barely clinging to existence. His **[SSS Rank]** tag flickered and died like a candle in a hurricane, replaced by something infinitely more pathetic:
**[Status: Depleted Power Source]**
**[Remaining Charge: 3% and Falling]**
**[Classification: Portable Equipment - Disposable]**
The zombie horde, deprived of their golden target, turned their hungry attention to Lucian. Dozens of corrupted eyes fixed on him with mechanical precision, their jaws clicking with anticipation like a symphony of broken bones.
Lucian smiled with the confidence of a man who'd just stolen fire from the gods.
He snapped his fingers.
**[ADMINISTRATOR COMMAND: Shift+Delete]**
**[Target: All Hostile Entities in 1000m Radius]**
**[Confirmation Required: Y/N?]**
**[Y - EXECUTE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE]**
The zombies simply... *ceased*. No dramatic death scenes. No final screams. They just stopped existing, their corrupted forms dissolving into streams of data that fell like digital snow. The silence that followed was more profound than the void between stars.
In seconds, the wasteland was empty except for the three of them and Arthur's barely breathing corpse.
As the stolen power settled in his system like liquid cocaine, Lucian's mind was flooded with Arthur's memories—fragmented images of sterile laboratories, scientists in white coats, and a young boy strapped to a table while they pumped him full of "Arrogant Protagonist Template v3.7."
*He wasn't chosen by destiny. He was manufactured like a fucking iPhone.*
"Mass-produced golden boys," Lucian murmured, the truth hitting him like a revelation wrapped in barbed wire. "They've been farming protagonists like battery chickens."
But there was more in the data stream—coordinates, access codes, and most importantly, a pathway to something called **[World Script v13 - FINAL REVISION - EYES ONLY]**.
Lucian looked across the wasteland to where a massive fortress of black servers rose from the corrupted earth like a digital Mount Doom. Its towers pulsed with the heartbeat of a sleeping god, and somewhere in its depths lay the source code that could rewrite the fundamental laws of existence.
"There," he said, pointing at the fortress with his blood-stained hand. "That's where we'll find the real script. The puppet master pulling all our strings."
Sylvia followed his gaze, her expression mixing awe and terror in equal measure. "That's the Narrative Engine's core processing center. The security protocols there will be—"
"Irrelevant," Lucian cut her off, hefting Arthur's desiccated form over his shoulder like a piece of designer luggage. "I've got administrative access now, and a portable power source for when things get properly messy."
Arthur's eyes fluttered weakly, a whisper escaping his cracked lips like the last breath of a dying god. "Please... I'll do anything... just don't—"
"You'll do exactly what you were designed for," Lucian said with the coldness of absolute zero. "You'll be my battery until I drain every last drop of code from your worthless, manufactured soul."
As they began walking toward the fortress, Lucian's smile was sharp enough to cut through the fabric of reality itself. The real game was just beginning, and he finally had the power to play it like a fucking champion.
Time
to steal God's source code and rewrite the universe in his own twisted image.
**[ENTROPY LEVEL: 23%]**
**[NARRATIVE ENERGY: 10,000/10,000]**
**[PORTABLE CHARGER: Arthur Sky - 3% Remaining]**
**[NEXT OBJECTIVE: Infiltrate Narrative Engine Core]**
The fortress loomed larger with each step, its black towers stretching into a sky that flickered between dimensions like a broken television. As they walked, Lucian could feel Arthur's remaining energy slowly trickling into his system—a steady IV drip of stolen divinity that made his every heartbeat pulse with digital power.
"You know," Sylvia said quietly, ice crystals forming and dissolving around her feet in frustrated loops, "there's no going back from this. Once we breach that fortress, we'll be marked for deletion by every higher-dimensional entity in existence."
Lucian's laugh was sharp as broken glass. "Good. I'm tired of playing by their rules anyway."
Behind them, the wasteland stretched endlessly—a graveyard of deleted dreams and corrupted code. Ahead lay the heart of the machine that had written their lives, their loves, their losses.
And in his arms, Arthur Sky—once the golden god of this digital realm—hung like a broken doll, his breathing shallow, his power nearly spent.
*Just the way I like my enemies,* Lucian thought with savage satisfaction. *Useful, portable, and completely at my mercy.*
The real war was about to begin.