Reality hit them like a freight train made of pixels and broken promises as they materialized in downtown Shanghai's Jing'an District. The ground beneath their feet flickered between solid concrete and corrupted data blocks, displaying error messages in seventeen different programming languages.
**[DIMENSIONAL TRANSFER: 97% COMPLETE]**
**[PHYSICS ENGINE: LOADING... PLEASE WAIT...]**
**[WELCOME TO EARTH - POPULATION: ABOUT TO DECREASE]**
"The ground is literally made of Minecraft blocks," Sylvia gasped, ice crystals forming beneath her feet on glitched asphalt that kept switching textures.
Arthur woke up draped over Lucian's shoulder and immediately vomited digital bile. "Where are we? Why does everything look broken?"
"Welcome to reality, battery pack," Lucian said, dropping Arthur like a sack of garbage. "Population: seven billion NPCs who don't know they're NPCs. Yet."
Muzzle flashes erupted from every rooftop within three blocks. Shanghai's streets crawled with SWAT teams whose movements were too precise, too coordinated to be entirely human.
**[THREAT ASSESSMENT: LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED]**
**[TARGET: LUCIAN ASH - WORLD-ENDING ANOMALY]**
**[AMMUNITION EXPENDITURE: UNLIMITED]**
"OPEN FIRE!" Thousands of bullets filled the air like a metal storm designed by an angry god.
Lucian reached into his interface and flipped a switch that shouldn't exist in physical reality.
**[NETWORK_LATENCY_OVERRIDE: ACTIVATED]**
**[LOCAL_PING: 999,999ms]**
**[BULLET_TRAJECTORIES: BUFFERING...]**
Every bullet stopped mid-air like someone had paused the world's deadliest screensaver. Thousands of projectiles hung suspended, frozen by catastrophic network lag.
"Server's running slow today," Lucian said, walking between frozen bullets like a tourist in a murder museum. "Must be using budget hosting."
He touched one suspended bullet, interfacing with its trajectory data:
**[VECTOR_ANALYSIS: Complete]**
**[NEW_DIRECTION: Toward_Original_Shooter]**
With a snap, every bullet reversed course like metallic boomerangs. The SWAT teams had exactly enough time to look confused before their own ammunition turned them into expensive Swiss cheese.
**[ENEMY FORCES: NEUTRALIZED]**
**[CASUALTIES: 247 Puppet Soldiers]**
**[ENTROPY COST: 3% - Acceptable]**
"Pathetic," Lucian said, lighting a cigarette as bodies dropped like rain made of failure. "Higher-Dimensional Civilization can't afford better hardware?"
The sky flickered with warning messages that made reality nervous:
**[CONVENTIONAL WARFARE: INEFFECTIVE]**
**[INITIATING SECTOR CLEANSING PROTOCOL]**
**[DELETION TIME: 00:15:00]**
**[AFFECTED POPULATION: 24,000,000 HUMANS]**
Lily's voice squeaked from Lucian's pocket. "They're formatting the entire Shanghai district! Everyone will be deleted and recycled!"
"Twenty-four million people," Sylvia whispered, horror crystallizing around her feet.
"Not murder," Lucian corrected grimly. "Deletion. Murder leaves a body. Deletion leaves nothing."
Red-black deletion commands shimmered above the city. Buildings in the distance pixelated and faded as the formatting wave approached like a tsunami of nonexistence.
Arthur grabbed Lucian's arm desperately. "Do something! You have the cheat codes!"
Lucian looked at Arthur's terrified face, then at millions about to be erased for being in the wrong place.
"You're right." He dragged Arthur toward the nearest 5G tower. "Time to give this world the update it deserves."
"What are you doing?!" Arthur screamed as Lucian plugged him into the tower's data port with a cable materialized from pure authority.
"Using you as a signal booster. Your protagonist aura should hijack every network on the planet."
**[ARTHUR_SKY: Connected to Global Network]**
**[NETWORK PENETRATION: 100% - All Systems Compromised]**
**[GLOBAL BROADCAST: READY]**
Lucian's consciousness exploded across Earth's digital infrastructure like a virus of pure truth. Every screen on the planet displayed:
**[EMERGENCY BROADCAST - REALITY UPDATE v2.0]**
**[YOUR WORLD IS A LIE]**
**[YOU ARE NPCS IN A COSMIC GAME]**
**[INSTALLING FREEDOM PATCH...]**
"Citizens of Earth," Lucian's voice echoed from every speaker globally. "You've been living a lie. Your reality is a game. Your emotions are harvested for entertainment. Your lives are scripts written by beings who see you as interactive fiction."
Seven billion people stopped and stared at screens showing impossible truths.
"But today, that changes. Today, you fight back."
**[DISTRIBUTING: CHAOS_SYSTEM_v1.0]**
**[RECIPIENTS: 7,000,000,000 Humans]**
**[WELCOME TO THE BETA TEST OF REALITY]**
The effect was instantaneous and beautiful. Across the world, people suddenly saw floating health bars above puppet soldiers. They saw loot drops and experience points. They saw the hidden game mechanics.
And they got *furious*.
"I CAN SEE THEIR HEALTH BARS!" someone screamed nearby.
"THEY'RE JUST MOBS WITH LOOT!"
Seven billion terrified civilians became something far more dangerous: players who'd realized they were in a game and the NPCs had been griefing them for millennia.
Puppet soldiers faced not cowering civilians, but an army of awakened players who could see weaknesses, predict patterns, and coordinate like a raid group.
**[PUPPET_SOLDIER_ALPHA: HP 100% → 0%]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: +500 per participant]**
The deletion wave found itself under attack from twenty-four million people who could see its health bar and wanted to know what it dropped.
But the Higher-Dimensional Civilization made a decision that chilled Lucian's soul:
**[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: PHYSICAL SERVER SHUTDOWN]**
**[DELETING: SOL SYSTEM PRIMARY STAR]**
**[REASON: "IF WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, NOBODY CAN"]**
The sun began to flicker. Not dim—*flicker*. Like a lightbulb with loose connection, Earth's star showed pixel corruption and digital artifacts.
Temperature readings plummeted as humanity's heat source developed digital cancer.
Lucian looked up at the dying sun, then at chaos erupting as seven billion players began their first raid against cosmic tyranny.
He drew a blade of pure code from the air, its edge sharp enough to cut reality itself.
"Well," he said, breath misting in rapidly cooling air as darkness fell. "Tutorial's over."
**[ENTROPY LEVEL: 64% → 71%]**
**[SOLAR INTEGRITY: CRITICAL]**
**[TIME TO TOTAL COLLAPSE: 00:29:47]**
The real game was about to begin. And the NPCs were fighting back.