The moment Haruto stepped beyond the glowing perimeter, Ivory’s lips curled into a frigid, lethal smile.
"Very well... then let the deletion begin."
At her command, the Obsidian Machine groaned, its gears grinding against the fabric of space. A neon-violet screen flickered into existence, casting a ghostly glow over the field of bones.
[CHALLENGE ACCEPTED]
Haruto’s status window flashed before his eyes, a mocking reminder of his hollow existence:
[ROOT SYSTEM ACCESS: FULL ACCESS AETHERIS CORE]
HP: 98%
(LOOSING 0.5% HR PER MINUTE)
|(REASON:EXTREME AURA PRESSURE)
MP/STAMINA: [ Dependent on Emotional Resonance]
Status: Boredom / Indifference.
[STATUS: HIGHLY ENCRYPTED / LOCKED]
[UNLOCK CONDITION: EMOTIONAL RESONANCE > 90%]
[CURRENT RESONANCE: 2% (Extreme Boredom)]
He stared at the empty Mana bar. His power wasn't fueled by potions or training; it was bound to his soul. In this world, to 'feel' was to be powerful—and Haruto had felt nothing for years.
As the three Goddesses rose, the air didn't just vibrate—it manifested data. Haruto’s vision flickered, and three HUD windows snapped into existence, floating above the Goddesses like boss-level nameplates.
[NAME: IVORY]
[TITLE: THE SOUL OF THE SILVER MOON / GODDESS OF LOGIC]
[LEVEL: 99 (MAX)]
[PRIMARY SKILL: ABSOLUTE CALCULATION / DIVINE RULESET]
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NAME: LUSTRA]
[TITLE: THE SOUL OF THE GOLDEN MOON / GODDESS OF LUST]
[LEVEL: 99 (MAX)]
[PRIMARY SKILL: SOUL SEDUCTION / FATE WEAVING]
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NAME: BELLONA]
[TITLE: THE SOUL OF THE CRIMSON MOON / GODDESS OF WAR]
[LEVEL: 99 (MAX)]
[PRIMARY SKILL: BLOODLUST DOMAIN / ETERNAL COMBAT]
Haruto looked down at his own status window. It was a mess of glitches and locked bars.
[NAME: HARUTO]
[LEVEL: --- (UNDEFINED)]
[HP: 98% (DECREASING -0.5% PER MINUTE)]
[STATUS: EXTREME BOREDOM]
[RESONANCE: 2%]
[SKILL: —]
"Level 99 versus a no Level " Haruto muttered, a cold smirk touching his lips.
"The matchmaking in this world is trash. This isn't a trial; it's a slaughter."
"Correct," Ivory’s voice echoed.
In a flash of silver light, Lustra and Ivory vanished. They didn't move; they teleported, reappearing instantly at the far end of the field. Ivory stood atop a floating pedestal of light, looking down like an admin over a terminal.
"Logic dictates that the weak do not possess the right to stand on the same soil as the Divine," Ivory said.
She slowly raised her hand and made a sweeping, horizontal gesture. Her fingers didn't move through the air; they seemed to slide across a digital screen.
[SYSTEM COMMAND: LOAD_MAP_GIANTS_BOARD]
With a tectonic roar, the bone-filled wasteland shifted. The ground beneath Haruto’s feet didn't just move; it reorganized, the obsidian earth cracking and reforming into perfect, alternating squares of abyssal black and glowing silver.
Haruto stood at the southern edge of a massive Giant’s Chessboard, looking out across a checkered abyss that stretched for miles. At the far northern end, Ivory stood on a floating pedestal of light, her Blue Aura shimmering like a distant, cold star. Between them lay the killing field.
Across the board, the silence was broken by the heavy, metallic thuds of Ivory’s army manifesting. These weren't mere pieces; they were towering, predatory silhouettes of White Queens and Knights, carved from divine marble and glowing with lethal energy.
Haruto looked at his own side. It was a joke. His Black King was already cornered, pinned against the edge of the board. A White Queen stood directly in its path, her marble sword resting against the King’s throat. Two Knights on spectral horses circled the perimeter, their lances glowing with divine light, cutting off every possible escape route.
It wasn't a game. It was an execution.
"Checkmate in zero moves?" Haruto said, his voice flat but loud enough to carry across the abyss. "That’s not logic, Ivory. That’s just blatant cheating."
Ivory’s expression didn't change. She looked down at him with silver, pitiless eyes.
"In this realm, my logic is the law. There is no such thing as 'cheating' when the rules are dictated by the Divine. You are a 'Formatting Error,' Haruto. And errors are removed efficiently."
She paused, a small, mocking smile playing on her porcelain lips.
"However, if the pressure is too much for your mortal mind—if you wish to surrender now and let the deletion be painless—I shall grant you one final mercy."
With a flick of her wrist, a Silver Rulebook materialized in the air, spinning toward Haruto.
"I will give you the manual," Ivory said, her voice dripping with condescension.
"Read it. Study the 'Logic' of this world. Perhaps it will make your final moments slightly more... intellectual. Think of it as an act of charity for a player who never stood a chance."
Haruto didn't look at the army of marble giants closing in. He didn't look at the sword at his King’s throat. His eyes were fixed solely on the book as it hovered before him. He reached out and snatched it from the air, the pages fluttering violently as the ink began to bleed into the paper.
(Haruto’s Inner Thoughts:) ‘She thinks she’s giving me a handicap. She thinks she’s being "merciful" by showing me the source code.’
A White Queen stood directly in its path, her marble sword pointed at the King’s throat. Two Knights on spectral horses circled the perimeter, their lances cutting off every possible square for retreat. To any grandmaster, it was a "Fool’s Mate" in progress—a trap with zero escape.
(Haruto isn't looking in any of this but a silver book hanging in the air)
A Silver Rulebook materialized in the air, its pages fluttering violently before Haruto caught it. The ink seemed to bleed into the paper:
Haruto snatched the Silver Rulebook out of the air. Its pages flipped with a violent, mechanical speed, as if a legacy system were being scanned in a split second. His eyes scanned the bleeding ink:
"If the King is destroyed, the Player is Deleted."
From a distance, Ivory watched him, her silver eyes brimming with a cold, aristocratic pride. Suddenly, her Blue Aura erupted. The azure light was so intense that the ancient bones scattered across the field began to glow with a haunting blue hue. This was the aura of "Logic" and "Calculation"—a pressure so heavy it felt like it could crush the lungs of any lesser being.
"Do not waste your effort, Mortal," Ivory’s voice resonated, amplified by the surging tides of her blue energy.
"To this day, not a single soul has left this 'Giant’s Board' alive. Thousands of 'Candidates' have stood where you stand—mighty warriors, legendary kings, undisputed geniuses—and every single one of them was deleted. Against my logic, your existence is nothing more than an error."
Haruto snapped the book shut, a faint, weary smile playing on his lips.
"Thousands came and not one passed? That just means your game is incredibly predictable.”
He started reading the book again.
“The Player is bound to the King. If the King is destroyed by the Opponent, the Player is Deleted."
A strange, predatory glint sparked in Haruto’s obsidian eyes.
"Opponent, huh?"
"I see," Haruto whispered, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the board.
"The King is pinned. The moves are limited. The system has already decided I’ve lost."
He looked across the vast distance at Ivory. From her pedestal, she looked down at him as if he were an ant already crushed under a boot.
"Do you see it, Mortal?" Ivory’s voice carried across the board, resonant and mocking. "My logic has already concluded your end. The board is set. The King is trapped. There is no sequence of moves in any reality that saves you from deletion."
Haruto looked back at his cornered King. A strange, predatory glint sparked in his obsidian eyes—the look of a gamer who had found a flaw in the developer's code.
"You're right, Ivory," Haruto said, his voice carrying a chilling calm. "Under your rules, there's no move left. So I think it's time I stopped moving according to the board."
He didn't march toward the enemy. He turned around and walked straight toward the one piece he was supposed to protect.
Haruto didn't even spare a glance at the white army's rows of knights and towers. Instead, he turned his back on the enemy and began a calm, deliberate march toward his own King. He wasn't moving to defend it; he was moving to execute it.
"Stop!" Ivory’s voice crackled like shattered lightning, her calm fa?ade finally fracturing.
"What do you think you’re doing?"
Haruto didn't slow down. He didn't even look back.
"Isn't it obvious?" he asked, his voice flat and terrifyingly logical.
"If I kill my own King, the 'Opponent' has nothing left to hunt. You can't win a game if the objective no longer exists."
Ivory’s face, usually as still as a marble statue, distorted with pure, unadulterated rage. The very idea of someone violating her sacred rules was an insult to her divinity.
"I commanded you to STOP."
She snapped her fingers with a sound like a gunshot. Instantly, the air around Haruto solidified into heavy, silver chains of 'Divine Logic.' They coiled violently around his ankles and shoulders, the cold metal digging deep into his skin with the force of ten thousand tons. The pressure was enough to flatten a tank into a sheet of scrap metal, designed to drag him back to his designated square.
But Haruto didn't even break his stride.
The silver links groaned and sparked under the strain as he continued to walk forward, dragging the weight of the Goddess's law behind him like it was nothing more than a cobweb.
"Logically... this is impossible!" Ivory muttered, her hands trembling as her Blue Aura flickered. "You are bound by the rules! You are a piece in my game! How can you move against the WILL?!"
Haruto’s obsidian eyes remained fixed on the King's throat.
"I told you, Ivory. Your game is predictable. And in a predictable game, the biggest glitch is the one who stops caring about winning."
--Clang! Snap!--
The chains shattered like cheap glass the moment they touched his skin. Haruto didn't even look back. He was focused only on the towering Black King in front of him.
"You called this a test of intelligence ? In my world this is called a defective version. Because you have set the rule so strictly that you have forgotten one thing: that a king who can't move isn't a checkmate . He's useless and a useless piece can be sacrificed” (Haruto’s voice was a low, dangerous vibration.)
"I’ve spent eighteen years playing by other people's rules, Ivory. I’ve scanned their items, I’ve worked their shifts, I’ve lived in their cages."
The Breaking Point Ivory couldn't take it anymore. She descended from the sky like a falling star, her silver rapier glowing with a light that threatened to erase Haruto’s very existence.
"If you will not obey the rules of the game," (she hissed)
"then you shall be deleted before the first move!"
She lashed out with her hand, and a massive wave of Silver Gravity slammed into the board.
--BOOOM!--
The obsidian board cracked. Haruto’s knees slammed into the ground. His HP bar on the floating machine screen flickered violently, dropping from 98%... 60%... 40%... 20%.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The sheer force drove Haruto to his knees, his bones screaming as they hit the obsidian floor.
[HP: 20% – CRITICAL]
"You are a boring candidate, Haruto," (Ivory spat, looking down at him with a gaze filled with aristocratic disgust.)
"Just like your pathetic past life, you will die here as a loser. The same loop. The same predictable death."
Ivory’s words didn't just hit Haruto; they re-wrote his reality.
Suddenly, the cold obsidian floor felt like the sticky, linoleum tiles of 'Day-Break Mart.' The scent of ozone vanished, replaced by the stench of stale coffee and floor wax. In his mind, Ivory’s face morphed into his manager’s bloated, screaming face—veins popping, spit flying—shouting at him for a misplaced price tag.
“Kneel! Apologize! You’re nothing but a tool, Haruto!”
Haruto’s head hung low. The red HP bar pulsed: 10%... 8%... 5%... He was suffocating. Every breath felt like he was inhaling broken glass. The humiliation of years of bowing to people he loathed, of being a "polite NPC" in a world that didn't see him, finally reached its boiling point.
‘Wait...’ (A jagged cut through the trauma.)
‘If I break this... if I win this glitched trial... I never have to live that boring life again.’
He began to calculate. Not with numbers, but with his soul.
(Inner thoughts:) If life was a game, then his "Submission" was the only file holding the system together.
Delete the submission, and the game crashes. (haruto scream)
"Aaaagghhh—!"
A horrific, gut-wrenching scream tore out of Haruto’s throat. This wasn't a power-up; it was a Mutilation.
His body began to reject its own "human" code. The skin on his back literally split open, not with blood, but with hissing violet static. His bones began to snap and rearrange themselves with the sound of dry wood breaking
—CRACK. SNAP.—
as the system tried to force him down while his will forced him up.
[WARNING: EMOTIONAL RESONANCE CRITICAL (access to power)]
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD]
"I... am... done..."
Haruto wheezed, blood and black ink leaking from his eyes. Every muscle was tearing, his body trembling in absolute agony.
“I am done kneeling for anyone”(he started screaming with an evil smile)
But through the unbearable pain, he began to lift his head.
Ivory froze. The air around her turned ice-cold. She looked down and saw it—the Devil’s Smile.
It wasn't a smile of joy. It was a wide, grotesque grin of a man who had gone past the point of sanity. It was the smile of someone who had looked into the abyss, found it boring, and decided to set it on fire.
Haruto’s eyes were bloodshot, glowing with a jagged, flickering violet light. The pain was still there, visible in his twitching face, but he was laughing through it.
"You think... this is m-death?"
Haruto rasped, his voice sounding like two tectonic plates grinding together.
"No. This is my pleasure."
As Ivory prepared the final strike, Haruto’s consciousness suddenly snapped. The chessboard, the bones, and the Goddesses vanished.
He felt weightless. For a moment, Haruto thought he was flying through an endless, golden void. Then, he saw Him.
A being made of pure, blinding light—a silhouette of a man that seemed to hold entire galaxies within his frame—stepped out of the nothingness. The pressure was immense, yet it felt familiar.
"Who... who are you?" Haruto asked, his voice echoing in the vacuum.
The being didn't answer directly. His voice felt like a thousand suns exploding.
"Since the dawn of existence, I have watched the Gods choose their successors. I have watched them pick the strongest, the wisest, and the most loyal."
The Light Being stepped closer, his presence vibrating through Haruto’s very soul.
"But none of them possessed the will to survive Me. Their hearts were too full of 'life' to contain the power of 'Creation.' But you... your Will is a roaring void. You have impressed me, Haruto."
"I didn't ask for a fan club," Haruto muttered, even in the face of a Supreme Being.
The figure let out a sound that might have been a laugh.
"I shall grant you a temporary gift. Full control of the Aetheris Core... but only until these trials end. Show me the limits of your potential. Show me if a 'Bored Mortal' can truly wield the power to delete a Goddess."
Suddenly, the golden void shattered. "Wait! Who are you?!" Haruto screamed, but the being began to fade into white static.
Haruto felt a sickening sensation of falling. He was plummeting back to reality at terminal velocity.
Suddenly Haruto’s body lay still on the obsidian square. Ivory stood over him, her hand raised, a look of cold triumph on her face. "It is over. The error has been purged."
But then, Haruto’s fingers twitched.
"Not... even... close," he whispered.
He opened his eyes. They weren't human anymore. They were swirling vortexes of black and gold.
--VROOOOOM—ZRRRRRRRKT!--
The Pure Black Aura didn't just appear; it exploded from his pores, shredding his retail vest into atoms. The aura was so dense it felt physical, a tidal wave of nothingness that made Ivory take a step back in genuine, primal terror. For the first time in an eternity, a Goddess felt like Prey.
Haruto stood tall, his silhouette flickering like a corrupted video file. He reached out and gripped the air, and the very space around his hand pixelated and died.
"I'm not part of your script anymore, Ivory,"
(Haruto whispered, the pain in his voice now replaced by a terrifying, hollow calm.)
The Silver Gravity that Ivory had used to crush Haruto was still there, manifesting as glowing, divine chains that bound his soul to the board. But as the Black Aura erupted
—VROOOOOM-ZRRRRRRRKT!—
those chains didn't break. They corrupted
The black aura, like a sentient, hungry fire, crawled up the silver links, staining them with a necrotic violet stain.
The silver chain, infused with Ivory’s divine gravity, wrapped around Haruto’s arm like a searing coil. The moment the holy metal touched his flesh, the sound was sickening
—Sssssssss!—
the smell of burning skin filled the air.
But Haruto didn't pull away. He tightened his grip.
His skin was literally melting, peeling back to reveal k muscle beneath, yet he stared at the carnage with a wide, trembling grin. The Black Fire of his aura fed on the silver chain, turning the holy metal into a corrupted, melting sludge.
[!! WARNING: EMOTIONAL RESONANCE AT 10% !!]
The system couldn't process it. According to the code, Haruto should have been unconscious from the shock. But Haruto was calculating. Every burn, every sting was a point of data that proved he was finally, finally awake.
"Is this it, Ivory?"
Haruto whispered, his voice cracking as the black static in his eyes surged.
"Is this the best 'pain' your system can generate?"
With a sudden, violent twist of his charred arm, he yanked the chain.
—- CRACK!---
Ivory let out a sharp, undivine gasp as she was dragged from her high pedestal. She slammed onto the obsidian floor, her regal robes staining with the dust of the skeletons she had mocked. She looked up, and her breath hitched in absolute, primal terror.
Haruto was looming over her, his arm a glowing mess of black fire and raw, burnt nerves. He looked like a demon being born from a glitched monitor.
"How... how can you smile?"
Ivory stammered, her silver light flickering like a dying bulb.
"Your body is being destroyed! The pain... it should be unbearable!"
Haruto leaned down, a single drop of black, ink-like blood falling from his eye and sizzling as it hit the floor.
"Pain?"
Haruto’s laugh was a jagged, hollow sound that echoed through the void.
"After a lifetime of feeling nothing, Ivory... this burning is the most beautiful thing I've ever felt. It’s the only part of your game that isn't boring."
The Devil’s Smile on his face was so wide it looked like his skin would tear. He turned his gaze toward the Black King.
"Now,"
Haruto hissed, his aura intensifying until the air itself began to pixelate and dissolve.
"Let's see what happens when I delete the only thing I'm supposed to protect."
He didn't just lunge. He became a streak of black static. With his burning, charred fist, he punched through the King’s chest.
-–KABOOOOM!--
He didn't just break the piece. He erased the space it occupied. The King didn't shatter into fragments; it was simply deleted from reality, leaving a jagged, purple-black hole in the center of the chessboard.
[!! SYSTEM COLLAPSE INITIATED !!]
[CORE DATA CORRUPTED]
Ivory screamed as the world around her began to de-render, but Haruto just stood in the center of the chaos, his burning arm still smoking, looking like he had finally found the "Excitement" he was willing to die for.
As the Black King vanished into the void, the shockwave didn't just break the floor—it broke the rules of existence.
Ivory tried to stand, but her legs gave away. She looked down at her hands and let out a shriek that sounded like shattering crystal. Her fingers, once solid and radiant, were becoming translucent. She could see the bones and the glitched chessboard through her own palms.She wasn't just fading; her divine textures were peeling away like old wallpaper, revealing the raw, flickering binary code underneath.
"No... this is impossible!" she gasped, her voice thinning out into a digital rasp.
"I am a Weaver! I am an Architect! You cannot... a mortal cannot do tha—"
"I told you, Ivory,"
Haruto’s voice cut through her panic, sounding like a distorted recording.
"I'm not part of the script anymore."
“And do you know something”
“to win a glitched game delete the corrupt file”
He stepped closer, his boots crunching on the de-rendering pixels of the world. Every time his Black Fire flickered, Ivory’s body would glitch violently—her form becoming see-through, then solid, then flickering out of existence for a millisecond.
[!! WARNING: ADMINISTRATOR DATA UNDER ATTACK !!]
The terror in Ivory’s eyes was unlike anything Haruto had ever seen in the 'Gray World.' This wasn't the bored irritation of a manager or the tired sigh of a customer. This was the Primal Fear of Non-Existence. She was fading, her divine essence being sucked into the vacuum Haruto had created.
She reached out to him, her hand trembling and semi-transparent.
"Stop... please... the system will collapse! You'll die along with me!"
Haruto stopped inches away from her face. The heat from his charred, burning arm was so intense that Ivory’s translucent skin began to "steam" with violet data-smoke.
"Then we'll be deleted together,"
Haruto whispered, his Devil's Smile reaching his eyes, which were now cold, bottomless pits of violet static.
"Isn't that the most exciting thing you've ever heard? No loop. No tomorrow. Just... The End."
Ivory looked into his eyes and saw it—the absolute, terrifying truth. He wasn't bluffing. He was truly ready to vanish forever just to feel this one moment of chaos.
"You... you're not a person,You're a demon."
she whimpered, her form flickering so fast she looked like a broken hologram.
"Almost" Haruto hissed.
With a final, deafening, the chessboard dissolved into a white abyss. Ivory’s translucent body was yanked upward by a sudden, violent surge of golden light as the system tried to "Backup" its corrupted Goddess, leaving Haruto alone in a void of falling data shards.
The white abyss didn't stay silent for long. The moment the Black King was erased, the sky bled a deep, digital crimson. The atmosphere became heavy, not with gravity, but with the raw, unfiltered wrath of the System.
[!! CRITICAL SYSTEM VIOLATION DETECTED !!]
[USER: HARUTO | OFFENSE: CORE DATA MANIPULATION / CHEATING]
Suddenly, a bolt of Divine Punishment Lightning—a jagged spear of gold and violet energy—tore through the void and struck Haruto directly in the chest.
KRA-KOOOOOM—!
Haruto was blasted into the air. This wasn't natural lightning; it was "Aggressive Deletion Code." It surged through his veins, setting every nerve ending on fire. His flesh cooked, his bones vibrated with the frequency of a dying star, and the system forcefully stripped away his vitality as a penalty for breaking the game.
The smoke cleared, but the image that remained was horrifying. Haruto was still standing, but he wasn't right. In the center of his chest, right where the Divine Lightning had struck, was a jagged, hollow hole. There was no blood. Instead, wisps of black smoke and flickers of red static leaked from the cavity, as if his very soul was pouring out.
[!! STATUS: PHYSICAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED !!]
[HP: 1.5% — SYSTEM STABILIZATION FAILED]
The Corrupted Aura His aura was no longer just black. It began to bleed into a violent, pulsating Crimson. The two colors fought and merged around his body, swirling like a dying star. The red wasn't just energy—it was his raw, unfiltered agony being converted into fuel.
Ivory (Lustra) looked at the hole in his chest and let out a choked gasp.
"You... you should be dead. No mortal can survive a puncture in the spirit core. Why are you still standing?!"
The Inner Chaos But Haruto didn't hear her. Inside his mind, everything was a distorted mess of glitchy memories and new, terrifying sensations.
The power of the Creator was too vast for a mortal mind. Without his usual "Boredom" to act as a buffer, the divine energy was corrupting his brain. His thoughts were shattering.
"Delete..." Haruto whispered, his voice sounding like two people speaking at once—one human, one a distorted machine. "Delete the file. Delete the world. Delete... EVERYTHING."
Ivory stepped back on her pedestal, her silver eyes widening in genuine fear. "The Core... it’s not merging with him. It’s consuming him. His mind is being overwritten by the raw data of destruction!"
Haruto looked up. One of his eyes was still obsidian black, but the other had turned a glowing, cracked crimson. He wasn't looking at a chessboard anymore. He was looking at a world that needed to be formatted.
"You wanted... a test?" Haruto growled, a terrifying, insane version of the Devil’s Smile splitting his face. "Let's see if your 'Logic' can survive a Total System Crash."
‘What is happening to me?’ Haruto thought, his inner voice echoing against the walls of his own consciousness. ‘I can feel my flesh burning... I can feel the air passing through the hole in my chest... My heart is barely beating... and yet...’
He looked at his trembling, charred hands. A surge of electricity shot through his nerves, a pain so sharp it should have made him vomit. But instead, a shiver of pure ecstasy ran down his spine.
‘Why does it feel like this?’ His thoughts became frantic, almost panicked.
‘It’s burning. It’s tearing me apart. It’s... it’s beautiful. For years, I felt nothing. No joy, no pain, just the gray hum of the world. But this?
This agony is the most vibrant thing I’ve ever tasted.’
A terrifying realization hit him.
‘Am I... enjoying this? Am I losing my mind, or was I always this broken?’
The Devil’s Awakening Outside, his body reacted to his thoughts. The Black Aura flared up, doubling in size. Haruto’s head snapped up, and the Devil’s Smile returned, but this time it was twitching with the effort of holding back a manic laugh.
"Is that all?" Haruto rasped, his voice sounding like a broken radio. He looked through the translucent Ivory, his gaze piercing her soul.
"You gave me a hole in my chest... but all you didn't do was to give my boredom a place to escape."
Every time he spoke, the air hissed through the cavity in his chest, making his voice sound like a whistling graveyard..
He took a step, his 1.5% HP bar blinking a dangerous, dying red. He was on the verge of collapse, yet he looked more alive than he had ever been in his entire life.
Then, he stopped. He looked at his charred hands, the burning chains, and the shivering Goddess on the floor. His wide, jagged smile didn't fade, but his eyes grew cold.
"I am still feeling bored," Haruto said, his voice a flat, terrifying monotone.
Ivory looked up at him, and something inside her divine psyche finally snapped. She wasn't just looking at a "Glitch" anymore. She was looking at a creature that had stared into the ultimate end and found it unimpressive. She began to hyperventilate, her translucent chest heaving.
"How... why aren't you satisfied?"
she whimpered, her form flickering so violently she looked like a broken hologram.
"I gave you everything! I gave you pain! I gave you a world to break! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!"
She scrambled backward, but she couldn't escape his shadow. The sheer weight of his indifference was more crushing than any gravity spell. She felt small. She felt irrelevant. She felt like an insect in Haruto's twisted game.
Suddenly, a sharp, melodic laugh cut through the heavy atmosphere.
Lusta stepped forward, her pink hair billowing like a solar flare. She didn't look at Haruto with fear—she looked at him with the hunger of a predator who had finally found a worthy hunt. Then, she turned her gaze toward the pathetic, translucent figure on the floor.
"Look at you, Ivory."
Lustra stepped forward, her voice dripping with venomous amusement.
"The one who claimed she could 'tame' the monster. You look like a discarded piece of your own game. A Goddess of intelligence , reduced to a transparent ghost by a mortal with a hole in his chest.”
"But I have to admit... this is a historic moment," Lustra purred, her voice echoing across the board.
"In all the eons of Aetheris, this is the first time a Candidate has ever survived your test, Ivory. No one has ever passed the Trial of Logic. Everyone else died before they could even move a pawn."
Lustra turned fully toward Haruto, her aura of toxic green and ruby red flaring up, clashing against Haruto’s black static.
"Step aside, Ivory. You've had your turn to play with him, and you failed miserably. You've humiliated the Divine long enough. Now..."
Lustra’s gaze locked onto Haruto's swirling black-and-gold eyes.
"It's my turn. Since he’s the first one to ever break your 'Logic,' let’s see if he can survive my Desire. Give me a chance to enjoy this 'Roaring Void' too."
Lustra turned to Haruto, her gold spear igniting with a heat that turned the surrounding air into a blur.
“A man who smiles while his soul leaks out... finally, a toy that won't break on the first swing. It's my turn to see if I can make you scream."
Haruto’s smile twitched. The 1.5% HP bar flickered one last time
“Come to me with all you got.” ( haruto scream)
[system warning emotion level : Rapidly Increasing]
[!! FINAL WARNING: USER IS DISCARDING THE SELF-PRESERVATION PROTOCOL !!]
The screen cuts to pitch black as the sound of Lustra’s spear igniting echoes through the void.
1.5% HP. > The most shocking part? Haruto is the FIRST candidate in history to survive Ivory's trial. He broke a record that has stood for eons, but at the cost of his own physical integrity. And that mysterious encounter with the 'Being of Light'... who exactly is watching our hero?
Lustra, the Goddess of Lust. She’s seen Ivory fail, and she’s not going to make the same mistake. Can a man who feels 'Extreme Boredom' survive a trial of pure desire? Or will his 1.5% HP finally hit zero?
Drop a comment: What would you do if you were in Haruto’s place? Kill the King or try to fight the Marble Giants? See you in Chapter 4:"
