The darkness on the 100th floor wasn't merely the absence of light; it was the absence of data.
For an Awakener, the world is usually a cacophony of sensory feedback—mana currents, system pings, and the constant hum of the interface. Here, everything was severed. Han Seo-Jun felt a terrifying lightness, as if his soul had been unplugged from a life-support machine.
Beside him, Ji-Won gasped. "My daggers... the glow is gone. Seo-Jun, I can't feel my mana."
"Don't panic," Seo-Jun said, though his own heart was thundering against his ribs. "The System didn't crash. We just moved beyond its reach."
He reached for the [Akashic Record]. He expected it to be dead, but instead, it flared with a cold, internal brilliance. Unlike the blue windows of the standard system, the Record existed inside him. It didn't need a network.
"I still have it," he whispered. "The Plagiarism ability... it's not part of their system. It's the source code."
He snapped his fingers. A spark of golden light ignited in his palm, illuminating a room that was infinitely vast and terrifyingly empty. There were no walls, only a floor of polished obsidian that reflected a million distant, unblinking stars.
In the center of the void sat a man.
He didn't look like a god or an architect. He looked like an older version of Seo-Jun—haggard, with hair the color of ash and skin like cracked parchment. He was shackled to a chair made of frozen light, his chest pierced by a dozen black spears that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic violet glow.
[Target Identified: The Architect (Alpha-Build).]
[Status: Decompiled / Heart Fragment Remaining.]
"So," the man said, his voice a dry rasp that seemed to come from every direction at once. "They finally sent the 'Correction'."
Seo-Jun stepped forward, the golden light in his hand pulsing in sync with the man's heartbeat. "Oswald calls you a prisoner. He says you're a failed experiment."
The Architect let out a hacking laugh. "Oswald is a subroutine with a tailor. I am the one who dreamed of the Game. I thought... I thought if I gave humanity a system, I could save them from their own mediocrity. I wanted to turn every human into a hero."
He looked up, his eyes two hollow voids. "But the Administrators—the entities from beyond the veil—they saw my 'Game' and realized they could use it for a more efficient harvest. They took my code, stripped away the freedom, and turned it into a slaughterhouse. They turned me into a battery to power their 'Interface'."
Ji-Won walked up beside Seo-Jun, her hand resting on the hilt of her dead daggers. "If you built this, you can stop it. End the System. Return the world to the way it was."
"It is too late for that, Little Queen," the Architect sighed. "The System is now the world's skeleton. If you pull it out, the body collapses. Earth would vanish in a second of total entropy."
He turned his gaze toward Seo-Jun. "But you... you are the 'Logic Error' I planted. Do you know why you had to survive a thousand near-deaths, Seo-Jun? Why you had to be an F-Rank Porter?"
Seo-Jun felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. "Tell me."
"Because the only way to beat a rigged game is to play outside the rules for so long that the Game forgets you exist," the Architect said. "I chose you because you were the most invisible man on Earth. Your suffering was the 'Cache' where I hid the true source code. Your 'Plagiarism' isn't a skill. It's a Delete Key."
Suddenly, the black spears in the Architect's chest flared with violet lightning. The room began to shake as the "Higher System" tried to re-establish its connection.
Oswald's voice boomed through the void, distorted and monstrous.
"DO IT, SEO-JUN! CONSUME THE CORE! BECOME THE UPDATE OR PERISH WITH THE ERRORS!"
The Architect reached out a trembling hand. "He's right about one thing. You must take the Core. But don't use it to update their machine. Use it to rewrite the 'Admin' privileges. Give the power back to the players."
The man's chest began to glow with a blinding white light—the Alpha-Core. It was a concentrated sphere of pure, unedited reality.
[System Warning: High-Density Energy Detected!]
[Plagiarism System: Analysis Complete.]
[Warning: Integration will permanently alter your humanity.]
"Seo-Jun, don't," Ji-Won said, grabbing his arm. "Look at him. That's what happens to people who try to hold that power. You'll become the next prisoner."
Seo-Jun looked at the Architect, then at the black spears representing the Administrators' control. He thought about the 1,000 times he had almost died while the world laughed at his weakness. He thought about the people like Ji-Won's brother, who were just "stats" to the beings upstairs.
"I've been carrying heavy things my whole life," Seo-Jun said, his voice calm and terrifyingly cold. "What's one more burden?"
He stepped forward and plunged his hand into the Architect's chest.
The explosion wasn't of sound, but of information.
Seo-Jun's mind was flooded with the history of the universe—the rise and fall of a million worlds, the cold calculations of the Administrators, and the blueprints of the System.
[SSS-Tier Ability: 'Akashic Record' is evolving...]
[Integrating Alpha-Core...]
[New Class Found: The Editor of Reality.]
He felt his "F-Rank" soul stretching, tearing, and reforming. The gold in his eyes turned into a swirling galaxy of white and black.
[Warning: The Administrators are attempting to 'Format' your consciousness!]
[Defenses failing...]
"Get out of my head," Seo-Jun roared.
He didn't use a skill. He used the "Delete Key." He focused on the black spears, the violet light, and the very concept of "Oswald." In his mind's eye, he saw the lines of code that defined the Tower of Silence, and he began to strike through them with a golden pen.
Line 4,500: Mana Constraints... DELETED.
Line 12,001: Administrator Override... DELETED.
Line 99,999: Human Limitation... DELETED.
Outside, in the physical world, the Tower of Silence began to glow with a light so bright it could be seen from Seoul. The mountain range groaned as the "Corrupted Gate" was forcefully uninstalled from reality.
Inside the void, the Architect smiled as he began to dissolve into stardust. "Finally... a player who knows how to cheat."
When the light faded, the 100th floor was gone.
Seo-Jun and Ji-Won were standing on the peak of the mountain under a clear, starlit sky. The Tower had vanished as if it had never existed.
Seo-Jun stood perfectly still. His jumpsuit was gone, replaced by a coat of shifting, dark-matter fabric that seemed to absorb the moonlight. His stats... his stats were no longer numbers.
[Name: Han Seo-Jun]
[Level: ERROR]
[Rank: The Editor]
[Current Status: Re-writing the Local Area...]
Ji-Won looked at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror. She reached for her daggers. They flared to life with a blue light ten times brighter than before.
"My mana," she whispered. "It feels... free. I don't feel the 'weight' of the System anymore."
"I broke the shackles," Seo-Jun said. His voice carried a resonance that made the very air vibrate. "In this province, at least, the Administrators have no power. This is now a 'Free Zone'."
He looked toward the horizon, where several high-speed mana signatures were approaching. The S-Rank Hunters of the World Association were coming to investigate the disappearance of the Tower.
Behind them, high in the atmosphere, a massive eye made of violet lightning flickered into existence for a split second before Seo-Jun blinked, and it vanished.
"They're coming for me," Seo-Jun said.
"Not just you," Ji-Won said, stepping up beside him, her daggers crackling. "They're coming for us. What's the plan, Mr. Editor?"
Seo-Jun looked at the "Status Window" of the world itself, hovering in the sky. He reached out and tapped a command.
[Global Announcement: The Game is Under New Management.]
"The plan?" Seo-Jun smiled. "We're going to plagiarism the rest of the world."