Three hours later, the system was running beautifully.
It was a logistics manager’s wet dream. I had spaced the zombies out every ten yards along the treacherous pass. They passed fifty-pound sacks of grain from one to the next with rhythmic, tireless precision. It was a conveyor belt of corpses.
Sack. Grab. Pass. Sack. Grab. Pass.
There was no complaining. No "my back hurts." No "I need a bathroom break." Just pure, unadulterated efficiency.
I sat on a crate of apples near the checkpoint, watching the grain flow north. Sylvia was sitting next to me, warming her hands over a fire we’d built. She looked torn between admiration and nausea.
"This is heresy," she muttered, watching a skeleton in a rusted helmet catch a sack of potatoes. "You're using the honored dead as... forklifts."
"I'm giving them purpose," I corrected, taking a sip of my mana-flask. "Look at them. They died for nothing in a pointless war. Now, they're feeding starving children. If anything, this is the holiest thing happening in the Empire right now."
Sylvia opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. She couldn't deny the results. The first shipment had already cleared the pass. We were hours ahead of schedule.
But the universe—or rather, the System—hated loopholes.
I felt it before I saw it. The air pressure dropped. The wind died instantly, leaving an eerie silence. The purple glow in the zombies' eyes flickered.
My HUD flashed red, overriding my vision.
[ALERT: Narrative Violation Detected.]
[ERROR: Unauthorized Miracle.]
[The System has flagged your activities as "Game Breaking."]
"Oh, come on," I groaned, standing up. "I'm just delivering groceries."
The clouds above us swirled, parting in a perfect circle. A beam of searing white light shot down, hitting the center of the pass, right in the middle of my zombie conveyor belt.
The zombies caught in the light didn't just die; they were deleted. Vaporized. Not even ash remained.
"Sir!" Sylvia scrambled back, shielding her eyes. "What is that?"
A figure descended slowly from the light.
It wasn't a man with wings. The Church depicted angels as beautiful humans with doves on their shoulders. The reality was far more terrifying.
The entity floating ten feet off the ground looked like a geometric nightmare. It was a collection of spinning gold rings covered in burning eyes, rotating around a central core of pure, blinding white fire. It hummed with a sound that made my teeth ache—like a hard drive scratching.
[ENTITY IDENTIFIED: Throne-Class Enforcer (The "Angel").]
[Level: ???]
[Mission: Debugging.]
"ARTHUR VANE," the Angel spoke. It didn't use a mouth. The voice vibrated directly inside my skull. "YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE NARRATIVE PARAMETERS. THE NORTH IS DESIGNATED AS A SUFFERING ZONE. YOUR INTERFERENCE REDUCES PRAYER YIELD BY 40%."
"I'm sorry," I shouted up at the spinning rings of fire. "Are you telling me I can't feed people because it messes with your quarterly prayer quotas?"
"SUFFERING GENERATES FAITH," the Angel droned. "FAITH GENERATES MANA. MANA SUSTAINS THE SYSTEM. CEASE OPERATIONS OR BE PURGED."
One of the golden rings spun faster. A beam of light charged up, aiming directly at me.
Sylvia was paralyzed with fear. This was it. The Divine Audit.
I looked at the Angel. Then I looked at my zombies. If I fought this thing, I would lose. It was a literal piece of the System’s code designed to squash bugs. I couldn't out-damage a GM.
But I was a businessman. And everyone has a price. Even software.
"Wait!" I yelled, holding up my hands. "I'm not trying to crash the server! I'm trying to optimize it!"
The Angel hesitated. The charging light dimmed slightly. "EXPLAIN."
"You want Mana, right?" I stepped forward, my boots crunching on the ice. "You want the prayer yield. But dead peasants don't pray. If they starve, your user base shrinks. That’s bad long-term strategy. It’s a churn rate nightmare."
The Angel remained silent, the eyes spinning thoughtfully. "LOGIC... VALID. HOWEVER. UNAUTHORIZED MAGIC IS A BREACH OF TERMS."
"I'll pay the fine," I said.
I rolled up my sleeve.
"Sir?" Sylvia whispered, terrified.
I ignored her. I focused on my core. I didn't pull out a coin purse. I pulled out a knife.
I slashed my own forearm.
But blood didn't come out. Instead, a thick, glowing blue liquid oozed from the wound. It wasn't just slime; it was concentrated, refined Mana. My body was a battery. Because I was a monster, my blood was essentially liquid currency for these things.
The smell of it hit the air—sweet, electric, and intoxicating.
The Angel’s rings stopped spinning. All the eyes focused on my arm.
[Mana Density: 100%. Purity: Mythic.]
"This is pure, refined assets," I said, holding my dripping arm up toward the floating geometry. "Better than the low-grade prayer scraps you get from starving farmers. You let my trucks pass, you take this. Consider it a... transaction fee."
The Angel lowered itself. The humming sound changed from aggressive to hungry.
"BRIBERY IS A SIN," the Angel stated.
"It's not a bribe," I said, flashing my corporate smile. "It's a subscription update. You look a little low on energy. Running those lasers must be draining."
The Angel hovered inches from me. The heat coming off it was intense, but I didn't flinch. It extended a tendril of white light. The tendril touched the blue slime dripping from my arm.
It absorbed it instantly.
A shiver went through the Angel’s rings. The white fire in its center flared brighter, shifting from a harsh white to a satisfied blue.
"ENERGY... ACCEPTED," the voice in my head sounded almost drugged. "SYSTEM LOG UPDATED. CLASSIFICATION CHANGED: HUMANITARIAN AID. EXCEPTION GRANTED."
The beam of light into the sky snapped shut. The oppressive pressure vanished.
The Angel began to ascend, drifting back up into the clouds.
"DO NOT EXCEED ALLOCATED BANDWIDTH, DUKE," it warned, though it sounded less like a threat and more like a suggestion. "THE AUDITORS ARE WATCHING."
And then it was gone.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.