Most people would be panicking if they were kneeling on cold obsidian, surrounded by a legion of orcs who smell like wet dog and rotten cheese. But honestly? I was mostly just annoyed by the writing.
Malagor the Soul-Eater—the seven-foot-tall generic bad guy pacing in front of me—was monologuing. Again. I wrote this guy back when I was twenty, fueled by energy drinks and teenage angst, and it shows. His dialogue is cringe-worthy. He’s been talking about "darkness eternal" and "the abyss" for five minutes.
"The world shall burn in the fires of my hatred!" Malagor roared, raising a sword that looked way too heavy for his character model.
"You said that three paragraphs ago," I muttered, shifting my weight. My knees were killing me. Not "fantasy hero battle damage" pain, but legitimate "I sit in an ergonomic chair all day and this floor is hard" pain.
The executioner, a hulking orc with a hood that was clearly clipping through his massive shoulders, shoved my head down.
"Silence, mortal!" Malagor sneered. He stepped closer, his heavy iron boots clanking on the floor. "Do you not fear death? Do you not fear the end of your story?"
I looked up at him. I could see the individual polygons on his nose. The rendering engine in this world was absolute trash. "Buddy, I’m the one who wrote your story. And let me tell you, I got lazy with the ending."
Malagor frowned. For a second, the AI didn't know how to respond to a prompt that wasn't in its database. He just stood there, blinking, his idle animation looping slightly out of sync.
"Madness," he finally decided, defaulting to generic Villain Response #4. "Kill him."
The executioner grunted and hefted the axe.
Okay. Time to go to work.
I closed my eyes and focused. Not on magic—I didn't have any mana. I focused on the code running underneath the floorboards. The hum of the server. The data stream.
My right eye twitched as the [Admin Console] flickered into existence.
It wasn't a cool, mystical rune circle. It was a translucent, janky gray window that looked like it belonged on Windows 98. It hovered in the air between me and the axe, invisible to everyone else.
[Object Selected: Executioner_Axe_04]
[Properties: Sharpness = 100 | Mass = 15kg]
I mentally tapped the keyboard.
`> Set Variable [Mass] = 0.01kg`
The executioner swung with all his might. He expected resistance. He expected the weight of the steel to cleave through my neck. Instead, the axe became lighter than a feather mid-swing. The momentum threw him off balance. He spun around like a ballerina on ice, tripped over his own feet, and face-planted into the stone floor with a pathetic clank.
The entire throne room went silent. Even the ambient "scary chanting" background music seemed to glitch and skip a beat.
"What sorcery is this?" Malagor boomed, his eyes glowing red. "Guards! Seize him!"
"Pause," I whispered.
I didn't pause time. I couldn't do that—too much RAM usage. Instead, I opened the Inspector Tool.
My head pounded. A sharp, stinging migraine spiked behind my eyes. This was the cost. Every time I touched the code, my brain felt like it was being put through a blender. The System called it "Corruption." I called it a reboot of my trauma.
I looked at Malagor. A list of attributes scrolled down his chest like the credits of a movie.
[Name: Malagor]
[Class: Demon Lord]
[HP: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Weaknesses: Holy Light, Legendary Weapons]
"Boring," I muttered. "Let's spice up the character sheet."
I focused on his biological tags.
`> Add Trait: [Allergy (Fatal)]`
`> Target: [Oxygen]`
"Seize—" Malagor started, then stopped.
He gasped. His hands flew to his throat. His face, usually a terrifying shade of gray, turned a vibrant, suffocating purple. It wasn't magic. It was simple biology. I had just made the air in his lungs toxic to his existence.
"Hrk—gkkk—"
The Demon Lord dropped to his knees, clawing at his chest armor. His health bar plummeted.
-500 HP
-500 HP
-500 HP
"You... what have you..." he wheezed, his eyes bulging.
"It’s called a retcon," I said, struggling to stand up. My legs felt like jelly. Using the console drained my stamina bar instantly. "I never really liked this arc anyway."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.