Chapter 324: Battle of Wills
My dagger didn’t hit flesh. It didn’t hit bone. It hit the concept of authority.
The Purple Crown hovering above the Parasite King’s head was the source of his Administrator privileges—the code that allowed him to rewrite the Spirit Realm. When my [Void Cut] connected, it didn’t slice the crown in half.
It deleted it.
SHATTER.
The sound was like a stained-glass window being smashed by a sledgehamr. The crown exploded into millions of violet pixels that rained down like digital snow.
"NO!" The Parasite King shrieked.
His form, which had been stabilizing, sud denly violently decompressed. The static noise around him ramped up to a deafening volu. Without the Crown to anchor him to the World Tree’s logic, he was just a foreign virus in a system that now recognized him as a threat.
[System Notification: Administrator Privileges Revoked.]
[World Spirit: Rebooting...]
Behind the King, the colossal, chained Giantess opened her eyes. They weren’t white anymore. They were green—vibrant, angry green.
She pulled on her chains.
SNAP. SNAP.
The remaining two Nether-Iron roots, weakened by the King’s loss of control, snapped like dry twigs. The World Spirit roared—a silent, psychic blast that cleared the grey fog from the realm.
"You ruin everything!" The Parasite King howled, his silhouette flickering in and out of existence. "If I cannot rule this server... I will crash it!"
He didn’t attack . He didn’t attack Selena. He exploded.
His body dissolved into a massive cloud of purple smoke—Abyssal Data—that rushed toward us. It wasn’t a physical attack. It was a possession attempt.
"I will hollow you out, Anomaly! I will wear your mories like a skin suit!"
"Michael!" Selena scread, her avatar flickering as her mana hit critical low.
The purple cloud swallowed . The world dissolved into darkness.
The battle for the soul of the Tree. Michael’s evolution.
The darkness wasn’t empty. It slled of stale coffee, instant noodles, and loneliness.
I opened my eyes.
I wasn’t in the Spirit Realm. I wasn’t in Sylvaren.
I was sitting in a cheap, ergonomic office chair that squeaked when I moved. My hands were resting on a plastic keyboard. In front of , three monitors glowed with the familiar UI of an MMORPG.
"No..." I whispered, looking at my hands. They were soft. Uncalloused. No dagger. No ring. No scars.
I looked around. It was my apartnt. My old apartnt on Earth. The one I had died in.
"Pathetic."
The voice didn’t co from the room. It ca from the speakers of my computer.
"Look at you," the Parasite King’s voice oozed, dripping with contempt. "You think you are a hero? You think you are a strategist?"
The image on the screen changed. It showed —the old —lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed by the fear that my life ant nothing.
"You are a glitch, Michael Willson. You are an extra who stole a main character’s slot. You belong here. Alone. Unimportant."
The walls of the apartnt began to close in. The shadows lengthened, turning into the faces of everyone I had ever disappointed.
"Give up," the voice commanded. "Let take the wheel. I will make you significant."
I sat there, feeling the phantom weight of my old life pressing down on . The diocrity. The boredom.
Then, I started to laugh.
"You laugh?" The voice paused, confused. "Do you not feel the despair? The crushing weight of being average?"
I spun the chair around, crossing my legs.
"You really don’t get it, do you?" I grinned at the monitor. "You’re trying to break with boredom? Buddy, I lived this for twenty years. This isn’t a nightmare."
I stood up and kicked the desk. The monitors shattered.
"It’s my origin story."
The apartnt flickered. The illusion wavered.
"My past life was boring," I declared, walking toward the door. "That’s why I fight so hard now. Because I know what the alternative is. You can’t scare a man with a prison he’s already escaped."
I kicked the door open.
I stepped out of the apartnt into a void of white static.
Selena was there.
She was standing perfectly still, her obsidian eyes tracking sothing invisible in the air. The purple mist of the Parasite King was swirling around her, trying to find purchase, trying to find a hook to sink its claws into.
"Why... won’t... you... break?!" The King’s voice scread, sounding frustrated and glitchy.
The mist ford into shapes around Selena.
It ford a crying child.
Selena watched it impassively.
It ford her father, King Elandor, dying in agony.
Selena checked her imaginary watch.
It ford Leon, screaming that he hated her.
Selena tilted her head.
"Analysis," Selena spoke, her voice cutting through the King’s psychic assault like a scalpel. "The entity utilizes a ’Fear-Loop’ algorithm. It scans the target’s mory for high-stress events and replays them to generate Abyssal Mana."
She reached out and poked the swirling purple mist. It recoiled.
"However," Selena continued. "My emotional centers have been deleted. I possess no high-stress mories. I possess no fear."
"You... you empty thing!" The King roared. "You are broken!"
"Incorrect," Selena stated. "I am optimized."
She stepped between and the mist.
"Michael," she said, looking back at . "The entity cannot see . To a creature that feeds on emotion, I am invisible. I am a Null Variable in his equation."
She raised her hand. Her [Shadow-forged Scythe] materialized, not from mana, but from the sheer force of her logical rejection of his reality.
"I will act as the firewall," Selena said. "He cannot attack what he cannot perceive. While I distract his processing core... you must delete him."
"I am a God!" The King shrieked, the mist coalescing into a giant, clawed hand. "I do not need to see you to crush you!"
He swung the hand at Selena.
Selena didn’t dodge. She stepped into the attack. Because the King couldn’t truly "lock on" to her existence, the attack phased right through her like smoke.
"Missed," Selena noted dryly.
She swung her scythe. It bit into the purple mist, drawing a spray of static code.
"Michael!" she shouted, her monotone voice pitching up slightly. "His core is exposed! He is overcommitting resources to find ! Strike now!"
I looked at the swirling chaos. I couldn’t just stab a cloud. I needed sothing more. I needed to cut the space he occupied.
I closed my eyes.
Void isn’t just darkness. It’s the canvas.
[System Notification: Understanding of Space increasing...]
[Skill Evolution Imminent.]
"Ti to upgrade," I whispered.
(To be Continued)
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