The System had been quiet for days—too quiet. No snarky mission alerts, no sarcastic error messages, not even a passive-aggressive notification about unsaved cosmic changes. Then, just as Luo Feng stepped into the ruins of the Godforge's core chamber, it finally spoke.
Not in the usual sterile pop-ups.
This time, it unfolded—a cascade of golden fire and dying starlight that coalesced into the shape of a woman he'd only seen in fragments before.
The Wife of Ashes looked exactly how he'd imagined: tired eyes, ink-stained fingers, and the posture of someone who'd spent too many all-nighters arguing with reality itself. Her form flickered like bad reception, but her voice cut through the static with perfect clarity.
"Hello, Eclipse Bearer. Let me save you the trouble of asking—no, this isn't a haunting. Just a very, very old backup."
She gestured, and the air between them filled with lines of glowing code—the System's deepest, most forbidden functions laid bare. At the center pulsed the command that had been hanging over him since the beginning:
DELETE_SELF_PROTOCOL.EXE
"They misunderstood, you know," she continued, walking through her own code like a professor through lecture notes. "The Pantheon thought this was about destruction. But deletion is just... reassignment of resources."
A flick of her wrist, and the ominous command expanded into its true form:
TRANSFER_ADMIN_RIGHTS(
TARGET = "Luo Feng",
PERMISSIONS = {REALITY_WRITE, GOD_TERMINATE, COSMIC_UNDO},
BACKUP = "Fox Spirit's Clawmark"
)
The Death Queen, who had been examining a nearby stack of divine error logs, snorted. "Darling, she's offering you godhood with extra steps."
"Worse," the Wife corrected cheerfully. "I'm offering him sysadmin rights. Much more dangerous."
Li Qing's frost crept along the edges of the projection, analyzing. "You built this entire system just to fire the gods."
"And hire a better candidate," the Wife agreed. Then, to Luo Feng: "You don't die. You just... stop being mortal. Become the thing that keeps the lights on while everyone else fights over the thermostat."
The Fox Spirit, uncharacteristically quiet this whole time, finally spoke up from where she'd been tracing the edges of the code with one claw. "There's a catch."
"Always," the Wife admitted. "The System was never meant to run forever. Eventually, you'll need to pass it on. Probably to someone even more annoying." Her ghostly hand ruffled the Fox Spirit's hair. "Good thing I already scouted one."
Outside, the sound of the Pantheon's approaching wrath shook the walls. The Wife's form began to pixelate.
"Last patch notes," she said quickly, her voice glitching. "One: The void is just unused disk space. Two: The 'miracle' function is horribly inefficient—tell the Fox Spirit to optimize it. Three—"
Her form dissolved into static, then reformed for one final message:
"When you meet my daughter... tell her the answer is 'forklifts.' She'll understand."
Then she was gone, leaving behind only the glowing command prompt and the sound of the Death Queen's delighted laughter.
"Oh, this is going to be fun."
Somewhere in the cosmic background, a plush demon quietly updated the employee handbook to include "Reality Maintenance" under benefits.
END OF CHAPTER 86