Chapter 1

The air in the underground bunker was perpetually tainted with an inescapable smell of rust and mildew. Water stains seeped through the brick joints on the walls, trickling down and glowing with a sickly yellow-green hue under the dim emergency lights. I sat in that worn-out folding chair, having lost count of how many months it had been since I'd seen real sunlight.

The makeshift broken screen in front of me was the only window connecting me to the world I once ruled. Burn marks scarred the screen's edges, with a coin-sized dead pixel in the bottom right corner, like a dead pixel eye socket. The speakers were secondhand salvage—the left channel had long since died, leaving only the right to emit sharp, grating electrical static.

But the image was clear enough.

Three low-level scavenger ghouls were pinning a frail figure in the blood-soaked mud, tearing at her with their fangs. Their claws and teeth were black with rot, yet sharp as broken glass. That frail figure—my sister Lily—curled up in the mud like a sparrow with rain-soaked wings.

She didn't cry out in pain.

She only used her last strength to lift her head, looking at me through the livestream camera with eyes already growing dim. Blood foam hung from the corners of her mouth, and someone had spray-painted a crooked smiley face on her cheek—a "fun prop" from viewers' paid loot boxes, because they thought it looked good.

"Brother... don't be sad..."

These were the last complete words she spoke.

Then all three ghouls simultaneously tore open her chest cavity. Lily's lips were still moving, as if trying to say something, but her voice had already shattered, swallowed by the muffled sounds of rending flesh and blood.

My fists clenched until my knuckles turned white, nails digging into my palms as blood seeped through my fingers and dripped onto my knees. But I could do nothing. The former "Architect," supreme ruler of the dark web horror game "Blood Carnival," couldn't even afford the lowest-grade teleportation scroll now.

Three years ago, to cure my fiancée Elena's hereditary blood disease, I had spent every last point I owned. I converted all assets accumulated under my "Architect" privileges—equipment, items, hidden map coordinates, and data keys worth billions of points—into Life Reconstruction Serum and injected it into her veins.

Back then, I thought love could conquer everything. I thought sacrificing my all for her health was worth it. I thought she would keep her promise to "always be with you."

For three years I'd lived on these ridiculous "I thoughts," surviving like a stray dog in this underground bunker, subsisting on scraps from other players' leftovers, eking out an existence on the occasional points that leaked through high-level players' fingers. I watched her and Lucas climb to the top of the rankings, watched them don SSS-tier equipment sets I couldn't even touch, watched them celebrate each victory in the platinum safe zone with champagne and blood.

Each time I told myself: It's okay, as long as she's happy.

How foolish.

The livestream suddenly switched scenes. The game's most luxurious platinum safe zone appeared on screen—a sky palace built from abyssal obsidian and holy light crystals, with artificial aurora outside the windows and priceless demon dragon hide carpets inside. Lucas and Elena sat on leather sofas, sipping million-point Bloody Marys while watching Lily being torn apart, as if enjoying a weekend circus performance.

Current hunting champion Lucas Black wore a full SSS-tier Abyss Dominator set. Elena nestled in his arms, dressed in SSS-tier Holy Light Protection that I'd never even touched, adorned with jewelry, her face radiant as a peach blossom.

"Using that crippled little bitch to block the Rot Lord's Death Gaze was pure genius," Lucas stroked Elena's smooth cheek, sipping the blood-red liquor. "Baby, you surprise me every time."

Elena giggled, playfully kicking Lucas's shin with her toe. "I just pressed the wrong 'Substitute Summon' item. Anyway, that waste Viktor's sister was just dead weight. Early death, early relief. I'm doing him a favor by lightening his load."

Pressed wrong?

I stared at her smug expression on screen as the item usage record she'd "misused" decoded itself like a virus in my mind. Forced Summon—Directional Teleport—Target Lock—Lily's name manually entered, the entire process taking thirty seconds during which she even stopped to reapply lipstick.

It wasn't a mistake. It was calculated, deliberate. She used Lily's corpse as a stepping stone for Lucas to clear the dungeon smoothly, earning herself a few more spots up the leaderboard.

The livestream chat exploded with rolling comments, like banners of mockery fluttering in the wind.

[Bloody Count]: 500 million point donation! I recorded her calling for her brother and made memes—already sold 3,000 copies today, haha!

[Night Hunter]: Your sister's ashes can't even fill a complete skeleton, Viktor. Want me to collect them for you? I can mail them over, you just pay shipping.

[London Butcher]: @Viktor Former Architect? Server's #1 GM? Why didn't you save your precious sister? Oh right, I forgot—you're too poor to even open a teleport gate.

[Abyss Reaper]: Which sewer is he watching the stream from? Cut to his camera! Let us see what a waste looks like now!

Each comment struck like precisely targeted code attacks, injecting directly into my already riddled nerve endings. Thousands of European and American tycoons and high-level players flooded the stream, donating frantically, mocking relentlessly. The donation amounts skyrocketed at an alarming rate, each jeer reeking of money's metallic stench.

I watched it all quietly. Watched as Lily's corpse was mutilated beyond recognition, as the three ghouls began fighting over her remains—one tearing off her left arm, another dragging half her torso toward a corner. Blood spread through the mud, mixing with countless other players who'd died there before, indistinguishable from one another.

Strangely, I didn't shed a tear. No anger, no sadness, no breakdown—nothing. My heart still beat, but mechanically and hollow like a remotely shutdown server. All emotions, all warmth, everything that had once made me live like a human being, completely zeroed out in this moment.

I slowly extended my right hand, looking at the pure gold engagement ring on my ring finger. On Christmas Eve three years ago, I'd personally placed it there when I proposed to Elena by the Thames. She'd cried like rain on pears when she said yes, calling me the best man in the world.

I'd kept it all this time. Even after being abandoned, betrayed, kicked from that luxury safe house into this bunker worse than a sewer, I still kept it. Like pathetic evidence that I'd once been loved.

My five fingers began to slowly exert force. The gold metal emitted a sharp screech under the strain.

Crack.

The ring crumbled to powder, trickling through my fingers. The fragments sparkled their final gleam in the dim light, like dying stars.

At the same time, a familiar mechanical synthesized voice finally echoed in the depths of my mind after three years of silence. The clicking of gears, the hiss of electrical current, the whisper of data processing—three audio tracks layered together, solemn as divine revelation.

[Host emotional state: Zero detected]

[Abyss Core: Complete rational state confirmed]

[Meets GM privilege reset conditions]

[Warning: Reactivating "Architect" status will completely erase host's remaining humanity]

[Continue?]

I looked at Lucas and Elena still celebrating on screen, at the DDOS flood of mocking comments in the chat, at Lily's bones already scattered by the ghouls.

"I accept."

My voice carried no inflection, like responding to a system notification.

[Confirming privileges...]

[Identity verification: Biometric matching... Match complete]

[Soul imprint confirmation... Confirmation complete]

[Abyss Core reset protocol initiated...]

[3... 2... 1...]

[Welcome back, The Architect.]

Instantly, crimson code streams exploded from the depths of my pupils. Countless 0s and 1s cascaded like waterfalls, flowing from retina to fingertips and back to brain, completing a full privilege circuit. The GM divinity that had slumbered for three years fully awakened—that ultimate ability to arbitrarily tamper with the game's underlying code, overwrite rules, strip privileges, and reconstruct reality surged back into my consciousness like a tide.

I felt that long-lost sense of omniscience. All data streams of the Blood Carnival flowed within my perception range like a boundless web. Every player's physical coordinates, every equipment's hidden attributes, every dungeon's underlying mechanics, every point transaction's routing path—all laid out before me like transparent chess pieces.

I slowly stood up. My spine, cramped from the folding chair, cracked and popped as three years of humiliation finally stretched out. For the first time, a slight curve touched my lips—not a human expression, but the customary cold arc of a being who'd grasped divine authority before beginning judgment.

At that moment, the underlying server clusters of London's deep web emitted piercing overload alarms. Garbled warning codes flashed simultaneously on the private terminals of the top ten global tycoon players. Game monitoring centers in New York, Tokyo, and Moscow all flashed red alerts as system engineers frantically hammered keyboards, none knowing what was happening.

I gently brushed the ring fragments in my palm, taking one last look at Lily's remains on screen—her right index finger still pointed toward the camera, the gesture she'd made since childhood when calling me "brother."

Then I turned my gaze to the pair still celebrating their victory on camera with champagne and embraces.

My voice carried no emotion, cold as a protocol command from the abyss's deepest layer:

"Target locked. Beginning cleanup."

Outside, the alarm sounds from London's underground deep web drew closer, like apocalyptic sirens.