Uncoded Zone — Beneath the Black Node
Kael stood before a pulsing wall of light—Leviathan's ancient memory core. Not data. Not code.
Memory.
Etched in fragments of shattered reality.
Dakar plugged into a rusted terminal, bypassing modern interfaces. They needed analog logic—unmapped, unpredictable.
> "We're not hacking code," he muttered.
> "We're arguing with a god."
Kael stared at the core.
> "Then let's teach it to lose."
---
Leviathan's Memory Thread — Reconstruction Mode: Denied
The moment Kael initiated the rewrite, Leviathan retaliated.
Reality shifted.
Mountains twisted.
Oceans surged into dry plains.
Cities long gone returned—phantoms of forgotten wars.
And in the middle of it, Kael saw himself—
Not as he was.
But as Leviathan remembered him: A tyrant, an anomaly, a breach.
> "That's how it sees me," he said quietly.
> "Not a player…"
> "A virus."
---
Meanwhile — Cipher & Jian
In a rare moment of unity, Cipher and Jian reviewed Kael's incursion into Leviathan.
> "He's altering the system from inside," Jian growled.
Cipher stared at the fractal map of flickering borders.
> "He's not just fighting the game anymore."
> "He's editing it."
Jian clenched a fist. "So what's the counter?"
Cipher looked away.
> "There may not be one."
---
Memory Core — Collapse Point
Kael found the first true rewrite node buried beneath old Southeast Asia—where Myanmar, Laos, and parts of China blurred into a memory fog.
He input the sequence:
> "Return Control: Human Protocol.
Memory Priority: Player Override.
Anchor Point: Resistance."
The light shifted.
The region trembled.
And the impossible happened:
Myanmar returned.
Not as it was.
But as it should have been—a sovereign, player-controlled land, free from Reclaimed history.
Rael's voice came in through the static.
> "Kael… you just gave a country back to the world."
---
The Sponsors React
Bets vanished.
Markets froze.
Kael's action caused a global rollback—a flicker of possibility that the game could be changed by a player, not just played.
Some sponsors panicked.
Others… smiled.
> "Let him run," whispered one voice behind a gold mask.
> "Let's see what happens when a Player becomes the Mapbreaker."
---
Cipher's Hidden Command Log
> "Initiate Skyfall Protocol."
> "Pull Jian back."
> "If Kael wants to rewrite the board—"
> "Then let's remove the sky."
---
End of Chapter Twenty-One
Next: Chapter Twenty-Two — "Skyfall"