The golden rift folded shut with a soft, almost damp sound, cutting off the luxurious Midas Bank penthouse from Shiro's home world.
The office instantly sank into absolute, ringing silence.
Here, on the highest tier of the colossal black tower, nothing could be heard — not the roar of the Interdimensional Interval megapolis, not the hum of portals. Only the soft artificial light reflected off polished obsidian and gold.
Tomoko sat huddled in the far corner of the vast, terrifyingly soft sofa, her head tucked into her shoulders. Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the spot where her friend had just disappeared to the only other being left in the room with her.
The dragon maid Mashu stood beside the glass table, back perfectly straight.
The glowing white lily she had held earlier had long since dissolved into the air, but that did not make things any less terrifying. Mashu had neat, short green hair styled in a flawless bob. From beneath her snow-white lace maid headdress rose long, curved horns in the style of classical Japanese dragons — dark at the base, fading into deep emerald at the sharpened tips.
And from under the hem of her long, impeccably ironed dark dress, a powerful scaled tail swayed slowly and smoothly.
And then there were the eyes.
Piercing red, like dried blood, with narrow vertical pupils.
They stared into space with the absolute indifference of a machine.
Tomoko swallowed nervously.
The sound felt as loud as cannon fire.
The slime in her lap quite obviously shared her feelings. Realizing that Shiro's overwhelming but familiar demigod aura had vanished and that he had been left alone with an elite Midas Bank Asset, the little monster let out a tiny squeak. His gray jelly-like body trembled, then slowly spread outward until he became a perfectly flat puddle, desperately trying to camouflage himself against the pattern of Tomoko's skirt.
The silence was unbearable.
Tomoko understood one thing: if she didn't say something right now, her heart would simply stop from a panic attack.
She was just an ordinary schoolgirl.
Yesterday her biggest problem had been a math test.
Today she was drinking tea in a multiversal bank with a dragon assassin.
— "U-um... Lady Mashu?" — Tomoko finally spoke in a timid stammer. Her voice cracked into a squeak.
Mashu slowly turned her head.
Her tail froze for a second.
The maid's movements were so smooth they looked inhuman.
— "Yes, Lady Tomoko?" — the dragoness replied in a velvet-soft, perfectly polite voice. — "Would you like me to refresh your drink? The temperature of your tea has fallen by four degrees, which is unacceptable for a guest of a VIP-Protected client."
Mashu stepped forward, gracefully lifted the golden teapot, and poured fresh-brewed tea into the thinnest porcelain cup imaginable. The aroma of herbs drifting from it was soothing, but Tomoko's hands were shaking so violently that the saucer rattled.
— "T-thank you..." — Tomoko mumbled. — "A-and... what do you usually do here? I mean... when you're not helping Shiro-chan. You're probably... an accountant? Doing numbers in spreadsheets or something?"
She tried to force a friendly smile.
Mashu tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. Her green hair fell into place along her cheek with impossible precision.
Her face remained a flawless stone mask.
— "Accounting is handled by the lower System algorithms," — Mashu answered calmly, folding her hands neatly over her white apron. — "My official position is Lead Specialist in Optimization of Hopeless Debts. I physically collect outstanding balances from users who ignore Midas Bank warnings."
— "O-oh..." — Tomoko swallowed.
— "A-and... how does that work? Do you take their TV? Or... evict them from their apartment?"
Mashu's red eyes fixed on the girl without blinking.
— "On the scale of the Multiverse, the material possessions of individual subjects hold no value," — the maid began explaining patiently, as though speaking to a small child.
— "For the recovery of minor debts, the Bank sends standard executor-collectors. They usually limit themselves to trivial measures: localized pressure on the debtor's world, erasure of their close relatives from reality, or seizure of life energy."
Mashu elegantly adjusted the cuff of her sleeve.
— "However, if the subject defaults on a loan exceeding five hundred million coins and refuses all contact, the protocol changes. In that case, I personally arrive in their Primary Timeline."
Tomoko went deathly pale.
Mashu continued in the same mild tone.
— "The standard procedure generally includes complete formatting of the continent on which the debtor is hiding. In the event of severe noncompliance or attempted resistance, I initiate a stellar-system annihilation protocol, followed by conversion of all organic ash, mana, and civilian souls into base System currency. It is rather monotonous work. Yesterday, for example, I had to manually process the biosphere of Sector 73-B, because the debtor attempted to hide inside the planet's core."
Mashu's dragon tail swished contentedly, almost knocking over a Ming dynasty vase.
— "But order within the Bank must be maintained. Biscuit?" — she asked, gracefully sliding a crystal dish of cookies toward Tomoko.
Tomoko turned so pale she nearly blended into the porcelain tea service.
Her brain simply refused to process the fact that this tiny maid-costumed girl had apparently turned an entire planet into coins yesterday over somebody's overdue debt.
The slime in Tomoko's lap seemed to stop breathing.
He flattened even further, becoming a gray film about one atom thick.
Shiro-chan... — Tomoko wailed inwardly, tears welling in her eyes as she picked up a shortbread cookie with trembling fingers.
Please come back soon... please... I'm drinking tea with the end of the world...
And Mashu, either not noticing or completely ignoring her guest's absolute animal terror, remained standing nearby, awaiting the slightest command.
Her disturbing eyes were fixed on the panoramic window overlooking the Interdimensional Interval.
She still had no idea that in just a few minutes, the calm life of this city would come to an end.
While, in the isolated Midas Bank penthouse, a trembling schoolgirl was drinking tea with the apocalypse, beyond the impenetrable windows pulsed the heart of infinity.
Central Sector. Main System Hub.
A place where the concepts of space and time themselves had broken down, giving way to pure concentrated information and mana.
For trillions of ordinary users, it was an unreachable Olympus.
A megapolis the size of a minor galaxy, woven from neon, floating continents, hyperspeed roads, and architecture beyond comprehension.
All life here was governed by the Global Nexus — the fundamental layer of reality that linked worlds into a unified infosphere.
For beginners and low-rank users, the public Nexus servers were a meat grinder. Alliances were forged there every second. Empires collapsed there every second. Bloody wars were waged over pathetic scraps of resources.
But the higher one's status, the more luxurious the network became.
Elite private clusters possessed their own pocket dimensions.
In the multiversal internet, interdimensional streamers broadcast genocides of demon lords live, while shadow merchants auctioned conceptual laws and dying stars.
But the Nexus was not a chaotic sandbox.
It stood on an utterly merciless vertical hierarchy of power.
At the base level, order was maintained by junior personnel: Assistants and Moderators. They were the System's attack dogs, clearing local bugs, sealing minor spatial fractures, and handing out "bans" — reality erasure — to violators.
Above them stood Chief Moderators, beings capable of rolling back time across an entire planet if protocol demanded it.
But the true masters of realities were the Administrators.
They were a complex, many-tiered caste of those who had gained access to the code of the Multiverse itself. Their hierarchy included dozens of ranks: from Junior System Overseers and Branch Curators to Sector Architects, Infosphere Governing Lords, and the terrifying Emissaries of the Absolute.
With each new rank, an Administrator gained more root-level authority to alter the fundamental laws of physics and magic in the worlds under their control.
Yet even the Emissaries of the Absolute trembled before the names burning on the Monument of the Highest.
A colossal obelisk of black neutron matter rose at the very center of the Main Hub, stretching upward into infinity.
Ten names shone upon it.
Ten absolute constants.
The Top 10 Highest Administrators.
They were not System algorithms.
Legends claimed that they had once been ordinary users — until they shattered the ceiling of development, hacked the base System code, and seized creator-level privileges for themselves.
Common users had never seen their faces.
Their names were spoken only in whispers through encrypted channels.
The Top 4, in particular, inspired endless rumors.
In the System logs, he was listed as Soufiw.
The Gray Cardinal. The absolute monopolist.
A genius coder who had rewritten the economy of the Multiverse for his own benefit.
If a global crisis erupted in any world, then Soufiw was simply testing a new profit-maximization script.
He never needed to dirty his hands by destroying worlds. He could bankrupt a universe with a single click by cutting off its mana flow.
But if Soufiw inspired dread through absolute control, the name of Top 2 inspired something far more primal.
KTULHU.
Among users, she was called Mommy Apocalypse.
An ancient, incomprehensible entity whose wrath even the pantheons of gods feared down to their marrow.
Her closed chat group was the most elite and terrifying place in the entire Nexus.
Stories said that she treated the participants in her chat with a disturbingly overprotective maternal affection.
But if anyone dared harm her "children" or disturb the peace of her server, KTULHU erased entire sectors of reality, reducing worlds to digital ash.
The gods prayed for only one thing:
That Mommy Apocalypse would never mention their world in one of her chats.
These ten pillars had seemed eternal.
The System functioned flawlessly.
No one in the Main Hub yet knew that, at this very moment, that perfect mechanism had developed its first fatal crack.
The Monument of the Highest Administrators in the heart of the Main Hub had always seemed immutable.
It rose above the boiling megapolis as an absolute constant — a monolith of black neutron matter whose cold radiance inspired reverence in trillions of users.
For countless ages, the symbols and names of the Top 10 had remained unchanged.
No additions.
No statuses.
Only the dry, terrifying usernames of the gods of this reality.
Until this second.
First, a golden spark ran across the surface of the black monolith, disrupting its perfect smoothness.
Then came a sound — a low, vibrating hum, like the moan of a dying galaxy — that rolled across the entire Central Sector.
Everyone on the plazas, in floating vehicles, or on open terraces froze and lifted their heads.
The symbol of Top 4, Soufiw, burst into blinding gold light — the color of absolute monopoly and System code.
At the same time, the symbol of Top 2, KTULHU, began pulsing with a deep, chthonic crimson radiance that made onlookers' knees buckle instinctively.
The two supreme colors intertwined, spiraling downward across the Monument, and burned a new line directly into the indestructible matter of the System itself.
The letters were immense.
They blazed above the entire megapolis so brightly that they eclipsed the artificial suns.
[ Protected / Successor / Daughter : Clumsy ]
For one second, the Main Hub stood in dead silence.
Then the Global Nexus exploded.
Not figuratively.
The analytical cores of the System howled under critical overload. In a single nanosecond, the #Clumsy hyperlink received two hundred forty-three billion user requests.
The algorithms tried to process them, choked, and threw cascading 404 failures across the entire sector.
The multiversal social networks descended into primitive chaos.
Stream Feed: Astral-Cast Live Channel: @lazy_demn
At that exact moment, a popular stream was in progress.
A famous concept artist under the handle @lazy_demn was lazily moving a stylus over a holographic tablet, sketching the Monument of the Highest for his viewers. The chat had been slowly discussing brushes, textures, and the latest astral-Photoshop update.
— "Yeah, guys, painting the Monument's lighting is a real pain in the—"
He cut off mid-sentence.
The stylus slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the desk.
Behind him, visible through the panoramic window of his studio, the newborn crimson inscription was burning across the sky.
@lazy_demn's eyes widened to the size of saucers.
He slowly turned toward the chat panel.
There were no longer words.
The speed of messages had exceeded the speed of light, turning the chat into a solid white band of text.
Donations were arriving so rapidly that the audio alert merged into one continuous ultrasonic scream.
[Chat Explosion]
[WHO THE HELL IS CLUMSY?!][WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! JUDGMENT DAY!][KTULHU HAS A REAL DAUGHTER?! MOMMY APOCALYPSE HAS AN ACTUAL DAUGHTER?!]
[SELLING ALL MY COINS! BUYING A BUNKER IN A POCKET DIMENSION!]
[Soufiw and KTULHU joined forces?! THE ECONOMY IS DEAD!]
[SELLING MY SOUL FOR INFO ON CLUMSY!!!]
The stream interface flashed red with a server-overheat warning — and then collapsed with a loud pop, throwing the artist out of the broadcast along with tens of thousands of other streamers.
The network itself simply could not survive news of this scale.
On the local equivalents of Twitter, the hashtag #Clumsy broke the all-time historical popularity record in 0.2 seconds.
Thousands of conspiracy theories appeared instantly.
Some claimed Clumsy was a secret mass-destruction weapon created by Soufiw.
Others swore she was an ancient goddess of ruin adopted by KTULHU in order to devour the Multiverse.
A third group had already started founding religious cults in worship of the new name.
Artifact merchants immediately increased the prices of absolute-defense shields by a factor of one thousand.
Low-ranking gods panicked and deleted their Nexus profiles, hoping the System would forget they existed.
No one knew who Clumsy was.
No one had ever seen her avatar, her logs, or her level.
And it was precisely that unknown factor that drove the Multiverse insane.
The two most dangerous, terrifying, and powerful beings in existence had just publicly declared their connection to someone else.
And that "someone else" had instantly become the most important and untouchable being in all realities.
But while ordinary users panicked out in the open, something far more interesting — and far more terrifying — began happening inside the hidden elite Administrator chat clusters.
Private Server: "Club of Infinite Pain"
Access Level: Branch Administrator (Critical System Bug)
If the open layers of the Global Nexus were drowning in panic and conspiracy theories, the elite hidden Administrator groups had a very different atmosphere.
Administrator:[Subaru_Original] sat in the virtual lobby of his server, clutching a glowing SSS-Rank Mythical Summoning Scroll in trembling hands.
He had been saving for it for half a year.
The scroll guaranteed a legendary-class ally summon: a wise strategist, an invincible swordsman, or at the very least someone with healing magic.
Preferably a cute elf girl.
Subaru squeezed his eyes shut, offered prayers to every known god in the Multiverse, and activated the scroll.
A flash of rainbow light tore through space. Epic music started playing. Digital rose petals rained down.
The System cheerfully chimed:
[Congratulations! A new participant has successfully joined the chat group: Subaru_Cyber-Ninja_2077!]
— "GOD DAMN YOU!!!" — [Subaru_Original] howled, hurling an empty mug at the wall.
This was the curse of his Administrator privileges.
A critical, unfixable bug in the space-time code of his server.
No matter who he tried to summon, no matter how elite, targeted, or mythical the banner, the System always — absolutely always — pulled in another version of himself from some other universe, route, or timeline.
And to make it even worse, they were always male.
Never once had it pulled a Subaru-chan.
Only an endless brotherhood of traumatized men.
Over time, the population of the server had reached several tens of thousands of Subarus.
The group chat was, as always, flying by at insane speed, full of utterly ridiculous names.
[xXx_RabbitSlayer_xXx]: Oh, new guy. Welcome to hell, bro. Tea's on the table, antidepressants are in the medkit.
[Subaru_From_The_Chelyabinsk_Factory]: Not Emilia again. I knew it. Guess I'll go finish my shift.[Darth_Subaru]: I sense a disturbance in the Force. And pain. Mostly pain.
[Subaru_Magical_Girl]: I HAVE SAID THIS A HUNDRED TIMES, IT'S JUST A CURSED OUTFIT! I AM NOT A GIRL! GET THIS THING OFF ME!
[Subaru_Who_Got_Some_Sleep]: Guys, come on. Life is beautiful!
[Subaru_Wrath], [Subaru_Pride], [Subaru_1000_Deaths]: SHUT UP, LEGENDARY-RANK!
Suddenly, the familiar routine of endless suffering came to a halt.
The server shook.
Every interface of all tens of thousands of participants flashed the same alarming red at once.
The System was directly broadcasting the Monument of the Highest — showing the appearance of the new line:
[ Protected / Successor / Daughter : Clumsy ]
...attached to the duo of the most terrifying Administrators in the Multiverse:
Soufiw and KTULHU.
The chat froze for one whole second, processing the information.
Then it detonated.
[Subaru_Analyst]: A Top-4 and Top-2 alliance? Probability of Multiverse survival has dropped to 0.0001%...
[Subaru_Panicker]: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! THIS IS THE END! KTULHU WILL EAT US!
[Subaru_Original]: Alright, everyone calm down! Nobody panics! We stay quiet, keep our heads down, and do NOT touch that tag!
But there's always one idiot in every family.
Especially when the family consists of tens of thousands of alternate versions of yourself.
[Subaru_Bravery_And_Stupidity], famous in his own world for regularly jumping barehanded at bosses, curiously opened the #Clumsy profile.
— "Oh, her DMs are open," — he muttered.
— "Lemme just ask how Mommy Apocalypse is doing."
Before the moderators could block his input, he typed and sent the following:
[Subaru_Bravery_And_Stupidity]: Yo! So the whole Nexus just went down because of you. Who even are you? And what's it like having Cthulhu as your mom? XD
The answer arrived in 0.001 seconds.
But not from Clumsy.
The entire chat-space went black.
All voices cut out.
In front of every single Subaru — from Cyber-Ninja to Magical Girl — appeared a gigantic System warning box dripping digital blood.
[System Notification: Midas Bank VIP-Protected Client Auto-Responder]
[Threat to Subject Clumsy's peace detected. Unauthorized contact.]
[Threat Level: Low (Spam / Irritant)]
[Protocol Launch: "Light Disciplinary Action"]
[Initiating forced physical zeroing of all synchronized sender avatars as a warning.]
[Have a nice day.]
[Execution in... 3... 2... 1...]
— "LIGHT DISCIPLINARY ACTION?!" — [Subaru_Original] managed to scream.
In the next millisecond, the server lobby was struck by an invisible but absolutely tangible wave of monstrous dragon pressure.
It was not a sword strike.
Not a magical explosion.
It was a conceptual slap on a multiversal scale.
Tens of thousands of Subarus — from Cyber-Ninja to Magical Girl — burst into red pixels in bloody sprays.
The server was instantly emptied, plunging into deafening silence.
And then, exactly three seconds later...
Space convulsed with the nauseatingly familiar sound of rewinding film and the dense, whispering murmur of Darkness.
The effect of Postmortem Return activated flawlessly, dragging their matrix souls back from nonexistence.
The server lit up with respawn glow.
Tens of thousands of Subarus materialized on the floor of the virtual lobby at once.
They gasped for air.
They screamed.
They clutched phantom wounds in their chests, throats, and stomachs.
Some broke into hysterics. Others simply lay curled in fetal position, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The chat slowly came back to life through groans.
[Subaru_Bravery_And_Stupidity]: I... I could taste my own intestines... through the monitor...
[Subaru_Analyst]: Confirmed... The System increased pain sensitivity by 400% before death... This was a warning.
[xXx_RabbitSlayer_xXx]: I would rather go naked against the Great Rabbit again than send that Clumsy even one more message!
[Subaru_Magical_Girl]: SHE KILLED US WITH THE GLARE OF AN AUTO-RESPONDER!
Breathing hard,
[Subaru_Original] somehow forced himself upright.
With a shaking finger, he opened the server settings, located the #Clumsy tag, added it to an absolute, unbreakable blacklist with the note:
[THREAT LEVEL: GOD]
Then he covered his face with both hands.
— "I hate this..." — he groaned in unison with ten thousand copies of himself. — "I hate this System so much..."
=============================
Private Server: "Absolute Ego"
Access Level: Top-500 Highest Administrators
If Subaru's server was the embodiment of collective trauma, then the cluster called Absolute Ego was concentrated megalomania.
Its virtual hall had no stable form.
It changed every second, adapting itself to whichever participant's ego was currently emitting the most dramatic levels of grandeur.
One moment it was a gothic castle.
The next, a floating golden ziggurat.
Then a ruined megapolis.
Meetings here were rare because the members physically could not tolerate one another's presence for more than ten minutes.
But today, an emergency System alert forced all of them to materialize in the shared lobby.
At the center of the hall hovered a gigantic hologram of the Monument of the Highest, with the burning inscription:
[ Protected / Successor / Daughter : Clumsy ]
Tomura Shigaraki viciously scratched at his neck.
The hall around him immediately began cracking and turning into gray dust.
— "Cheaters again... Damned donators and moderators," — he hissed, glaring at the golden and crimson letters with eyes red from lack of sleep. The eyes of a true gamer who had just discovered that the admins had granted someone god mode. — "Daughter? That Top-2 freak has a daughter? Can I touch the concept of their relationship and decay it into dust?"
He flung out a hand, trying to activate his skill on the System log, but the interface returned only a dry response:
[Error. Insufficient access rights.]
— "Annoying. So damn annoying!" — Shigaraki howled, disintegrating the virtual table.
— "Untouchable-level bullshit! Filthy admin abuse!"
— "Close your mouth, mongrel, and cease polluting the air in my presence!" — came a furious, vibrating voice full of arrogant rage.
The hall flooded with blinding golden radiance, erasing Shigaraki's decay.
Gilgamesh, King of Heroes, sat upon a throne of pure light. His face was twisted by absolute, undisguised fury. Behind him, thousands of glittering gates opened, and from each of them divine-rank weapons slowly emerged.
— "Some nameless cur has dared stand above me in the hierarchy of existence?!" — Gilgamesh roared, his voice making even the code of the server tremble.
— "Protected? Successor? In this world there are no rulers but me! The entire Multiverse is my garden! No one may take another under their protection without first kneeling and begging permission from the one true King! I will destroy that Monument! I will carve that tag out of the fabric of reality itself!"
— "Oh, shut up, both of you. Your yelling is giving me a headache," — came a lazy, drawn-out voice from the shadows.
Dio Brando lounged in an armchair, one leg thrown over the other, lazily swirling a goblet of digital blood.
— "I tried stopping time on this server so I could calmly study the phenomenon," — Dio clicked his tongue irritably. — "And do you know what happened? That inscription ignored time stop. The laws of The World had no effect on it. This Clumsy exists beyond our concepts. WRYYYY... what a nuisance."
Suddenly, Gilgamesh's golden brilliance, Shigaraki's gray dust, and Dio's oppressive aura all dissolved, replaced by the perfect, frightening whiteness of Hueco Mundo.
Standing in the center of the hall, towering over everyone with unquestionable charisma, was Sosuke Aizen.
He did not shout.
He did not try to destroy anything.
He simply stood there with his hands behind his back, smiling faintly down at the panicking villains.
— "Remarkable how easily you all surrender to emotion, gentlemen," — Aizen said softly, almost velvety. Every syllable dripped with perfect superiority.
— "You are looking at the Monument, yet failing to understand the composition of the picture."
With an elegant motion, Aizen adjusted his glasses. In the reflected lenses, the inscription about Clumsy glimmered.
— "The convergence of interests between the absolute monopolist Soufiw and the chthonic force KTULHU. The emergence of an unknown variable capable of breaking the established balance of the Top 10 and drawing all attention in the Multiverse toward itself..." — Aizen paused dramatically, letting silence settle over the hall.
— "Yes. Everything is proceeding exactly as planned."
He looked around at the gathered figures, radiating the aura of a master puppeteer who held every thread in his hands.
— "There is no need for concern. The birth of Clumsy and the chaos in the Nexus are not a System malfunction. This, too, is part of my plan."
Shigaraki ground his teeth.
Gilgamesh snorted contemptuously but closed the Gates of Babylon.
Dio thoughtfully sipped his goblet.
The authority of Top-500 Administrator Aizen was absolute.
If he said this was part of his plan, then obviously it was part of his plan.
None of them had any idea that inside his perfectly ordered mind, Aizen was currently frantically running through millions of possibilities, trying to figure out:
Who the hell is Clumsy? Why is this the first I'm hearing of her? And how do I keep any of them from realizing I have absolutely no clue what's happening?
The important thing is to keep smiling...
=============================
Private Server: "The Thirty-Move Play"
Access Level: Branch Curators (Analysts and Strategists)
If the villain server drowned in grandstanding, then the cluster of intellectual elites now resembled an overheating supercomputer one second away from exploding.
At the center of a completely black space traced with neon coordinate lines floated a colossal multidimensional chessboard.
Billions of pieces flickered across it, representing political alliances, world economies, mana distribution, and the probability of wars throughout the entire Multiverse.
Gathered around the board were minds accustomed to pulling the strings of empires.
Light Yagami nervously chewed on the cap of a digital pen while flipping through his System Death Log.
— "Clumsy... Clumsy... It's a username. I need her real name and face!" — he muttered, feverishly hammering search requests into the Nexus databases.
— "If I can eliminate this variable before she realizes her own power, I'll become the god of a new world!"
In the chair beside him, with his legs folded under himself, sat L.
He was absently eating infinite digital cake while staring at the red System alert about the alliance between Soufiw and KTULHU.
— "Statistically, the probability that your notebook would work on a subject protected by Top-2 and Top-4 is absolute zero, Light-kun," — L said in a monotone voice.
— "Moreover, the probability that Mommy Apocalypse would erase your timeline simply for attempting to learn her daughter's name is 99.9%. The remaining 0.1% is the chance she would turn you into a sentient stool. I would not recommend it."
Lelouch vi Britannia ignored their argument entirely.
He stood in front of the multidimensional board, and his left eye burned with the symbol of Geass.
He had pushed his Administrator-level processing abilities to the maximum.
— "An alliance between an absolute monopolist and a chthonic engine of annihilation..." — he whispered tensely, moving hundreds of thousands of pieces at once with sharp gestures.
— "If they combine Midas Bank assets and the military strength of KTULHU's closed group to protect one subject... then the balance of power will not merely shift."
The pieces on the board began spinning wildly.
Red lines of conflict twisted into a mad knot.
— "If someone attacks Clumsy, Soufiw will collapse the economy of their sector. If someone attempts to defend themselves, KTULHU will erase their reality. If—"
Suddenly, the Geass in Lelouch's eye flickered and went dark with the sound of a burned-out bulb.
The entire multidimensional chessboard rippled red, flashed the message:
[Critical computational limit exceeded]
...and shattered into digital dust with a crystalline sound.
Lelouch braced himself against the table, breathing hard and pressing fingers to his temples.
— "An unpredictable variable that breaks the very logic of the board itself," — he exhaled, finally admitting defeat. — "Checkmate to the entire Multiverse before the game has even begun. Gentlemen, we are no longer players."
=============================
Private Server: "The Path of the Lone One"
Access Level: Sector Architects (Solo Players)
This server had never contained a lobby, negotiation table, or armchairs.
Those who entered it had no need for company.
Sung Jin-Woo stood atop a black cliff inside his own isolated pocket dimension.
Behind him, blending into the horizon, stretched the endless silent Shadow Army — millions of elite warriors, knights, dragons, and rulers, ready to tear apart a universe at the slightest movement of his hand.
Before his eyes hung a single System notification:
[Hierarchy Update: Clumsy]
The shadow behind him thickened, and Beru, the fearsome ant king, emerged from it.
He dropped to one knee, radiating murderous devotion.
— "My liege!" — Beru rasped.
— "This unknown entity dares stand above you in the System rankings! Give the order, and we will find this Clumsy! We will tear her to pieces and lay her shadow at your feet!"
Jin-Woo stared for a long moment at the hologram displaying the tags of Top-2 and Top-4.
Then he slowly looked down at his own stats, at the million-strong army behind him, then back at the Highest tags...
...and quietly sighed.
He placed a hand on Beru's shoulder. The ant king froze in loyalty.
— "No, Beru," — Jin-Woo said calmly, with cold pragmatism, swiping the System window into the trash.
— "Against a Top-2 and Top-4 Administrator duo, the command 'Arise' won't help."
He turned toward his endless army of darkness and gave the only logical order:
— "Against them, only one command works: 'Hide.' Everyone stays quiet and does not draw attention."
From behind him came the quiet voice of Goblin Slayer, who had somehow wandered into the server by accident.
— "This Clumsy... is she a goblin?"
— "No," — Jin-Woo said flatly.
— "Then I don't care."
Goblin Slayer turned around and left the chat.
=============================
While the upper echelons of the Multiverse lost their minds and the hidden Administrator servers burned in panic, the Midas Bank penthouse remained wrapped in ringing, oppressive silence.
Tomoko sat on the edge of the vast sofa, clutching a thin porcelain cup in both hands.
The tea inside trembled in rhythm with her heartbeat.
The slime on her lap had fully accepted his fate and was now trying to mimic the pattern of her skirt, pretending to be a decorative stain.
Mashu still stood beside her with perfect posture, hands folded over her white apron.
Her red, vertically slitted eyes stared indifferently into the distance beyond the panoramic glass, toward the neon-drenched megapolis of the Interdimensional Interval.
Tomoko had only just begun calming herself down, convincing herself that if she stayed quiet and drank her tea, then the dragon maid who recycled planets into coins would probably leave her alone.
The girl timidly reached for a second cookie.
And at that moment, the perfect artificial lighting of the penthouse flickered.
The light pouring in through the colossal panoramic window suddenly dimmed.
Tomoko blinked, thinking clouds must have drifted over the city.
She turned her head toward the glass — and dropped the half-bitten cookie directly onto the flattened slime.
They were not clouds.
The sky over the Interdimensional Interval had gone black with billions of glittering points.
The space beyond the window was literally ripping apart with hundreds of thousands of spontaneous portals, out of which poured an endless swarm.
Floating magical familiar-eyes the size of cars.
Cybernetic spy drones covered in lenses.
Astral probes. Operator golems. Transparent observer spirits.
And, of course, mad interdimensional paparazzi riding flying boards and magic carpets, driven insane by the hunger for a scoop.
The algorithms of the Global Nexus had been unable to pinpoint Clumsy's exact location.
But they had managed to trace the ping of her System tag back to the Central Tower of Midas Bank.
And now the entire media machine of the Multiverse, every vulture in the Infosphere, had descended here to get the first footage of the being who had united Top-2 and Top-4.
The swarm struck the Tower like locusts.
A deafening low-frequency roar erupted.
The Bank's outer defensive barrier burst into blinding gold light as the first tens of thousands of drones slammed into it.
Across the penthouse glass — strong enough to withstand a supernova blast — ripples of energy spread like cracks of light.
Outside the window, madness unfolded.
Drones crashed into one another.
Magical eyes fired paralysis beams at each other to fight for a better angle.
Reporters screamed barrier-breaking spells through loudspeakers.
Hundreds of lenses turned directly toward the penthouse, trying to focus on Tomoko.
— "IS THAT HER?!" — came a distorted howl from outside, warped by the barrier.
— "FILM THE GIRL! THAT'S CLUMSY! WE FOUND KTULHU'S DAUGHTER!"
Tomoko went so white she turned nearly transparent.
The teacup slipped from her fingers — but never reached the ground.
Mashu caught it just above the floor.
The movement was so fast the air let out an offended whistle.
The dragoness smoothly straightened, not spilling a single drop of tea, and gently set the cup down on the glass table.
Her long scaled tail, which until now had swayed peacefully from side to side, froze and tensed like a steel spring.
The dark-emerald horns on her head began emitting a faint, ominous glow.
— "Please forgive this outrageous noise, Lady Tomoko," — Mashu said in the same velvet-soft, perfectly calm voice.
But now that calmness carried the unmistakable metallic click of a weapon being cocked.
— "Trash from the lower sectors of the Infosphere has dared disturb the peace of a VIP-Protected client's apartment. This is a gross violation of the Bank's silence protocol."
The dragon maid slowly turned toward the panoramic window.
The vertical pupils in her red eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits.
— "Y-you're not actually going to..." — Tomoko squeaked, flattening herself against the back of the sofa.
— "Please do not trouble yourself. I am merely about to conduct a light cleaning of the premises,"— Mashu said, elegantly straightening the lace cuff around her left wrist.
— "The temperature of your tea has once again fallen. I will finish quickly and brew a fresh pot. Please cover your ears and do not look at the flashes. They may negatively affect your mental state."
The air around the maid warped in a heavy, burning shimmer.
The System, ever helpful, projected a blood-red interface in front of her.
[Targets locked: 48,702,119]
[Status: Unauthorized intrusion. Threat to VIP Zone.]
[Initiating protocol: "Garbage Optimization"]
Mashu took one graceful step forward...
...and slowly plunged her hand straight into the golden layer of the penthouse's protective barrier.