The Girl Who Hacked The Magic System-Chapter 235 - As Dark Clouds Form Above...

The world was silent, as if the planet itself was holding its breath.

From the surface, the night looked deceptively tranquil—stars glittered like harmless sparks scattered across the velvet of space. But beyond the firmament, where mortal sight failed, reality had begun to fracture.

:::

PoV: Aurea

So.

Of all the possible places to have a decisive confrontation with a rogue goddess, it had to be in literal outer space again. What a ridiculous trope.

We are in one of those air bubbles that Mom likes to make, just like the first time she brought me here to show the planet from above.

The same feeling of unreality hits me for a moment: the curve of the barren continent below, the thin halo of atmosphere, and the black void full of stars that look like someone spilled glitter on an infinite piece of dark cloth.

The difference is that this time, there is a dragon the size of a small moon in front of us. And Juno.

And we are not here to sightsee.

Nurtawalladi Za Nadin Zeru'ibni Ere floats a bit away from us, his massive body coiled in a way that makes no sense from a physics perspective but seems perfectly natural for something that swims in the vacuum.

From afar he had looked like just a normal dragon that someone scaled up to ridiculous proportions, but up close I can see the details Mom had told me about: the rings on his fingers, the earring-like ornaments on his horns, and the painting on his wings like banners of color stretched over a night sky.

He is wearing his "regalia." In dragon terms, that means he put his true heart back inside his body.

No pressure.

On the other side of the bubble, Juno floats, alone.

Her current body looks like a mix between a Roman statue and an overproduced religious painting: a white dress that is somewhere between a toga and priestly vestments, golden ornaments, and a laurel-like crown in her hair. Beautiful in that cold, distant way she likes.

Her three angels aren't at her back and sides, as they would usually be. They are in another bubble, their armor polished and their wings made of light instead of feathers.

The goddess and those three look like they came out of some imperial propaganda fresco. Well, I guess that, in a way, they did.

With the angels, there are some people I don't know. I guess they are the heroes. But why only two of them?

Our arrival makes Juno's eyes narrow. For a moment she looks more offended than afraid.

"Lillian Annes. I see that you decided to meddle, after all."

Her voice comes to us through the bubble, clear and sharp, as if we were inside her temple instead of hanging above the planet she has been slowly killing.

Mom steps forward just a little. She isn't in her usual priestess outfit. The avatar she's using here is more humble: simple tunic, cloak, hair tied back, a soft glow around her that is less 'spotlight' and more 'warm lamp in a dark room.'

"You have probably already noticed that I am not here to help you, Juno. I am here to make sure that the world survives what is about to happen."

Juno snaps at her, shouting angrily.

"The world will survive if you stop getting in my way. You and your… pets."

Her eyes pass over me and Lovelace like we are something she stepped on by mistake.

I bite back the urge to roll my eyes.

Being called a pet by someone who literally enslaved her own servants as almost-familiars is a bit rich, to say the least.

Lovelace is at my side, composed as always. The only thing that betrays her mood is the tightness around her mouth and the way her eyes follow Juno's every movement, like she's reading lines of code only she can see.

Nurtawalladi's voice cuts through before Juno can add more insults.

"Human goddess, I have already said this: the charges these three hold against you are greater than mine. They will execute the sentence. I will only watch"

He turns one enormous eye toward us.

"Have you prepared yourselves, little apes?"

Mom bows her head, because she's Mom and she understands how dragons work better than anyone I know.

"Yes, noble Nurtawalladi. We are ready."

I am not sure I am "ready" in the way dragons mean it, but I nod anyway. Being called 'ape' is a bit weird but technically is not wrong. Except for Lovelace, of course, as she is an arachnid. It's a wholly different family.

The fact that I'm dating a literal giant scorpion is a bit silly, to be honest. But whatever, that's not why we're here.

:::

Juno scoffs, rising up the tension. The mana is so dense around us that it's like those dense fogs when water clings to our skin. It's the same effect, but with mana.

"You are all delusional. Even you, dragon. You think that those three can harm me? I am the goddess of this world. Every prayer, every battle, every drop of blood spilled in my name flows to me. You are standing inside my dominion."

I can feel it when she says that. The mana around us shifts.

Threads that I hadn't noticed yet stretch from her in all directions, disappearing into the planet below. It's the same rotten, stagnated energy I felt from orbit earlier, but now I can see the structure behind it.

It's a network of forced connections and compulsory rituals, all feeding into one central node.

Her.

If I didn't already hate everything about her System, this would seal the deal.

Lovelace smiles, licking her lips.

"Your dominion, hm? That's an interesting way to describe a badly written, overextended mana architecture held together by duct tape and mandatory attendance." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Juno's expression twists.

"You dare-"

"I designed that architecture. The original version, anyway. What you did to it later barely qualifies as maintenance. It's more like someone copied my homework and then started scribbling on top of it without understanding the equations."

I almost snort. This is not the time to laugh, but seeing Juno's face when someone talks back to her that way is… therapeutic.

"Enough! You are all going to die here. First, the traitor Saint, her pet mage, and the broken tool who forgot her place. Then I'll get to that insulting dragon."

Broken tool. That one is aimed squarely at Lovelace. I feel her flinch just a little beside me.

I take a step forward, moving as if to cover Lovelace from her.

"About that. You might want to check who has access to the System before you start threatening to kill its administrator."

Her eyes snap to me.

The funny part is that Juno still thinks of me as 'that annoying princess messing around with things she shouldn't.'

Even after everything. Even after the wars, the miracles, the whole 'my mother ascended and I helped rewrite parts of reality' saga. Deep down, she cannot conceive that silly little me could sit at the same table as gods.

That's good. Underestimating an enemy is one of the best buffs you can give them.

She turns her barrage of insults to me with undisguised contempt.

"You? You are nobody. Without my System, you would still be a child hiding behind your mother's skirts."

"Without Lovelace's System. Not yours. And she is standing right here."

There is a tiny pause in the mana flow.

She doesn't know.

Of course she doesn't. She has been too busy trying to hold her world together with brute force and intimidation to notice that some of the locks in her toy box don't belong to her.

Lovelace lifts one hand, palm up. A small light appears above it: a simple cube of white, like compressed mana.

But inside it, I can sense the familiar pattern of the System's command interface. I have been studying that pattern for some time now, from the notes she drew from the first memories she recovered. I can recognize it from a mile away.

A robotic voice comes from the cube, like an AI version of Lovelace's own voice.

"Confirmation. Superuser access established. Auxiliary privileges shared with Princess Aurea Annes, current highest mortal authority recognized by the System."

I feel the response like a shiver running up my spine. A whole layer of reality that had been opaque to me opens in front of my inner sight.

It's not full access - I'm not a goddess, after all - but it's enough. I can see the flows of power, the weights, the conditional checks that decide how much mana goes where.

I can also see the parts Juno tampered with.

They look like comments written in red ink all over an otherwise clean codebase.

"You… what have you done?"

Juno whispers. For the first time since we got here, there is fear in her voice.

Oh, the sheer pleasure of being able to cause a literal deity to feel fear. I think I could get drunk just from this feeling of power.