Chapter 273

Daphne

[HOST!!!!!]

The System’s voice isn’t a voice. It’s a shriek of pure, undiluted data-terror, a metallic banshee wail that vibrates through my very bones.

The world freezes, like a black and white photograph. A single drop of Felix’s blood is suspended in space, a perfect crimson pearl turned to grey.

[The male lead cannot die.]

The purple orb materializes directly in front of my face, pulsating with frantic, violet light. Its usual flat monotone is shredded with panic.

Honestly? I’ve always been curious. What would happen if the main character of a world died?

I have my answer now.

I look past the system.

From the spot where Felix is falling; where his life is literally held in a fist outside his body, thin, jagged lines of nothingness are spider-webbing outward.

They crawl up the frozen bodies of the crowd, fracture the stone of the arena, splinter the very sky.

It looks like reality is a pane of glass, and someone has just struck its heart with a hammer. The cracks are also spreading at alarming rate.

[Host.] The system says again, the word a desperate, pointed command.

"Alright, alright, keep your diodes on," I mutter.

I stand up from my seat in the nobles’ gallery, carefully peeling Nima’s arm from where it was linked with mine.

I stroke her frozen cheek once, a silent promise, then step out into the aisle.

I reach the arena floor. The scene is a gruesome tableau. Felix is collapsed, his body already going slack.

His eyes are glazed, locked on the figure standing over him. And there, protruding from the ruin of his chest, is an arm. A hand. And in that hand...

I crouch down, tilting my head. "So," I say aloud to the frantic orb zipping around my head.

"What do you want me to do? It’s not like I can just... pop his heart back into his chest and hope it starts beating." I poke at the frozen, bloodless organ in the clenched fist.

It feels unnervingly solid, like clay. "The narrative tension here is kinda shot, System."

[You must stabilize the core narrative anchor!] it projects, words flashing in the air beside the orb. [Without him, the world-line collapses. All data, all life, this iteration—TERMINATED.]

[This is why you shouldn’t have—]

"Are we really going to start the blame game right now?" I cut it off, my voice flat. The orb flickers sullenly but falls silent.

"Open the system shop. How many points do I have?"

A holographic screen shimmers to life in the frozen air before me. Glowing violet text lists my balance.

System Points (SP): 4,375

A breakdown flickers below:

· Mafia World (Completion - S Rank): 2,875 SP

· Administrative Compensation (Inconvenience Fee): 1,500 SP

"That’s... nice of them," I mutter. A consolation prize for dealing with the previous 404.

I start scrolling. The shop is a dizzying array of glowing icons—skills that could shatter mountains, scrolls of forgotten lore, artifacts that hum with dimensional power. My eyes skim past them. Reality Weaving (10,000 SP). Phoenix Feather (Resurrection - 15,000 SP). Chrono-Lock (12,500 SP).

All astronomically expensive. Of course.

A cold knot of genuine panic starts to tighten in my gut. The cracks are spreading faster now, creeping up the legs of the frozen spectators, turning them into grotesque, fragmented statues. The silence is beginning to hum with a sound of tearing.

Then I see it.

ITEM: DO OVER (Scroll)

Tiered Temporal Reversal Artifact. Allows localized reversal of causality.

My heart leaps, then plummets. Tiered. Of course.

I select it. A sub-menu blooms.

· Tier 1: 5-second rewind (Localized - 10m radius). Cost: 4,000 SP

· Tier 2: 30-second rewind (Localized). Cost: 25,000 SP

· Tier 3: 5-minute rewind (Area). Cost: 100,000 SP

· Tier 4: 1-hour rewind (Regional). Cost: --- INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE ---

Five seconds.

Four thousand points.

The fucking odds. It’s like the universe is a slot machine, and it just landed on my last damn coin.

I stare at the numbers. My hard-earned, bloody, inconvenience-fee points. All of it. For five seconds.

I look at Felix, his heart a frozen prize in a traitor’s hand. I look at the cracks crawling toward Nima’s frozen form.

There’s no choice.

"It hurts me," I say to no one, to the breaking world. "But I buy it anyway."

I mentally confirm the purchase.

SP: 4,375 -> 375

The number disintegrates, the digits dissolving into purple mist. In my hand, a weight manifests—a scroll of brittle, iridescent parchment, tied with a thread of twisted light. It hums with a power that makes the air around my hand waver.

I hold the answer to everything. For five seconds.

"System, can I speak to the male lead?" I ask, the scroll humming in my hand like a trapped star.

[Host, direct psychic interfacing with a core narrative anchor in a destabilized timestream will interfere with the local structural integrity—]

"Do you want the male lead to fucking die or not?" I snap, the cracks in the world inching closer to Nima’s frozen seat.

***

Felix

I blink.

Is this the afterlife? Death?

Everything is a silent, grey sculpture. The roar of the crowd is a vanished memory. I feel nothing. I am a ghost watching my own corpse.

"Listen here, little lion."

The voice is not part of the silence. It cuts through it.

The only thing in color in this grey hell. The Duke of Panthers. She glows with a faint, dangerous light, her golden eyes fixed on me with an expression of sheer, impatient disgust.

"I have paid a very steep price to give you a second chance."

I try to speak, to ask what is happening, where I am, but I have no voice here. I am a consciousness without a form.

"You have five seconds of borrowed time. Use them better."

She turns her back on me and walks through the frozen chaos. She steps over spreading cracks in reality as if they are mere cracks in a pavement.

I can do nothing but watch as she reaches her seat.Then, she snaps the glowing scroll in her hands.

*

Sound is a physical assault. The smell of blood and dust floods my senses. Pain erupts across my body—the bite on my arm, the bruised ribs, the exhaustion. I am alive. I am standing.

My uncle is a blur of motion before me, his arm already thrusting, his fingers rigid like a blade, aimed at the center of my chest. I have seen this before. I have felt it before.

I twist my torso. His killing strike deflects. His claws, meant for my heart, rake across my jaw instead.

His open wide in shock, my own hand moves, claws extended reaching for his throat and this time I don’t hesitate.