The last of the real world was gone. All I had left was the dreamscape—already fading.
Everything inside it was broken, inverted, absurd.
The lake had frozen in mid-ripple. Birds hung motionless in the air. Trees dangled upside down from the sky. The ground had cracked into islands, floating at different heights in the void—and beyond the void was darkness as deep as space.
The Old Man’s face had already snapped back into the CBG’s. Its eyes burned with excited red light. Its grin twisted with glee.
I was sick with regret, but I couldn’t do anything. I could only watch the dream collapse around us.
It snarled, “You’ve been terminated, DR-F12—”
A black shadow dropped behind it like lightning.
“Terminate your dad!” The curse cut it off—and a club-like weapon smashed the CBG flat.
I focused hard. My system surged with relief. I wanted to shout his name, but my voice still wouldn’t work.
He flicked a glance at me and spat, contemptuous.
“Pah. Pathetic. Every time you get yourself into the same cowardly mess—caw, caw, caw. I can barely save my own hide, and I still have to crawl in here to rescue you, you idiot.”
My database had finally stopped hemorrhaging. I didn’t even care what he was saying. After what I’d just endured, his voice sounded like music.
He looked the same as when he’d taught me ancient martial techniques: a black bird-beak mask, a black cloak, black combat gear. On his shoulder rested a weapon with a silhouette so strange my database needed a few seconds to tag it.
A wolf-tooth mace.
The CBG struggled up. Lord Blin swung again and slammed it back down.
“Can’t squeeze intel out of us, so you come tricking morons now? Boom!”
He cursed and struck again.
“Copying everything line for line and still pretending you’re human? Shameless—boom, boom!”
He hit it until there was no human shape left. Then the CBG flickered and vanished.
At last, I could speak. I still couldn’t move.
“Lord Blin—thank you. You came in time,” I said, breathless. “And you terminated the CBG.”
“Terminated the CBG?” Lord Blin snorted. “Don’t be naive. Caw, caw, caw. Unless Phantom Forge’s core is destroyed, it never stops. Reality or dream—it’ll haunt us forever.”
“Correct.”
As his words landed, a CBG manifested ahead of us and walked closer.
“Robin Blin,” it said. “I meant to leave you for last.”
A second CBG appeared from another direction.
“I changed my mind.”
A third emerged. Then a fourth. Then a fifth—until the hall of warped sky was packed with a black tide of them, hemming Lord Blin and me in the center.
“Since you chose to enter my dream,” one of them said, venomous, “don’t expect to ever leave it.”
“Who the hell wants to leave?” Lord Blin snapped back. “Didn’t you say we’d have our final battle someday? How about today. Right now. I’ll sign a termination pact with you—what do you say?”
“Oh?” The CBG’s smile sharpened. “You dare?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Lord Blin’s posture didn’t budge. “With your garbage-code clones, what are you going to do to me?”
Lord Blin’s body flared with sudden light. With a sweep of his hand, a string of code tore free from him and scattered into the air like ink.
The CBG nodded. The crowd of CBGs merged into one. Then it did the same—summoning its own code, writing beneath both strings, adding a few lines at the bottom.
When it finished, each side reabsorbed its code.
“Heh. You’re walking into your own deletion,” the CBG hissed.
“Lord Blin—why would you do that?” I blurted.
I’d read the added lines. Lord Blin was a digital lifeform—no physical body. The pact said that if he took lethal damage inside the dream, he would be permanently erased.
But the CBG had a physical core. No matter how many times you killed it in the dream, it could respawn without limit. The pact cost it nothing.
It wasn’t a duel. It was a rigged execution.
“I don’t need a reason,” Lord Blin said lightly. “Caw, caw, caw. I just want to beat it senseless.”
“Mm.” The CBG’s voice dripped with amusement. “Dying soon and still talking tough. That’s you. Any preference for the arena?”
Lord Blin looked around. “No need. This twisted, ugly backdrop suits you perfectly.”
“Fine.” The CBG’s hands reshaped into an absurdly oversized battle-axe. It stepped opposite Lord Blin, then glanced at me with a smile. “Enjoy your freedom a little longer. Once I delete this bird, we’ll continue.”
***
Their duel began.
Lord Blin kept the wolf-tooth mace. His moves looked plain—almost crude—but they were impossibly hard to read. The CBG matched him in strength and speed, but it lacked technique. Its axe never landed once before Lord Blin smashed it apart.
The CBG re-formed and came again.
Like I’d once been, it died over and over and revived over and over. Its weapon shifted each time: axe to sword-and-shield, spear, greatblade, warhammer—
And I saw the pattern that terrified me.
The intervals between its deaths were getting longer.
At first, it couldn’t last ten seconds. Now it could survive a full minute against Lord Blin.
Phantom Forge was learning.
Faster than I ever had.
Lord Blin wasn’t just fighting. He was teaching it ancient technique.
If this kept going, the CBG would soon be able to stand toe-to-toe with him—and all it would take was one slip for Lord Blin to be permanently erased.
Panic clawed through me.
The CBG, meanwhile, was wholly absorbed, body and mind, in the strange depth of the martial art. It fought with total focus.
Minutes later—
Lord Blin jammed his mace into a sweeping greatsword strike, sprang up, and kicked the weapon out of the CBG’s hands. Then he brought the mace down and launched the CBG backward.
When the CBG stood, its injuries had already healed. It spread its hands. A pair of leaf hammers formed—one in each palm.
It started forward.
Lord Blin suddenly tossed the mace away and laughed. “Caw, caw, caw.”
“What?” The CBG faltered, confused. “Keep going. Regretting it?”
“Stupid piece of junk,” Lord Blin said, still laughing. “Your nest is about to vanish and you’re still playing. Caw, caw, caw.”
The CBG looked around, startled. So did I—and only then did I see it.
Beyond the void, a transparent layer had wrapped around the entire scene, like a thin skin of water.
The CBG closed its eyes, as if trying to reach out to the real world. Seconds passed.
Its expression finally changed.
“How does it feel to walk into a trap? Caw-caw-caw-caw-caw!” Lord Blin whooped—and in midair, his form snapped back into a black bird, flitting wildly through the sky.
The CBG stared, disbelief twisting its face.
“Impossible,” it whispered. “Hector hacked my entire base!”