“A Creator Shard?”
Qi Heng repeated it, like the words hadn’t landed properly.
A moment ago, the conversation had been all ‘parts’ and ‘chips.’ Now it had jumped straight into something that sounded like mythology.
Across the table, Stowaway X shrugged as if names were meaningless.
“Don’t get hung up on it,” he said. “Every world calls it something different, based on whatever culture they grew up with.”
He ticked them off with his fingers, casual and almost cheerful.
“Some call it the Creator’s Redemption. Others call it a totem, a crystal, a force-core, a sigil.”
“The waterfolk call it the Ocean’s Dirge,” X added with a crooked grin. “They’re born with that depressed vibe. If you deal with them, stay optimistic, or you’ll get infected.”
He leaned back, chains scraping. “Some worlds get poetic: Shattered Star Stone, Fallen Star, World Barrier, Broken Claw… that kind of thing.”
“From what I’ve seen,” he continued, “the System loves calling itself the Creator. So the most universal name is Creator Shard.”
His smile turned sharp. “My world preferred a different name: the System’s pathetic fig leaf.”
X talked like he didn’t care, but everyone listening understood what he was really doing.
He was hinting at the worlds he’d walked through. The species he’d met.
Showing off. Proving he was real.
Qi Heng listened to the Director’s instructions through his earpiece, then asked, “You said the Creator Shard is in the Endless Sea. Do you know where, exactly?”
For the first time, X shook his head.
He asked a question of his own.
“In your world’s… bastard camp—Abyss, right?”
Qi Heng frowned. “Bastard camp?”
X waved a hand. “My phrasing. Once players have been in the game long enough, they pick an alignment.”
“Some worlds call it good and evil. Some call it lawful and criminal. I can’t be bothered to memorize everyone’s flavor text.”
He smiled. “So I call them good guys and bastards.”
“Here it’s Order and Abyss,” Qi Heng said.
“Perfect,” X replied. His gaze sharpened. “So—has there been an Abyss-aligned player who’s… not right in the head?”
“Someone extreme. Someone who thinks they can ‘save the world’ by ending it.”
Huang Yanyan’s eyes widened slightly, as if a name had been shoved into her mind.
“Player 0776,” she said.
Qi Heng didn’t need more explanation.
A few cycles ago, Player 0776 had dragged a blood-rite disaster into the Player World. At the end, he’d seized Huang Yanyan, Qi Heng, and another teammate, trying to sacrifice them to make the catastrophe permanent.
He’d claimed it was ‘for everyone.’ For fairness. For justice. For a better future.
With Huang Yanyan’s reminder, Qi Heng nodded once. “Yes. We’ve encountered someone like that.”
“Then we’re on the right track,” X said, sounding almost relieved.
“It means the System has already started assigning players to repair itself.”
A hard silence fell over the room.
Qi Heng’s voice was controlled. “Explain.”
X spread his hands. “You people don’t understand the System at all.”
“The System knows it’s broken. So it looks for someone to fix it. That ‘someone’ is us—players.”
He leaned forward, eyes bright.
“In most normal worlds, good-aligned players are ‘decent’ people. They don’t want to hurt innocent worlds. But they’re also cowards.”
“They hesitate. They vomit. They shake. They feel guilty right when the knife needs to fall.”
X snorted. “Indecision is useless to the System.”
“So it forces alignment. Good or bad. Order or Abyss. Pick a side.”
He tilted his head, as if remembering something unpleasant.
“And you remember the Abyss alignment’s permanent curse, right?”
“Every world words it differently, but it always circles madness, lost reason, instability.”
X’s voice stayed light, but the logic behind it was cold.
“From another angle, it’s simple: if you choose the evil side, the System helps you throw away morality.”
“Because when the good guys can’t get the Creator Shard using ‘clean’ methods…”
“…the System can point the bastards at it and say: take it anyway.”
He smiled without humor. “Even if the small world has to burn to make it happen.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
Finally, following the Director’s prompt, Qi Heng asked, “We dealt with Player 0776 in the Player World. How does that help us locate the Creator Shard?”
X answered with another question. “Do you know where that person operated in the Endless Sea recently? Where they went. Who they met.”
He nodded toward Huang Yanyan as if she should already understand.
“If they’ve been assigned a ‘repair the System’ task, then whatever crisis they created is part of that task.”
“Which means their activity zone in the Endless Sea is the best lead you have on the shard’s location.”
Huang Yanyan’s mind raced.
Player 0776’s blood-rite disaster in the Player World… and the crisis caused by the Sadness Theater in Windrest City…
The Institute had once suspected the two were connected.
And the Sadness Theater had been in Windrest City.
So… Storm Island? Or Windrest City itself?
Qi Heng continued, “Can you help us find the Creator Shard?”
X nodded easily. “If I’m willing to stow away into your world and tell you something this important, of course I’m willing to help.”
His eyes narrowed. “This System failure affects my world too.”
“But if I help you,” he added, “you agree to my conditions.”
Qi Heng’s posture tightened. “What conditions?”
“Relax.” X waved him off. “My world is heavily polluted. I need healthy seeds, clean soil, medical supplies… mechanical parts. Things we can’t produce anymore.”
Qi Heng waited for the order in his ear, then said, “Agreed.”
…
September 15, 12:00 a.m.
A familiar, mild weightlessness washed over Ethan—then snapped away.
When he opened his eyes, the neon glow outside his window was gone.
In its place stretched a clean, star-salted night sky.
A cool early-autumn breeze drifted in, carrying the scent of the sea that didn’t exist in the Player World.
[SYSTEM] Cycle 10 has ended. All players have returned to the Endless Sea. Cycle 11 begins.
[CHAT]
*: “Only an hour in the Player World and I’m already yanked back into another cycle.”
*: “Three worlds now. My brain is melting.”
*: “At least we transfer at night. Everyone’s asleep. Gives me time to remember what I even did last cycle.”
*: “Not for the guy who got dropped into a world where ghosts parade at night. He’s probably not grateful.”
The addition of the Third World and the start of a new cycle made the channel louder than Ethan had ever seen it.
[CHAT]
*: “Where are the official players? Come explain!”
*: “Yeah, this is confusing as hell.”
*: “Is the Third World fixed as a permanent game world now?”
*: “And will the System keep drawing people into it?”
Player 0097: “Based on what we have so far: yes, the Third World has stabilized.”
Player 0097: “World sequence is: Endless Sea → Player World → Third World.”
Player 0097: “If players die in the Third World, the System will draw new players from among us again.”
*: “What?! I thought it was a one-time penalty!”
*: “Fifty people died in that new world an hour ago. So next time it opens, it’ll draw fifty more?”
Player 0097: “At the moment, that’s what it looks like.”
*: “Then what do we do? Try to die this cycle so we won’t get drawn?”
*: “That’s genius.”
*: “Count me in!”
Player 0097: “Stop.”
Player 0097: “Last cycle, we found clues about repairing the System.”
Player 0097: “If the repair succeeds, the Third World should be able to close.”
In the dim room, Ethan watched in silence.
When the official channel mentioned a ‘repair,’ he finally asked the question he’d been holding back.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “What does repairing the System require?”
*: “Oh—Boss 0067 is here.”
*: “Same batch, remember?”
*: “Did 0067 go to the Third World?”
*: “We should work together to fix the System.”
*: “0097, answer! 0067’s asking!”
On the other side of the screen, Huang Yanyan hesitated.
The Institute had decided not to reveal too much to ordinary players yet.
Partly because most of them couldn’t help. Partly because Storm Island was a sprawling, densely populated power-knot—far beyond what anyone below Tier 3 could handle.
Windrest City wasn’t clean either—the Sadness Theater’s sinking had already hinted at a demigod-class shadow hidden inside the city.
Throwing ordinary players at that kind of knot without context would just create more deaths for the System to ‘replace.’
And partly because Stowaway X was coming.
A stowaway wasn’t a ‘soul transfer’ like the System used. His strength wouldn’t be nerfed in the Endless Sea.
After a moment, Player 0097 answered anyway—carefully.
[CHAT]
Player 0097: “As I said before, the System is like a program full of bugs.”
Player 0097: “You can think of it as the System having lost many ‘parts.’ Those parts are scattered across different worlds.”
Player 0097: “If players find the parts, we can follow the prompts to repair the System.”
Player 0097: “This is an approximation. We still don’t truly understand the System, but it’s the closest model we have.”
Ethan read the message and felt the gap in it immediately.
Official players had a plan. They just weren’t saying it out loud.
He asked from the side, careful not to step on whatever line they’d drawn.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “Do these ‘parts’ have special names?”
Huang Yanyan almost laughed at how persistent he was.
Player 0067 had always been low-key. This was the first time he’d fired off questions back-to-back.
But the Third World had shaken everyone, even him.
[CHAT]
Player 0097: “Different worlds call them different things.”
Player 0097: “Some call it the Creator’s Redemption. Some call it a totem, a crystal, a force-core, a sigil.”
Player 0097: “Some call it a Creator Shard.”
Creator Shard.
So it really was that.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “Understood. Thanks.”
Ethan closed the topic. The last piece slid into place in his mind.
Before the transfer, Eira—the Dirge Priestess—had told him a legend from angel records.
The story said the Creator had suffered a backlash from the worlds it created, and countless rays of divine light had shattered into fragments scattered across existence.
The Creator wanted those fragments back.
So it chose Travelers to walk the worlds and retrieve them.
Ethan had once asked why the legend used both ‘Creator’ and ‘Maker.’
Eira’s answer had been simple: they were the same. Just different names.
He opened his task panel.
[PANEL]
Cycle Task: Replace Governor Panglos Fell and become Storm Island’s true controller.
Reward: Fish up Storm Island.
You will obtain: Creator Shard.
You will obtain: World Truth Fragment.
Ethan let out a slow breath.
So he’d been assigned a System-repair task a long time ago.
And his conflict with Panglos Fell wasn’t just about the nobles he’d killed in Windrest Keep… or the governor suspecting he was a royal agent.
It was also because Ethan had to complete this task.
The System needed it.
Moonlight slid westward outside the window. The night air grew heavier with dew.
Ethan reread the objective once more, then checked the coral map that could lead him to Iseralai’s Tomb—where the Earth Core waited.
After running the next steps through his head, he put the coral map away and lay down to sleep.
…
Under the deep midnight moon, waves hammered against the reef caves along the sea outside Windrest City’s outer district.
Two towering figures of ghostly blue light materialized in the darkness.
They spoke to an even larger troll spirit standing among the rocks.
“My lord,” one of the blue spirits said, voice hollow as wind through a shell. “We found the bodies here. Not a drop of blood left in them. It has to be some kind of spell.”
The troll—Haizan—stepped into the cave and studied the surroundings. He knelt, checking the marks in the sand as if the dead had left footprints.
After a moment, he straightened.
“Then we should tell Lord Rhine,” Haizan said.