The System’s ‘penalty selection’ didn’t proceed the way anyone expected.
[SYSTEM] Public notice: In Batch 2241, no players completed the Cycle Task.
[SYSTEM] Batch 2241 Cycle Task completion rewards cannot be issued.
[SYSTEM] Batch 2241 Cycle Task failed. Selecting penalty…
[SYSTEM] World error detected. The Third World is about to open.
[SYSTEM] Third World opening countdown: 20 seconds.
[SYSTEM] Penalty selection countdown: 10 seconds.
[SYSTEM] Selected penalty: Third World.
[SYSTEM] Selecting players to enter the new world. Cycle 10-1 will begin.
For a heartbeat, the global chat froze—then erupted.
[CHAT]
*: “Third World? What is that?!”
*: “Is this a joke?!”
*: “A NEW WORLD?!”
*: “So the ‘random penalty’ is basically getting thrown into another death game?!”
*: “Wait—Cycle 10-1? Does that mean an extra cycle?”
[SYSTEM] Selecting the 1st player to enter the new world: Huang Yanyan.
[SYSTEM] Transfer begins in: 20 seconds.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
Huang Yanyan. So Player 0097 wasn’t just warning people—she’d been right on the front line.
[SYSTEM] Cycle 10-1 duration: 15 days.
[SYSTEM] During Cycle 10-1, Player World time will be suspended for selected players.
[SYSTEM] After Cycle 10-1 ends, selected players will return to the Player World. For the Player World, only one second will have passed.
[SYSTEM] If a selected player dies in the new world, the System will continue selecting from remaining players.
[SYSTEM] If total players in Batch 2241 falls below the minimum threshold, the System will draft new players from ordinary civilians.
The online player count on the chat interface plunged—then stabilized.
Ethan watched the clock on his laptop tick forward: 11:00:19.
He wasn’t selected.
That should have been relief. It didn’t feel like it.
Twenty seconds later, the player count surged again, and the chat flooded so fast it blurred into a single wall of noise.
[CHAT]
*: “I’m back—holy crap, that world was insane!”
*: “Fifteen days in a second… my head hurts.”
*: “I got dropped into a cultivation world. Flying swords. Monsters. I barely made it.”
*: “Wasteland world for me. No water. Everything rusted.”
*: “Modern world, but haunted. Real ghosts. Like, real.”
*: “Does this mean the ‘Third World’ isn’t one place?”
*: “Powers work, but it’s nerfed hard—maybe ten percent.”
*: “Check the death list! It jumped!”
*: “Fifty dead… just like that…”
Ethan scrolled automatically, searching for one name.
Player 0097.
She was still alive.
His breath loosened—just a little—before the next thought slammed into place.
If the System could draft civilians when player numbers dropped, then what happened tonight wasn’t just a ‘penalty.’
It was recruitment. Expansion. A leak widening into a tear.
His gaze drifted to the starlight card and the coral map on his desk.
His Cycle Task panel was still a mess of corrupted characters, but one phrase had surfaced through the noise—sharp and readable: Creator Shard.
Not a skill. Not a warning. A label that sounded like a piece of machinery.
If Player 0097 was right—if the System was a program—then a Creator Shard didn’t sound like loot.
A Creator Shard.
The more Ethan thought about it, the less it sounded like treasure and the more it sounded like something the System needed to keep running.
It sounded like a missing component.
The bedroom door creaked.
Eira stepped in, still wearing her dress, hair slightly damp as if she’d just come from the bathroom.
She eyed Ethan’s face. “You look like you swallowed a fishbone.”
“The System opened something,” Ethan said.
Eira’s expression sharpened. “I felt it. Like a tide turning the wrong way.”
She glanced toward the clock. “It’s almost midnight. You’ll be pulled back into the Endless Sea soon.”
Ethan nodded, then looked at her. “Eira. Do you know what a Creator Shard is?”
Eira went still.
Her playful mask slid away, leaving the Dirge Priestess beneath—the one who had walked graves that turned into salt.
“…That name shouldn’t exist,” she said quietly.
Ethan kept his voice steady. “But it does. And the System keeps flashing that name at me.”
Eira swallowed. “If you want the truth, I have to start from the beginning.”
Ethan didn’t hesitate. “Then start.”
…
Cloud City—Underground Research Institute.
The air smelled of disinfectant, gun oil, and something iron-sharp that didn’t belong in any clean facility.
Huang Yanyan strode into the main operations room with dried blood on her sleeves and exhaustion in her eyes.
Her boots left faint red prints on the polished floor.
Qi Heng was waiting at the door.
He took one look at her, then at the medics moving to intercept. “Report.”
“Fifty,” Huang Yanyan said hoarsely. “At least. The Third World isn’t one world. It’s multiple. Different rules. Same brutality.”
She glanced toward the interrogation room across the glass. “And he was right.”
Inside, a man with long hair sat shackled to a metal chair.
His skin was weathered. His clothes looked like they’d been patched with whatever could be ripped off a corpse. Sand clung to him, along with a faint stink of engine oil—like he’d crawled out of a burned-out highway.
The Director’s voice came through the intercom, calm as ice. “You predicted the Third World. Explain yourself.”
The long-haired man smiled slowly.
“All gifts come with a price,” he said, as if quoting scripture.
Qi Heng’s expression hardened. “Who are you?”
“A stowaway,” the man said. “Call me X.”
He leaned back as far as the shackles allowed, chains clinking. “You finally believe me now, don’t you?”
Huang Yanyan’s fists clenched. “Stop playing games. Why did the System open the Third World?”
X’s smile faded. “Because your System is breaking.”
“It’s a program,” he continued, eyes bright with something between hunger and fear. “A buggy one. It’s missing a critical component.”
The Director’s voice sharpened. “What component?”
X let out a breath that sounded almost like laughter.
“In my world, we heard a name for it,” he said. “A Creator’s Fragment.”