The rain tasted like iron.
It fell in sheets of black code, hissing as it hit the glowing stage. The crowd in the bleachers was silent. The fun was over.
Opposite Yoo-jin stood Subject 001—The Original. He looked pristine, his white suit repelling the digital rain.
Behind him twitched the Nightmares.
The Zombie Twins, Sol and Luna, had gray skin and sewn-shut eyes. They let out a low, distorted static screech.
The Headless Min-ji dragged a bat made of spinal cords.
"This is your legacy, Number 734," The Original smiled, checking his cufflinks. "You built them on trauma. I'm just showing you the source code."
Sae-ri stepped back, her hand covering her mouth. "That's sick."
"It's efficient," The Original raised a conductor's baton. "Eliminate the glitches."
He flicked his wrist.
SCREEEEE.
The Nightmares lunged. They didn't move like players. They moved like glitches—teleporting in jagged, broken frames.
"Defense formation!" Yoo-jin shouted.
Min-ji raised her bat to block the Headless version of herself.
CLANG.
The impact drove Min-ji to her knees. The Headless nightmare didn't recoil. It leaned in, the stump of its neck bubbling with black pixels.
"It's heavy," Min-ji gritted her teeth, her arms shaking. "It feels like... dead weight."
"It's your doubt," Yoo-jin typed furiously on his floating keyboard. "He's weaponizing your insecurity stats!"
On the left flank, Sol and Luna were screaming. The Zombie Twins were hugging them.
It wasn't an attack. It was a suffocating embrace. The Zombies were draining the light from the real twins' avatars.
[Status Effect: BURNOUT]
[Stamina draining: 10% per second]
"I can't... breathe," Luna gasped, her silver cloak turning gray.
"They're drowning," David yelled from the comms. "Yoo-jin! Their sync rate is dropping to zero! Do something!"
Yoo-jin looked at The Original.
The man was conducting calmly, eyes closed, enjoying the slaughter. He was playing a perfect, mathematical symphony of death.
"You're trying to out-code me," The Original said without opening his eyes. "But I wrote the engine. You can't delete my data."
Yoo-jin stopped typing.
He looked at the rain. He looked at his struggling team.
The Original was right. You can't delete a nightmare. You can't code away trauma.
"You're right," Yoo-jin said softly. "I can't delete it."
He slammed his hand onto the keyboard.
"So I'll sample it."
Yoo-jin turned the volume knob to maximum.
"Min-ji! Don't block!" Yoo-jin roared. "Let it in!"
"Are you crazy?" Min-ji screamed, the Headless monster pushing her face into the mud.
"It's a rhythm!" Yoo-jin shouted. "That thing is hitting you in 4/4 time! It's not a monster, it's a drum track!"
Min-ji blinked. She listened.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The Headless nightmare was bashing her shield with a perfect, mechanical beat.
"Match the tempo!" Yoo-jin commanded.
Min-ji closed her eyes. She stopped fighting the weight. She felt the rhythm of the blows.
Thud. Thud.
Min-ji swung her bat. Not to block, but to hit on the off-beat.
CRACK.
She hit the Nightmare's knee.
Thud-CRACK. Thud-CRACK.
"That's it!" Yoo-jin keyed in a bass line to match them. "Sol! Luna! The Zombies are screaming! Harmonize with them!"
"Harmonize with that?" Sol cried.
"It's a high C!" Yoo-jin played a piercing synth lead. "Turn their scream into a chorus!"
Sol and Luna looked at the gray monsters clawing at them. They took a deep breath.
They didn't scream back. They sang.
They hit a note that wrapped around the static screeching of the Zombies.
The discord didn't vanish. It merged.
The ugly static became a distorted, gritty harmony. It sounded like industrial rock—raw, painful, and electric.
The crowd in the bleachers woke up.
WTF IS THIS?
IT SOUNDS AWESOME.
IS THIS A NEW GENRE?
The Original opened his eyes. His baton faltered.
"What are you doing?" he hissed. "Chaos cannot be harmonized."
"That's why you failed," Yoo-jin stepped forward, his digital keyboard glowing red. "You want idols to be perfect. You want a clean track."
Yoo-jin played a chaotic jazz chord that shook the stage.
"But people love the crack in the voice. They love the struggle."
He pointed at Min-ji.
Min-ji was dancing with her nightmare now. She was parrying every blow, turning the fight into a violent, percussive choreography. She was smiling.
"You can't scare me with my own baggage," Min-ji yelled, smashing the Headless monster's chest. "I carry this crap every day!"
"Sol, Luna! Drop!"
The twins spun. They channeled the "Burnout" debuff into a massive burst of energy.
The Zombie Twins shrieked as the harmony overpowered them. They dissolved into black musical notes, swirling around the real sisters.
"Sampling complete," Yoo-jin grinned.
He looked at The Original.
"My turn to conduct."
Yoo-jin slammed both hands on the keys.
[Skill: The Producer's Remix]
[Effect: Convert Enemy Damage into Audio Output]
The black rain stopped. It turned into confetti.
The darkness of the stage exploded into strobe lights.
"Attack!" Yoo-jin ordered.
Starforce surged forward. They weren't tired anymore. They were fueled by the very nightmares that tried to kill them.
Min-ji led the charge. She vaulted off the dissolving body of the Headless monster.
"Hey, Copycat!" she screamed at The Original.
She swung her bat.
The Original raised a shield of white code. "futile."
BOOM.
The shield cracked.
"What?" The Original stumbled back. "Calculation error. Force exceeds parameters."
"It's not force," Sae-ri appeared behind him. She was holding the spotlight again. "It's drama."
She flashed the light in his eyes.
[Status Effect: BLIND]
"Now!"
Sol and Luna unleashed the stored energy. A beam of pure, distorted sound hit The Original in the chest.
It was the sound of their fear, weaponized.
The Original flew backward. He crashed into the scenery, shattering the digital skyscrapers.
He landed in a heap of glitching pixels. His perfect white suit was torn. His face flickered, revealing wireframe underneath.
The crowd roared. The donation ticker broke the integer limit.
Yoo-jin walked over to the fallen doppelganger.
The Original laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound.
"Impressive," The Original sat up, his arm missing. "You managed to monetize your own trauma. Very... human."
"Game over," Yoo-jin said coldly. "Delete yourself."
"Oh, I'm not the Raid Boss, Yoo-jin," The Original stood up. His body began to fade, turning transparent. "I'm just the tutorial."
He pointed to the sky.
Above the Arena, the red eye of Mason Gold opened again. But it was different this time. It wasn't just watching.
It was charging.
"Mason has finished the calibration," The Original smiled, his face dissolving into binary. "The Muse Engine is online. He doesn't need the Arena anymore."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," The Original whispered as he vanished completely, "he's going to upload the rest of the world."
RUMBLE.
The entire server shook.
David screamed in the earpiece. "Yoo-jin! Massive energy spike! Not here—in the real world!"
"What?"
"The Violet Signal!" David yelled. "Mason just boosted the broadcast power by 500%. He's using the Sanctuary's processing power to brute-force the minds of everyone in Seoul!"
Yoo-jin looked up.
The beautiful white dome of the Arena began to crack.
Purple light bled through the fissures.
"He's not playing a game," Yoo-jin realized with horror. "He lured us in here to distract us while he takes the physical world."
Sae-ri grabbed his hand. "Yoo-jin, look at the chat."
The chat window was scrolling, but the messages were changing.
My head hurts...
I hear music...
All hail Zenith...
All hail Zenith...
The viewers were being overwritten.
"He's zombie-fying the audience," Min-ji gasped.
Yoo-jin turned to the team. The victory against Olympus, the triumph over the Nightmare—it was all a stall tactic.
"We have to log out," Yoo-jin said.
"We can't!" Eden reported. "The exit ports are sealed. We are trapped."
Yoo-jin looked at the purple cracks spreading across the sky.
He didn't panic. He looked at the 8-bit cat, N3KO, hovering in the VIP box.
"N3KO!" Yoo-jin shouted. "The deal! You said you could rewrite physics!"
"I can!" the cat yelled back. "But the firewall is too thick!"
"I don't need you to break the wall," Yoo-jin grabbed his keyboard. "I need you to build a bridge."
"To where?"
Yoo-jin looked at the massive, golden Zenith Spire floating in the distance—Mason's personal fortress within the game.
"If we can't log out," Yoo-jin's eyes burned with desperation. "Then we go deeper."
He pointed at the Spire.
"We raid the Admin Tower. We kill the engine from the inside."
"That's a suicide run," Zeus_Prime, the defeated champion, limped over. "That tower is Level 100 content. You're Level 30."
Yoo-jin looked at the E-Sports legend.
"Then carry us," Yoo-jin said.
Zeus blinked. Then he grinned. He picked up his greatsword.
"Party invite accepted."
Yoo-jin turned to the camera. To the millions of viewers slowly losing their minds to the signal.
"Don't change the channel," Yoo-jin said.
"We're coming for the boss."