The grey void of the loading screen hung in silence, the air thick with divine frustration and one soul's indomitable spite. After he uttered a single word of denial.
Byte, the God of Tech, stared at Noctar, his data-stream form flickering with confusion.
"Let me get this straight. You would rather be a sentient, weeping sore on a landscape of festering garbage for all eternity than do a job for me?"
"Correct," Noctar said, his soul-voice flat. He turned to the God of Death. "Death god Mortis. The landfill judgment can be processed. I am at peace and I'm not interested in his 'internship'."
Mortis looked almost sympathetic, for a skeleton. "See, Byte? He's resolved. You can't reason with that level of self-destructive pettiness. It's admirable in its purity." His bony finger hovered over the [CONFIRM_REASSIGNMENT] button.
"Wait!" Byte yelled, a frantic edge to his voice. He snatched a shimmering tablet from the air. The tablet contained Noctar's complete soul-file. He scrolled through it, his eyes scanning at impossible speeds. The life of Noctar Ville, every line of code, every humiliation, every moment of genius crushed under the boot of the Vilheims, played out before him.
And the God of Tech began to smile. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of a shark that had just found a bleeding whale. The smile of a CEO who had just discovered a competitor's fatal flaw.
"Ah," Byte said, the sound dripping with revelation. "Oh, I see. This isn't about the work. This is about the terms."
Noctar said nothing. He didn't have to.
"Fine," Byte said, tossing the tablet aside. "Let's stop thinking of this as a divine mandate. Let's think of it as a contract. A consulting gig." He conjured a shimmering contract in the air.
"You perform one, and I mean one, service for me. You fix my bug. In return, I will personally see to it that your karmic debt is wiped completely clean. A full, unconditional pardon. You get a fresh start in the cycle of reincarnation. No slug and no landfill just A clean slate. That's the pay."
Noctar glanced at the contract. "Not enough."
Byte's eye twitched. "Not enough? I'm offering you salvation from an eternity of conscious rot!"
"And I'm offering you my unique skill set," Noctar countered, his tone that of a bored engineer in a budget meeting. "You said it yourself, 'beautiful, brutal but messy'. That doesn't come cheap. A clean slate is the baseline. What are the other benefits?"
Mortis chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "I like him. He's got spine. For a landfill that is."
Byte took a deep, calming breath made of ones and zeroes. "Fine. Fine! There will be... other benefits. A starter package, it's a standard Isekai Deluxe Kit."
"Vague," Noctar stated. "Be specific."
"TEN!" Byte exploded, his form glitching slightly. "Ten random draws from the Divine Gacha! Weapons, skills, items! Happy?!"
Noctar was silent for a long moment, processing.
< Ten loot boxes. From a god. The RNG is probably rigged, but the potential power curve... significant. Still. The core issue remains. He's downplaying the mission.>
"You said the issue wasn't a major problem," Noctar said, his metaphorical eyes narrowing. "If it's not a major problem, why do you need me? Why the high-cost consultant? You're lying. The problem is catastrophic, and you're desperate. That means my price just went up."
Mortis burst out laughing, a full-bodied, skeletal roar that shook the void. "HE CALLED YOUR BLUFF, BYTE! OH, THIS IS RICH!"
Byte looked utterly defeated. He ran a hand through his hair, which briefly turned into a cascade of binary. "...Fine. It's bad. The world you'd be sent to is called Ethron. Swords, magic, monsters, the whole cliché fantasy package. It runs on a system I designed, 'Gaia', which grants awakened humans powers to fight in dungeons, gather resources, all that good stuff."
"And?" Noctar prompted.
"And... it's developed a bug. A nasty one. Mortis, you tell him. You've been dealing with the fallout."
Mortis leaned forward, his blue flames dimming slightly. "The dungeons... mutate. They generate scenarios that are mathematically impossible to survive. They're not just hard; they're broken. They're death traps that defy their own internal logic. My intake from Ethron has spiked 700% in the last celestial cycle. It's a system-level error that's causing a localized apocalypse."
Noctar felt something he hadn't felt in decades: a spark of genuine, undiluted interest.
An urge, long buried under years of cynicisma and force slavery, stirred. The urge to touch the impossible, to see the code behind the magic. Noctar had always been a curious soul and on earth anime had satisfied some of that curiosity while also enhancing it.
"Okay," Noctar said, the word quiet but final.
Byte blinked. "Okay? Just like that?"
"On two conditions," Noctar continued, holding up two spectral fingers. "One: The starter pack is non-negotiable. It includes the ten draws, basic resources, and a localized interface.
Two: I get a sentient AI assistant. A full-spectrum, learning-capable entity based on my own designs. I'm not going into a bugged system without my own debugger."
Byte looked at Mortis, who just shrugged as if to say, "You started this." The death god clearly enjoying his cornered situation.
"Deal," Byte said, extending a hand that crackled with energy.
Noctar looked at the hand, then at the contract materializing before him. There was no pen. A thought was enough.
`// CONTRACT REVIEW: Karma_Wipe_PLUS_DivineGacha_x10_PLUS_StarterPack_PLUS_AI_Companion.`
`// MISSION_PARAMETERS: Debug_Reality_OS_Bug_Ethron.`
`// RISK_ASSESSMENT: Catastrophic. But preferable to sentient landfill.`
`// DECISION: Y/N.`
He willed his signature into existence after selecting Yes as the answer. A jagged, digital scrawl burned at the bottom of the contract with his initials. Byte sealed the contract with a sign of his own before folding it and sending it to his domain.
"Good," Byte said, his grin returning, wider and more unhinged than before. "Now... let's get you geared up. You're going to love what we've done with the place."
Noctar looked at the death god and then at the god of tech suddenly unsure of how well this will go.