The courtyard trembled beneath Ethan's feet as he sprinted straight toward the Administrator.
The deletion field the creature was preparing had grown so large that the air around it warped like melted glass, distorting the world in pulsing waves.
Every instinct screamed at him to run—hide, flee, escape the annihilation radiating outward like a silent roar.
But he didn't stop.
He couldn't.
Because behind him, dozens of students huddled behind shattered pillars, bleeding, injured, terrified. Lena was crouched behind a slab of broken concrete, her hands still pressed against the injured girl's chest to stabilise her breathing. And farther behind her—people Ethan didn't even know, trapped by the collapsing debris and the warping ground.
If Ethan ran now…
They would all be erased.
Ash hovered beside him, a distorted cube flickering violently.
[WARNING: RESET CHARGE—70%]
"How long do I have?!" Ethan yelled.
[ESTIMATE: 8 SECONDS.]
"Great. Fantastic. Totally doable." Ethan tightened his grip on the rebar. "I'm going to die."
[CORRECTION: POSSIBILITY OF SURVIVAL—38%.]
"That's not helping!"
The Administrator stretched its arms outward, pulling streams of space like ribbons, gathering them into a swirling singularity between its hands. The air crackled with void static. The sky dimmed. The cracks pulsed faster and faster.
Ethan pushed his legs harder, aggression evolution still burning inside him like wildfire. Every footstep felt like sprinting through molasses, but somehow he forced his body forward.
Behind him, Lena screamed, "Ethan, STOP! You can't fight that!"
He didn't answer.
He leapt.
The Administrator turned its head, registering the incoming threat. Its faceless visage flashed with unstable symbols—like a glitched error message.
Overdrive surged.
Ethan raised the rebar and slammed it downward at the Administrator's head—but the creature shifted sideways, almost instantaneously. The rebar passed through a fragment of its shifting form, scattering digital shards of light.
The Administrator countered, its arm slicing horizontally like a scythe. Ethan ducked barely in time. The blade of reality blur sliced cleanly through the space where his neck had been.
A ripple of nausea hit as he felt the edge graze his cheek—not skin, not flesh, but existence.
His cheek tingled with cold emptiness.
"That should've erased my head…"
[PHASE SHIFT PARTIAL REACTION DETECTED.]
"Good to know," Ethan muttered, his heart pounding.
Reset charge continued rising, a countdown ticking invisibly behind his eyes.
[RESET—80%]
The Administrator glided toward him, its shape flickering.
It didn't want to fight anymore.
It wanted to finish charging and wipe everything clean.
Ethan gritted his teeth. "Not happening."
He lunged again—
—only to feel something snap inside his body.
The Overdrive evolution flared too hard.
Pain shot down his arm. His legs buckled for half a second. His breath caught.
[WARNING: AGGRESSION OVERDRIVE UNSTABLE]
[MUSCLE DAMAGE LIKELY]
"No—no no no—not now!"
The Administrator raised both hands toward the sky.
[RESET—90%]
The swirling singularity above the courtyard pulsed, growing brighter. Buildings flickered like unstable holograms. Even the air seemed to glitch.
Ash spun, flashing red.
[RECOMMENDATION: INTERRUPTING RESET IS IMPOSSIBLE.]
[ALTERNATIVE: DESTROY ADMINISTRATOR CORE.]
"Where is the core?!" Ethan shouted.
Ash rotated.
[INSIDE ITS CHEST.]
Ethan blinked. "The part protected by its entire body?!"
[YES.]
"Of course. Why not?"
The Administrator began pulling its hands down, dragging the glowing singularity toward the ground. If it reached the courtyard—
Everything would be gone.
Everyone would be gone.
And Ethan wasn't sure whether that included him. Or if he'd simply be erased so completely that even his atoms forgot they had ever existed.
He sprinted.
This wasn't a careful fight.
This wasn't a strategy.
This was desperation.
The Administrator fired a ripple of reality tear—
Ethan Phase Shifted, slipping milliseconds to the side, the ripple carving a void through the air beside him.
[PHASE SHIFT COOLDOWN: 6 seconds]
Another deletion blade swung—
Ethan ducked and rolled across the ground, skin scraping concrete.
He was close.
So close—
The Administrator finally looked directly at him.
For the first time, it reacted emotionally—
Or something close enough to be mistaken for emotion.
Shock. Alarm.
The symbols across its mask pulsed brightly.
Ethan was too close to stop.
He drove the rebar forward—
—but the Administrator grabbed it, its shifting hand forming a razor-edged grip around the metal.
Ethan's arm nearly broke from the force.
The Administrator twisted—
—and the rebar dissolved.
It didn't snap.
It didn't bend.
It vanished.
Ethan froze. His only weapon—gone.
The Administrator raised a hand, preparing to erase him next.
[RESET—97%]
Only seconds left.
Lena's voice reached him through the chaos.
"ETHAN! GET OUT OF THERE!"
He looked back.
Her eyes were wide, terrified.
Her hand outstretched.
She wasn't begging him to save everyone.
She was begging him to save himself.
Ethan's chest clenched.
He turned back to the Administrator—and something inside him shifted.
Not instinct.
Not power.
Resolve.
He stepped forward instead of back.
The Administrator sliced downward with its void blade—
Ethan grabbed its arm.
The moment his hands touched its unstable form, his system screamed.
[CONTACT WITH ADMINISTRATOR—UNSAFE]
[RISK: ERASURE—97%]
[CONDITIONS MET: EVOLUTION TRIGGER AVAILABLE]
"Do it!" Ethan roared. "NOW!"
The system hesitated—glitching, struggling to process the overlapping, impossible energies.
[Searching for evolution compatible with:
• Administrator energy
• Overdrive instability
• Phase Shift residue
• Lethal combat intent]
The Administrator tried to pull away. Ethan held his arm tighter, locking it in place.
[EVOLUTION FOUND.]
Time froze.
Space trembled.
Ash's light snapped bright white.
[You have evolved: NULL STRIKE]
Your body generates a point of localised anti-system force.
A precise strike can disrupt or collapse system-bound beings.]
Ethan felt it immediately—
—a cold pressure forming around his right hand, like he was holding a miniature black hole.
The Administrator jerked, reading the threat.
Too late.
Ethan pulled his fist back—
—
—
—and slammed it straight into the centre of the Administrator's chest.
Glass shattering.
Digital static.
Cosmic pressure.
The Administrator's core flared—cracked—then burst into a spray of white-gold fragments.
The deletion field collapsed instantly.
The vortex in the sky imploded.
The cracks healed.
The air stilled.
The Administrator's body convulsed, flickered, then dissolved into countless shards of shimmering data that evaporated into the sky.
Silence fell.
Ethan dropped to one knee, chest heaving, vision swimming.
Pain rippled through every muscle.
Lena rushed to him, grabbing his shoulders.
"Ethan! Ethan—can you hear me?"
He nodded weakly.
Behind them, students stared at him with awe, fear, and disbelief.
Ethan didn't care.
He looked up at S-level cracks still faintly glowing in the sky.
Ash hovered closer.
[WARNING.]
Ethan blinked. "What now…?"
Ash pulsed.
[YOU HAVE KILLED AN ADMINISTRATOR EXECUTIONER.]
[MORE WILL COME.]
Ethan closed his eyes.
This was only the beginning.