The Royal Capital: Valtoria Industries Shop2:30 AM.
Dante wiped the blood from his shotgun. The adrenaline was still pumping through his veins, sharp and cold.
"System," Dante commanded. "Status."
[Threat Neutralized.][Current Funds: 22,000 Gold.][Ammo Reserves: Low.]
"They won't stop with assassins," Dante muttered, kicking Pyre's corpse over. "The Guild is arrogant, but they aren't stupid. When these men don't report back, they'll send a cleanup crew."
He walked to the shattered display case.
"I need a kill zone," Dante planned, his eyes scanning the shop floor. "I'll rig the entrance with a tripwire-triggered Claymore. I can use the glass shards as shrapnel. I'll fortify the mezzanine with steel plating. When they breach, I'll turn this shop into a blender."
He began to move, his mind racing with blueprints. He was confident. He had killed a Wyrm. He had killed assassins. He had the System.
"Fabricate: Pressure Plate. Fabricate: Black Powder Canister."
Blue light flickered as he worked. He was turning his shop into a fortress. He anticipated a squad of Battle Mages—maybe ten men. He calculated the angles. He calculated the kill ratios.
"Let them come," Dante snarled, placing a rigged canister behind the counter. "I'll bury them in their own arrogance."
[System Alert][Proximity Warning Detected.]
Dante checked his HUD. "More assassins? Good. I need target practice."
[Analyzing Threat...][Mana Level: 0.0000][Magic Signature: NULL.]
Dante frowned. "Zero mana? Is it a civilian? A guard?"
The holographic text turned a violent, static-filled red. It flickered, distorting Dante's vision.
[Threat Assessment: RECALCULATING.][Threat Level: INFINITE.]
"Infinite?" Dante scoffed, checking his shotgun. "System, you're glitching. How can a target with no magic be a threat?"
[Warning: Dimensional Resonance Detected.][Warning: Logic Gate Failure.][Source: Approaching from the East.]
Dante paused. The System had identified a Uranium-mutated dragon instantly. Until now, it could identify anything and everything. Why was it panicking over someone with zero magic?
"System, clarify. Is it the Grand Magus? Is he cloaking his mana?"
The text scrambled, letters bleeding into unreadable symbols.
[NEGATIVE. TARGET HAS NO MANA.][WARNING: OTHERWORLDLY SIGNATURE DETECTED.][Entity Identification: IMPOSSIBLE.][Survival Probability in Combat: 0%.]
Dante froze. The wrench in his hand clattered to the floor.
Otherworldly?
For a split second, a desperate hope flared in Dante's chest. Was this another transmigrator? Someone from Earth who had also been given a System? Could he reason with them?
But the System offered no explanation. It simply kept flashing warnings, flooding his vision with red text that screamed a single, impossible statistic: Chance of Victory: 0%.
Zero percent?
Even against the Wyrm, the System had given him a 12% chance before the Railgun. Zero meant absolute certainty. It meant physics wouldn't help him.
"System, scan for weakness. I have Uranium. I have gold. I can build another Railgun."
[Simulation Failed.][Simulation Failed.][CRITICAL ALERT: HOST SIGNATURE EXPOSED.][RUN! RUN! RUN! PLEASE! HIDE NOW!]
Dante felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter air. The System wasn't just warning him; it sounded... panicked. It was acting like a child hiding from a monster.
He didn't question it. The System had never begged before.
"Elara!" Dante screamed, sprinting for the back room where she was sleeping. "Wake up! We're leaving! NOW!"
"My Lord?" Elara stumbled out, rubbing her eyes. "What about the gold?"
"Forget the gold!" Dante roared, grabbing her arm and dragging her toward the back exit. "Move!"
He kicked the heavy reinforced door open, aiming for the alleyway.
But the alley wasn't there.
The world outside the door had been replaced by white static. A dense, unnatural fog swirled, erasing the cobblestones, the buildings, the very air.
And standing in the center of the nothingness, was a Silhouette.
It looked like a man in white robes, but the edges of his form blurred into the fog. He wasn't walking. The world was simply moving around him.
[ALERT: VISUAL CONTACT ESTABLISHED.][ALERT: EXISTENCE DELETION IMMINENT.]
Dante froze. He hadn't even stepped outside, yet his skin began to vibrate. The atoms of his body were being pulled apart just by perceiving the entity.
The Silhouette stopped. It turned its head slowly.
It didn't have a face. Just a void of static where eyes should be.
"He sees us," Dante choked out, dropping to his knees as the pressure crushed him. "It's over."
The figure raised a hand.
But before the white light could erase them, the System froze. The red panic warnings vanished.
A new text appeared. It wasn't red. It wasn't blue.
It was Gold.
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS GRANTED.][CREATOR INTERFERENCE DETECTED.][INITIATING DIMENSIONAL SHIFT: TIMELINE B.]
"Admin?" Dante whispered, his eyes widening as he read the golden text. The fear of the entity outside was momentarily replaced by a different kind of terror—existential dread.
"Creator?" he stammered, staring at the floating words, his mind reeling. "You mean... your creator? The one who built the System?"
He didn't get an answer.
The air around them didn't dissolve—it shattered. The reality of the shop, the capital, and the white fog peeled away like burning paper.
Dante felt a sensation of falling, not through space, but through time.
CRASH.
Dante hit the ground hard.
He gasped, scrambling to his feet, shotgun raised.
He wasn't in the shop. He wasn't in the capital.
He was standing in a snow-covered forest, the wind howling through pine trees. The air was freezing. The sky was a different shade of grey.
Elara was beside him, unconscious in the snow from the shock of the transit.
Dante looked around wildly. He recognized the mountain range in the distance. They were near the Borderlands.
[System Rebooting...][Temporal Displacement Complete.][Current Location: Timeline 882-Alpha (Parallel Universe).][Note from Administrator: "I have shifted you to an echo. One of infinite timelines. It will take time for Him to find this specific frequency again. But do not mistake this for safety. To balance the equation, the Dante of this timeline was swapped to your previous coordinates. He died in your place. Do not waste the life bought with his deletion. Prove you are worthy of this power. Grow stronger. When He returns, you must be ready to kill a God."]
The gold text faded, returning to the standard blue.
Dante stared at the message, his breath trembling in the cold air.
"Kill a God?" Dante whispered, his voice cracking. "With what? Guns? That thing erased reality by looking at it."
He looked at the unconscious Elara, then at the vast, indifferent sky. The adrenaline crashed, leaving only a hollow, crushing weight in his chest.
"It's impossible," Dante laughed, a broken, hysterical sound. He sank into the snow, burying his face in his hands. "I'm just a bug. I'm not even worthy of being a glitch in their system."
For the first time since arriving in this world, Dante Von Valtoria wasn't planning. He wasn't calculating. He was simply despairing.
The Observation Deck - Beyond Reality
In a place that was not a place, a being of pure code and light watched a screen.
It observed the small, trembling heat signature of Dante in the snow of Timeline 882-Alpha.
"...Kill a God..." The Administrator mused, the voice echoing in the void. "Well, I know that isn't possible."
The being swiped a hand, bringing up millions of other screens. Each one showed a different world, a different protagonist. Some were knights, some were mages, some were engineers like Ryan. Most of them were dead.
"...I have reincarnated millions of people from different worlds just for the sake of my entertainment. They all break eventually."
The Administrator looked back at Dante, who was shivering in the snow, terrified and broken.
"...Though I would be lying if I didn't think that the success of this order would bring me immense entertainment. Run, little variable. Let's see how long you last."
Timeline A - The Void
The Silhouette stood amidst the swirling white dust of what used to be the alleyway.
It lowered its hand. The space where the Rogue Node had been was empty. But it wasn't just empty; it was replaced.
A different biological signature—the Dante of the parallel timeline—had been swapped in for a nanosecond before being erased by the deletion beam. A perfectly balanced equation.
The Entity tilted its head, the static of its face rippling.
"...Signal Lost. Displacement detected..."
The voice resonated with the weight of a collapsing star, shaking the very fabric of the void.
"...Interference Signature: Administrator Class. Source: Masked."
The Entity paused. The human vessel it had just erased was irrelevant; it didn't even register Dante's existence. Its attention was fixed on the lingering traces of the dimensional shift.
"...Rogue System... still lingering."
"...Who is behind this act? Unknown."
The Entity looked down at the empty space where the insignificant human had cowered.
"...Why utilize our Technology? Why gift it to a being such as this?"
The Entity began to dissolve, fading back into the space between dimensions, abandoning the dead timeline.
"...Illogical."