The air didn't just get dry; it became a weapon. Every breath Han Jin took felt like swallowing a handful of hot needles.
Around him, the GSDI soldiers collapsed, their skin puckering and cracking as the very moisture was ripped from their cells.
Even the pond of asphalt he had created earlier shattered into a fine, grey powder.
The Intern looked down from the tower, his thumb hovering over the tablet.
"In a world without the Liquid state, your ladle is just a stick, and your stirring is just waving at the dust. How does it feel to have your medium deleted, Han Jin?"
[BING!]
[World Event: The Great Drought (Patch 2.0.1)]
[Rule: The Liquid state of matter is now Unsupported.]
[Warning: Biological failure imminent in 300 seconds.]
"Han... Jin..." Lin Xi stumbled from the doorway, her lips cracked and bleeding.
The Salt of Creation in her hand was glowing a dull, angry red, unable to find any water to purify.
Han Jin looked at the ladle.
He looked at the sand-filled fountains.
His golden eyes weren't fading; they were sharpening.
"You think the Liquid state is a physical property?" Han Jin's voice was a raspy growl.
"To a Developer, maybe. But to an Emperor, Liquid is an Intent.
It is the concept of Flow."
He didn't run for a drink.
He turned to the defeated Asura, Varkas, who was currently turning into a statue of red clay.
"Varkas! Your aura!" Han Jin shouted. "It's made of Blood-Lust. Does Lust have a physical state?"
Varkas looked up, his eyes dimming.
"It... it is a fire. A boiling... wait."
"It's a flow," Han Jin commanded.
"Link!"
He jammed the Rusty Paperclip into the Elysian Tuning Fork attached to his ladle, then struck the ladle against Varkas's cracked armor.
THUMMMM...
"I'm not linking to water," Han Jin roared, his voice echoing through the desiccated courtyard.
"I'm linking the Concept of Flow from Varkas's Blood-Lust to the Concept of Humidity in the air!"
[BING!]
[Warning: Illegal Conceptual Bridge!]
[User is attempting to liquefy Emotion!]
"I'm not just liquefying it," Han Jin gritted his teeth, his skin starting to flake away. "I'm distilling it!"
He began to stir the dry, dusty air with the Tuning Ladle.
He didn't move it like a sword; he moved it like a whisk.
The air around the ladle began to shimmer. It wasn't water...it was a translucent, glowing violet substance: Liquid Intent.
As Han Jin stirred, the violet liquid began to condense out of the Dry air.
It defied the Intern's patch because it wasn't H2O; it was the raw, metaphysical essence of fluidity itself.
"Impossible!" The Intern's fingers danced across his tablet.
"I've locked the molecular vibration of the Liquid state! You can't just... vibe a new one into existence!"
"Watch me," Han Jin said.
He swung the ladle, sending a spray of the violet liquid toward the command tower. Where the Fluidity touched, the dry sand in the fountains instantly turned back into rushing water.
The cracked skin of the soldiers smoothed over. The Liquid state was being Re-installed by force.
[BING!]
[Conflict Detected: System Patch vs. Emperor's Intent]
[Result: Logic Paradox. The Dry World is being Overwritten.]
Han Jin didn't stop.
He used the Elysian Tuning Fork to find the IP Address of the Intern's tablet.
"You like patches?" Han Jin asked, his eyes locked on the tower.
"Here's a Zero-Day Vulnerability for you."
He Linked the violet liquid in his ladle to the Intern's Tablet.
SPLAT
A glob of the Liquid Intent hit the tower's side, but the effect was digital.
The Intern's tablet suddenly began to leak literal purple ink from its screen.
The code on the display started to melt and drip onto the Intern's shoes.
"My tablet! It's... it's dissolving?!" The Intern panicked, trying to wipe the screen, but his fingers just slipped through the liquid icons.
"The concept of Flow works on data, too," Han Jin said, walking toward the tower.
"And right now, your authority is leaking away."
The Intern looked at the melting tablet, then at the God-Emperor walking through a courtyard that was rapidly returning to life. He realized he had underestimated a "Legacy File" that had survived the deletion of an entire universe.
"This... this isn't over!" The Intern shouted, his body beginning to flicker as he prepared to disconnect.
"The Administrator won't be happy about this rollback!"
"Tell the Administrator," Han Jin said, raising his ladle, "that if he wants to patch my world, he'd better come down here and write the code by hand."
The Intern vanished in a mess of purple static.
Han Jin slumped to his knees, the Tuning Ladle losing its glow.
The air was moist again.
The water was flowing. But as he looked at the Paperclip, he saw it had turned a dark, burnt black.
[BING!]
[Warning: The Rusty Paperclip has reached Maximum Stress.]
[New Item: The Charred Link of Fate]
"Han Jin!" Lin Xi ran to him, catching him before he hit the ground.
"The Second Beta..." Han Jin whispered, looking at the charred paperclip.
"It's not a game. It's a De-fragmentation. They're trying to merge us into a single, unified reality. And we're the part they want to delete."
He looked at the sky. For a brief moment, he didn't see blue. He saw the Source Code of the Multiverse, and it was written in the blood of a thousand dead Emperors.
Authors Note:-
Support with power stones and collections