The tea was cold.
Arthur stared into the chipped ceramic cup, watching the reflection of the bruised purple sky. Even after killing Zeus, even after reaching Level 1100, the taste of a cheap 10-cent tea in the slums felt more real than all the divine nectar in the heavens. Around him, the people of the slums—the scavengers, the porters, the forgotten—were looking at him not with fear, but with a silent, desperate hope.
"You really are one of us, aren't you?" the old man asked, his new arm—reborn from Arthur's mana—trembling slightly.
Arthur looked at the man's calloused fingers. "I still have the scars on my back from carrying S-Rank loot, old man. You never truly stop being a porter. You just change what you're carrying."
But the moment of peace was shattered.
The sky, which had been healing, suddenly turned a blinding, sterile white. It wasn't the golden light of the gods or the red mist of war. It was a light so pure it felt like it was erasing the world. There was no thunder, no sound at all. Just a terrifying, absolute silence that made every heart on Earth skip a beat.
[Warning!]
[Detection: The Source Code is being Rewritten.]
[Anomaly: The Origin has noticed the 'Error' in the Farm.]
[100x Multiplier Activated!]
[Danger Sense multiplied x100!]
Arthur dropped the tea cup. It shattered on the dirt floor, but the pieces didn't fall—they dissolved into white pixels before they could hit the ground.
"So, the landlord is finally here to evict the tenant," Arthur growled, his voice vibrating with the power of the Void.
The Messenger of Nothing
A rift opened in the middle of the slum. It wasn't a hole in space; it was a hole in existence. Out of the white void stepped a figure that looked like a man made of glass and starlight. He had no face, no clothes, and no weapon. He didn't breathe. He simply was.
"Arthur of Earth," the figure spoke. The voice didn't come from its mouth; it echoed inside Arthur's DNA. "You have performed an illegal operation. You have terminated the 'Great Twelve'—the maintenance crew of this Sector. You have seized the '100x Multiplier', a tool meant for cosmic balancing, and used it to disrupt the Harvest."
The slum dwellers fell unconscious instantly, their minds unable to process the presence of the being. Only Arthur stood his ground, his feet sinking into the dissolving earth.
"Illegal operation?" Arthur laughed, a cold, jagged sound. "Is that what you call my life? My mother's death? The millions of souls your gods ate? We aren't a 'Sector'. We are people. And your 'Harvest' is over."
The glass figure tilted its head. "A farm animal does not get to decide when the harvest ends. You are a glitch, Arthur. A porter who carried a weight he was never meant to touch. I am here to delete the glitch and reset the Sector to Version 1.0."
The figure raised a hand, and suddenly, the entire city began to disappear. Buildings, trees, and even the air were being turned into raw data and sucked into the white light.
100x Multiplier: Overload
Arthur felt his own body starting to fray at the edges. His Dark Void armor was being peeled away like old paper. This wasn't a fight against a god; this was a fight against the very code of the universe.
"You think you can just delete us?" Arthur roared. "I've spent my whole life being told I didn't matter. I've been treated like a zero for twenty years. You want to see what happens when you multiply a 'Zero' by a hundred?"
[Ding!]
[100x Multiplier Activated!]
[Skill 'Void Existence' multiplied x100!]
[Concept: 'The Unforgettable Error'!]
Arthur's body stopped dissolving. The violet energy in his core flared up, turning into a deep, abyssal black that even the white light couldn't erase. He lunged forward, not with a sword, but with his bare fist.
The impact caused a shockwave that reset the 'Deletion' for miles. The buildings that had turned into pixels suddenly snapped back into reality.
"I am a porter!" Arthur screamed, his fist pressing against the chest of the starlight figure. "And I've carried the weight of my mother's coffin! I've carried the weight of every insult! I've carried the weight of a world that didn't want me! You cannot delete a weight this heavy!"
[100x Multiplier Activated!]
[Physical Impact multiplied x100!]
[Force: 500,000,000 Newtons!]
The glass figure cracked. For the first time, the sterile white light was stained by a drop of violet blood.
"Impossible," the Messenger whispered. "A mortal soul cannot sustain a multiplier of this magnitude. Your core should have exploded."
"My core exploded a long time ago," Arthur hissed, grabbing the Messenger by its starlight throat. "In a dungeon, while my girlfriend watched me die. What you see now is just the ghost of a man who refuses to stay dead."
The Architect's Message
Arthur slammed the Messenger into the ground, the impact creating a crater that went miles deep into the Earth's crust. He raised his 'Void-Render' blade, the metal humming with the power of a thousand dead suns.
"Who sent you?" Arthur demanded, his boot on the Messenger's chest. "Who is the 'Architect'?"
The Messenger looked up, its faceless head reflecting Arthur's own angry face. "The Architect is the one who wrote the first line of code. The one who decided that some souls are fuel and some are masters. You cannot win, Arthur. Even if you kill me, the Source will simply send a 'format' command. The entire star system will be wiped clean."
"Then I'll go to the Source and break the keyboard," Arthur said.
[Ding!]
[100x Multiplier Activated!]
[Skill 'Soul Extraction' multiplied x100!]
Arthur didn't just kill the Messenger; he tore the information out of its being. Images flooded his mind—the creation of the 'System', the thousands of planets like Earth that had been harvested before, and the location of the 'Origin Forge'—the place where the multipliers and the gods were made.
[Level Up! Host reached Level 1200!]
[New Quest: 'The Siege of the Origin Forge'!]
[Reward: The Truth behind the 100x Multiplier.]
The Messenger dissolved into white ash, and the sky slowly returned to its natural blue. But Arthur knew the peace was a lie. The 'Origin' wasn't done. It was just preparing a bigger 'deletion'.
A Moment of Humanity
Arthur walked back to the old man, who was just starting to wake up. The slum was quiet now. The miracle of healing had stuck, but the fear was still there.
Arthur looked at his own reflection in a puddle of water. He didn't look like the skinny, tired porter anymore. He looked like a god. But inside, he still felt the same hollow ache.
"I have to go," Arthur whispered to the old man.
"Will you come back?" the man asked.
Arthur looked up at the stars, knowing that the 'Origin Forge' was hidden somewhere in the constellation of Orion. "If I don't, there won't be a 'back' to come to. Keep the tea warm, old man. I still owe you for this one."
Arthur flared his mana, his violet wings spanning the width of the city. With a boom that broke the sound barrier, he launched himself toward the stars.
[Status: Arthur]
[Level: 1200]
[Current Location: Exiting Earth's Atmosphere.]
[Goal: Kill the Creator.]
The porter was no longer carrying bags. He was carrying the fate of a galaxy. And his 100x multiplier was just getting warmed up.