The thousand red pens did not move like arrows.
They moved like surgical strikes.
Each one was a needle of absolute negation, aimed at the "Plot Points" that made Ren who he was.
The Critic stood in the mud with his single red eye glowing with a cold and professional boredom.
"Chapter One: The Entrance," the Critic announced.
"Reason for deletion: Unoriginal. Derivative of better works. Strike."
One of the red pens blurred.
Ren didn't have time to dodge.
The pen struck his left shoulder and didn't draw blood.
It drew Grey Space.
Ren's memory of the first day at Aegis Academy began to flicker.
The face of the first instructor, the smell of the ozone in the courtyard, the feeling of his first rank it all began to dissolve into a formless mist.
Ren fell to one knee as the "Experience" was ripped out of his soul.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Identity Corruption: 15%.
Status: The Early Chapters are being Redlined.
"Chapter Five: The First Betrayal," the Critic continued, his voice like dry paper.
"Reason for deletion: Excessive melodrama. Poor pacing. Strike."
Five more pens lunged.
The older Anya stepped in front of Ren, opening the Unedited History.
The white starlight from the book formed a wall of raw, unpolished text.
The red pens hit the wall and were caught in a web of contradictory plotlines.
"You can't edit a story that hasn't been finished, Critic!" the older Anya shouted.
Her white hair was glowing so brightly it began to burn the muddy air.
"Ren isn't a draft anymore. He's a Living Archive!"
The Critic tilted his white-masked head.
"An archive is just a storage unit for failures," he stated.
"And failures are meant to be recycled."
The Critic raised his silver briefcase.
The thousand pens began to rotate, creating a vortex of red ink that started to drain the color from the entire battlefield.
The knights of Valerius were already becoming transparent, their armor turning into sketches.
Ren looked at the grey space in his shoulder.
He felt the void growing, eating away at his logic.
He didn't panic.
He used the Architect's Mind to analyze the Critic's attack.
"Strategy 121," Ren whispered, his voice a low vibration.
"If the Editor is in the room... he is no longer the Author."
"He is just another character with a Specific Role."
Ren looked at the Critic's crimson suit.
"Anya, the older one. What is the Critic's fatal flaw in the original history?"
The older woman struggled to hold the book against the red vortex.
"He's a perfectionist, Ren! He can't handle a Plot Hole!"
"He has to fix every error he sees!"
Ren's eyes turned a brilliant, obsidian black.
He stood up, ignoring the grey mist in his shoulder.
He didn't draw the Editor's Blade to strike.
He turned the blade toward Himself.
"Ren, what are you doing?!" the young Anya cried out.
Ren drove the obsidian scalpel into his own shadow.
He didn't just strike it.
He began to De-render his own importance.
[SOVEREIGN COMMAND: THE NARRATIVE HOLE]
Suddenly, Ren's presence on the battlefield didn't just dim.
It became a Void.
To the system, Ren was no longer the "Protagonist."
He was a massive, gaping error in the middle of the scene.
A character who had no name, no rank, and no purpose.
The red pens stopped their rotation.
They hovered in the air, their tips twitching with a frantic uncertainty.
The Critic's red eye began to pulse with a rapid, alarming light.
His programming was screaming at him.
A plot hole of this magnitude couldn't be ignored.
"Correct... the... error..." the Critic wheezed.
His pristine crimson suit began to glitch, turning into a mess of red scribbles.
"Identity... missing. Logic... broken. Must... fix..."
The Critic didn't attack Ren.
He was forced by his own nature to Fill the Hole.
He stepped into Ren's shadow, his silver briefcase opening as he tried to pour every red pen into the void to stabilize the story.
"Now!" Ren roared.
Ren didn't pull his shadow back.
He used the Root Key to lock the Critic inside the paradox.
He wasn't fighting the Critic.
He was Archiving him.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Illegal Capture: The High Critic.
Status: Trapped in a Non-Euclidean Plot Hole.
The red vortex collapsed.
The color returned to the knights of Valerius.
The grey mist in Ren's shoulder solidified back into flesh, though a jagged scar of white noise remained.
The Critic was gone.
In his place, Ren's shadow was now a deep, pulsing crimson.
The shadow didn't follow the light anymore.
It had a silver briefcase and a red eye.
"You... you ate him?" the young Anya whispered, stepping back in horror.
"I integrated him," Ren said.
His voice carried a new, heavy resonance.
"He wanted to edit my life. Now, I have his Permissions."
Ren looked at the sky.
The indigo of Valerius was returning, but it was different now.
He could see the "Margins" of the world.
He could see the page numbers in the corners of the horizon.
But the older Anya didn't look relieved.
She was staring at the Unedited History with a look of absolute terror.
"Ren... the book," she whispered.
"The Critic wasn't the one who sent the pens."
Ren looked at the book.
A new page had been written in a handwriting that looked exactly like Ren's own.
[THE END OF THE CRITIC]
[AND THE BEGINNING OF THE SOVEREIGN WAR]
"If the Critic is gone," Ren said, "then who is the one writing the new pages?"
Suddenly, a massive, golden door appeared in the center of the battlefield.
It wasn't a wooden door this time.
It was a gate made of solid Diamond.
And standing in front of the gate was a man Ren hadn't seen in a very long time.
It was Subject 001.
The original Silas.
But he wasn't wearing a cadet uniform or a lab coat.
He was wearing a crown made of the same starlight as the dragon.
And he was holding a golden pen.
"Congratulations, 004," Silas said, his voice echoing across the Kingdom.
"You've successfully cleared the 'Crossover' trial."
"But you made a mistake. You forgot that in a story with two leads, only one can survive the Final Volume."
Silas raised the golden pen.
"Welcome to the Sovereign Rank Diamond."
"I am the Author's new favorite. And you... you're just the Antagonist now."