Death was absolutely terror-struck and utterly dumbfounded. The mortal thread she had clipped just a few moments prior did not belong to a mere human—the soul currently resting in her cosmic ledger was the sovereign master of both the Beast of Desire and the Beast of Maternity.
Amou's fingers remained brutally clamped over her face, an unbearable, agonising vibration spreading rapidly through the entirety of Death's conceptual existence due to the sheer reality-warping pressure the Primordial was exerting.
It was a terrifying reality: if Amou continued to squeeze for just a fraction of a second longer, the absolute concept of the End would simply cease to exist, leaving the universe completely unable to process mortality.
Amou had explicitly demanded the immediate return of Amon's soul matrix, but executing such an administrative bypass was no simple task. It would fracture the laws of Creation.
The Council of Deities would undoubtedly be furious at such an action—but the fury of the heavens was an absolute joke compared to the tangible, world-ending cataclysm currently radiating from the two Primordial Beasts standing before her in the snow. One was pinning her down as if she were a common insect, while the other casually guarded Amon's reconstructed vessel, ignoring the mortal girl weeping helplessly at his side.
Death looked into the abyss of her options and knew exactly what she had to do to survive.
"A-Alright... Madam..." Her melodic, ancient voice was strained, shaking with absolute, compliant terror. "I-I will return... your master's soul immediately..."
With a contemptuous flick of her wrist, Amou loosened her iron grip, allowing the supreme arbiter of life's end to collapse onto the frozen ground with a pathetic, heavy thud.
Gasping for a breath she didn't physically need, Death scrambled up from the snow and reached her pale hand directly into thin air, tearing open a microscopic rift into the transit lanes of the Soul Palace.
In the next microsecond, a blinding, flawlessly radiant orb manifested in her palm, pulsing rhythmically with a familiar signature. Trembling violently, Death turned toward Amou and bowed until her silver hair swept the ice, humbly offering the glowing essence upwards.
"This... this is your master's soul, Madam," Death whispered, her strained voice carrying an almost frantic politeness.
Amou snatched the orb from her palm without a word, her cold, unblinking gaze locked entirely on Amon's motionless form. She walked over to the corpse and gently pressed the glowing sphere directly into the centre of his chest. The orb vanished into his skin like water into sand.
A sharp, violent gasp rattled through the clearing as Amon's body suddenly jerked. His chest violently rose and fell, his lungs drawing in a massive, ragged gulp of the freezing winter air as vital warmth rapidly flooded back into his pale skin. Life had officially re-established its dominance over his biology. However, based on the shallow, rhythmic patterns of his breathing, it was clear his consciousness was buried deep within a recovery cycle; the sheer trauma of the temporal bullet meant it would take his mind some time to fully calibrate and awaken.
Seraphina stared at the scene, her mind completely shattered by the absolute impossibility of the events unfolding before her. Looking down at Amon's living, breathing, yet unconscious form, her suffocating grief vanished in an instant, replaced by a massive, overwhelming wave of profound relief and happiness. But beneath the relief, a terrifying realisation washed over her. She had just watched her classmate's pets casually force the Grim Reaper to return her classmate's life.
"Tiamat. Seraphina," Amou's cold, lifeless voice sliced through the wind, completely devoid of any emotion as she stared out into the distant, blinding blizzard. "I want you both to transport him back to the safety of the Academy medical bay immediately. I have some highly pressing, unfinished business to take care of.
The sheer, bloodthirsty weight behind those words made it explicitly clear that a mass murder was about to occur. Without waiting for a response, Amou's towering form simply vanished from the spot, leaving behind shimmering particles.
"Why exactly are you still standing there?" Tiamat asked, slowly turning her neutral, terrifyingly vacant amethyst gaze back toward Death. Her voice was flat, carrying a clinical chill. "Do you require me to send you back to your jurisdiction manually?"
An uneasy, profoundly ominous aura flared from Tiamat's silhouette. Death's blindfolded head nodded in immediate, frantic disapproval.
She was acutely aware that if the Beast of Maternity chose to 'send' her back, the damage to her existence would be catastrophically more painful compared to Amou's simple grip. After all, within the hierarchy of the Primordials, the concept of Maternity was infinitely more ruthless, fiercely protective, and entirely unforgiving when it came to the safety of the things they claimed as theirs.
. . .
"I truly didn't expect a failure of this magnitude from you, Amon," Masha's voice drifted through the space, heavily tinged with a sharp, melodic playfulness. "Someone as meticulously calculating as you dying to something so structurally basic... it is deeply underwhelming, I must say."
The moment the bullet had severed his cardiac matrix, Amon was not plunged into the dark void of the Soul Palace. Instead, he opened his eyes to find himself seated inside a familiar, pristine chamber—a room he had hoped to never physically visit again.
It was the liminal intersection where he and Masha conducted their meetings. Masha sat directly across from him on the plush, deep-crimson velvet sofa, her gleaming eyes staring at him with unadulterated amusement.
"I am a human, Masha," Amon replied. His voice remained exceptionally low, measured, and perfectly composed, though his knuckles lightly pressed into the fabric of the cushions. "There will inevitably be intervals where my performance drops below peak efficiency. It simply happened to be one of those times."
"You shouldn't be offering logical excuses, considering you possess [Mad Mind]," Masha chuckled softly, tilting her head back as her elegant laughter echoed off the walls. "You could have easily engaged the skill to avoid your death. But instead, you didn't do so, and died."
"If I utilise that skill continuously, it will degrade my sanity over time. You are fully aware of that parameter, Masha," Amon countered. He looked at her with a completely flat, neutral expression, his unique crimson eyes entirely devoid of any warmth. "I am actively calculating every variable to avoid the exact terminal fate of the original Amon Von Crown—the timeline where he went completely haywire because his sanity coefficient hit absolute zero."
"Engaging your system skill for a mere second wouldn't have caused any permanent damage to your consciousness, Amon," Masha noted, her gaze locking directly onto his. Her eyes were filled with a terrifyingly refined cosmic elegance, masking a very distinct, cutting mockery toward his current status. "Isn't this behavioural pattern identical to that event back then? The time when you tried to act oversmart, only to lose those innocent lives because of your own arrogant scheme?"
"That context was entirely different," Amon replied, his cadence unwavering, refusing to let his voice fracture.
Superficially, he appeared completely unbothered. But deep within the recesses of his soul, an absolute, burning loathing was aggressively consuming him.
He thoroughly, deeply despised his own complacency. He loathed how arrogant he had become, how entirely insufficient his power truly was. In the face of a genuine, critical situation, he had been forced to rely entirely on external variables to survive.
The sheer lack of individual, independent strength to resolve a high-tier crisis on his own terms filled his chest with a suffocating venom. Amon silently questioned himself: how many more times would he be forced to rely on others' intervention to drag him out of a lethal corner?
He had thought of himself as a mature, perfectly responsible person. But he wasn't. A truly mature and responsible person never allows complacency to cloud their awareness, and they never, under any circumstances, lack the raw individual power to secure their own survival.
"Your active streams give me the absolute highest tier of amusement throughout this genre, you know?" Masha spoke, her voice shifting into a fluid mix of playfulness and highly flirtatious mockery. "Watching you desperately claw at the narrative threads to rewrite the plot of the original novel, watching you try to escape the heavy, psychological trauma of losing those innocent lives during Costoria's birthday banquet... it provides me with a highly unique, exquisite kind of thrill and pleasure."
Masha smoothly rose from her seat, her elegant silhouette sauntering across the floor toward him with slow, deliberate steps. She slid onto the plush sofa directly beside him, casually wrapping a slender, pale arm around his neck, her presence radiating a cold, intoxicating pressure.
"I have personally managed and curated thousands of streams spanning a wide array of genres, Amon. I have even overseen high-tier progression streamers within your exact genre," she whispered, leaning in so close that her breath brushed against his cheek, her lips pulling into a sharp, predatory grin. "But you are the absolute first streamer I have ever encountered who manages to grant me so much raw thrill and pleasure... simply by showcasing your helplessness."
She paused, her fingers lightly tracing his collar. "You keep getting violently thrown into operational situations where you have an absolute zero-percent probability of winning through standard physical stats. It is the natural, cascading butterfly effect of your own narrative disruptions. Not a single one of these recent situations has been in your favour, and yet, you continue to survive. Not because you possess dominant strength, but because that brilliant, broken mind of yours keeps cheating those sure-lose situations. It makes perfect sense why you grew arrogant."
Amon looked away, his jaw tightening as he stared at the far wall. The blatant deflection amused Masha even more, a low, purring laugh vibrating in her throat.
"That arrogant attitude and your stubborn resistance towards me... they both give me the exact kind of delicious chills I wish to experience over and over again, every single day~"
"Can you please move?" Amon spoke, his tone dangerously low, tightly controlled to mask the turbulence in his chest. "I feel incredibly uncomfortable..."
To his slight surprise, Masha actually complied. She smoothly removed her arm from around his neck and slid a few inches away along the velvet cushions. "Better?" She smiled playfully, her voice dripping with a melodious, deliberate tease.
Amon didn't say a word. He simply closed his eyes and continued to keep his face averted—a resistance that immediately ticked off Masha. The playful atmosphere evaporated instantly. Moving with a sudden, predatory fluidness, she closed the distance again. This time, her fingers clamped firmly onto his chin, forcefully tilting his head up and wrenching his gaze back to lock with hers.
"I particularly do not like that attitude of yours, Amon," Masha hissed, her fingers dug in just enough to anchor him. "I am a top-class Streaming manager. High-tier entities across all Meta Domains are willing to sacrifice everything they own just to have a single chance of speaking with me. You are granted that luxury for free, alongside special treatment from me—and yet, you are so fucking ungrateful."
She stared directly into his unique red eyes with a cold, unforgiving glare that felt like an absolute vacuum. Her voice had completely lost its flirtatious playfulness, replaced instead by an ominous, crushing hostility that sent a genuine spike of visceral fear through Amon's chest.
"Can we please maintain... our professionalism?" Amon pleaded, his voice slightly shaken, a rare fracture appearing in his flawless composure.
Hearing the slight tremor in his plea, Masha slowly let go of his chin. Internally, the sight of his acute helplessness up close thrilled her to an intoxicating degree. A sharp, entirely unedited sensation spiked down her abdomen—a primal thrill she had never experienced in all her aeons of managing talent. She wanted to draw out that experience, to push him until he broke completely, but she strictly forced her boundaries back into place... for now.
"Anyways," Masha cleared her throat, smoothly resetting her posture as if the psychological assault had never occurred. "I apologise for getting carried away."
She stood up, smoothing down her elegant attire, and sauntered back across the room to her original plush sofa, facing Amon with a perfectly curated, corporate expression.
"The reason why I summoned your consciousness here is to notify you that your streaming channel has officially received a tier upgrade. You have successfully transitioned into a Silver-Rank Channel. This milestone unlocks the real-time viewers' donation, which subsequently enables the active Shop function for your profile."
Masha snapped her fingers with a crisp resonance. Behind her silhouette, a series of glowing, intricate geometric emblems manifested in the air.
"There are exactly six institutional ranks governing Streaming Channels: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Ruby. Bronze represents the foundational baseline, while Ruby stands as the absolute zenith of the streaming hierarchy. Each progressive rank upgrade scales your operational parameters, allowing you to receive ten times the maximum donation value of the preceding tier. At your current Silver rank, the maximum single donation threshold you can receive is capped at 100 Streaming Coins (SC). As your channel rank increases, your structural donation range will expand exponentially."
She explained the logistics in a flawless, professional tone, snapping the floating insignias out of existence before seamlessly manifesting smaller, physical tokens of them to dance across her palm.
"Your long-term objective under my management is exceptionally simple, Amon: scale your metrics to Ruby rank, and systematically hoard enough capital to purchase a Destiny Coupon."
Masha dissolved the tokens with a soft breath and manifested a blank, radiantly shining parchment coupon in her hand. The object vibrated with an absolute, undeniable cosmic weight.
"It allows the holder to formulate any singular wish, and it will be real. Countless legendary streamers before you have successfully acquired this coupon and had their desires granted. Do not make the amateur mistake of categorising it as an unobtainable item. It is entirely within your reach—provided you keep giving the audience the show they want to see."
Amon stared at her, completely dumbfounded as the implications of her explanation finally caught up with him.
"Wait... So, I didn't actually die?" he asked, a rare tone of pure, unedited surprise slipping through his voice.
"...Are we honestly doing this right now?" Masha looked at him, her corporate posture deflating into a flat, thoroughly disappointed expression. "Did you seriously manage to completely forget about your own Primordial pets? Amou almost permanently deleted the literal concept of Death for harvesting your soul back in the snow, and Tiamat patched your physical biology. You are technically alive right now, Amon. You are just completely unconscious."
"Oh..."
Amon was even more surprised to learn the sheer absurdity of the situation unfolding in the real world, but before he could process her words, his vision flickered. He looked down to see his liminal visage beginning to turn translucent, fading away into particles of light. It was an anomaly that had never happened during their previous meetings.
"It seems our designated meeting time is officially up." Masha sighed disappointedly, her shoulders slumping slightly as she realised she wouldn't get to prolong his psychological torment. "I had to summon your consciousness here on a highly restricted, limited-time meeting protocol since your brain is currently recovering from trauma. That is why you're disappearing."
She rose from her velvet seat and smoothly sauntered over to his rapidly dissolving form. Leaning down, she let her fingers gently brush against his fading cheek for a brief, lingering moment, her eyes locking onto his one last time.
"Be sure to provide me with lots of premium entertainment, m'kay?"
Her voice echoed softly in the pristine room just as Amon's consciousness shattered into pure golden light and completely disappeared.