Crimson light consumed everything—like being swallowed by the sun itself. Then, nothing.

  The memory of pressing 'YES' lingered in my consciousness as I plunged into the unknown. Darkness enveloped me, but calling it darkness would be like calling a black hole a shadow. This was absence in its purest form—no up, no down, no reference points. Even the boundaries of my own body felt theoretical as I floated, weightless yet somehow still present, my consciousness spread thin across what felt like infinite space.

  [TERMINUS PROTOCOL INITIATED]

  The notification hung suspended before me, its text perfectly visible despite the surrounding darkness. Unlike the usual clean lines of my system interface, these characters pulsed with unsettling crimson energy, each letter seemingly alive with purpose.

  Then, like a digital waterfall, more text began flowing beneath:

  [ACHIEVE THE FOLLOWING AS A SPECIES WITHOUT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF TERMINUS]

  [DEFEAT PINNACLE S-TIER BOSS SOLO – COMPLETE]

  Zarthus [S-tier Source, Level 100, LEXICON VORTEX(Cursed)]

  Zarthus... the Emperor himself. S-tier Source... Level 100. The absolute pinnacle of human achievement. Of course he could defeat an S-tier boss solo. But why was his ability marked as cursed? That detail never appeared in any news feeds.

  [DEFEAT PINNACLE BOSS ONE TIER HIGHER SOLO – COMPLETE]

  Volt [E-tier, Level 16, DOMAIN ENGINE(CURSED)]

  Me? My name on this list? The realization hit like a physical blow. The Void Reject wasn't just any D-tier entity—it was a D-tier PINNACLE boss. Thirteen levels above me. System mechanics made it virtually impossible to survive against a boss more than a few levels higher. The gap in stats, processing speed, and dimensional energy output increased exponentially with each level. Thirteen levels higher should have shattered my neural pathways, turned my organs to mush, collapsed my dimensional signature entirely.

  Yet somehow, I'd survived. Not just survived—succeeded. In doing so, I'd unknowingly checked a box in a cosmic checklist I hadn't known existed.

  [ACHIEVE CONQUEST SOLO SAME TIER – COMPLETE]

  Sable [C-tier, Level 39, OVERDRIVE CASCADE(CURSED)]

  I didn't recognize this name, but understood the achievement. Conquest—the complete extermination of all entities within a rift without completing objectives—was considered nearly impossible in equal-tier rifts. This would require fighting multiple same-tier boss monsters simultaneously; the energy expenditure alone would kill most raiders.

  A chill ran down my spine. How many impossible achievements had this protocol required?

  [REVERSE RIFT INVASION SOLO – COMPLETE]

  Caspian [A-tier, Level 59, INFINITE CIPHER (CURSED)]

  I had no idea what this meant. This Caspian person somehow left the rift on the other side and invaded the other dimension? And again—cursed trait. Every single person on this list had a cursed ability. This couldn't be coincidence.

  [REPEL S-TIER INVADING CIVILIZATION – COMPLETE]

  Zarthus [S-tier Source, Level 100, LEXICON VORTEX(CURSED)]

  Zarthus again, but this was public knowledge. Everyone knew the Emperor repelled the Convergence single-handedly, celebrated globally.

  [EVOLVE ONE ABILITY TO S-TIER PINNACLE – COMPLETE]

  Morgan [S-tier Bastion, Level 89, FORTUNE FABRICATOR(CURSED)]

  Morgan... one of the Emperor's Inner Circle. FORTUNE FABRICATOR—the ability to manipulate probability itself. Network vids claimed her discovery of ability evolutions was a complete game changer for S-tiers.

  [EVOLVE ONE ATTRIBUTE TO S-TIER PINNACLE – COMPLETE]

  Azeran [S-tier Knight, Level 69, FORCE AMPLIFIER(CURSED)]

  Azeran the Unyielding. His FORCE attribute was legendary—capable of shattering mountains with a single blow. I'd watched a documentary about him once. They said his attribute evolution was unprecedented, that no one understood how he'd achieved it.

  I laughed bitterly. Because it wasn't natural evolution at all. It was another requirement for whatever THIS was.

  [OBTAIN KNOWLEDGE ABOUT TERMINUS – COMPLETE]

  Vidvan [S-tier Ruler, Level 99, SYNAPTIC CARTOGRAPHY(CURSED)]

  Vidvan—the Lorekeeper. The oldest living raider on Earth other than the Emperor. His ability let him map and store infinite knowledge. He discovered what Terminus was... and then probably told Zarthus.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  [CREATE S-TIER ARTIFACT – COMPLETE]

  Kreyka [S-tier, Level 99, ENTROPIC MACHINE(CURSED)]

  Kreyka the Artificer. Her dimensional forge was referenced in almost every advanced crafting manual. Another piece clicked into place. The Null Shard—the artifact that appeared mysteriously last year and had since protected Pinnacle City from all rift incursions. It wasn't a gift from beyond as they claimed... it was a deliberately created component of this protocol.

  [CREATE SOURCE ESSENCE – COMPLETE]

  Zarthus [S-tier Source, Level 100, LEXICON VORTEX(CURSED)]

  I had no idea what this was.

  [OBTAIN LENS OF THE ALGORITHMIC ASCENDANT – COMPLETE]

  Zarthus [S-tier Source, Level 100, LEXICON VORTEX(CURSED)]

  Akamea [S-tier Ruler, Level 91, FEED DRIFT(CURSED)]

  Kesseo [S-tier Ruler, Level 95, EIDOLON NEXUS(CURSED)]

  Seyin [S-tier Ruler, Level 93, ECLIPTIC RESONANCE(CURSED)]

  Lao [S-tier Ruler, Level 99, DIMENSIONAL PARADOX(CURSED)]

  Wait no way…

  [COMBINE SOURCE ESSENCE WITH LENS OF THE ALGORITHMIC ASCENDANT TO EVOLVE ONE CURSED TRAIT TO NEMESIS – COMPLETE]

  Volt [?-tier, Level ???, ??????]

  And I was the final piece. My trait—whatever it truly was—needed to evolve beyond cursed to... NEMESIS? I struggled to comprehend. That's why I was brought to Moonstone City.

  [ALL REQUIREMENTS MET]

  [EARTH ASCENSION INITIATED]

  The realization crashed over me in waves of mounting horror. Every achievement, every impossible feat on that list had been building toward something beyond my comprehension. And I had just completed the sequence.

  "What have I done?" I whispered, my voice neither echoing nor dampening but simply existing momentarily before being swallowed by the void.

  My gaze moved to the final lines, understanding their implications with mounting dread:

  [SS TIER RIFTS UNLOCKED]

  [F-TIER RIFTS NO LONGER APPEAR ON EARTH]

  [NON-NATIVE F-TIER ENTITIES ON EARTH ERASED]

  "No," I whispered, cold sweat breaking out across my skin despite the void's absence of temperature. "No, no, no..."

  F-tier rifts were humanity's lifeline.

  The System's progression was designed as a careful ladder, each rung incrementally more dangerous than the last. F-tier rifts were the foundation—manageable challenges with reasonable survival rates for even the least gifted. They allowed humanity to supply and replenish necessary higher-tier raiders, to evolve and adapt to interdimensional threats without being overwhelmed.

  That foundation had just been obliterated. Without F-tier rifts, blanks would have to earn their traits in E-tier environments. The mortality rate would be catastrophic. Humanity's pipeline for new raiders would collapse overnight.

  And the non-native F-tier entities—the ones that had already emerged and integrated into Earth's ecosystem? Gone. Erased. Some of those entities were beneficial, providing resources.

  "I've doomed us," I said, the words falling into the void without impact. "This is extinction."

  The mental calculation was brutally simple. For every thousand potential raiders, perhaps one would survive. Within a generation, Earth's defender force would dwindle to insignificance. And when the higher-tier threats came—which they inevitably would—humanity would have no response. No defense. No future.

  The visions I'd experienced in the hospital suddenly made horrifying sense. The bald man with the white beard who warned "Don't do it" from that pristine penthouse. The severe woman in the charcoal suit who insisted "Not worth it" across that sleek conference table. The unnaturally symmetrical twin children who whispered "The pattern breaks with you" in the crystal botanical dome. The partial-translucent elderly man whose haunting words "End it" still echoed in my memory.

  They hadn't been hallucinations or random dimensional bleeding. They had been warnings.

  My mind raced, piecing together the fragments of understanding deliberately kept from me. The memory sphere wasn't just information—it was Source Essence, created by Zarthus himself. And the eye in that strange liquid pool—that had been the Lens of the Algorithmic Ascendant, another item on the Terminus checklist.

  I had been the final piece. The unwitting catalyst for change that couldn't be undone.

  But why? Why orchestrate such an elaborate scheme? The System itself was a construct—a framework imposed on reality to provide structure, progression, and control. Anyone who reached its upper boundaries would eventually face the same frustration: the ceiling of possibility. For someone like Zarthus, who had conquered everything conquerable, what remained but to break the ceiling itself?

  To transcend the very system he had mastered.

  To go up. To SS-tier. To something beyond the known structure.

  It all made sense now. The cryptic behavior of everyone I'd encountered since arriving in Moonstone City. The labyrinthine path through Stability Headquarters. The strange implants. None of them could tell me anything directly—that would have invalidated the requirement of "without prior knowledge of Terminus."

  The Administrator's careful wording. The contrived isolation. The memory sphere installation that felt too secretive, too important. Every step had been calculated, every interaction scripted to guide me to that final choice while maintaining the illusion of free will.

  And I had walked the path exactly as designed, believing myself clever for questioning what little I did.

  I should have been furious at being manipulated, at being used as a pawn in some cosmic game. On the contrary I was angry at myself, I had made the choice. I had said "Yes" to the prompt. No one had forced my hand.

  And whatever this "NEMESIS" evolution to my trait might be, it sounded significantly better than "CURSED."

  "He must have a plan," I told myself, trying to find reason in madness. "The Emperor wouldn't doom humanity just to advance himself. There must be something I'm missing."

  But as I floated in the void, watching those crimson letters pulse with finality, doubt crushed my attempted rationalizations. What if there was no plan? What if this was simply the ambition of a being who had reached the limits of one system and needed to break through to another, regardless of consequences?

  The weight of responsibility—for my choice, for humanity's fate—pressed down upon me with unbearable force. My chest constricted, lungs struggling to draw breath in the dimensionless void.

  I collapsed inward, curling into myself as if I could somehow hide from the truth glowing before me. My invisible hands clutched at my face, fingers digging into skin hard enough to draw blood. The progression system that had given us a fighting chance against dimensional threats had been fundamentally broken. The careful balance between challenge and growth, shattered.

  "What have I done?" The question emerged as a scream, tearing from my throat with primal force. "WHAT HAVE I DONE?"

  The void offered no answer, the notification continuing its steady, crimson pulse. The only sound was my own ragged breathing and the echo of that scream, fading into nothingness.

  My scream faded into nothing, leaving only the crimson glow of the completion notification.

  The notification pulsed once more, adding a final line I hadn't noticed before:

  [TRAIT EVOLUTION COMMENCING]

  Humanity as I knew it was over. And I, believing myself special, believing myself chosen, had pressed the button that ended it all.