Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

This week had been absolutely mental—like, beyond any Netflix series or TikTok conspiracy theory she'd ever binged.

Karen came here thinking she'd find some basic-ass criminals or maybe corrupt politicians behind her brother's death. Instead? She walked into a whole-ass supernatural telenovela complete with vampires who looked like they stepped out of a Twilight fever dream, deamons that made horror movies look like Disney films, and witches who could probably cancel reality itself if it posted something problematic.

And don't even get her started on the cosmic entities casually discussing the fate of entire dimensions over what looked like afternoon tea but was probably made from ingredients that would make Gordon Ramsay weep.

She'd found someone so small—this pale, absolutely gorgeous vampire girl who could literally yeet a city into oblivion with a fists.

Seraphina moved faster than Karen's thoughts could track, possessed strength that could flatten mountains, but treated Karen like she was made of glass and good intentions. It was giving protective older sister vibes, which was both wholesome and terrifying as hell.

Then there were the Origin Families leaders—beings so fundamentally powerful that reality itself seemed to glitch slightly around them, like the universe was constantly trying to process their existence and failing.

And the truth about her brother? Absolutely devastating.

He'd been collateral damage in some cosmic-level beef that spanned multiple gods and beings, and there wasn't a damn thing a regular mortal like her could do about it. Zilch. Nada. She was basically that background character in an action movie who finds out aliens exist and can only stand there going "what the fuck" while buildings explode.

That's when she met Nyxavere, and honestly? Girl was something else entirely.

She had this beauty that was almost painful to look at—not in a bad way, but like staring directly at a sunset made of liquid starlight and pure aesthetic. Nyxavere's omniscient gaze seemed to see not just Karen's present hot mess of a situation, but every possible future branching out from this moment like some cosmic family tree of chaos.

"You want to matter," Nyxavere had said with this knowing smile that suggested she'd already seen this conversation play out across infinite timelines and was just humoring Karen by going through the motions.

"You want to be more than just a mortal observer in a cosmic story that's way above your pay grade."

And just like that—poof—Karen had been transformed. No dramatic light show, no mystical chanting, just Nyxavere doing her thing like she was updating someone's Instagram bio.

Now she sat in this crystalline chamber that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie's wet dream, her consciousness expanded beyond anything human minds were supposed to handle without a serious migraine.

Streams of data flowed around her like living rivers of pure information—but these weren't your basic-bitch Earth networks. Oh no, this was some next-level shit.

The palace operated on something Parker had apparently snagged during his sixth life called "OmniLink"—a technological infrastructure from a reality where technology had evolved beyond needing actual physical stuff and had become pure conceptual networks.

It was like Wi-Fi's incredibly overachieving cousin that went to Harvard, got three PhDs, and then decided to transcend physical limitations just for funsies.

Instead of reaching across buildings or cities like regular internet, OmniLink extended beyond Earth's orbit, beyond the solar system, reaching into dimensions where information itself was the fundamental building block of existence.

Through OmniLink, Karen could access every satellite and server on Earth, sure, but that was just the appetizer. She would one day be able to hack into systems across multiple realities, alien databases that would make NASA scientists cry tears of joy, interdimensional networks that stored the digital histories of civilizations that had basically said "screw physical form" and transcended into pure data millennia ago.

She would rewrite the programming of space stations orbiting distant stars, crash the reality-maintenance systems of entire pocket dimensions, or hack into the computational matrices of beings who existed as pure data and probably had better internet speeds than anyone on Earth.

This was why Nyxavere had chosen them, and honestly, it made perfect sense in that chaotic, world-ending kind of way.

When your upcoming enemies operated across infinite realities and used technologies that treated dimensional barriers like speed bumps, you needed a digital army that could reach beyond Earth's orbit and into whatever cosmic nonsense was threatening the family this week.

Parker's sixth life acquisition had built the infrastructure; Nyxavere's power had created the operators capable of using it without their brains melting.

The four of them weren't just cosmic-level hackers—they were interdimensional system administrators with access to OmniLink, a network that treated the barriers between realities like firewalls that needed a good old-fashioned bypass.

Yes, she wasn't alone.

Three teenagers sat beside her in similar crystalline alcoves—Cam, the leader, along with his companions whose names she was still learning.

They had... history with the family, some complicated shit involving past events that Karen wasn't fully briefed on and honestly wasn't sure she wanted to know about. What mattered now was that Nyxavere had found their skills useful enough to upgrade them from whatever they'd been before into cosmic-level digital entities.

Nyxavere had found their attempt amusing rather than threatening.

"Honestly," Karen had asked the omniscient girl, "why do you need us at all? Your family could erase entire realities if they wanted to. What could four hackers possibly offer?"

Nyxavere had just smiled and handed them powers that elevated them beyond mortal comprehension.

Now Karen understood. When you possessed the power to unmake galaxies, sometimes the most elegant solution was precision rather than force.

Sometimes you needed beings who thought in terms of networks and systems rather than cosmic destruction.

The four of them weren't weapons.

They were surgical instruments.

*

In a realm beyond conventional space, through the training space, where concepts took physical form and emotions painted the sky in impossible colors, Zhang Ruoyun stood before her oldest companion. The Phoenix of Balance had never failed to restore equilibrium in her entire existence—but Parker's current state presented a challenge unlike any she'd faced.

She didn't blink as she studied him, her ancient eyes taking in every detail of his transformation. Since his ascension to true omnipotence, they'd tried everything to restore his emotional depth.

Cosmic interventions, reality recalibrations, even attempting to temporarily separate his power from his consciousness—all had failed.

The problem was elegant in its impossibility: Parker possessed absolute control over Balance itself—not something he'd gained during his ascension, but a power he'd claimed through Plunder after his sister had helped him unlock his true potential. A fundamental force Zhang Ruoyun herself wielded, now completely under his dominion after he'd copied from her after the cosmic unlock of Plunder.

Instead, it had become the very mechanism that kept his emotions locked away from his conscious experience.

"The irony is almost poetic," she murmured, her voice carrying harmonics that made nearby concepts like Love and Sorrow lean closer to listen. "I gave you the power to maintain perfect balance, and now that very balance prevents you from feeling the chaos of human emotion."

She sighed, a sound that rippled across dimensions and made distant stars flicker.

"To restore your humanity, I'll have to convince you to voluntarily surrender a power you're not even consciously aware you're using. And you, in your current state, see no logical reason to embrace the inefficiency of feelings."

Zhang Ruoyun began to circle Parker's motionless form, her mind calculating possibilities across probability streams that extended into infinity.

"But perhaps," she whispered, "logic isn't the approach we need. Perhaps what we need is crisis. Something that threatens what you love in ways that pure logic cannot address."

Her ancient eyes gleamed with the first stirrings of a plan that would either restore Parker's humanity or destroy everything he'd worked to protect.

Sometimes, to restore balance, one first had to create perfect chaos.

What better chaos than **x