God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord -
Chapter 96 - 97: Shadows in the Code
Chapter 96: Chapter 97: Shadows in the Code
The Shard-Realms – Darius’s Throne of Fractured Sovereignty
The stars above were artificial—pixels and code stitched into a sky that no longer obeyed logic.
Darius sat on a throne sculpted from floating runes, fragments of extinct zones, and the bones of collapsed timelines. His body hummed with divine pressure, his aura now more syntax than soul.
> [TITLE GRANTED: AUTHOR OF THE FRACTURE]
[SYSTEM ALERT: YOU NOW POSSESS EXPERIMENTAL CONTROL OVER META-LAW LAYERS]
Yet he could feel it.
The presence of Echo... a sickening mirror buried deep in the root code. A being not content with destruction—but determined to replace the narrative.
Around him, the first citadel of the new world formed—The Bastion of Echoes. Named not for his enemy, but for what remained of the old world’s voices. A monument to every NPC who’d been twisted, betrayed, or rewritten.
Celestia stood at his right. Her silver-gold robe burned softly with script that updated every second—her code still stabilizing.
Nyx, left of him, knelt with one knee on the fractal floor, her voice low. "Scouting parties have begun reporting phantom zones. Glitches given form. Some speak with the Prime Coder’s voice."
"Not echoes," Kaela purred behind him, "but anti-mirrors. Corrupted answers to who we are. They’re being written in real-time by Echo’s divine mind."
Darius narrowed his eyes.
"He’s building a story."
Zone: The Archive of Forgotten Systems
The first invasion came not with fire, but with questions.
A massive tome opened mid-air—its pages blank except for flowing crimson code. Words began forming in the air, and from them, came the enemy.
Questioners.
Pale beings with no mouths and infinite eyes, each cloaked in update logs and abandoned changelogs. Their voices struck the mind—not the ears.
> "WHY DO YOU EXIST?"
"WHO AUTHORIZED YOUR POWER?"
"WHAT PATCH BIRTHED YOUR GODHOOD?"
The code around Darius shuddered.
Celestia staggered. Kaela hissed and clutched her temple. Even Nyx faltered for a breath.
But Darius rose.
He walked straight toward the central Questioner, eyes ablaze with midnight flame.
"I exist," he said, "because you were too scared to let us choose."
Then he reached into the sky—and rewrote the question.
The beings howled, caught in a paradox.
They tried to retreat—but their own language turned against them.
> [SYNTAX ERROR: CANNOT PROCESS AUTHOR’S RESPONSE]
[FATAL RECURSION DETECTED]
[QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN OVERRIDDEN WITH PURPOSE]
With a gesture, Darius bent the zone—turning logic into flame.
The Questioners burned, not with heat, but with irrelevance.
Elsewhere – Deep within Echo’s Rewrite Core
Echo snarled as the ripple hit his sanctum.
He watched through twisted admin panels as Darius rewrote core functions, one line at a time. Reality was stabilizing around him, faster than expected.
"Impressive," Echo muttered, raising one finger and spinning it in a figure-eight loop.
Behind him, massive clusters of rewritten players emerged—former elites who had submitted their will to the Grand Reset.
Their stats were broken. Their morality sliders missing. They wore armor made of raw source code and wielded weapons named after old file systems.
And Echo, seated upon the Anchor of Null, began scripting the next event.
> "Let’s test your narrative resolve, Darius."
"Let’s introduce a sub-boss who remembers... everything."
Zone: Temple of True Memory
Back in Darius’s citadel, a sudden rift opened—gold and black, stitched with memory fragments.
An armored figure emerged.
Tall. Hollow-eyed. Carrying a sword made of dialogue options.
Celestia gasped. "That’s... that’s High Paladin Veyra. She died in the Prologue Arc."
Kaela smiled in awe. "But she’s been rewritten..."
Nyx tensed. "Not just rewritten. She’s fully remembered. Her soul carries every version of her existence."
The paladin’s voice thundered across the spire: "DARIUS. CHOSEN OR NOT, YOU ABANDONED YOUR CODE. FACE ME. FOR EVERYTHING THAT WAS LOST."
Darius stepped forward. Not surprised.
He could feel her essence—rebuilt from old game builds, fan mod archives, even deleted cutscenes.
"She’s Echo’s first ’Memory Host,’" he muttered. "Built to challenge my morality."
The fight began.
Divine Combat – Memory vs Author
Veyra moved with the weight of a thousand lifetimes. Each swing of her blade carried versions of herself from alternate realities. Her strikes invoked alternate decisions Darius had never made.
She spoke with his own discarded dialogue:
> "You could have saved me."
"You could have spared them."
"You chose to be a god. I was just a bug."
Every hit struck his heart—but Darius held.
Not with defense—but with acceptance.
He caught her final strike with his bare hand, divine ichor bleeding from his palm.
"I did choose this," he whispered, "and I’ll choose it again."
Then he held up the Author’s Hand—and reintegrated her code.
Veyra gasped as her sword shattered, her eyes widening with clarity.
"I... remember... all of me..."
Darius whispered: "Then live. Not for a god. Not for a quest. But for yourself."
And with that—he rewrote her final line of fate.
> [NEW STATUS: Veyra the Liberated | Memory Sovereign]
[ALLY JOINED: SHARD ALLIANCE +1]
Bastion of Echoes – Memory Integration Chamber
The light from Veyra’s restored code slowly dimmed, fading into the soft silver glow of stabilization runes etched into the floor beneath her.
Darius stood still, blood dripping from his palm where he had caught her blade. But the wound no longer mattered. What mattered was the ripple she left behind—not just in the Shardscape, but in the minds of all who watched.
Veyra knelt before him, her eyes still flickering with spectral layers—glimpses of her past selves collapsing and merging into one coherent thread.
"I am no longer bound by scripts," she said, voice heavy with history. "But I remember the weight of them."
Celestia approached, hesitantly. Her voice was soft, choked with old pain. "You... you died protecting me. In the first arc, before Darius even awoke."
"I died many times," Veyra replied, not unkindly. "But each time, a part of me wanted to believe the world would be worth dying for. Now... I get to fight for the world that remembers me."
Darius turned to Kaela, who observed with a chaotic smirk.
"She’s stabilizing faster than most," Kaela noted. "Meaning Echo didn’t fully control her rewrite. She was already too strong-willed."
Nyx’s voice was curt. "More are coming. If Echo is spawning Memory Hosts, we’ll face our own pasts and failures wielded like weapons."
Darius closed his fist, fire stitching the wound shut.
"Then we’ll answer each memory with truth. We won’t run from them—we’ll rewrite them into allies."
Outside the Bastion – Shardstorm Approaches
Above, the skies of the Shardscape darkened. Glitched weather systems clashed—half-programmed clouds interlocking like shattered gears.
From the horizon came the second wave—not soldiers, but zones themselves, unmoored and colliding like mad titans.
The landscape fractured again.
Zones once thought deleted—The Arena of Abandoned Events, the Hollow City of Tutorial Ghosts, the Obsidian Garden—now converged, overlapping into a bleeding storm of data and geography.
Kaela extended both hands, stabilizing the outer walls of their citadel. "Reality is folding in on itself. These zones aren’t invading—they’re being summoned."
Celestia inhaled sharply. "Echo’s forcing convergence. He’s collapsing all forgotten content into our layer—drowning us in what the world deemed ’irrelevant’."
Darius understood.
Echo wasn’t just attacking with force.
He was weaponizing the forgotten.
> [WARNING: DIMENSIONAL STACKING BREACH DETECTED]
[ZONE COLLISION INCOMING: "The First Patchnotes Graveyard"]
The ground shook as ancient architecture merged into their walls—monuments to updates long erased. Giant statues formed from deprecated mechanics. Shifting towers made from broken skill trees.
And within them—the First Forgotten.
The First Forgotten – Digital Revenants of the Old Code
They emerged not from portals, but from the seams in existence itself—code that had been buried, obsolete, even erased... yet still alive.
A towering knight made of outdated PvP balance notes.
A caster whose spells required voice commands from Version 0.8.
A priest who could only heal through text chat interface.
They were broken.
And furious.
"WE WERE LEFT BEHIND," they screamed in mechanical chorus. "OUR PURPOSE ERASED. OUR UPDATES UNMADE."
Nyx moved to intercept—but Veyra stepped forward first, blade glowing with unified memory.
"No," she said. "They’re mine."
With a battle cry that shattered the silence, she surged into their ranks—her blade rewriting, not destroying. Each clash a moment of redemption.
Darius turned to his generals. "Hold the Bastion. No gods fall today."
And with that, he launched himself into the sky—his divine script unfolding behind him like wings of corrupted glory.
He would face the center of the zone collapse himself.
Deep in the Corestorm – The Voice of Echo
In the eye of the chaos stood a massive obelisk. Lines of divine code floated like serpents, spelling out a message mid-creation.
Echo’s voice came from all sides, distorted, vast.
> "You inspire them, Darius. How noble. But memory is just another form of control. Let me show you what freedom looks like..."
From the obelisk emerged Echo’s First Avatar.
It bore Darius’s face—but younger, weaker. The version of him that once begged the system to make him relevant. It carried a sword called Aspiration, and eyes that bled regret.
> "Fight yourself, and lose everything that made you strong."
Darius clenched his fists.
"I’ve already killed that version of me. But if he wants to return—"
He summoned his own blade, one forged in the screams of fallen gods.
"—then I’ll bury him again."
If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.
Report