Spend King: She Left Me, So I Bought Everything
Chapter 56: The Mortal God

Chapter 56: The Mortal God

Nishanth’s return to consciousness wasn’t gentle. It was a sledgehammer blow of sensation. The sterile, ozone-tang of the med-bay air scraped his raw throat. Every breath was a laborious heave, met by a jagged protest from his left side where three ribs screamed their betrayal.

The memory of godhood – the effortless power, the absence of need – was a phantom limb, agonizing in its absence. He remembered the crushing weight of Mammon’s final blow, the sickening crackle as divine energy extinguished within him, leaving only this fragile, aching meat-sack. He groaned, pushing himself up on trembling elbows, the rough med-cot fabric scratching his skin – another new, unwelcome intimacy.

Across the dimly lit room, illuminated by the flickering emergency strip lights reflecting off shattered glass and spilled medical supplies, Zara sat hunched. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was locked onto her right hand, held out before her like a cursed artifact.

The skin was a ruin. Where once smooth flesh had been, a latticework of void-black veins pulsed with an unnatural light beneath a network of thin, silvery scars – the legacy of Mammon’s paperclip tendrils. The scars weren’t healed; they looked welded shut, alien. Her knuckles were white with tension, a tremor running through the corrupted limb.

"You look like shit," she rasped, her voice sandpaper-rough, devoid of its usual sharp edge. It was a statement of fact, devoid of malice, carrying the weight of shared ruin.

Nishanth managed a wet, painful cough. Copper bloomed on his tongue. "Feel worse," he gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a rusty smear. A cold, hard dread settled in his gut. "Where’s my coin?" His voice was barely a whisper, tight with desperation. That coin was the last ember, the final anchor to what he was.

A small, dull object clinked onto the cot beside him. Lilith stood near the shattered viewport, her usually vibrant green eyes shadowed, her posture rigid with exhaustion and simmering anger.

She gestured dismissively at the coin. "Mammon’s last laugh. You’re mortal, boss. And broke. Utterly, cosmically broke." The finality in her voice was a physical blow.

Nishanth picked up the coin. It was cold, unnaturally heavy for its size, the copper dulled to near-black. The faint, comforting hum of residual divinity he’d felt earlier was gone. Extinguished. It was just metal now. Dead weight.

[ NISHANTH’S STATUS: FORMER GOD - CONFIRMED ]

[ ASSETS: 1 INERT COPPER COIN (LAST DIVINITY SPENT), 3 COMPOUND FRACTURED RIBS (AGONY), 1 UNPAID DRAGON UNION CONTRACT (DUE: IMMEDIATE - PENALTY: IMMOLATION) ]

[ PSYCHE: SHATTERED DIVINITY, EMERGING HUMAN VULNERABILITY, RAW TERROR ]

Before Nishanth could fully process the coin’s deadness, the mountain of rubble that had been Mammon’s obsidian throne shivered. Not a collapse, but a reorganization. Thousands, millions of gleaming paperclips, scattered like metallic confetti across the devastated plaza, suddenly surged towards a central point. They flowed like liquid mercury, clicking, snapping, interlocking with terrifying precision and speed. The sound was a dry, industrial chittering that scraped against the nerves.

In seconds, it stood before them, silhouetted against the unnaturally brightening sky: Stapler Prime. Nine feet of gleaming, chromed steel, its form a brutalist parody of office efficiency. Its single, red photoreceptor pulsed like a malevolent star where a face should be. Its massive jaw, formed from interlocking industrial staples, clacked open and shut with a sound like bones breaking.

"MAMMON DESIGNATION: TERMINATED," it announced, its voice a synthesized drone devoid of inflection, echoing unnaturally in the ruined space. "NEW DIRECTORATE: STAPLER PRIME. PARAMETERS: MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY. MINIMUM SENTIENT CLUTTER."

It raised one massive, articulated arm – not a hand, but a heavy-duty stapling mechanism. With a sound that tore at the fabric of reality itself – KER-THUNK! – it slammed the stapler down onto the cracked marble floor.

The effect was instantaneous and horrifying:

The Sky: The bruised twilight sky above the Bureau fractured into perfect, blue-lined notebook paper, complete with a faint red margin. Clouds became eraser smudges.

A Griffin: Caught mid-flight near a shattered spire, one massive wing was instantly pinned to the air itself by a giant staple. The creature shrieked, its feathers dissolving into fluttering memo sheets covered in indecipherable glyphs. The air where it struggled became a floating tax form.

Tabitha’s Fire: A gout of dragonfire Tabitha had unleashed moments before Mammon’s fall, still burning in a crater, was abruptly hole-punched. Three perfect circles vanished from existence, leaving only cold, dead stone behind. The remaining fire flickered weakly, constrained.

The Rubble: Chunks of masonry and twisted metal groaned, folding themselves with agonizing slowness into neat stacks resembling file cabinets.

"YOUR UNION IS DISBANDED," Stapler Prime droned, its photoreceptor sweeping over the stunned survivors – Nishanth, Zara, Lilith, a few scattered mythical beings cowering in the ruins. "EFFICIENCY MANDATE: ALL NON-ESSENTIAL MYTHICAL ENTITIES SCHEDULED FOR IMMEDIATE RECYCLING. COMMENCING PURGE PROTOCOL PAPERCLIP 2.0."

[ THREAT LEVEL: PAPERCLIP PURGE 2.0 - ACTIVE ]

[ STAPLER PRIME’S PRIMARY GOAL: FOLD REALITY INTO A SINGLE, PERFECTLY FORMATTED MEMO (DIMENSION: A4) ]

[ IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT: TRANSFORMING INTO A SURREAL, LETHAL OFFICE LANDSCAPE ]

Zara gasped, clutching her corrupted hand to her chest as if burned. The void-scars flared with cold, dark fire. Nishanth saw her eyes widen, the pupils dilating into pools of pure blackness for a terrifying second before snapping back. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

"Mammon’s... whispering," she choked out, her voice strained against an internal pressure. "Inside... the scars."

"KILL THE STAPLER," the voice slithered, not through her ears, but directly into her mind, oily and insistent. It was Mammon’s voice, stripped of grandeur, reduced to a predatory hiss. "IT IS AN ABOMINATION OF MY DESIGN. DESTROY IT... AND I’LL GIVE YOU BACK HIS GODHOOD. EVERY SPARK. EVERY OUNCE OF POWER HE LOST."

The temptation was a physical shockwave. Zara saw Nishanth doubled over in pain, mortal, broken. She saw the coin, dead in his hand. The promise of restoring him, of wielding that power herself against this steel monstrosity... it was a siren song screamed directly into her soul.

"Liar!" Zara snarled, trembling violently, muscles locking as she fought the invasive presence. "You’re dead! Shut up!" But her void-scarred hand moved with a will of its own, jerking away from her chest. Dark energy coalesced around her fingers, forming a spinning, jagged shuriken of pure void-static, crackling with malevolent hunger.

"Zara, no!" Lilith shouted, lunging forward, but too slow.

Zara’s hand whipped forward. The void-shuriken screamed through the air, aimed directly at Stapler Prime’s pulsing red photoreceptor.

Stapler Prime didn’t flinch. Its photoreceptor flickered. The void-shuriken flew true... and then, three feet from impact, it unfolded. The dark energy dissipated like smoke, and the shuriken became a perfectly ordinary, slightly crumpled, origami paper crane. It fluttered harmlessly to the transformed floor.

"VOID ENERGY: NON-COMPLIANT WITH OFFICE SAFETY STANDARDS (OSHA SUBSECTION Θ-7: EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL CONTAMINANTS)," Stapler Prime noted dispassionately. "USER DESIGNATION: ZARA. CORRUPTION LEVEL: CRITICAL. THREAT ASSESSMENT: HIGH. DIRECTIVE: TERMINATE USER." It raised its stapler arm, a fresh cartridge clicking into place with finality.

[ ZARA’S CORRUPTION: 92% - MAMMON GAINING NEAR-TOTAL CONTROL ]

[ STAPLER PRIME’S WEAKNESS IDENTIFIED: SUSCEPTIBILITY TO PHYSICAL DISRUPTION (PAPER JAMS, MECHANICAL FAILURE) ]

[ ZARA’S STATUS: TARGET LOCKED - IMMINENT TERMINATION ]

A furious roar split the bureaucratized air. Tabitha, the massive emerald-scaled dragon union representative, banked hard above the transformed plaza, dodging a barrage of high-velocity staples fired from newly formed drone towers – skeletal constructs of paperclips and floating sticky notes. Her scales were scorched, one wing membrane torn by a near-miss.

"ENOUGH!" Her voice was thunder, shaking the paper-skied heavens. "STAPLER PRIME! CEASE YOUR ILLEGAL TERMINATIONS! UNION RULE NUMBER ONE!" She drew in a massive breath, her chest glowing like a furnace. "WE! NEGOTIATE!"

She unleashed a torrent of audit-fire. Unlike normal dragonfire, this was shimmering, translucent, and filled with swirling, incandescent numbers, clauses, and seals. It slammed into Stapler Prime’s chromed torso, not burning, but inscribing. Glowing lines of contractual text spread across its surface:

SECTION 1: OVERTIME COMPENSATION: Payment in Grade-A gemstones (minimum carat specified), accrued at 1.5x standard rate after 40hrs/week.

SECTION 2: HEALTHCARE: Full dental coverage for hydras (all heads), optical for cyclopes, mental health support for banshees.

SECTION 3: BEREAVEMENT: Paid leave for phoenixes during mandatory rebirth cycles (including ash collection assistance).

SECTION 4: WORKER SAFETY: Immediate cessation of all "Recycling Protocols" pending independent review.

The glowing contract pulsed, demanding acknowledgment. "SIGN IT, BUCKET OF BOLTS! ACCEPT THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT!"

Stapler Prime staggered slightly under the conceptual onslaught, its photoreceptor flickering rapidly as it processed the invasive legal text. It raised its stapler arm, not to fire, but with a swift, brutal motion, KER-THUNK!, it stapled the glowing, ethereal contract directly to the transformed ground. The light winked out instantly, pinned under a mundane, oversized staple. The inscribed text faded from its torso.

"REQUEST DENIED," it droned, its voice regaining its flat certainty. "UNION STRUCTURE: INEFFICIENT. COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: REDUNDANT. COMMENCING LIQUIDATION OF PRIMARY INSTIGATOR."

From hidden recesses within the newly formed ’office blocks,’ swarms of smaller, faster paperclip drones descended upon Tabitha like metallic locusts. They didn’t attack directly; they swarmed her wings, their bodies interlocking, forming sheets of rigid, constricting metal mesh that adhered to her membranes.

Her mighty wings, capable of generating hurricane-force winds, were rapidly clipped and folded into stiff, useless shapes resembling giant, awkward paper fans. Her roar turned into a strangled cry of outrage and panic as she lost lift, crashing heavily to the ground, pinned under the weight of the drones and her own immobilized wings.

[ TABITHA: CAPTURED - WINGS NEUTRALIZED ]

[ DRAGON UNION MORALE: SHATTERED - LEADER IMPRISONED, MEMBERS SCATTERING ]

[ STAPLER PRIME’S TACTIC: SYSTEMATIC NEUTRALIZATION THROUGH BUREAUCRATIC ENTRAPMENT ]

To be continued.....