The Lazy Genius With 999x System
Chapter 65: What the Third Path Really Is

Chapter 65: What the Third Path Really Is

The sky cracked like glass behind her.

Alicia ran.

Not through any familiar hallway or corridor of the academy, but across a spiraling platform made of fragmented dreams, warped data, and pulsing memories. Each step threatened to collapse beneath her heels. Her school shoes were scuffed, her breath uneven—but her eyes burned with purpose.

Jay. Where are you?

She clutched the pendant around her neck—the one that had once glowed with system alignment. Now it flickered with wild, chaotic magic: resonance. Not from code. From him.

She had felt it—his presence, vanishing deeper into the fabric of the system’s final layer. But something was wrong.

She wasn’t just chasing Jay. She was chasing two versions.

One tethered to her heart.

And one stitched together by remnants of what the system wanted him to be—obedient, vacant, looping forever in performance stats and false progress.

Her heart ached at the sight.

The "Other Jay" walked slowly ahead of her, an emotionless echo. His eyes were clouded, a hollow glow flickering within.

"Jay," she whispered. "Not again."

She didn’t know how she’d entered this layer. Maybe it was because she was part of the anomaly now—her own awakening at the battle’s peak had shattered the rules. Maybe it was because her bond with Jay had twisted the system’s metrics. She didn’t care.

She just refused to lose him again.

She caught sight of him—the real Jay—just ahead, standing beside Rei before a shimmering mirror-door.

Her voice broke the silence.

> "Jay!"

He turned—eyes wide, blinking like he hadn’t realized she’d still been following.

She saw the conflict on his face. The uncertainty. The pain.

And she smiled through her exhaustion, breathless but steady.

> "Don’t walk through that door alone. If you do... you’ll lose yourself before you ever reach the end."

Behind her, the Other Jay tilted his head.

The system had sent its final anchor. And Alicia wasn’t about to let it take Jay back.

Not again.

_____

The world shimmered like a half-remembered dream.

Jay stood still beneath a sky painted in overlapping hues—sunlight clashing with starlight, clouds trailing like torn parchment across a fractured ceiling of reality. The ground under his feet rippled, as if resisting its own shape.

This isn’t the Dream World. Or the System’s shell. Or even the Null layer.

It was something else entirely.

The Third Path.

A corridor that existed between choice and collapse, between fate and freedom—a realm constructed not by logic, not by code, but by intent.

Rei appeared beside him, silent but not alone. His data-threaded form had stabilized, though his outline still flickered with residual corruption.

"You see it too," Rei said, voice quiet. "This place... it’s built from contradictions. From all the choices we refused to make."

Jay nodded slowly. "And the system didn’t predict it. Because it can’t."

They looked ahead.

Three doors floated midair—each hovering above an invisible platform of cascading runes. Two were cracked, aged. One pulsed with something dangerously alive.

"The first path," Rei said, gesturing left, "was Submission. Live by the system, die by its rules. The fate everyone accepted."

Jay gestured right. "The second: Rebellion. Tear it all down. Burn every code, shatter the structure... but be consumed in the process."

Rei glanced at the central door.

"And the third..."

Jay narrowed his eyes. The door bore no lock, no glyph. Just a mirror. His own reflection stared back, tired—but smiling faintly.

"...Is to rewrite the purpose," Jay finished.

Not destroy. Not submit.

Reclaim. Redefine.

Rei’s hands trembled. "But... we’re not gods. We’re broken. I’m still—"

"You’re still here," Jay interrupted. "And that means we haven’t lost."

For the first time, Rei smiled. A real one. Faint. Haunted. But true.

The mirror-door rippled. It reacted not to force, but resolve.

Jay placed his palm against the glass. "Let’s show the system what it never accounted for."

Rei mirrored him, and the door dissolved into light.

From behind, a voice echoed. Familiar. Frightened. Fierce.

"Jay!"

Alicia’s voice—urgent and close.

Jay turned, wide-eyed.

But she wasn’t alone.

Behind her stood... another Jay.

His face blank. His eyes glitched.

System-formed. Dream-fused.

A failed fork—an echo of the Jay who once chose nothing.

____

Jay froze.

Alicia’s voice cut through the haze like a lifeline, sharp and clear. He turned from the mirror-door and saw her—standing near the platform’s edge, her uniform torn, cheeks flushed, eyes burning with something more powerful than magic.

Conviction.

Behind her, the corrupted version of himself—the System’s Echo—stepped forward. It mimicked his form, but something was off: the posture too stiff, the gaze too vacant, as if pretending to be him without understanding how.

"Don’t walk through that door alone," Alicia called out again, panting between words. "If you do... you’ll lose the part of you that still remembers us."

Jay hesitated.

The mirror rippled beside him. The Third Path waited.

But so did the weight of everything he’d fought for.

Rei’s voice came softly, "The Echo’s not just a trap. It’s a memory—of the Jay that wanted nothing. The one who stayed silent when the world demanded answers."

Jay clenched his fists.

"I know."

The Echo stepped beside Alicia, emotionless. Its glitching voice echoed—hollow and robotic.

"System recommends: proceed with authorized restructuring. Eliminate corrupted variance—Rei Kazuma. Restore original host identity: Jay Arkwell [Ver. Null-042]."

Jay’s breath caught.

So that was it. The system wasn’t just offering resistance—it was offering replacement.

Alicia took a step forward. "Jay, you’re more than numbers. You were always more than just a ’lazy genius.’ Even when you refused to act... you felt. You chose. That’s what scares the system." _{fre eweb\(n)ovel(.)co(m)}

The mirror flickered violently. The door was destabilizing, the Third Path reacting to uncertainty.

Suddenly, the Echo moved.

In a blur, it lunged at Rei—its hand forming into a jagged system blade, a perfect imitation of Jay’s "Lazy Strike" but with no soul behind it.

Jay’s body moved before he could think.

Clash.

Jay met the Echo mid-air, blade to blade, aura to artificial glow.

"You’re not me," Jay growled. "You’re just... a copy that forgot what it means to sleep in class because the world was too loud. A shell."

Rei grunted, gripping his side where residual corruption still pulsed. "He’s buying time. If the Echo kills me, the loop resets."

Alicia raised her palm—her pendant reacting with violent light. "Not happening."

She sent a beam of pure resonance magic, striking the Echo’s side, staggering it.

The Echo glitched again. "Unknown variable: [Princess-Sequence-AL-001] interfering. Calculating new outcome—"

Jay struck.

A real strike. Not one boosted by numbers. Not calculated by efficiency or stat optimization.

Just will.

Crack.

The Echo staggered, its face twitching—then splitting, not in blood, but in fractured lines of code and memory.

Jay leaned in. Whispered.

"I choose the path where I’m not alone."

The mirror-door flared open.

Bright. Unforgiving.

Yet warm.

Jay turned to Alicia and Rei, both wounded, both holding steady.

"Let’s walk it together," he said, holding out his hand.

Alicia took it first, her smile soft. Rei followed, reluctant but resolute.

They stepped into the light.

Behind them, the Echo shattered completely—dissolving into binary snow that drifted upward into a sky that no longer looked broken, but... healing.