Twelve hours after the "Seoul Station Incident," the sun did not rise.
The people of Earth looked up at the sky, expecting the dawn. Instead, they saw the stars beginning to fall. Not as meteors, but as streaks of clinical, white light. These were the Exterminator Pods—the elite cleanup crew of the Designers.
Si-woo sat on the roof of the highest remaining skyscraper in Seoul, his white hair flowing in the cosmic wind. He was no longer Level 25. Every second that passed, the "Engine" in his heart was processing the remnants of the Architect's soul, feeding him data, power, and memories.
[LEVEL UP!]
[LEVEL 78 REACHED]
[NEW PASSIVE: 'INTERSTELLAR PERCEPTION']
He saw them coming. Six thousand high-rank signatures, each one more powerful than a National Level Hunter.
"Seol-ah," Si-woo said without turning around. The Regressor was standing behind him, her rapier drawn. She had decided to stay, curious to see if this "End of the World" would finally be the one that stuck.
"I see them," she said, her voice cold. "The Exterminators. I've seen them once before, in Life 212. They wiped out the planet in three hours. No one stood a chance."
"That's because they didn't have someone who could take what they give," Si-woo said.
He stood up, the shadows around his feet rising to form a cape of absolute darkness. He looked at his hand—it was translucent, showing the flickering stars behind it. He was becoming less of a man and more of a "Universal Function."
"They are coming to reclaim their property," Si-woo said, a dark smile touching his lips. "But I've already put a lien on this planet."
The first Exterminator pod slammed into the Han River, sending a wall of water five hundred feet into the air. From the steam emerged a creature of pure geometry—a shifting mass of white cubes and golden lasers. It looked at Si-woo and calculated its first move.
[TARGET: ANOMALY-001]
[THREAT LEVEL: OMEGA]
[PROCEDURE: TOTAL ERASURE]
The Exterminator fired a beam of "Pure Information"—a weapon that didn't kill the body, but deleted the target's name from history, causing them to cease existing in the past, present, and future.
Si-woo didn't move. He opened his mouth and inhaled.
The beam of light bent, warped, and was sucked into Si-woo's throat like a strand of spaghetti.
[NOTIFICATION]
[INFORMATION CONSUMED: +1,000,000 DATA UNITS]
[SKILL LEARNED: 'CONCEPTUAL ERASURE']
[LEVEL UP!]
"Is that it?" Si-woo asked, his voice echoing through the minds of every Exterminator in the sky. "You sent me a snack? I was expecting a meal."
The six thousand pods in the sky paused. For the first time in ten billion years, the Designers' machines felt something they weren't programmed for: Logic Error.
Si-woo pointed his blade at the nearest pod.
"My name is Han Si-woo," he declared, and as he spoke, the violet runes on his body blazed with enough light to replace the sun. "And from this moment on, the Earth is off-limits. I am the Sovereign of the Zero-Sum. And the only thing I'm deleting today... is you."