The corrupted reincarnators surged like a black tide—bodies once human, now rewritten by the system's will. Their auras glitched, their souls fragmented.
Each of them was once someone like him.
A soul with hope.
Now? Obedient lines of corrupted code.
"Kill the Error."
"Protect the Core."
"Reset the Cycle."
Yuto stood alone.
His newly-evolved body—unstable, fluctuating.
His threads twitched in and out of existence.
Even so—
He stepped forward.
"I'm not deleting anyone," he muttered.
"Even if the system already has."
■ Passive Trait Triggered: [Paradox Bloom]
Enemy logic loops destabilizing...
Emotional data fragments leaking from corrupted targets...
One unit resisting control...
Suddenly—someone didn't attack.
One girl in the mob froze mid-strike, sword shaking in her hands.
She was... normal.
Short hair. Brown eyes. Earth clothes.
Torn, stained with digital scars—but unmistakably human.
"...Yuto?" she whispered.
Yuto stopped cold.
"What…?"
"Say that again."
The girl dropped her weapon, hands trembling.
"Yuto... Satou?"
"You... you used to sit in the second row. By the window."
"You always drew monsters in your notebook…"
His breath hitched.
The memories hit like a truck.
"Asuka... Asuka Hoshino?"
His old classmate.
The one who stood beside him during the Truck-kun accident.
She should have died too.
And yet here she was—alive, corrupted, but conscious.
"They kept me awake," she whispered.
"I watched. Over and over. All my lives. Every failure."
"Until I forgot how to scream."
"But then... I heard you."
"You never stopped trying."
"Even when you were just a bug."
The others noticed.
The system responded.
Aegis-Null's voice descended like a blade.
"EMOTIONAL BREACH DETECTED."
"SUBJECT: ASUKA HOSHINO – FLAGGED FOR IMMEDIATE PURGE."
"INITIATING SYSTEM CLEANSE."
Light spears formed in the sky.
Yuto moved faster than thought.
He threw up every thread, every broken command, every glitched line of code in his unstable form—
"DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HER!"
The sky fractured.
Yuto stood over Asuka, shielding her from the purge.
Her form flickered—stuck between corruption and consciousness.
"Don't give up," he said, grabbing her hand.
"You remembered me. That's enough."
"Hold on to that."
■ Shared Memory Sync Activated
Subjects: Satou Yuto / Hoshino Asuka
Link Established
— Reintegration Protocol Triggered —
Corrupted Hostility Overridden
The army staggered.
Across the corrupted tide, heads lifted.
Hands shook.
Some dropped weapons.
One by one—flickers of memory broke through.
Faces. Names. Feelings.
The tide of death slowed.
The system screamed.
"UNAUTHORIZED SYNCHRONIZATION. ERROR."
"ERROR."
"ERROR."
"!!!"
Asuka's body stabilized. Her eyes cleared.
She stood up beside him.
Still weak. Still trembling.
But alive.
"We're not programs," she whispered.
"We're people."
Yuto smiled—bitter but burning.
"Let's remind the system what that means."