So where were we? Ah yes, the majesty cursing the air like a gamer who just lost their save file.
....
"Those fuckers made it more complicated," the man ran a hand through his celestial white hair, frustration radiating from him in actual visible waves that distorted the air.
"It would've been so much easier to find the core if these species hadn't evolved," he growled, his golden eyes flashing dangerously. "Just which bastard was so desperately horny they decided to copulate with those monkeys?"
His jaw clenched so hard that veins bulged across his temple like angry lightning bolts. If rage could be weaponized, this man would be a walking armoury.
With a dramatic sigh, he examined the orb in his hand—an artifact adorned with numerous purple eyes that seemed to blink independently of each other. The man channeled energy into it, causing the orb to levitate and spin with increasing velocity.
Suddenly, the orb erupted with a pulse that expanded outward in all directions, an invisible wave washing over buildings, people, animals—marking everything in its path like a scanner.
The wave kept going, crossing oceans, mountains, and deserts, leaving no corner of earth untouched.
Once the wave had circled the globe completely, the orb displayed a text:
"Infiltration complete. Navigate through the waves to attain target's location."
Threads of purplish energy materialized in the air, converging into what looked like a GPS system. The man transformed the orb back into an earring and reattached it.
"Fine. It's nothing hard," he declared with the confidence.
Taking a few steps backward—as if preparing for a running start—he suddenly merged with the energy waves and vanished, traveling at light speed along the purple threads. Not just fast—literally teleporting through space itself.
Meanwhile, our soup-obsessed protagonist had just finished slurping down his grandmother's magical broth and was tucking himself into bed in his rooftop retreat.
"Haaah, finally," Inso sighed with the contentment of a cat finding the perfect sunbeam.
You might wonder—isn't he sleeping 24/7 already?
But for Inso, sleep wasn't just a biological necessity. It was the only time his brain could truly relax, the only moments when the world turned blissfully dark and silent, free from the exhausting molecular dance party he was forced to watch every waking moment. For Inso, sleep was sacred, a rare hideout of peace.
Inso's Rule #1: Disturb my sleep and die
But of course, our protagonist couldn't possibly have that peace.
BUZZ... BUZZZ... BUZZZZZ!
A vibration.
Sleep Mode: Forcibly Terminated
Rage Mode: Activating...
That. Was. IT.
Inso slammed his glasses on with such force they nearly snapped in half. As his eyes shot open, ready to commit unspeakable acts of violence against whatever dared disturb him—
A screen materialized directly in front of his face, displaying bizarre, glitching letters that continuously morphed and shifted as if they couldn't decide what language to be.
Inso whipped his head around, but the screen followed his movements with the persistence of an overeager puppy. Or a particularly annoying ad that wouldn't go away no matter how many times you clicked the X.
He made a double chin of confusion—the universal human response.
[System modified to human language. You can start posting now]
The screen's gibberish suddenly transformed into readable text. Inso's eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
[Polarum: Kyaaaa! This species is so cute. I want to eat it!]
[Lars: ... ]
[Ekkril: No. They'll die if you eat them]
"What the hell is this?" Inso muttered, looking for hidden cameras. Was he being pranked? Had he accidentally taken hallucinogens with his soup?
[Polaris: But why human language? Can't this human learn system's language?]
[System: That's because humans have low brain capacity. Please adjust accordingly.]
[Lars: ... ]
"Which advanced-level asshole is messing with me now?" Inso's voice dropped dangerously low, the kind of tone that signals looming violence.
[Polarum: Humans really speak complicated language. Sighs in 3D.]
Inso's patience—already a rare and endangered resource—finally went extinct. He spun around like a tornado, searching for projectors, hidden devices, anything to explain the floating screen that stalked him like a clingy ex.
"Oh yeah? Try me," he challenged with an eerie danger lurking beneath that voice.
With newfound determination, Inso stormed to the balcony, his safehouse now invaded by whatever digital phantom had decided to haunt him. With a sly smirk that promised retribution, he removed his glasses.
"Time to reveal which kid's play this is" Inso tried to trace out the patterns but was frozen.
Normally, holograms would appear to him as complex wave patterns. But these "letters" remained crisp and clear, hanging in space like they'd been painted there by an invisible hand. They existed independently of the normal energy waves and molecular clouds that filled his vision.
Inso rubbed his eyes repeatedly, his scientific brain short-circuiting. Among the usual chaos of bouncing molecules and swirling energy fields, only these letters remained fixed and stable—like they weren't part of his reality at all.
Just as his lips parted in the horror of understanding—a massive energy disturbance rippled through the air.
Instinctively, Inso slammed his glasses back on, expecting to see his grandmother. Instead—
A blinding flash of light which turned into the divine man from earlier, now standing before Inso like he'd just stepped off the set of a fantasy drama.
Their eyes met in an electric standoff, reality itself seeming to hold its breath. The stranger's lips curled into a predatory smirk.
"Is it you?" the man asked, his voice a threat that promised violence.
Inso's heart raced like drumbeats. The strange entity did not feel like a mysterious superhero, but a predatory demon lord. "How did he get here? All I saw was a flash," he pondered, trying to process the impossibility of what just happened.
[Polarum: Here comes the uncute fella. Tch.... My eyes.]
[Lars: ___ ]
[Polarum: Whoa! Even Lars agreed. LOL]
"I can't show that I'm scared", Inso maintained a calm face.
"Who the hell are you?" Inso demanded, his annoyance crystal clear in his face as he glared at the intruder.
The man moved with supernatural grace. With a casual flick of his wrist, a whirlpool of energy played around Inso's face, plucking his glasses away as easily as snatching candy from a baby.
Inso's fight instinct kicked in—he was about to launch himself at this arrogant intruder, consequences be damned—but he froze in shock.
A pause.
For the first time in his life, he was seeing someone without his glasses, and they didn't appear as a swirling mass of atoms and energy fields.
But an actual person.
"Strange...."
But before Inso could process, the stranger pressed his hands against Inso's forehead, his touch burning like dry ice.
"Now give me your eyes, you useless fucker," the man commanded as foreign energy began pouring into Inso's body.
The energy pierced his nerves attempting to carefully remove his eyes connected to his brain without damaging any single nerve.
Basically, an advanced surgery done by an advanced creature to remove the eyes. But the patient was not administered with anaesthesia.
[System Notice: WARNING] [Life force declining 89%... 76%... 62%...]
The pain was unbearable. Inso felt like every atom in his body was being individually torn apart and reassembled wrong. He continuously stabilised his body by neutralising the stranger's attack. But the force was too large for him.
"What wrong did I do to suffer this hell my whole life?", all sorts of thoughts ran through his head as his vision blurred and reality breaking around him. The edges of his consciousness began to fray.
"I... I don't..." he couldn't even form simple thoughts in his head as the world dissolved into chaos.
[43%... 31%...]
With his last functioning two brain cells, Inso spotted something—a single unstable point in the attacker's seemingly perfect energy field. A weakness. A vulnerability. Like finding a loose thread in his grandma's sweater.
"I don't want to die, you #@!#$#%"
With the desperate strength of someone with nothing left to lose, Inso reached out and broke it.
BOOM!
The explosion was deafening, a miniature flash bomb. The shockwave sent Inso flying backward.
Using his ability on pure instinct, Inso healed his body, manipulated the energy waves to create a temporary shield that prevented him from becoming a smear on the concreting.
When the dust settled, Inso looked up in horror to see the divine man still standing—not even a hair out of place. But his eyes...
His eyes had transformed into swirling spiral of darkness, creating a localized black hole that began sucking everything toward it with terrifying force. Roof tiles creaked and snapped, flying into the abyss. The air itself seemed to scream as it was devoured.
[Polaris: Oops.]
[Polarum: Is he going to die from the start? Why? TT.]
[Ekkril: Can someone reach the system admin?]
Panic clawed at Inso's chest like a caged animal. He'd just wanted a peaceful night's sleep, and now he was being forced to go extinct by a God knows what entity on his own rooftop. This wasn't fair. This wasn't—
[Lars: Stabilize the earring.]
The command cut through Inso's panic like a knife. At this point, questioning the mysterious floating text was the least of his concerns.
Fighting against the gravitational pull that threatened to deform him, Inso planted his feet firmly on the floor and stretched his hand toward the man. He focused every ounce of his ability on the earring—the pulsing orb adorned with blinking purple eyes.
The effort nearly killed him. Blood vessels burst in his eyes. His nose began to bleed. Every cell in his body screamed in protest.
But the earring stabilized, and the man's eyes closed, its wild energy patterns suddenly calming under Inso's influence.
The effect was instantaneous. The screaming wind died. And the divine man crumpled to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
Inso collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath. His entire body felt drained, like he'd run a thousand marathons while carrying a truck. Black spots danced in his vision as his overwhelmed system struggled to recover.
[Polarum: Wowww! Someone survived THAT? I'm going to be this human's fan from now on!]
[Ekkril: I didn't know that someone could suppress Rex. Respect ++]
[Lars: ....]
Despite the existential crisis he was experiencing, Inso couldn't help but notice how the mysterious text boxes seemed to be... cheering for him?
With what little dignity he had left, he did the most embarrassing thing possible—he addressed the empty air.
"Who... are you all?" he wheezed, looking at the floating screen only he could see.
There was a moment of digital silence, followed by text that would forever change his life:
[System: Welcome to the space group chat]