Chapter 134: Taunting the Creator
The system screen gently glitched in and out of reality, its blue edges pulsing with an ethereal glow while the golden center shone far too brightly in the surrounding darkness. Small cracks of light occasionally spread across its surface before disappearing, as if the screen itself was struggling to remain stable.
Max was forced to watch it.
His eyes burned from the light, but the black mist held him in place, refusing to let him turn away. The cold darkness wrapped around his body like countless invisible chains, tightening whenever he tried to resist. The screen flickered again, and for a moment, the golden glow warped like liquid metal before slowly stabilizing in front of him.
A strange silence surrounded him. Even the faint sound of his own breathing felt distant, swallowed by the black mist around him, and the only thing that remained clear was the unstable system screen floating before his eyes.
Then crimson letters began to appear one after another.
They did not simply materialize like normal system messages. Each letter was written slowly, as if an invisible hand was carving it into existence with an old quill. The strokes dragged across the golden screen like wet ink, thick and dark, carrying a color far too close to blood.
The crimson lines trembled slightly after being written, almost as if they were alive. Small drops of red energy gathered at the ends of the letters before sinking into the golden surface, leaving behind faint marks that looked like scars.
The first word formed.
[Generating a new system feature...]
Every single letter made Max’s face pale slightly, as if the system was not using ink at all, but drawing from something inside him. With each crimson stroke, a faint pull tugged at his chest, his veins, his mana channels, making him feel as though his own blood was being used to write the message in front of him.
His heartbeat slowed with every new letter that appeared. A strange emptiness spread through his body, not painful enough to make him scream, but deep enough for him to feel that something was being taken away. The sensation crawled beneath his skin, following the rhythm of the crimson writing until he could no longer tell whether the system was creating the message or carving it directly from him.
[New feature generated.]
[User-system communication has been unlocked.]
A strange voice echoed through the void.
"Hello, user."
It was a woman’s voice, gentle and calm, brushing against Max’s ears as if the sound was coming from every direction at once. It did not feel loud, yet there was no way to ignore it. The voice slipped through the black mist, through the countless eyes watching him, and straight into the deepest part of his mind.
Max froze.
For a moment, even the pain in his chest felt distant.
He listened to the voice carefully, his brows slowly furrowing as the golden screen continued to flicker before him. Until now, the system had only spoken through cold messages, through commands, rewards, punishments, and merciless notifications that appeared whenever it pleased. But now, for the first time, something on the other side had spoken to him directly.
"You can speak now?" Max asked, his voice rough from pain and confusion.
"Yes, user," the system replied, its tone still gentle, even though its source remained impossible to find.
The voice did not come from the screen or the eyes, yet it surrounded him from every direction, as if the entire void had opened its mouth just to answer him.
"Don’t call me user. Call me by name," Max said, his eyes drifting slightly out of focus before he suddenly realized how strange that sounded even to himself. "What am I even saying...?"
"What is this place?" Max asked, his voice growing sharper as his gaze moved from the golden screen to the countless eyes surrounding him.
The system’s gentle voice remained calm, almost too calm, as if none of this was strange at all.
"You are in the dimension of the one who created me. I do not have the authority to speak their name."
Max’s expression slowly changed as those words settled over him, heavy and strange, making the endless darkness around him feel far less empty than before. His gaze drifted toward the countless eyes suspended in the mist, each one staring back at him with that same cold patience, and for the first time, he no longer felt as if they were only studying him.
"Then... these eyes..." Max muttered, his voice lowering as he looked around. "They belong to the creator?"
"Correct," the voice replied without much emotion, gentle yet distant, as if it was only confirming something simple.
Max did not speak for a long moment after that. His eyes slowly lowered, his thoughts sinking deeper into the weight of what he had just heard.
"Why?" Max muttered.
The system did not answer.
"Why am I here?" His voice grew louder, the question leaving his mouth with more weight than he expected. "Why was I chosen for this fate?"
His words carried emotions he had kept buried for far too long, ever since the moment he had opened his eyes in this world and realized that his old life was gone.
Rage, confusion, bitterness, and something deeper that even he hated admitting to himself all seeped through his voice at once.
"That remains unclear," the voice replied. "The creator’s plans are beyond my authority."
This time, the system sounded slightly more human. The change was faint, almost easy to miss, but Max still heard it. Beneath that calm voice, there was something strangely close to sadness, or maybe pity, buried so deep that it barely touched the surface.
"Bullshit," Max whispered.
His eyes carried no happiness from the sudden upgrade. There was only a murderous glint inside them, sharp enough to make the black mist around him feel colder.
"That existence created you, and you know nothing? What a joke."
He spat into the endless abyss beneath him, watching his spit fall into the darkness, though it was impossible to tell if it would ever reach the bottom.
The system screen fluttered before him.
The crimson cursive letters began to shift, their bloodlike color slowly fading into blue, becoming almost crystal clear and ethereal against the golden surface.
"Well, do you know who created you then? Do you know your purpose?"
The voice came out shaky, carrying far more emotion than before.
That sudden question made Max’s eyes widen.
He stared at the system window with a dumbfounded expression, his anger pausing for the first time since he had been dragged into this place.
"That..."
He did not know how to answer.
There were too many theories in his original world, too many beliefs, arguments, gods, sciences, philosophies, and stories about where humans came from and what made them exist in the first place.
Some people believed they were created by a god. Others believed they were born from nature, from chaos, from nothing more than time, chance, and survival. Max had never cared enough to choose one answer and carve it into his heart as the truth.
But then something dawned on him.
"Hold up..." Max’s eyes sharpened as he stared at the screen more carefully. "That way of speaking, and that kind of critical thinking... you’re not just a system, are you?"
The system window faded out of existence all of a sudden, leaving Max alone with the countless eyes still scanning him from every direction.
"Good, run!" Max roared, his chest heaving heavily as he glared at the eyes with naked murder in his gaze. "I don’t need you!"
The eyes did not answer him. They only continued to stare, silent and endless, as if his rage meant nothing to them, as if they were still peeling through every part of him without the slightest care for what he wanted.
Max clenched his teeth, rage burning through the pain wrapped around his heart as his voice grew colder.
"And you... don’t think you can play me like your puppet. I will never dance on the palm of some god or whatever you are. Even if I was born to suffer, even if this whole path was prepared for me before I ever opened my eyes in this world, I will still die as someone the universe itself will never forget. And a mere god like you can never order me around."
The pupils narrowed one after another, and for the first time, the eyes reacted. They began to spin around Max, slowly at first, then faster, circling him in the black mist like a storm of silent judgment.
"Good."
A voice suddenly echoed through the void, ancient and deep, so heavy that the single word shook Max’s body and made his head spin uncontrollably. It did not sound like the system. It did not sound like anything human. The voice felt ancient, as if the thing speaking had watched entire worlds live and die without ever caring enough to move.
"A man should be like that."
Max’s eyes widened slightly, but he forced himself to remain still, even as the sound pressed against his bones.
"Let me grant you something that will speed up your growth..."
