Chapter 42: 2.26

[WARNING! WARNING! A WORLDBREAKER HAS ENTERED THE WORLD! PLEASE PROCEED CAREFULLY!]

[WARNING! WARNING! A WORLDBREAKER HAS ENTERED THE WORLD! PLEASE PROCEED CAREFULLY!]

[WARNING! WARNING! A WORLDBREAKER HAS ENTERED THE WORLD! PLEASE PROCEED CAREFULLY!]

Jia Hyson: '…'

[WARNING! WARNING! A WORLDBREAKER HAS ENTERED THE WORLD! PLEASE PROCEED CAREFULLY!]

Jia Hyson: '…Okay I got it, the shock has worn off Bebe, turn it off."

Bebe: 'It's a new alarm installed. The number of warnings is supposed to represent the level of the enemy. I can't turn it off.'

[WARNING! WARNING! A WORLDBREAKER HAS ENTERED THE WORLD! PLEASE PROCEED CAREFULLY!]

Jia Hyson: '…' Whose shitty idea was this?

…

In the System World:

Overseer X: 'Milord, there have been some complaints about the new Worldbreaker alarm.'

Overlord Li Jun: 'Hehe, unless someone of a higher tier comes we'll keep it the way it is.'

Overseer X: '…' Whose shitty idea was it to give this fool so much power?

…

After a few more headache inducing seconds the alarms finally stopped, making both Jia Hyson and Bebe give sighs of relief. This new alarm system… it was really too cruel.

"Bebe how many times did it ring?"

"Nine times," Bebe counts, "This should mean this Worldbreaker is relatively skilled. They've managed to get in and out of at least nine worlds so far."

Jia Hyson was a little surprised. Nine worlds was a long time after all. "So what is a Worldbreaker? It's like a bug?"

Bebe also was surprised. It only knows the general basics from friends but essentially when a Worldbreaker is born they start relatively weak making them at their most vulnerable yet at the same time difficult to detect. It's the same as asking a satellite to locate a mite on an ant. Impossible. However the more worlds destroyed the more power they gain and the more attention they gather. Usually by the fourth or fifth world would ninety-eight percent of Worldbreakers be eliminated. Nine worlds was really quite rare unless the previous worlds all had weak energy.

"No it's not a bug. A bug is like a genetic mutation, a glitch in the system that is more or less unavoidable. For example a cannon-fodder character getting a second chance at life when they weren't supposed to, someone accidentally remembering their past life, a ghost possessing a main character, or a mistake in the reincarnation cycle resulting in an unwanted transmigration. If bugs are accidents, Worldbreakers are intentional murderers."

Jia Hyson suddenly gets it. He's read many quick transmigration stories and a common trope was a host that is wronged by a system and somehow changes their fate- usually through some clearly OP hacking skills- and must alter the course of fate in various worlds to gain enough power to break free. "Worldbreakers are rogue hosts?!"

If Bebe could it would nod. As expected, Host may constantly hold nothing but evil and dirty thoughts in his mind but he wasn't an idiot. "Correct! As you know there's always going to be some rogues and criminals around. A Worldbreaker is a shitty ungrateful host who couldn't take the stress of their job and essentially murdered their cute life partner system, stealing their energy in the process. After that they will continue taking different world's energy by disrupting the story negatively, stealing the blessings of protagonists or altering the fate of the world."

Interesting, this is really similar to the stories this time. "What about rogue systems?" He asks curiously. Those were also quite a common trope. It gave justification for hosts to attack and destroy them.

"That's a little different," Bebe explains, "That's called a Worldhacker. A Worldhacker is a poor system who was no longer satisfied living the hard life of a system and rebels."

Jia Hyson: '...' why do I feel that someone is being particularly biased in these explanations?

Bebe makes an embarrassed coughing sound, "Well, unlike Worldbreakers who only have one path to their goal, Worldhackers have multiple and are much harder to detect compared to Worldbreakers. For example if they find a bug first or a cannon fodder character with decent spiritual energy to absorb they can latch onto them and called themselves a Counterattack System or something, using them as an intermediator to absorb more energy by making them do tasks. A more common low-key Worldhacker crime is stealing a percentage of their host's points for themselves, increasing the prices of the shop items and forcing the host to buy many things in order to quickly earn energy."

"That…" The first example was very typical but those last crimes.. "Isn't that just white collar crime?"

"White collar crime is still crime," Bebe says seriously, "Besides, points are super essential to hosts, by stealing them they reduce the host's survivability in harder worlds and indirectly cause their death."

"Oh, that makes sense," it was a little unreal imagining systems doing these sort of things though. Like it makes sense. But still. It felt rather petty ah. "So what happens next?"

"This," Bebe pauses and suddenly Jia Hyson had a very, very bad feeling. "Well, the generally once a Worldbreaker enters the world the closest hosts must drop their original missions in order to focus on eliminating the target."

Jia Hyson froze. "Excuse me?" He asks in a 'You better be shitting me or I'll kill you,' tone. Drop the mission? The mission he BURNED ALIVE for? He's been a fucking ghost for thirty fucking years for this mission! And they want him to drop it?!

Sympathetically, Bebe could only whisper, "Destroying the world breaker is the most important task, it is the priority, the original aim becomes secondary."

Jia Hyson: '...Bebe, what the fuck.' He suddenly felt like crying.

This sort of feeling, like a good wife who spent so much time and effort on arranging her beloved husband's birthday party only for it to be canceled the day before because the husband ran off with his secretory... really too hard to bear.

Bebe: '...I am so sorry QAQ'

Unable to momentarily control his emotions his hair like violent tendrils of living shadows spread across the room, crushing and breaking everything in sight. Because it covered the room the sound of destruction was muffled under all that hair. He had never been so angry!

How can he be so unlucky?! Out of all the worlds the Worldbreaker went to, to destroy it- eh?

Out of all the worlds…

"Wait." Jia Hyson slowly retracts his hair until it reverts back to its normal waist length and silky form. Bebe silently breathes a sigh of relief. If it's host really lost control of the abundant negative energy inside himself and went on a rampage there weren't many forces here that could solve an enemy as strong as him.

"But if a Worldbreaker comes to this world and tries to change it… isn't that like a home wrecker trying to destroy a marriage between a divorced couple?" Jia Hyson asks. His job as a Beta system host is to change the world plot. Not only that, it's a change that has been given the stamp of approval by the System world, the Story World and potentially the author gods themselves which allows him to so easily alter the fate of the protagonists without too much backlash from the will of the higher beings. In short, if a Worldbreaker came to take the fate of the story or the protagonist into their own hands there would be nothing to steal!

After a second of thought Bebe also felt a little strange. "That, that seems to be the case!" It exclaims. It couldn't be blamed for it's ignorance, there were very few systems that could offer the same unrestricted freedom as a Beta system even in the Design sector.

For example a Villain Reformation system- the main goal is to reform the villain who had ended up either too OP, overstepped their bounds, and-or completely destroyed the world. Therefore things like blackening the hero, causing more negative impacts than good, ruining a righteous sect that had been a strong pillar of righteousness without substituting for another equally strong pillar to balance out the good and evil of the world... Totally taboo outcomes for the host. Insta-fail.

But a Beta-system didn't have that sort of problem. As long as the story is good who cares if the hero dies? Who cares if the world is destroyed and the bad guys stay bad? If the ratings are high the world can burn for all they care, they have other systems to clean up the aftermath!

In a reality with an infinite amount of worlds that is constantly growing in number there are also an infinite number of systems and hosts to try do their best to keep them all in check. The Beta system is so fucking rare they can only be counted in the double digits. There really hasn't been a case of a Worldbreaker having the fortune to bump into one of them. And it had to be his perverted host ah. Really.. too fortunate.

Getting a bit excited Bebe searches up any similar Worldbreaker cases on System Searchers, the system search engine equivalent of Google, and quickly found some relevant points of information, "Bebe checked, there's really no cases of a Worldbreaker contacting a Beta Host. However! From the systems in the Design sector they say that if the Worldbreaker enters midway through a changing plot, things become very difficult due to the feedback loop of time. This is because there's a strong chance that the information they would receive about the story world at that point is the revised story line."

Jia Hyson raises an eyebrow at that, he quite liked parallel universes and time travel theories, especially in stories so he more or less swiftly grasped what was being implied. "Are you saying that if world A, thanks to the host's efforts, manages to change and stabilize the story line it will become world B, then the Worldbreaker who entered in such a vulnerable time could either receive world A or B's information then?"

"Yes. Generally if the host failed to alter much of the story the Worldbreaker would get A's storyline but if the host was already making big waves at that point the Worldbreaker will have at least a 93.2% chance of getting world B's storyline instead."

Jia Hyson clicks his tongue. That's quite a scary thing ah, the more competent the host was at their job the more disadvantaged they could be if a Worldbreaker crashes the party. At best they'll be at more or less equal playing grounds but it would imply the host may not lack the skills to do much in the first place since they couldn't influence a change in the world. This reflection of skill doesn't count for basic system hosts who only have to act out a role of course.

At worst though the host could be up against someone that knew their future actions or at the very least the general consequences of the world that even the host will not know due to the butterfly effect they caused. Foresight is a formidable weapon that cannot be looked down upon. And because Worldbreakers are criminals constantly on the run, they'll have more experience fighting hosts than the hosts should have fighting Worldbreakers, so even having no advantage is a big disadvantage to hosts.

"But this Worldbreaker came before the story started, doesn't that mean.." Jia Hyson smiles unpleasantly, "doesn't that mean they're stuck with the original story then?"

Bebe 'hehe'-ed. "The possibility of that is indeed 96.6% positive."

Even though Jia Hyson had a higher affinity for more violent means and had done some less than... normal things in his life, he had never fought in a battlefield, he never strategized any big attacks, never seriously learnt any martial art skills or had the intellect to plot the downfall of a business. All the things he did could be said to be quite simple and direct, using stories to passively aggressively vent against people, using seduction to manipulate, play around and bully people, occasionally sneaking around to go do immoral things that may or may not be definitely against the law…

The point is, Jia Hyson could at most be on the level of a slightly psychotic small time serial killer with a surprisingly large influence. Confronting enemies in a one on one manner, only striking when he's confident he can get away with it and for less serious cases he will play with the attitude of 'we'll cross that bridge when it comes to it'. While it has its benefits that sort of manner also has a lot of weaknesses, something he was very much aware of.

If it was any other situation, Jia Hyson would not be confident enough to fight a Worldbreaker. A Worldbreaker is an ex-host that went rogue so presumably the Worldbreaker had gone through some serious shit. Even if they used to be from a cannon-fodder system one could not look down on them. Stories are infinite, with so many genres and themes and variations a cannon-fodder character can be a king, a warrior, a genius- after going through so many worlds and picking up so many skills it is easy to determine how dangerous a Worldbreaker really is.

However, this wasn't any other situation. This was a situation that had literally all the cards stacked in Jia Hyson's deck. Jia Hyson had the blessing of the world to change its fate and had not done that mission injustice. This wasn't a few minor fixes and personality changes, this was a whole goddamn new horror story!

Ramping up the power of the ghosts to extremely high levels, converting a supporting lead character into a killer, heck he even has the law enforcement on his side thanks to Li Guiren! Meanwhile the Worldbreaker has no such blessing, they had no reliable information about anything but most of the main cast's backgrounds and personality. Not to mention they would have to do their best to not do anything too drastic to draw too much attention lest they receive some sort of backlash from the story world. It's similar to why many QT counterattack stories have the rule that the counterattacker could not directly kill the protagonists these children beloved by the author god.

If the Worldbreaker is a ghost character in the demon house Jia Hyson can just suppress them to death with the other ghosts. If the Worldbreaker is a human, well, hehe, Jia Hyson can just suppress them to death with the other ghosts!

Suppress! Suppress until they drown from choking on their own blood!

"Hahaha," Jia Hyson laughs evilly, "Aiyah, you really frightened me before Bebe but it turns out it's not such a big deal! Inform your boss that I'll continue my original mission, my aim was to produce a bad ending anyway so it perfectly coincides with killing off this Worldbreaker."

"Hohoho," Bebe also laughs villainously, "You're right host, you are absolutely right! We may not have the experience but we have the power! Let's crush them all! Wipe them out! There shall be no intact corpses once the dawn breaks!"

"That's the spirit!" Jia Hyson crows. He suddenly remembers another very important aspect of facing something like Worldbreakers in stories, "Don't forget to request compensation to your superiors as well! It's already a Skill Upgrade world and now a Worldbreaker has come, the points we earn from this place need to be very good right!?"

Bebe at this point was so excited it was like it was injected with chicken blood. It hadn't even thought of the points! Skill Upgrade worlds already garner a lot of points especially if the worlds had a certain percentage of danger like this one should have, a Worldbreaker's presence is dangerous but they were valuable, instantly doubling the point worth of a Host's reward plus extra depending on their assessed level of difficulty. Ah, ah, wouldn't this turn out to be one of the most valuable missions it had ever accomplished if they pulled this off?

This, this is really.. too amazing!

...

The Worldbreaker nibbles on a strawberry, enjoying the tart flavor. It's been three lifetimes since he enjoyed fresh produce. An apocalyptic world, an intergalactic warzone with only nutrient solutions and poisonous zerg and a dark fantasy world where he had to play a necromancer's fucking summoned wraith.

He had to admit he had been doubting his luck for a while, but now.. he chuckles softly as he reads the storyline. "Aiyah, even though it says horror this is really... it's really going to be too easy."

Reaching for another piece of fruit he murmurs thoughtfully, "All I have to do is give those pathetic excuse of ghosts a bit of a boost and I can kill them all in one feel swoop! Those damn ghosts will have a decent amount of spiritual energy to absorb as well, they'll get me a lot of points hehe." With only some careful calculations he had more or less determined the easiest and effective solutions. Nodding decisively he quickly decides his plan of action, to his credit he really deserved to manage to live through as many worlds as he did with no help from the system world. "Tomorrow I'll go to this, ugh, demon house and see if I can.. negotiate."

He reads the terrible story again, finding it more and more appealing to the eye the more he reads through the badly written plot.

Worldbreaker: 'Hahaha! Kill them all! For the points!" (╯✧∇✧)╯

Bebe: 'Hahaha! Kill them all! For the points!' (╯✧∇✧)╯

Jia Hyson: 'Hahaha! Kill them all! For the points!' (╯✧∇✧)╯