The Lazy Genius With 999x System

Jay stood still, his feet sunk an inch into the obsidian tiles of the fractured corridor. The air crackled — not with electricity, but with memories, flickering like faulty neon signs along the walls. The academy's halls were collapsing, not physically, but chronologically, different time signatures bleeding into one another.

He didn't speak, not yet. Not until the ticking slowed.

Click.

Clack.

Clutch.

Silence.

Behind him, Alicia emerged from the distortion veil, brushing strands of silver-blonde hair behind her ear, eyes alert. "It's worse than before," she said, her voice as soft as snowfall. "The layer is decaying faster. Whatever the Observer left here… it's trying to bury itself."

Jay didn't answer at first. He was watching a cracked monitor on the wall — a looping visual of a much younger version of himself stumbling through the same hallway, alone, confused. The glitch was not accidental.

"This place," Jay finally muttered, "is built on versioned memories. We're walking through the debug logs of the old world."

Alicia furrowed her brow. "What does that mean?"

Jay turned to her, his usual slouch gone. "It means we're not just in a simulation. We're inside an overwritten archive. A quarantine zone. Whoever tried to preserve this world made a copy of a copy — and the original data's bleeding through."

They kept walking.

Every few steps, they passed remnants: frozen projections of students mid-laugh, glitching teachers assigning homework that had never existed, a bell ringing endlessly in the distance. The deeper they went, the more fragmented the world became.

At the heart of the hallway was a door — not a physical one, but an invitation. It pulsed like a heartbeat, labeled only as:

[QUERY: IF MEMORY EXISTS]

Jay reached out instinctively, but Alicia stopped him.

"You've been glitching more the closer we get," she said, placing a hand over his. "Tell me the truth — is this hurting you?"

Jay paused, then smirked. "Of course. But that's how I know we're getting close."

Without waiting for approval, he touched the door.

---

Elsewhere, Rei Kazuma

He gasped as he emerged from the memory stream. The distortion he'd wandered through minutes — or hours — ago had dumped him into a static corridor filled with mirrors. They didn't show his reflection. Not anymore.

Each mirror projected a different version of himself.

One was still wearing the academy uniform, neat, precise, determined.

Another showed the Rei who had failed to save the girl with the system scar.

A third showed... the corrupted Rei, code leaking from his fingertips, one eye a fractured pixel.

Rei exhaled. "Fragments of me."

He stepped closer to the corrupted version. "You tried to take control once."

The corrupted mirror smiled. "You let me."

Rei didn't flinch. "You were scared."

"No," the mirror replied. "I was honest."

The moment shattered — literally. The mirror splintered, and from its remains emerged a faint trail of data threads.

Rei followed them, deeper into the corridor.

---

Back with Jay and Alicia

The room beyond the Query Door was nothing like they expected.

It wasn't a lab, or a chamber, or a core archive.

It was a classroom.

Desks arranged neatly, a blackboard at the front. Dust floated in the golden twilight leaking from a broken window.

Jay blinked.

This was Room 1-A.

Not the simulated one — the real one. Or perhaps the original layer it was based on.

And sitting at the teacher's desk was a figure.

Not the Observer.

Not a projection.

Just… a man. Early thirties. Thin glasses. Faint stubble. Smiling sadly.

"Jay Arkwell," the man said. "And Alicia Renvale. You found it."

Jay froze. "You're…"

The man tapped the desk. "Call me Null. I'm the system's original architect."

Alicia's breath caught. "But… the Observer—"

"Was the failsafe," Null interrupted. "A good failsafe. But even failsafes rot in time."

Jay stepped forward slowly, fists clenched. "Why are you showing us this now?"

Null's expression didn't change. "Because you're finally asking the right questions. The world you knew? It wasn't the first. Not the second. You're living in the ninety-ninth variation of an experiment I designed."

Jay's jaw clenched. "Experiment?"

"I tried to simulate choice," Null explained. "I built a world where people could rewrite themselves. Become heroes. Face loneliness. And in every single iteration, it fell apart."

Alicia stepped beside Jay. "Then why keep going?"

Null's voice cracked faintly. "Because one variable kept surviving. You, Jay. And the girl who always chose to follow you. You and Alicia — you were the only constants."

Jay shook his head, heart pounding. "You mean we're test subjects?"

"No," Null said, quietly. "You're the error I couldn't delete."

A silence fell.

Then Jay laughed.

A broken, humorless sound.

"Great," he muttered. "So we're not even heroes. Just bugs."

"No," Null said again, rising. "You're beyond hero or villain now. You're something the system couldn't understand. And that makes you the only ones who can fix it."

The room shuddered.

Outside, the hallway began to melt — not physically, but from memory corruption. Data screamed across the walls like dying ghosts.

Alicia gripped her sword. "What do we do?"

Null's form flickered. "Find the last root. The Observer can't reach it. I built it into the third layer, deep beneath the system core. It was… my hope. My regret."

Jay looked at Alicia, then back at Null. "Why are you fading?"

Null smiled. "Because this version of me is a memory. You've activated the last sequence."

The door behind them sealed.

And the classroom, one final time, turned to white.

---

Observer's Hidden Log:

[ARCHIVE 000-RED]

[Status: Leaking.]

[Observer Note: They've reached the root. Null's ghost has begun the final arc.

I am no longer the only one watching. Something else… an Echo… is listening.]

I fear this is no longer a dream, but a recursion. If Jay fails now, even I may forget why this began. – Observer

______

A Fragment from Null's Isolation Layer

The world they see is bright.

Mine is... fragments. Broken save points and trailing echoes.

I remember everything they chose to forget.

There's no sun here. Just a cracked sky of numbers trying to realign.

I walk beneath it — barefoot, because boots crunch the broken code and make it harder to listen. That's all I have left now. Listening. Watching. Stealing memories not meant for me.

Jay Arkwell.

They say that name with so much warmth. As if he was always the answer.

But what if he wasn't? What if he's just the version that played nice?

I was Jay once. Still am, in a way. Same bones. Same pulse. Different sins.

And I remember the first time I tried to smile in this void. It cracked my cheek — like the system itself didn't allow expressions unless they matched the current "narrative branch." I wasn't a branch. I was the root trimmed away.

Do they know?

Does Alicia?

Does Rei?

...Do they remember what the price was to get here?

Because I do.

I remember a Rei who begged the system to reboot without him, just to save the others. I remember an Alicia who tore her wings off, thinking she could reset the timeline herself.

None of that mattered.

Those versions got rewritten. Dumped into the overflow bin. And me?

I was left behind. Forgotten. Like a test case that failed but never got cleaned up.

But I'm still here.

And I've learned how to walk the broken spaces.

They call me Null because I don't have a variable. But I've always had purpose.

I exist to remember.

And maybe that's why I can't let him keep the story. He didn't earn all of it. He didn't suffer for every path. I did.

So let him be the hero.

I'll be the glitch in his ending.

I know Alicia suspects something now. She saw a glimpse of me during that last collapse. Rei probably hears my breath in the background of his dreams.

Good. They should.

I want them to see that this world isn't theirs — it's ours.

Or at least… it was.

Now I'm left with their discarded dreams.

Their abandoned truths.

And this voice inside that keeps whispering:

> "If you overwrite him… you'll finally belong."