"Resistance Morpheus!"
"Intruder Aron!"
"Intruder Tony Stark!"
"You three have been marked as errors, and errors must be... corrected!"
As soon as Agent Smith appeared on the scene, he performed an elegant string of bullet-dodging.
Twisting left and right, he avoided every bullet that Morpheus fired.
It was an elegant display, without a doubt.
But in Aron's and Tony's opinion... that's it?
"What's going on?"
"Didn't we tell the mainframe we're only here for a visit?"
"Why is there a program trying to delete us?"
Tony immediately realized that Agent Smith wasn't a real person.
Of course, that wasn't because of his special skills.
But because...
"Sir, I've successfully entered the Matrix and started taking control!"
Unnoticeably.
The super AI Jarvis had completed the invasion.
He followed Tony's consciousness into the Matrix world.
Now he had taken the second-highest authority in the entire system, right below the mainframe itself.
In other words, he had far more privileges than Agent Smith.
"Great. Give me cover first!"
"Invincibility! One-hit kill! Unlimited energy! Super jump... turn it all on!"
Just as Tony said that—
In an instant, golden light surged around him.
Tony, who a second earlier had been an ordinary human, suddenly became brimming with power.
He raised his hand and fired a blaster.
Boom——!
Agent Smith completely vaporized.
Erased from the data world.
"Hahaha! I can't believe how good this feels!"
Tony burst into laughter.
Not because he was arrogant.
But because...
He'd held back his whole life.
For the first time in his life, he felt what it meant to have power in his own body.
It felt much better than relying on external devices, armor, and mechanics.
Tony currently felt as if he was on top of the world.
"???"
Off to the side, Morpheus wore an expression of complete, bewildered disbelief.
The scene he was watching exceeded the limits of his understanding.
He knew there were hackers among the rebels.
Those hackers would sometimes use system loopholes or viruses to grant themselves supernatural abilities inside the Matrix.
But it had always been limited, like dodging bullets and the like, just as Agent Smith had done a moment ago.
But this...
Morpheus honestly wanted to say: "Bro, did you just turn on cheat codes?"
"What do you say, you see how big my cock is?"
"Aron, come on, say something nice and I'll ask Jarvis to unlock a few plug-ins for you too!"
Tony had already grown conceited and started showing off to Aron.
"I came to experience the Matrix, and you turned on cheats right away? Who told you you could do that???"
Aron slapped him on the back of the head.
At the same moment, the golden light dispersed.
"Sir, there's been a system error within the Matrix!"
Jarvis immediately sounded the alarm—he'd lost access and control.
"You idiot. You ruined my good mood."
Aron said, then waved his hand.
The Matrix world before their eyes instantly turned into endless rows of 0s and 1s.
The system collapsed.
Yes, Aron had just destroyed the Matrix that the mainframe had created.
More precisely.
He destroyed the first layer of the Matrix.
The layer that mimicked the real world of the nineties.
"Oh my God, what's happening?"
"Is this the end of the world?!"
"No, no, no! It turns out what he said is true, this world is fake!"
"Will we wake up?"
People around them watched in horror as skyscrapers and streets crumbled before their eyes.
Everything was turning into green 0s and 1s of code.
Including their bodies...
The entire world built from the consciousness of billions of people, was collapsing!
"Oh my God! Zion!"
And Morpheus's body also began to disintegrate into streams of zeros and ones.
But then the anxiety on his face turned into pure elation.
So many people woke up at once.
Doesn't that mean their rebellion is having an effect?
Can the rebels really shake the foundations of the Matrix?
When he thought that…
Morpheus spread his arms and greeted the end of this world with a smile.
Until then, he still believed that the world of Zion, was real.
"Time to test the server."
"So many accounts transferred at once... the question is whether server number 2 can handle it."
Aron said this with a glance at Tony.
Since Jarvis had been booted from the Matrix by Aron, all the plug-ins and modifications vanished.
Tony returned to his normal form an ordinary human shell.
Emphasis on ordinary.
"How did you do that?"
"Can pure force affect a virtual world?"
Tony Stark looked like he was about to cry, but had no tears.
He hadn't even had time to enjoy the power, and Aron had torn it all down.
What hurt him most was that he didn't understand, how did Aron affect digital network systems with his abilities?
"Who told you I used force?"
Aron gave him a sidelong look.
When he saw his expression, as if he were about to cry, his mood suddenly improved.
Nothing feeds the ego like a brother's disappointment.
"You know Professor X?"
"Telepathy?"
"I used the power of the Morning Star to upgrade that telepathy a bit."
"Simply put, I can use telepathy like a web browser."
Aron gave a brief answer and mercilessly kicked Tony.
"You're kicking me again?!"
"I can walk by myself, you know!"
Tony shouted, but the next instant he fell backward into the void.
Everything went dark.
And the next moment…
He woke with a start.
He was inside a sleep capsule, full of gooey slime.
His whole body was stripped bare, hair and beard shaved off.
Multiple tubes were plugged into his body.
"Yuck! What is this!?"
With discomfort and disgust, Tony began ripping the tubes off himself, struggling to get out of the capsule.
Finally, after a lot of effort, he managed to crawl out.
Then he saw a sight that took his breath away in all directions stretched similar capsules.
People were waking up, one by one, struggling to pull themselves out and yank out the tubes.
Across the space, naked men and women, with terrified looks, for the first time discovering reality, a cold, metallic world under machine supervision.
"No, this is still virtual!"
"The real me should be wearing nano armor; there's no way I'd wake up in a hibernation warehouse!"
Tony reacted immediately.
And then…
Just like last time, Aron appeared out of nowhere.
His specific way of arrival, as if materializing from the code itself, immediately confirmed Tony's suspicions.
"Why didn't you get out of the capsule?"
He looked at him with anger and suspicion.
Since those who wake from the capsule no longer have hair, Tony at that moment looked… well, completely bald, even his famous zigzag beard was gone.
"Hahahaha..."
Aron couldn't hold back.
"Jarvis, take a screenshot of this scene for me."
"Send it to my inbox."
To tell the truth, before Aron even said it,
Jarvis had already automatically saved this scene in his systems.
As a special file: "DO NOT DELETE!"
"I..."
Tony's face literally flushed red.
"Aron, please… when we get back, forget about this, okay?"
Before he could finish his sentence…
His body suddenly began to convulse.
And he wasn't the only one.
All around, the people who had just woken up suddenly began to behave the same way, spasms, jerks, trembling.
As if the entire network were cracking.
Be it people or background, everything became unstable, images flickered, sounds skipped.
"W-w-w-what's hap… what's happening…?"
Tony's face twitched, and his speech turned into pure interference.
"Hmm…"
"Looks like too many people woke up at once, so the server crashed~"