The chaos in the Chamber of Origin was deafening, but Malak ignored it. He simply snapped his fingers—the sound like a breaking bone—and he was gone.
He rematerialized in his private observation deck, a space overlooking the swirling white void of the Nexus Core.
He shed his True Form, the feathers and obsidian melting away, but he kept the face—the porcelain mask with the horror-movie smile. He was tired of hiding his nature from his "toys."
"Fools," he muttered, watching the screens that monitored the Nexus Seven. "They think they are protecting the status quo. They don't realize the status quo is already dead."
He watched Saitama reading a comic in City Z.
He watched Jin-Woo cleaning his daggers in the Shadow Realm.
He watched Sensei (Dazai) lying peacefully in a wooden coffin, being dragged by a cat-girl.
"They have integrated," Malak observed. "They have learned to travel. They have learned to disrupt. But they still think this is a game about defense. They think they won by stopping the Tangle."
He chuckled, a wet, grinding sound.
"They have no idea that the Tangle was just the stress test."
He raised his hand, hovering it over a massive, red button on his console labeled [PHASE 2: UNIVERSAL INTEGRATION].
"Time to wake them up. The warm-up is over."
World: Solo Leveling
Jin-Woo was in the middle of a guild meeting. The topic was the strange fluctuation in Gate energy signatures.
"Chairman Woo," a hunter asked, "do you think the Red Gate incident was an isolated event?"
Jin-Woo opened his mouth to speak.
The hunter froze. The dust motes in the light froze. The sound of the air conditioner died.
Jin-Woo sighed. "Here we go again."
World: One Punch Man
Saitama was at the checkout counter. He was holding a coupon for 50% off beef. It expired at noon. It was currently 11:59 AM.
"That will be 500 yen," the cashier said.
Saitama reached for his wallet.
The cashier froze. The clock froze at 11:59:59.
"Oh, come on!" Saitama yelled at the frozen universe. "One second?! You couldn't give me one second?!"
World: No Longer Allowed In Another World
Dazai (Sensei) was sitting by a campfire with his party. He was holding a small, purple, bubbling vial of poison he had crafted from dungeon slime.
"Finally," Dazai whispered, a faint blush of excitement on his pale cheeks. "A poison that promises no pain, only the eternal, literary silence of the void. Perhaps this will be the masterpiece I have sought..."
He lifted the vial to his lips.
The liquid froze mid-slosh. The crackling fire froze. His party members froze in mid-sentence.
Dazai lowered the vial, his expression shifting to one of utter, heartbroken disappointment.
"My suicide has been interrupted. Again. This story is a tragedy of interruptions."
One by one, across seven dimensions, the heroes were plucked from their frozen realities.
They appeared in the white void, stumbling as gravity reoriented itself.
"Everyone check your pockets!" Kazuma immediately screamed, checking his ring. "Did anyone steal anything? Gojo, stay away from my loot!"
"Relax, thief," Gojo said, floating cross-legged in the air. "I'm more concerned about why we're back. I thought we won. I thought we beat the big bad Tangle."
"The scent..." Tanjiro whispered, covering his nose. "The scent of this place has changed. It used to smell like sterile ozone. Now... it smells like rot and perfume."
"He's right," Okarun-Granny said, his spiritual senses tingling. "The vibes are totally different. The 'System Administrator' vibe is gone. Now it feels like... a haunted hospital."
Dazai, who had been summoned while lying down, simply remained on the floor, staring up at the white void with dead, fish-like eyes. "Is this the afterlife? Is it finally over? Or is this just another plot twist in a poorly written light novel?"
"Welcome back, Nexus Seven."
The voice did not boom from the sky. It came from behind them.
They turned.
Standing there was The Arbiter. But he wasn't the ball of light. He wasn't the fractal shape.
He was a humanoid figure in a sharp, white suit. But his face...
It was the True Face. The split porcelain mask. The weeping golden eye. The bleeding black eye. And that smile—that fixed, unmoving, ear-to-ear grin filled with needle-teeth.
Kazuma screamed and hid behind Saitama.
Jin-Woo summoned his daggers instantly.
Gojo lowered his sunglasses, his smile vanishing.
"You..." Gojo whispered. "You look hideous. I prefer the geometry."
Malak didn't move his jaw when he spoke. The voice just happened in their heads.
"The geometry was a kindness. This is the truth."
He walked towards them. The ground rotted beneath his feet, turning from white to grey.
"You have performed adequately in the Tutorial," Malak said.
"Tutorial?" Jin-Woo repeated, his voice cold. "We saved the multiverse. We destroyed the Conceptual Tangle."
Malak laughed. "You destroyed a glitch. A minor coding error. You treated it like a final boss."
He spread his arms. The white walls of the void fell away.
Instead of emptiness, they were now standing on a glass platform floating in a chaotic, swirling storm of colors. They could see everything. Millions of universes, floating like bubbles. Some were colliding. Some were burning. Some were merging.
"The Reset Game isn't about fixing bugs," Malak hissed, leaning close to Tanjiro, who flinched at the smell of ancient blood. "It is about Integration."
"I lied to you," Malak confessed cheerfully. "I don't want to separate your worlds. I want to see what happens when I mash them together until they break."
He pointed a long, clawed finger at the swirling storm.
"The quests you did? Collecting sheep? Fighting low-level toads? That was kindergarten. That was the warm-up."
Malak's grin seemed to widen, threatening to split his face.
"Phase Two begins now. You will no longer be visiting 'zones' or 'dungeons.' You will be entering Active Hostile Universes."
"Your mission is not to fix them," Malak whispered. "Your mission is to conquer them."
He snapped his fingers.
Seven massive, obsidian doors appeared behind the group. They weren't the clean white portals of before. These doors were chained, bleeding, and radiated terrifying power.
"Door Number One," Malak announced like a ringmaster. "A universe where the concept of 'Power Levels' is broken. A universe of screaming warriors and golden hair."
Okarun turned pale. "The Saiyan Incursion... he's making us go there?"
"Door Number Two," Malak continued. "A universe of flesh-eating giants."
"Door Number Three," Malak pointed. "A universe of superheroes where the symbol of peace is dead."
Malak looked at the terrified, confused, and angry faces of the Nexus Seven.
"You are the Nexus Seven. You are my Architects. Now... go break some worlds."
The chains on the Obsidian Doors shattered. The vacuum of the multiverse began to pull them in.
Dazai sighed, dusting off his coat as he stood up, looking utterly unimpressed by the cosmic horror. "Conquering worlds? How tedious. I suppose if I must go, I shall search for a beautiful spot to perish in this new universe. Perhaps a planet exploder will finally do the trick."
The Tutorial was officially over. The real nightmare had just begun.