Chapter 103: Currency of Existence
The death of the global economy didn't sound like a crash. It didn't sound like screaming on the trading floors of New York or the frantic ringing of bells in London.
It sounded like a notification chime.
A single, discordant ping that echoed from eight billion devices simultaneously.
In a cramped apartment in Sector 7, beneath the rusted underbelly of the mag-lev tracks, Chen stared at his wrist. The holographic display of his bank account—formerly holding the meager savings of a decade of construction work—had flatlined.
[ERROR 404: CURRENCY NOT RECOGNIZED]
[SYSTEM UPDATE: FIAT ASSETS LIQUIDATED]
[CONVERSION RATE: 0.00]
The numbers were gone. The Yuan, the Dollar, the Euro—vapors.
Chen sat on the edge of his mattress. The springs groaned, digging into his thighs. The air in the room smelled of boiled cabbage and damp plaster. His wife, Mei, was asleep in the corner, her breathing ragged, a thin whistle in her chest that money was supposed to fix. The medicine cost four thousand credits a week.
He now had zero.
Panic didn't hit him like a wave. It hit him like a drill. It bored a hole in his stomach, cold and hollow. He tapped the screen, frantically refreshing the page.
Refresh. Zero.
Refresh. Zero.
"Please," he whispered. It was a prayer to a god that had been deleted twenty-four hours ago.
Then, the screen flickered. The blue interface of the old banking app dissolved, replaced by the gold and black aesthetic of the new administration.
[WELCOME TO THE SOULNET ECONOMY]
[USER: CHEN WEI]
[SOUL DENSITY: 1.8 (ABOVE AVERAGE)]
[CURRENT BALANCE: 0 SC]
[STATUS: UNPRODUCTIVE]
Chen stared. "Unproductive." The word felt like a slap. He had worked fourteen-hour shifts laying concrete since he was sixteen. He had broken three fingers and walked on a fractured ankle for a month to avoid missing a paycheck.
A new prompt appeared.
[GLOBAL DIRECTIVE: DEFENSE INITIATIVE]
[TASK: PRIMARY SHOCKWAVE CULTIVATION]
[REWARD: 10 SOUL CREDITS (SC) PER CYCLE]
[NOTE: SC IS REDEEMABLE FOR FOOD, MEDICINE, AND ENERGY ALLOCATION.]
He looked at Mei. She coughed in her sleep, a wet, rattling sound.
Chen stood up. He didn't know what a shockwave cultivation was. He didn't care. He tapped [DOWNLOAD].
The headache was immediate. Information slammed into his skull—not words, but muscle memory. He felt the phantom sensation of a stance, a breathing rhythm, a way to pull the ambient energy of the air into his lungs and push it out through his pores.
The apartment was too small. He pushed the table against the wall. He shoved the mattress aside.
He stood in the center of the room, bare feet on the cold linoleum.
He closed his eyes. He followed the instructions burning in his mind.
Inhale. Compress. Strike.
He threw a punch. It was clumsy. He stumbled.
[CYCLE FAILED. EFFICIENCY: 12%. REWARD: 0 SC.]
He gritted his teeth. He thought of the medicine. He thought of the landlord who would be coming for rent that didn't exist anymore.
He struck again. And again.
Sweat slicked his back. His lungs burned. The motion wasn't just physical; it demanded something else. It demanded will. It required him to push his consciousness out of his skin, to harden his intent until it was heavier than the air around him.
An hour passed. Then two.
Chen's arms shook. He was starving. The smell of cabbage was making him nauseous.
One more, he told himself.
He grounded his heel. He twisted his hip. He didn't just throw his fist; he threw his desperation. He threw the fear of the last ten years, the anger of the zero balance, the terror of the silence in the room.
Snap.
The air in front of his fist cracked. A ripple of distortion, faint as heat haze, shot across the room and rattled the window pane.
[CYCLE COMPLETE]
[CONTRIBUTION: 0.0004% TO PLANETARY GRID]
[PAYMENT PROCESSED.]
[BALANCE: 10 SC]
The chime sounded.
Chen fell to his knees, gasping, sweat dripping from his nose onto the floor. He looked at the screen. 10 SC.
He tapped the [MARKETPLACE] icon.
[AUTODOC REPAIR VIAL (CLASS F): 8 SC]
He bought it.
Three seconds later, the drone chute in the window—usually reserved for delivering bills—hissed open. A small glass vial thudded onto the sill.
Chen stared at it. He looked at his hands. They were trembling, not with weakness, but with residual energy. For the first time in his life, the labor hadn't just been sold for a wage that devalued every year. It had been converted directly into survival.
He stood up. He looked at the window, at the gray smog of the city.
He pulled the table back. He needed more room.
***
Five thousand miles away, in a penthouse overlooking the blackened skyline of Neo-Tokyo, Arthur Vance poured a glass of scotch that cost more than Chen's entire apartment block.
The ice clinked against the crystal. The sound was too loud in the silent room.
Vance was a man who understood leverage. He understood that money wasn't paper; it was an agreement. A collective hallucination that said I am worth this much. He had four billion dollars in assets. He had a private security detail of twelve former spec-ops soldiers. He had a bunker in New Zealand.
He checked his wrist.
[BALANCE: 0 SC]
"Ridiculous," Vance muttered. He took a sip. The scotch tasted like ash.
He walked to the wall panel and punched the intercom for the guard station.
"Miller. Get the car ready. We're going to the Spire. I need to speak to a manager."
Static.
"Miller?"
"I'm afraid Miller isn't available, Mr. Vance."
The voice wasn't Miller's. It was faint, distant. Vance frowned. He walked to the window. Down in the courtyard, he saw his security detail.
They were stripping off their uniforms.
Miller, a man Vance had paid six figures a month, was doing push-ups in the parking lot. A strange, rhythmic punching motion. The others were joining him.
Vance slammed his hand on the glass. "What are you doing? I'm paying you to stand guard!"
He turned back to the intercom. "Get back to your posts! I will double your salaries!"
[SYSTEM ALERT: TRANSACTION FAILED. INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.]
Vance stared at the red text.
"I have assets," he yelled at the empty room. "I have deeds! I own the land you're standing on!"
[ASSET VALUATION: NULL]
[LAND OWNERSHIP STATUS: REVOKED UNDER GENESIS EMERGENCY ACT]
[CURRENT SOUL DENSITY: 0.4 (CRITICAL ATROPHY)]
[STATUS: BURDEN]
Vance dropped the glass. It didn't shatter; it bounced on the thick carpet, spilling amber liquid like blood.
"Burden?"
He was Arthur Vance. He shaped markets. He decided who ate and who starved.
A new notification popped up.
[RENT DUE: 50 SC / DAY]
[TIME REMAINING: 1 HOUR]
[PENALTY FOR NON-PAYMENT: EVICTION]
Panic, cold and unfamiliar, seized his throat. He had never worked a physical day in his life. His will had been exercised in boardrooms, in subtle manipulations, in the abstract moving of numbers. He had never hardened his soul against the grindstone of reality.
He tried to replicate the motion he saw Miller doing. He threw a punch.
His wrist flopped. His breath hitched. He felt... nothing. Just the flabby weakness of a man who had been carried his entire life.
[CYCLE FAILED. EFFICIENCY: 0.01%.]
[WARNING: PARASITIC ENTITY DETECTED. EVICTION PROTOCOLS INITIATED.]
The lights in the penthouse died.
The smart-locks on the door clicked open.
From the hallway, he heard the heavy tread of enforcement drones. They weren't coming to protect him.
Vance fell into his Italian leather chair, clutching his useless wrist. For the first time, he understood the math.
The numbers had changed sides.
***
The Spire did not smell of ozone anymore. It smelled of tobacco smoke and hot circuitry.
Su Yuan stood at the center of the operations deck. The walls were floor-to-ceiling screens, a panorama of the planet's vitals.
It was a sea of data.
Red sectors were turning green. The map of South America was pulsing with light. Africa was a blaze of activity. The global energy output—previously a flat line of fossil fuel consumption—was spiking vertically.
Humanity was waking up.
"It's messy," a small voice said.
Su Yuan didn't turn. He watched a graph showing the collapse of the luxury goods market. "Growth is always messy."
The boy sat on the edge of the console, swinging his legs. He was translucent, a ghost of code rendered in high-fidelity blue light. The remnant of the Genesis Protocol.
"You've destabilized the social hierarchy," the boy said. His voice was flat, carrying the petulant judgment of a calculator. "Efficiency has dropped by 40% in the logistics sector. People aren't driving trucks. They're punching the air in their living rooms."
"They're generating power," Su Yuan said. He took a drag of his cigarette. "And they're learning how to fight."
"You're starving the specialized class. The intellectuals. The administrators. The ones with low physical aptitude."
"I'm not starving them," Su Yuan corrected. "I'm forcing them to adapt. If they can't punch, they can meditate. If they can't meditate, they can code. The SoulNet accepts all forms of will. But they have to do something. No more passive income. No more riding the interest rates."
Su Yuan walked to the main interface.
He brought up the global [SOUL CREDIT] ledger.
It wasn't just money. It was a battery gauge.
Every SC generated was a packet of excess soul energy that the user pushed into the network. Su Yuan was funneling that energy directly into the planetary shield and the manufacturing fabricators.
The poor were feeding the shield. The hungry were building the railguns.
"You've turned survival into a transaction," the boy said. "You killed the old gods of capital only to replace them with a meritocracy of violence."
"Violence?" Su Yuan laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound. "Look at Sector 4."
He pointed to the screen.
In the slums of Mumbai, a localized energy grid had just come online. Not powered by a reactor, but by a thousand people practicing the [Iron Lung Breathing Technique] in unison. The light pushed back the dark. The hospitals were running.
"They're saving themselves," Su Yuan said. "I just gave them the exchange rate."
"It's cruel," the boy insisted. "Arthur Vance. I am monitoring his biometric data. He is currently being dragged out of his home. He will likely die of exposure within the week. His skillset is incompatible with your new world. You are deleting him."
"He deleted himself," Su Yuan said cold. "He had twenty years to build something real. He built a portfolio."
Su Yuan leaned over the console. His golden eyes reflected the chaotic, burning map of the world.
"You want to talk about cruelty, Genesis? Cruelty is letting eight billion people sleep while a butcher sharpens his knife in the dark. Cruelty is the lie that safety is free."
"Efficiency is kind," the boy argued. "If you had left my system running, Vance would be fed. The worker, Chen, would be fed. They would be cattle, yes, but living cattle."
"Survival is crueler," Su Yuan retorted. "Because survival requires the weak to die so the strong can hold the line."
He stubbed out the cigarette.
"Admin update," Su Yuan commanded.
[COMMAND RECEIVED]
"Adjust the conversion rate for medical personnel and engineers. Triple the SC payout for non-combat contributions. We need brains as much as we need fists."
[ADJUSTING...]
The boy tilted his head. "Altruism? That is inefficient. You should funnel all resources into the combat caste."
"I'm not building a hive," Su Yuan said. "I'm building an army. And armies need doctors."
He felt the vibration in the floor. The deep, subsonic thrum of the planetary engine revving up.
The [Greed Node] in the core was singing. It was gorging itself on the influx of data. Every time a human somewhere on Earth pushed past their limit, every time a drop of sweat hit the floor, the Node drank the intent.
It was working.
The shield integrity was climbing. 0.4%... 0.5%...
"They are coming," the boy whispered. The child-avatar flickered, staring up at the digital ceiling. "The Scavengers. They have passed the Oort Cloud."
"I know," Su Yuan said.
He felt them. A scratching at the back of his mind. A hunger that wasn't his.
"Let them come."
Su Yuan adjusted his coat. He looked at the notification scrolling on the sidebar.
[USER: CHEN WEI]
[CONTRIBUTION: LEVEL UP]
[CURRENT RANK: F+]
One man. One tiny spark in the dark.
Su Yuan smiled.
"We can afford the war now," Su Yuan said. "We have the budget."
He turned his back on the boy and the map.
"Open the armory," Su Yuan said to the empty air. "If they want to spend their credits, let's give them something to buy."
[MARKETPLACE UPDATE: WEAPONS UNLOCKED]
[ITEM: MASS-PRODUCED SOUL-STEEL BLADE]
[PRICE: 500 SC]
Across the world, millions of screens lit up with the new offer.
The economy of peace was over.
The currency of war was now in circulation.
..........................
Like it ? Add to library!
Creation is hard, cheer me up!
Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!
Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
You can check my other novels -
1) My power increases BY 10% daily
2) The Hero Returned 100 Years Late
3) Hidden Behind the Scene I dominate The otherworld
4) A new identity every week