The clearing was silent, save for the distant, rhythmic *thump-thump* of the Academy Guard's griffons circling overhead like vultures waiting for a carcass to cool. The Admin stood ten feet away, her white robes untouched by the soot and tequila-mist that coated everyone else. Her eyes weren't looking at me; they were locked onto the jagged, obsidian-wrapped hilt protruding from the pile of shattered Ursog armor.
It was the **Heart of the Mountain**, or as the System's tooltip now screamed in flickering violet text: **[The Cursed Blade: Aethelgard's Agony]**.
The sword didn't just sit there. It bled. Thick, oily black flames licked the air around the blade, sizzling as they touched the grass. Every few seconds, a low, subsonic moan echoed from the steel, a sound so saturated with misery that three students in the front row burst into spontaneous, inconsolable tears.
"Don't touch it!" the Instructor yelled, his iron arm grinding as he held back a curious student. "That's a World-Eater class relic. One touch and your soul will be flayed for a thousand years. It's cursed with the concentrated despair of a dying star."
Jude, who had finally crawled out from the pile of dirty dishes, stared at the blade with a mixture of greed and absolute terror. "It's Rank S... but it's unusable. It's a dead drop. A scam from the gods."
I looked at the sword. Then I looked at my back. Between the Golem's "foot kneading" and the Ursog's "Hug of Doom," my shoulder blades felt like they had been rearranged by a drunken architect. There was a spot right under my left scapula that was itching with the intensity of a thousand fire ants, and my arms were too stiff to reach it.
"System," I muttered, my voice barely a whisper. "I have zero slots. I have a 5,000 EXP debt. And I have an itch that is currently more painful than that sword's 'Eternal Agony'."
> **[System Message]**
> **[Current Status: 0/5 Slots Available.]**
> **[Emergency Notice: Stability Points (SP) are low (20/100).]**
> *Advice: The Admin is watching. If you perform another 'Logic Break' now, you might actually delete your own personality. Also, your back itch is a psychosomatic response to extreme stress.*
>
"I don't care," I gritted my teeth. "Nudge it. Use the last of the residual Concept Points. I'm not dying with an itch."
> **[System Message]**
> **[Residual CP Detected: 50.]**
> **[Nudging Narrative...]**
>
I stepped forward. The class gasped. The Admin's eyes narrowed, her fingers twitching as if she were preparing to delete my character file on the spot. I ignored them all. I walked up to the screaming, flame-wreathed blade of doom and reached out.
"Viktor, no!" Se-ah's voice cracked from the sidelines. She was awake, her face pale, her hands trembling as she reached for a dagger she no longer held.
I gripped the hilt.
The black flames roared, surging up my arm. The "Agony" hit my mind—a wave of pure, unadulterated suffering. I felt the weight of a billion broken hearts, the cold of a trillion winters. It was the ultimate curse.
*Interpretation,* I thought, closing my eyes and forcing my mind into the shape of a disgruntled consumer. *This isn't a cursed sword of eternal agony. This is just a poorly marketed, over-engineered **Self-Heating Back Scratcher** from a late-night infomercial.*
**[CP Spent: 50]**
**[Target: Aethelgard's Agony]**
**[New Meaning: 'Deluxe Battery-Free Back Scratcher (Heat Mode: ON)']**
The black flames didn't vanish. They turned a soft, glowing amber. The subsonic moaning shifted into a low, comforting hum, like a cat purring or a high-end massage chair. The temperature of the steel dropped from 'Soul-Searing' to a precise **104°F**.
I turned my back to the class, reached over my shoulder with the legendary relic of the apocalypse, and began to vigorously scrub the itch.
"Ah... that's the spot," I breathed, my eyes rolling back in my head. "Right there. The obsidian serrations really get into the deep tissue. It's like a heated stone massage but with more... edge."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a man.
Jude dropped his golden sword. The Instructor's iron arm literally fell off its hinges, clattering to the dirt. The Admin, for the first time since I'd met her, looked genuinely, humanly baffled. Her digital eyes flickered with "Error 404" messages.
I continued to scratch, the Rank-S world-ending relic humming happily against my spine. I looked over my shoulder at the horrified elite class. "What? It's ergonomic. A bit heavy, but the heat distribution is incredible. You guys really need to stop overthinking loot drops."
"You're using Aethelgard's Agony..." Jude stammered, his voice reaching a pitch only dogs could hear. "To scratch... your back?"
"It was either this or a tree branch, Jude. And I'm allergic to pine."
I felt the 'F' on my sleeve pulse again. It was burning now. The blue wireframe wasn't just on my arm anymore; it was crawling up my neck, stinging like a tattoo made of lightning.
> **[System Message]**
> **[CRITICAL STABILITY WARNING: SP 10/100.]**
> **[User Status: Rank F >>> Error: Evolution Forced.]**
> *Note: You have treated a Rank-S artifact like a dollar-store tool. The World-Logic is currently having a seizure.*
>
Suddenly, the sky above the Forest of No Return didn't just darken; it froze. The clouds stopped moving. The griffons hung motionless in the air, their wings locked in mid-beat. The Admin froze in place, her hand halfway to her chin, a statue of white silk.
A massive, golden rectangular box slowly manifested across the entire horizon, glowing with a light so bright it made the sun look like a dim bulb. It wasn't a System Message. It was something else.
The text scrolled across the sky in a font that looked like it was written in liquid light, visible to every person, monster, and spirit in the world:
> **[System Log: Unrecognized Logic Breach Detected in Sector 7.]**
> **[Status: Manual Over-ride Initiated.]**
> **[User ID 00: 'The Developer' has logged in.]**
>
The air in the clearing began to taste like ozone and old code. I looked at the back-scratcher in my hand. It was starting to turn back into a sword.
"System," I whispered, my heart stopping. "Who is User 00?"
> **[System Message]**
> *Advice: Drop the sword. Kneel. And for the love of all that is holy... stop scratching.*
>