Chapter 141: Her Broken Interface

Zion walked through the dirt paths of the new camp in the southern hills.

Six hundred people followed her now, and the sheer number turned the rebel faction into a small moving city.

They pitched heavy canvas tents and built thick wooden palisades to keep the Church patrols away from the perimeter.

The smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat filled the air.

Zion looked at a young man carrying a heavy wooden bucket of water from the river.

The blue interface materialized in her vision to provide his basic stats.

[NPC 302: Blacksmith. Level 12. HP: 140/140.]

Then the text glitched. The clean blue letters turned jagged and bled into a bright, chaotic red.

The screen scrambled and generated a second box of text right below the health bar.

[Current thought: He misses his dead brother. He worries about the winter cold and wonders if he will survive the next battle.]

Zion swiped her hand and closed the screen.

The System treated them as disposable assets during her first run through this world, but now it forced her to read their human fears and their private regrets.

She hated it.

The emotional bleed ruined her tactical focus.

She needed structure because a mob of six hundred angry peasants could not win a war against the organized Church armies, so she gathered her core fighters in the center of the camp.

She stood on a wooden wagon to address them.

Varek stood at the front of the crowd.

He led the rear guard during the massive canyon ambush, and he kept one hundred and thirty of his two hundred men alive against overwhelming odds.

He proved his worth in blood.

“You are the military commander now,” Zion told Varek. “Organize patrols and train the new recruits. We need a solid frontline before we march north.”

Varek nodded and slammed his fist against his iron breastplate to salute her.

He accepted the duty without hesitation.

Zion then picked five elders from the civilian group.

She formed a governing council to handle food distribution and resolve petty disputes among the refugees.

She refused to play city manager anymore, because she wanted to focus entirely on the incoming war and the ticking global clock.

She delegated the boring administrative tasks to the council so she could plan the next strike.

An older woman from Oakhaven set up an improvised school near the riverbank.

She gathered the orphans and the younger kids to teach them basic reading and writing.

Zion walked past the wooden benches and stopped to watch the class.

Mila sat on a large tree stump with a piece of rough parchment on her lap.

She dipped a sharpened wooden stick into a small clay pot of crushed berry ink.

She concentrated on her task and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth to trace the shapes.

Zion stepped closer, and her heavy armor clanked against the dirt.

Mila looked up and smiled. She held up the parchment.

“Look,” Mila said. “I wrote your name.”

Zion looked at the crooked red letters on the paper.

Y-U-N-A.

The blue interface exploded in Zion’s vision and blocked her sight.

[MINOR ACHIEVEMENT: NPC has learned the Player’s real name.]

[REWARD: +2 Humanity.]

Zion closed the interface with a quick mental command. She pushed the blue screen away and dropped to one knee.

She looked the little girl right in the eyes.

“It is perfect, Mila,” Zion stated.

“Can I write another word?” Mila asked.

“Sure,” Zion answered.

Mila grabbed her wooden stick and dipped it in the berry ink again.

She scratched four new letters onto the parchment and turned the paper around to show her work.

The word said MAMA.

Zion stopped breathing.

She stared at the crude letters written in berry juice.

She killed gods and slaughtered entire armies without flinching, but this single word paralyzed her.

“Mila.” Zion swallowed the dry lump in her throat. “I am not your mother.”

Mila dropped the parchment and wrapped her small arms around Zion’s neck.

She hugged the armored Player tight and buried her face in the cold metal shoulder guard.

“I know,” Mila whispered against the armor. “But I do not have another one.”

Zion did not push her away.

She raised her hands and wrapped her arms around the little girl, and she hugged her back.

She felt the small heartbeat against her chest plate.

The blue interface flashed one more time in the corner of her eye.

[CURRENT HUMANITY: 52%]

Night fell over the southern hills, and Zion sat on her throne of melted armor inside the command tent.

The camp went completely quiet outside.

She opened her main menu to check the quest logs.

The global countdown timer sat in the top right corner of her vision.

It read twenty-four days.

She had exactly twenty-four days left before the System initiated a massive continent-wide event, and she still needed to march her army to the capital to find the Architect.

The interface glitched again.

A new message popped up in the exact center of her vision. It did not use the standard blue or red text.

The letters were pitch black and bled into the digital background.

[PLAYER ZION.]

Zion gripped the armrests of her throne.

The Architect sent a direct message, and this was the very first communication she received since the countdown began weeks ago.

[NOTE: Your efficiency decreased by 340% compared to Cycle 1.]

[CAUSE ANALYSIS: Excessive empathy toward NPCs.]

[RECOMMENDATION: Delete emotional bonds to restore efficiency.]

[EXECUTE RECOMMENDATION?]

Two digital buttons hovered in the air right in front of her face.

[YES]

[NO]

Zion stared at the [YES] button.

She knew exactly what it meant.

She could hit that button and erase all the pain.

The System would wipe her emotional cache and turn her back into the perfect killing machine. She would forget the guilt.

She would forget the dead soldiers and she would forget Mila.

She would become the exact same monster who burned Phaedra to ashes in the first timeline, having no name and no attachments.

She would just have the game and the absolute drive to win.

Her armored finger hovered over the [YES] button and she kept it there for three full seconds.

She felt the temptation of the void, because the void offered absolute peace through total apathy.

She could stop caring and finish the game without hurting inside.

Zion moved her hand.

She hit the [NO] button with a hard punch.

CRASH!

The kinetic force of her fist connected with the digital interface.

The holographic panel cracked, and glowing blue lines splintered across her vision.

The black text shifted and formed a final warning on the broken screen.

[DECISION LOGGED.]

[NOTE: This is the second rejected system recommendation. There will be no third warning.]

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