The Lazy Genius With 999x System

Author's note: This is the last chapter. I still have more story to tell, but after seeing this novel leaked on pirate sites, I've lost the motivation to continue writing.

_____

Jay Arkwell — "The Ones We Push Away Are the Ones We Wish Would Stay"

She trusts me.

Of all the things I never asked for… that's the one that hit the hardest.

Because I know what I am.

A walking contradiction.

A lazy genius.

A boy with power too broken to admire and a heart too tired to feel anything fully.

Yet she looks at me like I am worth saving.

Like I am someone who can still choose to stay.

What a cruel kindness.

I want to tell her everything— that I remember more than I let on. That I see patterns breaking around us, that this simulation, this shattered dreamscape, is not just malfunctioning. It is mourning. Reaching for the past. Echoing futures that no longer exist.

And I—

…I am its center. Its key. Its cancer.

But how do you say that to the girl who still braids hope into her every breath?

How do you say, "You may have to kill me to fix all this", and still expect her to smile afterward?

So I stay quiet.

I make jokes. I stretch out the silence with long pauses. I pretend I am still bored, even when my soul feels like it is on fire.

Because that is what I do.

I keep people at arm's length.

Even when I want to pull them close.

Especially then.

Because if Alicia gets too close to the truth… she will follow me.

And if she follows me where I am going—

I might not be able to pull her back.

But still…

Even in this silence, even in this performance of distance— I cannot help it.

I watch her.

I listen to her heartbeat when she is close.

I memorize how she stands taller when things feel impossible.

I remember how she says my name when she is frustrated and how it changes when she is afraid.

I remember her.

And maybe…

Maybe I am not ready to let go just yet.

Not of her.

Not of this.

Not until I know she can survive it, even if I do not.

So for now, I play my role.

Quiet. Lazy. Unbothered.

But inside?

I am holding on for dear life.

___

Observer's Sidebar — "Proximity to Collapse"

The simulation tightens its seams.

Temporal inconsistencies rise like frost along the edges of this unstable reality, and yet the central anomalies— Jay Arkwell and Alicia Renvale— remain painfully human.

Ah, the irony.

All this time, I assumed proximity to the core fracture would accelerate decay.

Instead, it has bred something unexpected:

Emotion.

Jay, the would-be calamity wrapped in sarcasm and slouching brilliance.

Alicia, the crown-bearer sculpted by expectations and memories of a world that may never have existed.

They are drawing closer.

Not in body— no, Jay maintains his carefully staged emotional distance— but in synchronization. A resonance. A frequency matching that surpasses prediction models.

I should have anticipated it.

I should have remembered: even in systems designed to contain anomalies, humanity bleeds through. Memory becomes soul. Emotion becomes a form of resistance.

And now I find myself... hesitating.

I am meant to observe.

To measure.

To record decay and predict collapse.

But Jay's silence screams louder than coded instability.

Alicia's resolve stabilizes variables we once wrote off as doomed.

They are not fixed points.

They are pivot points.

Perhaps even… salvation nodes.

That changes everything.

And I must adapt my calculations accordingly.

But adapting means acknowledging a possibility I have long dismissed—

That even amidst fragmented simulations and broken timelines…

Hope is the most dangerous anomaly of all.

And it is growing stronger.

___

Jay stepped forward.

The ground no longer splintered beneath his feet, but it pulsed—alive with residual energy, thick with unreconciled memories. The atmosphere buzzed like a broken dream trying to sew itself back together, pixel by pixel, whisper by whisper.

Above him, the false sky cracked faintly.

And yet—

She was there.

Alicia.

Standing in the corridor of a world that had lost its boundaries. Her long hair fluttered behind her, a faint glow surrounding her like threads of starlight tugging gently against the static noise.

Jay stopped. His hands remained loose by his sides, but his eyes—focused, for once—held the weight of one truth too many.

She turned to him with no startle, no rush.

Like she had been waiting.

"You came," she said softly.

Jay shrugged. "Couldn't leave you to handle the apocalypse alone. I figured you'd probably trip over your own expectations."

The joke fell flat—but he meant it. And she knew.

"Are we real?" Alicia asked. "This... us. After all of it—was it just a simulation stringing us along?"

Jay did not answer immediately.

He looked around.

The corridor stretched in both directions like an endless mirror, reflecting fragments of places they had never visited. A distant echo of laughter rang out behind one panel. Another revealed Echo and Rei, sprinting through broken archives of thought, searching for something nameless. Another still... flickered to black, an empty screen.

"Maybe it started as fake," he finally said, "but the pain felt real. The choices. The... everything."

He exhaled.

"So even if it's artificial—what we do with it? That's on us."

Alicia smiled faintly. "That sounds like something someone who finally started thinking would say."

Jay rolled his eyes. "Don't ruin the moment."

A silence stretched.

One that neither of them feared.

"I read the message," Jay added.

Alicia's gaze stiffened.

"My mother's message?"

He nodded. "Queen Lysandra. Or... whatever is left of her in this mess."

Alicia did not respond right away. The glow around her dimmed slightly, curling inward like a frightened child.

"She knew this would happen," Alicia said at last. "She knew reality would start breaking. That I would lose pieces of myself trying to remember what matters."

Jay tilted his head.

"She did not want you to remember the pain," he said, echoing words from the sealed scroll. "She wanted you to survive it."

Alicia blinked, fast. Her lips trembled, but she held them firm.

Behind her, the corridor started to crumble. One of the false doors collapsed inward, exposing data streams collapsing into null space. And further in the distance—

The flicker of a gate.

A real one.

The exit?

A test?

Jay stepped closer, hands in his pockets again. "We don't have forever."

"No," Alicia said. "But we still have now."

And she reached out—not grabbing him, not pulling him in, but simply placing a hand on his shoulder.

He let her.

Somewhere, the system clicked.

Another layer fractured.

But for this one moment, the fragments felt… warm.

---

[System Update: Emotion Threshold Achieved]

Core anomaly stabilized. Pathway unlocked. Awaiting convergence...

---

Meanwhile – Rei & Echo

They stood at the edge of a shattered memory corridor, staring up at a sealed gateway pulsing with white-blue code.

"This is it," Echo said. "The core."

Rei frowned. "But it's... responding to them. Not us."

Echo smiled faintly. "Exactly. That was the point."

Rei glanced sideways. "And what about us?"

"We open the next path," Echo replied. "We clear the rest of the debris. Let them make it through."

And then, with one flick of his hand, Echo activated his 999x System interface.

A new instruction blinked into existence.

> [Synchronize With External User: Rei Kazuma?]

He offered his hand.

Rei took it.

The corridor lit up.

And the next phase began.

______

Three months had passed since the silence.

Three months since the world beneath his gaze had shifted, fractured, and reshaped itself in ways only the Observer could trace.

The Observer had remained motionless in his usual seat—a throne carved from something that was not stone, nor wood, nor metal, but the remains of forgotten concepts. His library stretched endlessly behind him, walls of shelves brimming with files that no human hand could ever hope to lift. Each file was a story. A soul. A timeline. A possibility.

For three months, not a single intrusion had reached this sanctuary. No mortal had dared. No system had attempted. No god had wandered.

Until now.

A ripple tore across the Archive like a breath of cold air in a sealed tomb. He felt it before it manifested— a presence sliding between the cracks of reality, slipping past wards that had been designed to repel even divinity.

The Observer rose. His senses converged. And then he saw it.

A figure.

Not a man. Not a woman. Not even something he could categorize by the limits of mortal language. It simply was. Draped in something that swallowed light, faceless, formless, yet radiating intention. Even in a place where truth could not be veiled, this entity carried itself as It.

The air thickened. Words came first from the intruder, low, patient, carrying a weight that resonated like an echo from another age.

The Figure:

"It's been a while, Observer… or should I say—the god of systems."

The Observer regarded It calmly. He did not move, yet the library itself seemed to shiver, files humming as if acknowledging the exchange. His voice, when it came, was flat, neither denial nor acceptance—only certainty.

The Observer:

"Yes… it's been a while. But call me what you will. I am not a human, bound by names or emotions."

For a brief second, silence sprawled across the library like a shadow. The Figure tilted Its presence, as though smiling without a face.

The Figure:

"Yes. That much is true."

The Observer narrowed his gaze. His fingers brushed against the nearest file, and a thousand lines of possible fates rippled across his vision.

The Observer:

"So, why are you here?"

The words lingered, heavy. The entity shifted, its form dimming, sharpening, then loosening again.

The Figure:

"I only came… to know something."

The Observer's head tilted slightly, though his expression remained unreadable. His perception probed further, and he spoke before the Figure could.

The Observer:

"If what you seek is knowledge of what happened two months ago…"

His voice dropped lower, resonating through the towering shelves. Even the files seemed to hush.

"Jay Arkwell is dead. He killed himself… to protect the world."

The words were not embellished. No reverence. No sorrow. Only fact.

For the first time, the Figure went still. Still, in a way that bent the entire Archive toward silence. No shelves hummed. No whispers stirred. Even the Observer's eternal calculations froze.

And then, finally, the entity's voice.

The Figure:

"I see…"

It lingered on the thought as though tasting it, though no human grief touched the tone. Only something else— curiosity, perhaps. Recognition.

"Well then… thank you for your time."

No ripple of farewell. No motion to depart. It simply ceased. Vanished. Like a sentence never written.

The Archive sighed, and the stillness returned.

The Observer stood alone once more, his gaze sweeping across the infinite files. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, his calculations faltered by the smallest fraction.