Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The Author Tower didn’t look much like a tower.

It was more like a deep well constructed from stacks of manuscript paper. We descended by stepping on lines of glowing text. Countless abandoned titles, deleted character profiles, and unfinished endings floated around us. With every floor we descended, I could feel certain thoughts that once belonged to me drifting toward me from the pages, like countless unsent letters finally finding their recipient.

Xu Zhibai asked me in a low voice, “What if the Hunter follows us down?”

“It definitely will,” I said. “Because what it fears most is right here.”

“What’s that?”

“The places where the story hasn’t been finished yet.”

The Rule Hunter can execute established rules, but it can’t fully control unfinished text. Being unfinished means there are possibilities; it means the right of interpretation hasn’t been nailed down yet. For a creature that lives by judging definitive sentences, a place like this is naturally dangerous.

At the bottom of the well was a half-open door.

The sign on the door read: Unfinished Draft Archive.

There were no bookshelves inside, only an old computer. The screen was lit, the document’s title bar was blank, and the cursor blinked steadily, waiting for input. A figure sat before the computer, seen from behind. She wore the grey hoodie I used to wear most often before I died. Her hair was tied up messily, and her shoulders looked very thin.

Hearing our footsteps, she didn’t turn around.

“You’re a bit later than I expected.”

My throat felt as if it were blocked by something.

“You’re the one who threw me back into the Dungeon?”

“If I hadn’t, you would have already been turned into an Engine.” She finally turned around. Her face was identical to mine, only paler and more exhausted. “I could only shove the ‘you who is afraid to die’ back into the game and let you carve out your own path.”

“What gave you the right to choose for me?”

“Because I wasn’t a complete person anymore at that time.” She looked at me, her tone flat. “I only had the part of me left that could write rules. The fear, the hesitation, the desire to escape-that’s all in you. If you didn’t come back, I wouldn’t be able to write a story capable of killing the Hunter.”

I wanted to scream at her, to ask if she knew how many times I had nearly died along the way. But as the words reached my lips, I suddenly understood. She wasn’t “someone else”; she was the other half of me that had been forcibly severed. Cursing her was no different from cursing myself.

A warning popped up on the computer screen.

[The Rule Hunter has entered the Author Tower.]

“It’s here.” Xu Zhibai looked back nervously.

The other me pushed a document toward me.

The title consisted of only six words.

*The Hunter Never Leaves the Chapter*

“This is the new book I’ve kept unfinished until now,” she said. “As long as you fill in the final chapters, the System will have to index it as an unfinished Rule Draft first. Once the Hunter is written into it, it must obey the causality within the book.”

“Won’t the System just delete it?”

“No.” She gave a small smile. “Because what the System fears most isn’t an error-it’s a blank space. As long as text is still being generated, it will prioritize its preservation.”

Outside the door, the sound of footsteps drew near.

The Rule Hunter had arrived.