Chapter 15

Chapter 15

I stood before the terminal, staring at that glaring string of numbers.

3%.

Those three characters encapsulated all of the System’s arrogance. It dragged people in, forced them to find a way to survive between the lines of text, and then took the few lucky survivors to use as material for new rules. To the System, this wasn’t cruelty; it was simply efficiency.

But now, the Hunter was gone. I had rewritten the Judgment Module into my new book, and for the first time, a genuine vacancy had appeared in the entire System.

A vacancy meant it could be rewritten.

“How do you plan to change it?” Xu Zhibai asked me.

I looked at the screen, then at the other version of myself standing beside me, who was gradually fading away.

She didn’t rush me; she simply stepped aside to give me her place. At that moment, I suddenly understood that the so-called “complete Lin Zhaowan” was never about one side devouring the other. It was about me finally accepting that I could both write and feel fear; that I wanted to win, but I also wanted to live. The System had split me apart originally to make me more useful. But a real human being was never meant to be reduced to mere functions.

I placed my hands on the keyboard and slowly typed out the new default terms.

“Every Novice Dungeon must contain a clear path to survival.”

“No rule may induce player death through self-contradiction.”

“Authors reserve the right to interpret and appeal their own texts.”

“System Maintenance Characters may not refuse to answer Author-level questions.”

Finally, I deleted that line showing 3% and re-entered a new number:

97%.

Xu Zhibai was stunned. “You’re setting the survival rate that high?”

“It’s not high,” I said with a slight smile. “That remaining 3% is for the System to bear itself.”

The terminal remained silent for three seconds before a confirmation box popped up.

“Deploy new rule set?”

I clicked confirm.

The entire Author Tower suddenly lit up. Glowing sentences buried within countless Dungeons were rewritten simultaneously, like tens of thousands of lamps being lit all at once in the dark of night. From the distance came the overlapping sounds of broadcast resets, as if countless dying Novice Dungeons were being forcibly corrected, writing a “path to survival” into the default answers for the first time.

The other me slowly dissipated in the light, like paper ash finally returning to the flames.

She looked at me and whispered, “So this is what it feels like to live as a whole person.”

My nose stung with tears, and I nodded.

“What now?” Xu Zhibai asked.

I looked at the permissions bar that had just popped up at the very bottom of the terminal.

An identity that had never existed before appeared there.

Interim Chief Editor.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“First, I’m going to rewrite the manuals for all those bullshit ‘certain-death’ scenarios,” I said. “And then, I’m going to write a real employee handbook for the System.”

“Have a name in mind?”

I gazed at the new document title slowly generating on the screen and finally gave my answer.

“It’s called ‘Rules Rewritten by Me’.”

From now on, the System wouldn’t decide how someone should die.

Instead, I would decide that every story should at least give the living a decent beginning-and an end they can walk back from.