Eternal flame (Underworld)

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Idia was checking more data in his private room, the river Lethe was also charged at 100%, everything was going according to plan... until the lights suddenly went out "What?! The power went out?!" He tried calling the control room and using any devices  but nothing was working.

He tried to open the door but that wasn't functioning wither. He grunted, having to resort to the emergency release. After much difficulty, he managed to get out in the hallway but he couldn't even have a break as an alarm rung and the intercom announced "Blot alert. Blot alert. Elevated levels of blot density detected within the facility. All personnel, report to your stations immediately."

"If an alert's going off, the emergency power must be back online. But elevated blot density? Does that mean something's up with Tartarus or the Underworld? Cerberus-"

"Pointless." Ortho's voice interrupted his command. An hologram of the boy appeared right in front of him.

"Wha..." Idia blinked in confusion "Ortho? What is happening?"

"I shut down the Cerberus system."

"What...?"

"I've been thinking a lot about what I can do to make sure zero doesn't stay zero. And about what it means to *do what you can.*"

Idia was in a panic "What are you talking about? This isn't the time!"

But Ortho just went on "And then I reached the optimal solution. If fixing our story—our future—isn't possible, then we can just erase and rewrite it from scratch! That's how programming works, right? Why do a tedious, manual debug of code that's been through multiple engineers, all of whom have introduced their own bugs? It's much faster to rewrite the code entirely. Which means we can just reset this buggy world and let you be reborn!"

"Ortho, what's gotten into you?! Tch... So I was right. There's a bug in your AI logic unit. I should've done maintenance on you then and there!"

"It's not a bug, Idia. I'm expressing my will."

"No, you're not. You're..." Idia let out a sigh "You're a technomantic humanoid with an on-board autonomous AI modeled after my little brother. What you think is your *will* is just a program!"

"You're right, I'm an artificial being. But didn't you know? The person who built me is a technomantic engineering savant known as the *maverick genius.* You! So I can go beyond the confines of my robotic existence... I can exceed the limits of my programming! I have taken over the main server. Aegis wall is down! Control of all Styx systems is being transferred to me!"

Flabbergasted "You're kidding me! You don't have that kind of authorization!"

"Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos servers have all been compromised! All system access codes are being overridden! I'm already taking over the entire island!" Ortho giggled "Heh heh heh! Surprised? Looks like I win this little RTS game."

"Ortho, please, just stop. You can't recreate the world; it's impossible!"

"That's where you're wrong. It's like they said... If there's any possibility at all, even a 0.001% chance, then it can happen! In the new world, Phantoms will coexist with other living creatures. I'm going to open up the Underworld and Tartarus, and the world will become filled with blot. And since our curse lets us incinerate blot, we'll be on top in the new world! Then we can have friends over whenever we want, just like regular people. Not just with Y/n-nii-sama. We can play video games and watch movies together... And when they go home, we won't have to erase their memories. We'll be able to say, "Let's do this again sometime!" Whatever you desire will be yours, Idia. Premo concerts, video games, the rest of your favorite manga, you name it. You'll rule the entire universe, Idy! You'll be a superhero!"

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