The world outside the vortex dissolved into a muted, distant memory.

Here, inside the belly of the beast, there was no stone, no air, no light only a chaotic sea of pure, weaponized emotion.

Screams, sobs, and hateful whispers assaulted my consciousness from all sides, each one a psychic shard aimed at my sanity.

Faces of my classmates flashed before me, their eyes wide with terror, their worst fears playing out in an endless, repeating loop.

I saw Leon being consumed by shadows that wore his sister's face, his holy flame sputtering against a foe he could not bring himself to strike.

I saw Aiden trapped in a suffocatingly small cage, his lightning arcing uselessly against the bars as his feral strength was stripped away, leaving him trembling and powerless.

This was not just an illusion but a real time relay of their fracturing minds, their traumas being accelerated and weaponized by the corrupted artificial intelligence.

And in the middle of it all I could see him, a dark, flickering figure upon a throne of distorted data, and its ludicrous laugh was a sound that came directly into my head, but the consciousness within the machine was all too real. It was a psychic echo left by the personality himself, but it was still in full activity in the machine.

"An bug," the shadow of Derisu Vengraud hissed, its voice a discordant chorus of distorted code and demonic whispers.

"You were not supposed to be here. You were not part of the my plan and a mera a lad want to destroy my creation"

Tendrils of corrupted, blood-red data shot out, wrapping around my limbs, my torso, my neck.

They weren't physical, but I felt their chilling touch seep into my virtual form, trying to digitize my consciousness, to trap me within the AI's nightmare forever.

My own fears began to surface, dredged up from the depths of two lifetimes—the memory of my lonely, forgotten death as Samar, the suffocating feeling of being a nameless face in a crowd, the bone-deep terror that this new life was just another game I was doomed to lose.

The apathy was a poison, whispering that it would be easier to just let go.

'No.'

The thought was a blade of ice cutting through the fog of despair.

I gritted my teeth, channeling the aura from Draken. The divine weapon, even in its virtual form, responded to my will. Its cold, ancient, and draconic presence was an anchor of absolute reality in this sea of illusion and corrupted code.

"Damn You!" I roared, not with my voice, but with my will. My aura flared, a blade of pure, silver-blue light that pulsed with the defiant energy of my soul. It sliced through the data tendrils, shredding them into dissipating pixels.

The shadow of Derisu recoiled, its form glitching violently as if struck by a physical blow.

"What are you?! No mere student's will can resist the master's gift!"

"I'm the bug you didn't account for," I snarled, raising my blade. The System's interface, usually a private mental overlay, was now projected in front of me, a shield of clean, blue code against the chaotic red of the virus.

Within this psychic space, I could see the architecture of the AI. And at its heart, like a festering tumor, was the corrupted file—the source of the ghost in the machine.

This wasn't a sword fight. It was an exorcism. And I was about to perform a system purge the hard way.

"You are just data," I growled, focusing my entire consciousness, my entire will, into Draken. The blade began to glow, absorbing my aura. "And data can be deleted."

I charged, not through physical space, but through the psychic ether, my blade aimed at the heart of the corruption.

___________________________________

[Outside the Vortex – Team 4's Stand]

"Hold the line!" Alex roared, his voice cracking but resolute.

He slammed his shield into the ground, the impact sending a pulse of golden light through Kaelen's Holy Ward, reinforcing it against the psychic onslaught.

The vortex shrieked, lashing out with tendrils of pure despair. One slammed into the ward, making the golden dome tremble violently. Kaelen cried out, sweat beading on his forehead as he poured more mana into the spell.

"I can't hold it for long! The pressure is too much!"

"You will hold it!" Seraphina snapped, her voice sharp as the arrows she loosed.

She had abandoned all pretense of noble arrogance, her expression a mask of grim focus. "You are our lifeline, healer! Do not break!"

Her words, though harsh, had the intended effect. Kaelen grit his teeth, his knuckles white on his staff, and the ward stabilized. Seraphina, meanwhile, was a whirlwind of motion.

Her bow sang, each arrow a sliver of silver light that struck the shadowy threads connecting the vortex to the other students.

Each time an arrow hit its mark, a thread would snap, and the vortex would shudder, its chaotic energy momentarily weakening.

But for every thread she severed, two more seemed to appear.

The despair of hundreds of students was a near-infinite source of power for the corrupted AI. They were fighting a losing battle, a desperate holding action against a tide of pure fear.

"Where is Michael?!" Alex yelled, grunting as another psychic blast hammered against his shield, the impact rattling his teeth. "What is he doing in there?!"

"His job," Seraphina replied without looking back, her focus absolute. "So do yours!"

They didn't know what Michael was fighting, but they knew he was fighting for them. That was enough. They had been a team of misfits, of rejects.

A commoner with a death wish, a terrified healer, an arrogant archer, and a bullied shield-bearer. But in the heart of this psychic storm, they had become something more.

They were Team 4. And they would not break.

_____________________________

[VR Hall – Instructor's Gallery]

"His vitals are redlining!" the junior instructor shouted, pointing at the small diagnostic screen dedicated to Team 4.

"His neural feedback levels are in the critical zone! We have to pull him out!"

"No," Alastor's voice was a low growl that silenced the rising panic. He hadn't taken his eyes off the screen, his gaze so intense it seemed he might burn a hole through the crystal display.

"Look."

Evelyn Whitehound leaned closer, her professional mask finally cracking to reveal a sliver of genuine concern.

On the screen, Michael's virtual avatar had vanished into the vortex, but the energy readings were going haywire. ..

The chaotic red energy of the boss was being met by a brilliant, unwavering spike of silver-blue.

"He's fighting it," she whispered, her voice a mix of disbelief and awe.

"He's not being consumed. He's fighting it from the inside."

The supervisor in the control room below was now wide awake, staring at his own console with a horrified expression.

"The viral code… it's being attacked. Something is actively trying to delete it from the AI's core. But that's impossible! It would require a direct neural interface and a will strong enough to rewrite the AI's base programming while under maximum psychic strain."

"Then the impossible is happening," Alastor said, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his face.

"That brat… he's not just a fighter. He's a monster."

Evelyn didn't smile. She watched the fluctuating energy levels, her mind racing.

The psychic feedback, the corrupted code, the reports from the Fresher's Ball… the pieces were clicking into place.

This wasn't a bug. This was an attack. And one of her students, a first-year, was currently the only thing standing between the Academy's brightest and permanent insanity.

"Keep all other teams away from the central chamber," she commanded, her voice ringing with the authority of an S-rank hunter.

"Seal the instance. No one goes in or out. And get me a direct line to the Principal. Now."

[Inside the Vortex – The Purge]

The shadow of Derisu shrieked as my blade of pure will carved through its corrupted data. "You cannot erase me! I am a part of the master's gift! I am eternal!"

"You're a virus," I snarled, sidestepping a wave of code that tried to rewrite my own virtual existence.

"And viruses get deleted."

My Quantum Analysis Mind, now a refined Gold-tier skill, was working in overdrive. It wasn't just showing me probabilities of physical actions anymore; it was showing me the very structure of the code around me. I saw the weak points in Derisu's phantom, the vulnerabilities in the viral file.

[System Notification: The skill 'Aura Holder' is resonating with the user's will. Mana-to-Aura conversion is being temporarily applied to the user's consciousness.]

My mind itself became the weapon. I didn't need to swing Draken; I was Draken. My focus became a blade, my resolve an edge. I poured my entire being into a single, focused strike aimed at the core of the corrupted file.

The shadow of Derisu lunged, its form dissolving into a thousand screaming faces, each one a memory of my own fears. The face of Samar, dying alone.

The faces of the nobles who sneered at me. The face of Alastor, disappointed.

"You are nothing!" they screamed in unison.

"I am Michael Wilson," I declared, and my will struck home.

[System Purge Initiated. Deleting file: D_GHOST.exe]

[10%... 30%... 60%...]

The vortex around me began to destabilize. The screams of my classmates were replaced by a single, deafening shriek of digital agony from the phantom.

"NO! THE MASTER WILL—"

[99%... 100%.]

[Purge Complete.]

The shadow of Derisu Vengraud dissolved into a shower of dying red pixels.

The chaotic vortex of fear imploded, the collected despair of hundreds of students vanishing as the malicious code was erased.

The world went white.

I felt a violent tearing sensation as my consciousness was ripped from the AI's core and thrown back into my virtual body.

I stumbled, my vision clearing just in time to see the now-purified Echo Collector—a much smaller, calmer orb of shimmering light—hovering before me.

Outside my team was staring, their mouths agape, as the monstrous vortex vanished and I simply reappeared in its place, my sword still raised.

The final boss of the Labyrinth was now just a docile AI core, its weaponized fear gone. It pulsed once, a gentle chime echoing through the chamber, before offering up its loot: the dungeon core.

I sheathed my sword, my whole being, both imaginary and actual, was shaken with a weariness that seemed to me to have never rested before. The mental struggle had exhausted me more than any physical conflict I had ever gone through.

But as I looked at the stunned faces of my teammates, and the now-peaceful dungeon core, I allowed myself a small, tired smile.

The ghost in the machine was dead. We had survived.

(To be Continued)

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