He began to laugh softly, then snapped back into clarity, voice sharp and excited. "But there is more. In the past, every dungeon break carried with it an explosion of empowerment. Monsters would erupt from the gate swollen with new strength, their levels spiking in an instant. I have personally documented cases of a level ten creature climbing to level fifty within a breath. That was the terror of dungeon breaks. That was why entire armies fell, and why stopping dungeon breaks occurring was paramount to military strategies. It was much easier to get rid of the monsters inside than outside."

He stabbed a finger toward the camera. "Yet today, nothing! Not one documented case of sudden empowerment. The gates shattered, the monsters poured out, but they were no stronger than they were inside their dungeons. If that were not the case, we would not be speaking of hundreds of millions dead. We would be counting billions."

The room behind him buzzed with faint noise, assistants moving uneasily as if his rant was not part of the script. Roht's grin only widened. "Why is this happening? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the question. The end of the grace period was proclaimed, yet the rules have shifted. We are still piecing together what has changed and why. And every answer we uncover only raises more questions."

The interviewer tried to steer him back. "So you're saying the danger could have been worse…?"

"Worse?" Roht barked out a laugh. "It will be worse. This reprieve is not mercy. It is design. The board wants me to reassure you, but I will not insult my intellect. This is not a collapse. This is a controlled escalation. Something is watching the clock. Something is setting the rules. Whether that something is as abstract as the laws of the universe being at play and escalating the mana apocalypse, or some powerful-beyond-comprehension entity controlling things, is what we don't know."

The camera lingered on his manic smile, the rattling of his chains, and the gleam in his eyes as though he had seen the edge of a storm no one else could fathom.

But he was not alone.

Kaiden shuddered from head to toe as the words of the mad scientist echoed in his skull.

Controlled escalation. Rules being set. Something dictating the terms.

They made him think of one figure.

His benefactor. His unlikely savior.

The Heavenly Demon, also known as the Celestial Tyrant.

The man who had forged the Demonic Pornstar System. Or, to be more specific, not this exact system, but the predecessor, the foundation that turned itself into what Kaiden now carried after choosing him as its host.

That man had supposedly rebelled against the universe itself.

There was one specific system message that kept repeating before his mind's eyes. The message he got when he lucky-rolled the [Silent Casting] skill, something that has gone a bit underutilized due to the many eyes already planted on his every move. Thus far, he has only used it in the rare circumstances where no one was watching.

The message went as such:

[By the time he was capable of creating the system, he was already at a high level. Resetting one's level was beyond even the means of the Heavenly Demon, making it too late for him to benefit from the ability to allocate his stats gained from leveling up. However, when reconstructing the system before his defeat, the Heavenly Demon incorporated this feature to grant his successor full autonomy, free from what he referred to as the 'Tyranny of the Universe.']

Kaiden had always thought of this man the same way he thought of fanatics back on Earth who hurled rocks into the night sky, screaming at gods for curses no one had placed upon them. A madman. A failure.

A very powerful and successful failure.

But what if he had not been mad?

What if he had a reason?

Kaiden's heart pounded as the thought spiraled. What if the Celestial Tyrant had watched his loved ones die, not by accident or fate, but by the same deliberate hand Roht was describing? What if it had not been chaos at all, but rules? Cycles? Some cruel design that forced entire worlds to bleed?

If that was the truth, then maybe the Heavenly Demon had not been raving at the stars. Maybe he had been striking back at something real. Something that deserved to be fought.

Kaiden swallowed. A part of him wanted to laugh it off, to keep seeing the Tyrant as his quirky benefactor so that he did not have to ask the question bubbling inside him.

What if he was right?

What if…

The universe itself is the enemy?

Suddenly, a sharp clatter broke through. Two assistants rushed into the camera's frame with pale faces. "The orders came down…" Sarah laughed.

And, indeed, their hands gripped the chains that held the scientist to his chair.

"Wait- wait! You parasites, I am not finished!" Roht snarled, thrashing as the camera caught his face twisting between rage and exhilaration. "The world is a clock, and you blind rats don't even see the gears turning! You want me to sit quietly in the lab like some neutered animal while history rewrites itself in blood!"

"Didn't he want to do anything but be present…?" Elara sniffed, her tears no longer flowing.

"He's mad, dear," Sarah giggled.

The feed jolted as his chair screeched across the floor, dragged back by unseen hands. His shouts rang even as his figure slipped out of frame.

Left behind was the interviewer, sitting stiffly, lips pressed thin. She smoothed her papers with practiced moves, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her polished smile.

"Thank you… For your patience, dear viewers," she said carefully. "Dr. Roht did not mean any offense with his words. He is a very, ah, free-spirited individual, and his passion can sometimes run away with him. Please rest assured, the Global Scientific Community remains committed to clarity and calm during these times of upheaval."

She swallowed, forcing a brittle composure.

"Moving forward, updates will continue to be provided by other professionals on our panel, while Dr. Roht… returns to where he is most needed. In the laboratories."

The words were smooth, but her expression betrayed a silent plea. She wanted to be anywhere but in that chair.

The feed cut to the network's insignia, accompanied by a bland piano jingle that did nothing to mask the dissonant aftertaste Roht had left behind.

Just then, someone knocked on the door. Or, rather, the door burst down due to someone's actions.

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