Chapter 82: The Inherent Inefficiency of the Chosen One

The dust from the sudden, structural reorganization of the muscle mommies had barely settled before the primary atmospheric parameters of the boss chamber recalibrated.

In that moment, Nick stood alone in the center of the boss room, his hands visibly vibrating against the leather hilt of his legendary blade, and his golden shonen aura, which had previously held a stable, marketing-approved luminescence, was now flickering erratically like a dying neon sign outside a late-night convenience store.

The physical absence of Egel left an immense, gaping void in his tactical formation—a void that his limited cognitive processing was entirely unequipped to fill.

No meat shield meant less defense and fewer chances to win.

"E...gel...?" Nick muttered, his eyes darting toward the jagged, smoking hole in the eastern wall. "This... wasn't supposed to happen... The vanguard isn't supposed to get launched into a completely different loading zone before the first phase transitions..."

"Your vanguard was operating under a massive, unaddressed structural deficit," Kaito said, his voice dropping an octave as his brand-new AI-generated [Villainous Overhaul (Aesthetic)] passive adjusted his vocal resonance for maximum acoustic intimidation.

Then, Mordecai Von Ravenloft stepped down from the obsidian dais, his dark, light-absorbing robes trailing across the rubble with a soft, ominous rustle. "Namely, a catastrophic lack of familial transparency and months of unpaid emotional overhead. Now, Nick, let’s look at your current balance sheet."

A translucent blue window materialized directly in front of Nick's face, flashing with an aggressive, crimson border.

[WARNING: PARTY COMPOSITION CRITICALLY COMPROMISED]

[CURRENT MEMBERS: 1/350]

[SPONSORSHIP CONFIDENCE INDEX: -42% (MARKET PANIC DETECTED)]

[LIVE STREAM CHAT STATUS: 'CRINGE', 'FRAUD', 'LARRY_SOLOS']

Nick collapsed into the puddle of stagnant dungeon water that appeared out of nowhere, his fingers clutching at his legendary sword. The cold, sterile light of the boss chamber caught the greasy sweat on his forehead, rendering his tears in sharp, unappealing detail.

For a few seconds, there was only the distant, heavy thudding from Sector 5, where a painful family reunion was systematically demolishing the walls. But inside the main chamber, the absolute silence of his professional bankruptcy was too much for his shonen ego to bear.

The humiliation didn't just bend his posture; it fractured something deep within his cognitive framework. The artificial, heroic vocabulary he had spent months cultivating for the live stream suddenly shattered, replaced by the raw, ugly vocabulary of a broken man.

"Fuck this..." Nick spat, his voice dropping into a jagged, trembling register. He punched the wet stone, splashing dark water over his pristine, ruined greaves. "Fuck this entire world. Fuck the System. Fuck the high priests, and fuck the audience! I'm so tired of being humiliated! What have I done to deserve this?!"

He scrambled to his feet like an unhinged animal, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated venom as he pointed a shaking finger at the fake necromancer.

"I’m the victim here, you know! And I'm supposed to slay the evil without any particular difficulty!" Nick screamed, his voice cracking violently as he abandoned all narrative compliance. "I am the one who was murdered by a fucking psychopath on Earth just because his girlfriend decided to upgrade! I had a life! I had sponsors waiting! I deserve my vengeance, I deserve my harem, and yet... yet I am being continuously clowned on and humiliated by a goddamn NPC!"

The word psychopath echoed off the vaulted ceiling, sharp and discordant.

In that moment, Kaito didn't move, but the ambient purple fire lining the perimeter of the room suddenly went perfectly still.

Even the subtle, clinical amusement that had occupied his violet eyes for the entire encounter vanished, replaced by an absolute, freezing vacuum. The silver quill between his fingers stopped rotating.

The boundary between the cold CEO Mordecai and the tired, betrayed electrician from Tokyo became dangerously thin.

After a few moments, a heavy, suffocating pressure settled over the room, so dense that even Princess Pyroetta stopped her 'mosquito-ing', her eyes widening in (non)genuine terror.

Kaito remained calm, but it was the calm of a high-voltage wire right before a catastrophic short circuit.

"Explain yourself," Kaito said. His bass-baritone voice was low, vibrating through the stone floor like a distant seismic event. "I am a benevolent man. I will listen to your final operational report. Tell me about this... transformation you provided."

Nick let out a ragged, pathetic laugh, his eyes bloodshot as he bought into the illusion of Kaito’s professional curiosity. He took a step forward, his chest heaving as he tried to use his past as a shield.

"Before that fucking truck hit us, I was a god!" Nick roared, his hands clawing at the air as if trying to grasp his lost terrestrial life. "I was an influencer! I had forty thousand followers on my social media! I was finally saving the most beautiful girl I had ever seen from her pathetic, miserable routine! She was drowning in that boring, monotonous apartment with a guy who did nothing but fix wires and complain about the budget! She was begging me to rescue her! She chose me, you understand?!"

Kaito stood perfectly motionless, his hands crossed behind his back beneath his light-absorbing cloak, fighting the urge to end his life.

"She was happy with me!" Nick shouted, the lie flowing from his mouth with the practiced ease of a mid-tier marketing pitch. "We were happy before that depressed, low-life electrician lost his mind and dragged all three of us under the wheels of that truck! Lucy wanted me! She chose my lifestyle over his poverty! And I’m here in this shitty world because some blue-collar loser couldn't handle a basic market correction?!"

Nick started speaking like that even though he didn't know who the person in front of him was. Yeah, because raging will boost your damage output, fighting spirit, and blah blah blah... yeah, anime stuff.

Thud.

Deep within the dark, heavily fortified vault of Kaito’s mind, a structural beam cracked.

Nick had targeted the single, bleeding wound that the Necromancer had spent a (relative) eternity trying to encase in stone and bureaucracy. For a microsecond, the entire world of Aethelgard faded.

Kaito wasn't looking at a Level 100+ Chosen Hero; he was looking through the heavy rain of that Tokyo evening when Lucy wasn't at home, imagining the silhouette of the woman he loved inside a hotel room with him.

A cold, insidious doubt tried to claw its way up his throat. 'Has Lucy lied to me? Did she really choose him and cheat?'

But then, the memory of what had happened in the VIP Suite of the Sleeping Basilisk flashed in his mind—the smell of burning life force.

The holy veil turning into a bloody shield, and the way Lucy had smiled at him while coughing up her own soul to keep his darkness hidden from the paladins.

'I never hated you, Kaito.'

In that moment, the doubt died. Lucy had no reason to protect him.

Kaito slowly closed his eyes, then opened them. The violet light within his irises didn't just glow; it turned into two concentrated lasers of absolute, unmitigated hatred.

The polished silver quill in his hand suddenly melted, turning into a stream of molten mercury that dripped onto the stone floor with a soft hiss.

He took a single step forward. The sound wasn't that of a boot hitting stone; it was the heavy, metallic resonance of an executioner's block dropping into place.

"...Tell me, Nick," Kaito said, his voice dropping into a register so deep and hollow it didn't sound human anymore. The clinical corporate mask was gone, leaving only the raw, terrifying entity that had crawled out of the Abyssal Trench. "Did she know about your erectile dysfunction when she 'chose' you?"

Nick froze mid-breath. His face turned from a flush crimson to the ghastly, translucent white of a fresh corpse. His jaw remained open, but no sound came out.

"Or did you have to buy her four rounds of cheap, high-sugar cocktails, probably with some drugs inside, at that lounge first? You knew that she couldn't drink alcohol, didn't you?" Kaito continued, his steps deliberate, slow, closing the distance like a shadow expanding across a wall. "Did you have to wait until her cognitive processing dropped twenty percent below before you could drag her into that low-rent boutique hotel just to abuse her unconscious body for your personal metrics?"

In that moment, even all the other adventurers who were watching the show stood completely silent.

Nick’s knees buckled. He stumbled back, his hands scraping against the rough masonry as his eyes locked onto Kaito's face in absolute, paralyzed horror.

The secret—the dirty, squalid truth behind the 'romance' he had presented to the guild and the high priests—had just been laid bare by a monster in dark robes.

"How... how do you know that...?" Nick whispered, his voice cracking into a high, terrified whine. "Who... what are you?! No... You can't be—"

Kaito stopped exactly one meter away, towering over the kneeling hero. The silver embroidery on his robes began to bleed violet fire, the high collar of his outfit casting a long, demonic silhouette across the ruined ceiling blocks.

"Guess what, Piollo," Kaito whispered, his twin violet eyes burning through the darkness like two dying stars. "I was actually planning to let you live. I was going to liquidate your assets, draft a standard severance package, and leave you to rot as a Level 1 beggar in the lower districts."

The ambient mana in the entire boss chamber suddenly went completely wild.

A massive, spinning vortex of dark purple gravity erupted from beneath Kaito's boots, tearing the floor apart as the raw, unsuppressed power of a furious Necromancer flooded the room.

The system interface didn't even try to log the skill names anymore; the blue text boxes were glitching out, flashing with endless streams of corrupted data.

"But your behavioral non-compliance has officially exceeded my patience," Kaito hissed, his hand reaching down toward Nick's face, his fingers dripping with compressed, agonizing dark energy. "I am going to murder you again with my bare hands. And this time, there will be no truck to share the blame."

The violet fire expanded, swallowing the light, swallowing the stream, swallowing the screen.

[CRITICAL WARNING: AREA DATA OVERFLOW]

[NARRATIVE STATUS: EXTREME NARRATIVE VOLATILITY]

"No... no, no, no!" Nick panicked, his thumb frantically twitching against his user interface as he tried to refresh his real-time popularity analytics. "The chat... they’re unsubscribing! They’re saying I’m a carried hero! I’m the Chosen One! I have a prophecy! The high priests signed the exclusivity contract!"

He didn't even reflect on his actions; the Cucked One cared more about his OnlySaints subscribers than about saying 'I'm sorry'. Not that it would've changed anything, tho.

"The high priests are currently facing a class-action lawsuit regarding the unauthorized distribution of bathwater thanks to Cassandra," Kaito replied calmly, stopping exactly five meters away. His twin violet eyes glowed with the cold, mathematical precision of a server blade running a diagnostics check. "Their endorsement has been declared a toxic asset. You are entirely uninsured, Nick. Your defensive metrics are down, your brand identity is fracturing, and your posture is an absolute disaster."

"SHUT UP! YOU'LL DIE NOW!" Nick screamed, his virgin shonen ego overinflating to combat the clinical severity of the assessment. "I don't need a vanguard! The light is strongest when the hero is pushed into a corner! THIS IS MY DESPERATE AWAKENING! [Radiant Burst]!"

He slammed his heavy boots into the stone, attempting to trigger a high-tier agility skill that would allow him to close the distance instantly.

A brilliant, cinematic flash of golden light erupted beneath his heels, accompanied by a swell of synthesized orchestral trumpets the System automatically generated to enhance his presentation.

Kaito didn't move a muscle. He didn't even raise his staff. He merely blinked.

[SKILL ACTIVATION: UNSKIPPABLE VILLAIN CUTSCENE (META-GRADE)]

[TARGET: CHOSEN HERO NICK]

[EFFECT: TEMPORAL FLOW RESTRICTED TO NARRATIVE VELOCITY]

Instantly, the golden flash beneath Nick's boots froze into a solid, jagged crystal of static light, and the synthesized trumpets ground to a horrific, distorted halt, sounding like a cassette tape being violently chewed by an old car stereo.

Nick’s entire body locked in mid-air, suspended precisely three inches off the ground in an incredibly awkward, hyper-dramatic lunging posture.

His jaw was forced open, his eyes wide with absolute terror as he realized he could no longer access his muscle commands or his skill shortcuts.

The physical world around him turned a dull, monochromatic grey, except for Kaito, who remained fully articulated and perfectly rendered in high-definition violet color.

A large, glowing translucent screen appeared right in front of Nick's restricted field of vision. In the bottom right corner, a tiny, flickering grey button read: [SKIP IN 05:00].

"What... what the f*ck is this?!" Nick’s internal monologue screamed in absolute agony. "I can’t move! My ultimate skill is stuck in the queue! Why is there a progress bar in my retina?!"

Kaito slowly adjusted the silver cuffs of his dark robes, clearing his throat with a deep resonance that echoed through the frozen temporal plane.

"Every quarter, it’s the same issue," Kaito began, his bass voice carrying the crushing weight of a mandatory three-hour corporate training seminar. "You protagonists enter a high-tier dungeon environment with the absolute certainty that your emotional state correlates directly with your kinetic output. Spoiler: It doesn't. An underlying computational code governs the physical laws of Aethelgard, and your current output is operating at a forty-two percent efficiency deficit."

"Let me go!" Nick’s soul wailed. He tried to force his thumb to move toward the mental shortcut for his [Holy Will] passive, but his system interface refused to respond. The progress bar was moving with agonizing slowness. [SKIP IN 04:42].

"Furthermore," Kaito continued, walking in a slow, precise circle around the suspended hero, pointing a gloved finger at the various structural vulnerabilities in his legendary gear. "Your armor distribution is entirely non-compliant with standard safety regulations. Look at these shoulder pauldrons. They are exactly three times larger than your cranial radius. If you were to attempt a standard horizontal slash, the upper bevel would compress your jugular vein. You aren't dressed for combat, Nick. You are dressed for a thumbnail." Mordecai said, looking at Nick with intense disgust.

"And... to be more specific, the real enemy of this world... no, of my soul... are the fast food stories. Same revenge plot, same script, only for giving people what they want: IMMEDIATE DOPAMINE RELEASE WITHOUT A PROPER PLOT! THAT'S WHY WE'RE FUCKED!" He added. "And do you know the difference between a good story and a bad story? I'll tell you: it's the budget. The animation budget. Give people proper animations, and they'll forget all the plot holes and call 'PEAK' everything." Mordecai continued. (That one was probably personal.)

In that moment, Nick's frustration level began to spike violently. The sheer, unadulterated agony of being forced to listen to a middle-management critique of his legendary wardrobe and all the anime world was doing genuine damage to his sanity. He began to mentally slam his consciousness against the frozen interface, desperately trying to force the system to bypass the dialogue.

[TARGET IS ATTEMPTING TO BYPASS NARRATIVE DELIVERY INTENTIONALLY]

[CORRECTION APPLIED: FRUSTRATION DETECTED]

[NICK TAKES 50 PSYCHOSOMATIC DAMAGE FROM PURE ANNOYANCE]

Then, a sharp, stabbing pain shot through Nick's forehead—not from a physical blade, but from the raw, agonizing irritation of an unskippable corporate presentation. A small chunk of his health bar turned grey and crumbled away.

"You see," Kaito said, stopping directly in front of Nick's frozen face, his violet eyes boring into the hero's soul. "In a real professional environment, an employee with your level of behavioral non-compliance would have been terminated during the probationary period. You don't read the memos, you don't log your hours, and you consistently misallocate guild assets for personal brand growth. You are a liability to the entire revenue stream of this realm."

After his last words, the timer finally ticked down to zero. The word [SKIP] flashed a bright, neon green.

With a massive, desperate mental lunge, Nick smashed his consciousness against the button.

The grey world shattered, and the temporal flow snapped back with the harsh, concussive force of a broken rubber band.

The golden light beneath Nick's feet exploded into useless sparks, and he tumbled forward onto his face, skidding across the rough stone dust for three meters before coming to a clumsy halt at Princess Pyroetta's feet.

"Sir Nick!" Pyroetta wailed, her red twintails covered in a fresh layer of ceiling soot. "That was the most boring, uninspired villain monologue I have ever heard! Why didn't you counter-monologue him?! Your dialogue metrics are tanking the stream!"

"I... I tried..." Nick wheezed, pushing himself up from the floor, his glorious blond hair now looking like a bird's nest that had survived a minor industrial accident. Moreover, his forehead was still throbbing from the psychosomatic damage. "He... he has some admin-tier pop-up magic... It’s completely unfair!"

"Get up, Piollo," Kaito's voice boomed from the shadows, his dark figure completely unaffected by the localized temporal distortion. "We are only five minutes into the evaluation, and you are already resting on the clock. That is a clear violation of standard productivity guidelines."

"I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU! I’ll wipe that smug, corporate smile off your face!" Nick roared, his face twisting into an expression of raw, unvarnished hatred, abandoning all attempts at dynamic positioning, gripping his "legendary" blade with a white-knuckled intensity as his ultimate shonen resource pool filled to maximum capacity.

[HEROIC SYNERGY UNLOCKED: THE POWER OF FRUSTRATION]

[NICK ACTIVATES CALAMITY SKILL: FINAL STARLIGHT JUDGMENT]

The legendary sword in his hands let out a massive, deafening shriek of pure metal stress. "Oh, brilliant," the blade's internal voice groaned in Nick's mind. "The big one. The over-budget animation sequence. I hope you realize this attack consumes 80% of my durability. If we miss, I'm going to look like a rusty butter knife for the next three chapters."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Nick shouted.

In that moment, the entire boss chamber was suddenly illuminated by a blinding, multicolored solar flare, with massive pillars of golden and azure energy shooting from the sword, forming a colossal, rotating cross of holy fire that reached the vaulted ceiling.

The sheer physical force of the mana generation caused the loose rocks on the floor to levitate, spinning in chaotic orbits around Nick's glowing form.

"This is it!" Nick screamed, his voice amplified by the system's built-in dramatic reverb. "This is the attack that defeated the Elder Kraken of the Sunken Coast! It’s a twelve-hit combo that ignores seventy percent of physical armor! You can't block this, Monster! You can't calculate your way out of pure, unadulterated shonen hype!"

"Genius, you just spoiled your strongest technique," Mordecai said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Our beloved Fake Necromancer stood perfectly still beneath the towering cross of holy fire. He didn't even raise his hands into a defensive block or ask Pyroas to perform a counter [ADMINISTRATIVE FLARE].

He merely adjusted his high, structured collar, with his violet eyes scanning the massive magical structure with the detached coldness of an engineer looking at a poorly written blueprint.

"Skill activation," Kaito muttered, his voice perfectly clear despite the roaring torrent of holy energy.

[SKILL ACTIVATION: SPOILER ALERT: VISION OF THE GENERIC]

[SKILL EXPLANATION: MORDECAI VON RAVENLOFT LOUDLY REVEALS THE PREDICTABLE NATURE OF AN ENEMY'S FINAL ATTACK. IF MORDECAI IS RIGHT (AND HE'S 99% ALWAYS RIGHT), THE ENEMY'S ATTACK WILL DEAL ONLY 1 POINT OF DAMAGE DUE TO "NARRATIVE LOSS".]

[EFFECT: PREDICTABILITY OVERLAY APPLIED TO TARGET'S LOGICAL HORIZON]

Instantly, a massive, flashing neon orange arrow appeared in the air, pointing directly at Nick's right elbow. A sequence of floating, holographic text blocks materialized next to the spinning holy cross, listing the exact frame data, hit boxes, and structural properties of the attack in plain, easy-to-read sans-serif font.

"Your twelve-hit combo consists of nine identical vertical slashes followed by two horizontal feints and a highly telegraphed overhead slam," Kaito announced, his deep baritone carrying across the chamber with absolute, devastating clarity. "The entire sequence relies on an assumed narrative convenience where the antagonist stands still out of pure astonishment. Furthermore, your third slash leaves your left flank exposed for precisely fourteen frames because your oversized shoulder pauldron restricts your rotator cuff rotation."

Nick’s heart skipped a beat. The colossal cross of holy fire suddenly wavered, the bright golden lines flickering as the structural integrity of his hype encountered a massive, unpatched bug.

"How... how do you know the sequence?!" Nick stammered, his concentration shattering in real-time. "This is a secret technique taught to me by the ghost of the First Paladin!"

"The First Paladin, friend of Sir Galadron, was a non-playable character designed in the early alpha phase of the narrative engine," Kaito said, taking a single, casual step to the left, positioning himself precisely outside the first hit-box zone indicated by the orange holographic overlay. "According to Ugo, his coding was incredibly lazy, and every single one of his derivatives uses the exact same attack pattern. It’s entirely derivative, Nick. It feels unoriginal and shows no artistic or mechanical innovation. Moreover, these are the same skills for everyone, right? Random acrobatics with absolute 0 efficiency."

The moment the word unoriginal passed Kaito’s lips, the System let out a sharp, metallic chime that sounded like a cash register closing an unsuccessful transaction.

[NARRATIVE PREDICTABILITY CONFIRMED]

[SPOILER ALERT TRIGGERED: TARGET'S ATTACK LOSES COHERENCE]

[CRITICAL DAMAGE APPLIED TO CELESTIAL SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF]

[NICK'S ATTACK INFLICTS: 1 DAMAGE]

The colossal, world-shaking cross of holy fire instantly shrank. The blinding solar flare turned into the faint, pathetic glow of a couple of sparklers at a low-budget children's birthday party.

The massive, levitating rocks dropped back to the floor with a dull, anticlimactic thud, and the entire grand animation sequence had been reduced to a single, low-resolution visual effect that barely registered on the room's ambient light meters.

Nick dashed towards Mordecai and completed the twelve-hit combo anyway, his sword swinging wildly through the empty air where Kaito had been standing three seconds ago. The blade whistled softly, hitting nothing but a solitary dust mote before coming to a halt.

"One damage...?" Nick stared at his combat log, his voice dropping into a high-pitched whisper of pure, unadulterated existential dread. "My ultimate skill... my three-hundred-mana ultimate skill... did one point of holy damage?!"

"The market value of your drama has collapsed, Nick," Kaito explained, looking down at his status menu to confirm that his health pool had dropped from 10,000 to 9,999. "An entirely predictable narrative cannot generate sufficient kinetic tension to bypass basic magical resistance. You aren't fighting a boss, Nick. You are fighting your own bad writing. Say thanks to all those authors who only chased money instead of their dreams."

"Damn it! Damn it all to hell!" Nick wept, dropping his sword to his side as the complete lack of external validation began to eat away at the final remnants of his sanity. He looked toward Princess Pyroetta, his eyes begging for some form of moral support. "Princess... please... tell me my form was good... tell me the aura looked cool..."

"Oh, oh. Squirrel Fart-Boy is searching for validations. So pathetic. Throw me inside a volcano, for the love of the Goddess," the legendary sword spoke.

Pyroetta turned her face away, her red twintails twisting into a tight, dismissive knot. "I’ve seen better lighting effects on a low-tier goblin shaman, Nick."

"No... it’s not over..." Nick whispered, his teeth grinding together as he reached into his inventory, his fingers wrapped around a small, cracked obsidian shard. "I still have the backup plan. The high priests... they gave me a forbidden artifact... a shard of the Primal Chaos... If I trigger this, the entire zone will undergo an unscripted reality shift!"

Kaito sighed, adjusting his leather gloves with a slow, deliberate movement that suggested he had already scheduled a lunch break in exactly ten minutes.

"You really don't understand the basic principles of human resources, do you?" Kaito said, his violet eyes locking onto Nick's trembling frame. "You think your primary deficit is a lack of raw power. It isn't. Your primary deficit is a complete lack of accountability regarding your historical interpersonal transactions. Let’s bring in a specialist to address your social liabilities."

Kaito raised his right hand, his silver quill manifesting between his fingers like a conductor's baton.

[SKILL ACTIVATION: GHOSTING: LITERAL EDITION]

[SKILL EXPLANATION: SUMMONS A 4TH WALL BREAKING GHOST THAT HAUNTS THE TARGET, REMINDING THEM OF THEIR MOST EMBARRASSING SOCIAL FAILURES].

[TARGET: CHOSEN HERO NICK]

[PHANTASMAL REQUISITION: HISTORICAL SOCIAL TRAUMAS]

The floor directly behind Nick didn't crack. Instead, a cold, greasy pool of grey mist began to seep out from the gaps between the masonry. From the center of the mist, a figure slowly rose—not a skeleton, not a zombie, but a translucent, hyper-realistic phantom wearing a normal, high-school gym uniform from the terrestrial realm.

The phantom had no face, except for a massive, glowing smartphone interface where its features should have been.

The screen displayed a messaging app with three distinct, unread notifications that had been sent exactly fourteen years ago.

"What... what is that...?" Nick whispered, his entire body tensing as a wave of cold, primordial embarrassment washed over his spine. "Why does that ghost smell like Axe Body Spray and cheap cafeteria pizza...?"

The phantom slowly raised its translucent arm, its voice echoing in Nick's ears with the sharp, mocking clarity of a group chat that had been archived but never deleted.

"Hey, Nick," the ghost whispered, its voice perfectly mimicking the tone of the most popular girl in his middle-school district. "Everyone saw you trying to do that anime run during the hundred-meter dash yesterday. We all took a video. We’re putting it in the yearbook group chat. Also, your hair gel smells like industrial floor cleaner. Please don't sit at our table anymore."

"NO! NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT! STOP... STOP IT!" Nick screamed, his hands flying to his ears as his health bar took a massive, direct hit of pure, unadulterated [Psychological Structural Damage]. No physical armor value could mitigate the raw, piercing agony of a middle-school social rejection.

"Nick? What's wrong? Oh... do you remember when you pooped yourself in middle school, and everyone called you 'Poopy-boy' for the next month? Do you remember when you brought your mother to your first date with a girl?" The ghost continued.

"NOOOOOOOOO!" Nick screamed, his eyes wide in terror, while all the adventurers up there burst into a deep laugh.

[CRITICAL HIT! GHOSTING: LITERAL EDITION INFLICTS 450 PURE PSYCHIC DAMAGE]

[TARGET IS CURRENTLY RE-EXPERIENCING THE 'YEAR 2012' TRAUMA]

[DEFENSIVE METRICS REDUCED TO ZERO DUE TO INTENSE SOCIAL CRINGE]

But the ghost didn't stop. It took a step closer, the smartphone face flashing with a new notification.

"Remember that time you tried to ask out the cashier at the grocery store by reciting a monologue from a fantasy movie, Nick?" the phantom chuckled, its voice shifting into a deep, monotone drone that carried the absolute finality of an awkward silence. "She didn't answer you. She just scanned your milk in total silence and asked if you had a loyalty card. Everyone in line behind you was looking at their shoes."

"AGHHHHH!" Nick fell to his knees, his legendary armor clinking against the stone as he curled into a tight, defensive fetal position. His face was buried in his hands, his eyes streaming with actual, uncinematic tears as his own repressed memories violently dismantled his entire identity. "Make it stop! Please! I’ll give you the gold! I’ll give you the kingdom! Just turn off the ghost! The cringe... It’s too much... I can feel my soul shrinking!"

Kaito watched the hero weep, his expression remaining completely unperturbed. He adjusted his ledger, checking off another line on his clipboard.

"Social liabilities fully processed," Kaito noted, his deep voice cool and measured. "Basic historical data have entirely depleted the target's psychological reserve. Now, let’s address the final structural inconsistency in your contract."

Kaito took three slow steps forward, standing directly above the weeping hero. He raised his silver quill, pointing the tip directly at the center of Nick's glowing legendary sword.

"What... what are you doing...?" Nick whined, his voice muffled by his own gauntlets as the ghost of his middle-school failures slowly dissolved back into the grey mist, its job completely finished.

"I’m performing a standard compliance review of your inventory," Kaito said. "Skill activation: [Plot Hole Strike]."

[SKILL ACTIVATION: PLOT HOLE STRIKE]

[SKILL EXPLANATION: THIS SKILL EXPLOITS LOGICAL INCONSISTENCIES IN THE ENEMY'S NARRATIVE TO LAUNCH AN ATTACK THAT BYPASSES THEIR DEFENSES. IT AFFECTS THE TARGET'S SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF.]

[TARGET: LEGENDARY BLADE 'SWORD OF THE RIGHTEOUS ECHO']

[LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY DETECTED: MATERIAL PROVENANCE ENTIRELY UNSUBSTANTIATED BY LORE]

A bright, flashing red circle appeared around the hilt of Nick's sword. The system's administrative voice let out a sharp, metallic buzzer sound.

"According to your official character biography," Kaito stated, his bass voice filling the room with the absolute authority of a tax auditor closing a fraudulent account. "This blade was forged from the heart of a fallen star by the ancient blacksmith of the Sun Realm. However, according to Sector 3's regional transport logs, the material composition consists entirely of low-grade scrap iron imported from a nearby goblin landfill to reduce manufacturing costs. The legendary status of this item is an absolute fabrication designed to deceive potential investors."

Of course, that was a fake story made up by both Vesta and Jeanette, but Nick was too shocked to react.

"Wait, what?!" the sword's internal voice screamed, its metallic resonance suddenly turning into a high-pitched panic. "I’m scrap iron?! I’m not a fallen star?! My whole life is a lie! I thought I was celestial! No wonder I always taste like rusted tin cans! The narrative team completely scammed me!"

The moment the logical plot hole was exposed, the legendary blade's structural coherence completely vanished. The brilliant golden runes lining the edge of the steel blinked out, replaced by a series of ugly, rusted patches that spread across the metal like an aggressive mold.

The sword didn't break—it simply ceased to exist as a legendary asset, its stats collapsing to zero as the suspension of disbelief holding its data together was entirely revoked.

With a soft, pathetic clink, the weapon turned into an ordinary, badly bent piece of scrap metal, its hilt dropping out of Nick's hand and rolling into a puddle of stagnant dungeon water that had appeared out of nowhere.

Nick stared at his empty palm, his mind completely blank as the absolute reality of his situation finally settled into his bones. His party was gone. His sword was garbage. His reputation was a negative number.

"You... you destroyed my sword with a lore correction..." Nick whispered, his voice entirely devoid of life.

"I didn't destroy it, Nick," Kaito said, looking down at him with his twin violet eyes, standing perfectly in his impeccable, dark robes. "I simply audited it. A narrative built on fraud cannot withstand a basic structural inspection. Your contract with this world is officially terminated due to a total lack of performance compliance."

From the adjacent room, a sudden, massive explosion tore through the remaining walls, a shower of concrete fragments and dust flying into the boss chamber as the titanic, roaring combat between Egel and the newly mutated, muscle-bound Regel reached a catastrophic crescendo, the sound of their heavy fists hitting reinforced masonry providing the perfect, thunderous background music for the complete and utter bankruptcy of the Chosen Hero.

Kaito didn't look back at the explosion. He simply adjusted his leather gloves, looked down at Nick, and raised his silver quill one final time.

"Now," Kaito said, his bass voice echoing through the ruined chamber. "Let’s discuss your severance package..."