The transition was instantaneous and jarring. One moment, Ren was standing in the ruins of a Cathedral in Aethelgard, surrounded by the smell of ozone and the impending heat of a nuclear-grade mana explosion. Next, he was standing on a floor of polished obsidian so dark it looked like a frozen lake.

  The "Higher Boardroom" was a space that defied the geometry of the mortal realm. There were no walls, only floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a burning, twilight version of Tokyo. Skyscrapers were crumbling in slow motion, and the sky was a bruised purple, choked with the smoke of a world that had ended a long time ago.

  In the center of the room sat a long, mahogany table. And at the head of that table sat the man in the suit.

  He looked exactly like the trucker who had ended Kaito Tanaka’s first life, but the "blue-collar" grime was gone. His suit was a charcoal three-piece, perfectly tailored. His hands were folded on the table, and his eyes—flat, grey, and devoid of light—watched Ren with the detached interest of a scientist looking at a petri dish.

  [SYSTEM ERROR: CORE LOGIC BREACH] [HEAVEN/HELL SYNC RATE: 0% — FORCED DISCONNECT]

  Ren felt the weight of his power vanish. Lucifer’s prideful snicker, Jophiel’s warm compassion, Mammon’s greedy whispers—all of them were gone. He was alone in his own head for the first time in five years. He felt small. He felt twelve again—no, he felt like Kaito, the thirty-four-year-old man who had failed to see a truck coming.

  "Sit down, Tanaka-san," the man said. He gestured to the chair opposite him. "We have a lot of data to go over."

  Ren didn't sit. He stood his ground, his hands clenching into fists. "Data? I’ve spent five years clawing my way out of the mud. I’ve balanced fourteen primordial entities that were trying to tear my soul apart. I’ve unified a continent. And you’re calling it 'data'?"

  The man smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You were a 'Turnaround Specialist' in your previous life, Kaito. You were hired to take failing companies, strip them of their dead weight, and make them profitable again. Did you think your reincarnation was a reward? A gift from a benevolent God?"

  The man stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the burning Tokyo. "This world—the one you call your 'System'—is a failing asset. The Seven Angels and Seven Demon Lords were the original 'Board of Directors.' They couldn't agree on a vision, so they split the world’s resources. The result? Stagnation. War. A dividend that was rapidly approaching zero."

  "So you brought me in," Ren whispered, the pieces finally clicking together. "You didn't want a hero. You wanted a Liquidator."

  "Exactly," the man turned back. "The 'System' is just an interface for the asset management software. We needed a soul with 'Sovereign Neutrality'—someone who didn't care about Light or Dark, only about the 'Close.' And you’ve done well. The Elven Merger was inspired. The 'Red Saint' branding was a masterstroke of marketing."

  [SYSTEM STATUS: ANALYZING 'THE EMPLOYER'] [IDENTITY: UNKNOWN] [THREAT LEVEL: OMNI-CLASS]

  The man tapped his gold pocket watch. "But you’ve become... attached. You started caring about the 'workers.' That girl, Elena. The Princess. You even started trying to 'save' the God-Slayers instead of simply harvesting their cores for the raw materials."

  "They aren't materials," Ren spat. "They’re leveraging. A loyal employee is worth ten times more than a raw resource."

  The man sighed, a sound like dry leaves skittering across pavement. "That’s a very 'human' sentiment. Unfortunately, humans are inefficient. We’ve been watching your 'Neutral Point' experiment. By merging the Angels and Demons, you aren't just stabilizing the world. You’re creating a new 'Market Leader'—yourself. And our investors... well, they don't like monopolies unless they own them."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Ren felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. "Who are the investors?"

  The man in the suit didn't answer. Instead, he snapped his fingers.

  The white sand plane from earlier returned, but it was no longer empty. Fourteen colossal chairs appeared in a circle around the mahogany table. And one by one, the silhouettes of the Seven Archangels and the Seven Demon Lords manifested. But they weren't the voices in Ren's head. They were the "Originals"—the ancient, cosmic versions of the entities.

  Lucifer stood tall, her violet eyes narrowed in fury. Raguel held a flaming sword that looked like it could split a star. Mammon was a mountain of gold and shadow.

  They weren't fighting. They were all looking at the man in the suit with the same expression: Absolute Terror.

  “Master,” Lucifer whispered, her voice trembling. “We have kept the balance. We have followed the protocols.”

  "You have failed to produce a return," the man in the suit said coldly. "And now, your 'Liquidator' is trying to buy out the company from under us."

  He turned back to Ren. "Here is the offer, Tanaka-san. You can continue your 'Duality' project. We will even give you the Holy Empire on a silver platter. But in exchange, you must delete the 'Saint' persona. You must become the 'Void.' You must strip this world of its mana, condense it into a single 'Seed,' and hand it over to us. We will then move you to a new 'Project'—perhaps a futuristic world, or a steampunk one. You get to keep your memories. You get to keep your 'Negotiator' soul. You get to be the CEO of whatever reality we put you in."

  Ren looked at the silhouettes of the fourteen entities. He looked at the burning Tokyo. Then he thought of Elena von Strauss. He thought of the Elven Princess Elara, who was finally seeing her trees bloom. He thought of the commoners who had looked at his butterflies and felt hope for the first time in eight hundred years.

  "And if I refuse?" Ren asked.

  The "Higher Boardroom" began to shake. The skyscrapers outside dissolved into black ink.

  "If you refuse, we consider this a 'Hostile Takeover.' We will terminate your contract. We will delete the 'System.' And we will reset this world to its factory settings. Every soul you’ve 'merged,' every person you’ve 'saved,' will be wiped. And you? You’ll go back to that moment on the highway. You’ll feel the metal of the truck crushing your chest. And this time, there won't be a second chance."

  [CRITICAL WARNING: SYSTEM DELETION INITIATED — 0.01%] [HEART RATE: 180 BPM]

  Ren felt his biological age-sync flickering. He was fifteen, then thirty-four, then a child of eleven. The pain was excruciating. It felt like his soul was being shredded.

  "I’ve spent my whole life negotiating," Ren gasped, his knees hitting the obsidian floor. "And I’ve learned one thing. Never... accept... the first offer."

  The man in the suit leaned over Ren, his shadow covering him completely. "This isn't a negotiation, Kaito. This is an eviction notice."

  "No," Ren growled, his eyes suddenly igniting with a light that wasn't blue or red. It was a terrifying, hollow gold—the color of the [Authority of the Void] that he hadn't even known he possessed. "A negotiation only ends when both parties agree on the price. And you... You haven't realized what I've been doing with the 'Neutral Point' for the last three years."

  Ren grabbed the edge of the mahogany table. As he touched it, the wood didn't break. It began to take on the appearance of stained glass. Millions of glowing mana-butterflies began to emerge from the table, the chairs, and even the man's suit.

  "I didn't just 'merge' the Angels and Demons," Ren said, his voice becoming a thunderous roar. "I used them to 'backdoor' into your OS. You gave me the 'System' to manage the world. But I used the world to manage the 'System'."

  [COUNTER-HACK INITIATED: 'THE ARCHITECT’S REVENGE'] [RE-ESTABLISHING SYNC: 100% — THE FOURTEEN AUTHORITIES RESPOND!]

  The silhouettes of the Archangels and Demon Lords suddenly snapped their heads toward Ren. They felt it. The "Leash" wasn't on them anymore. It was in the Boardroom.

  "What are you doing?" the man in the suit shouted, his calm demeanor finally shattering.

  "I'm initiating a 'Leveraged Buyout' of the Multiverse," Ren said, standing up. "I don't work for you. I own the assets now."

  The room erupted. The obsidian floor shattered. The burning Tokyo vanished, replaced by a blinding, white-hot void.

  Ren felt himself being pulled back—not toward the Cathedral, and not toward the Highway. He was being pulled toward something else. A place between the files. A place where the "Investors" lived.

  But as he flew through the data-stream, he saw a final notification on his flickering screen—one that made his heart stop.

  [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: HOST SOUL FRAGMENTED] [THE 'SAINT' PERSONA HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY THE EMPLOYER] [THE 'VILLAIN' PERSONA IS FALLING INTO THE UNKNOWN] [CURRENT STATUS: THE DIVIDED SELF]

  The last thing Ren saw before the darkness took him was the man in the suit holding the "Saint" half of his soul—the half that contained his compassion, his light, and his memories of Elena—like a trophy.

  "You wanted a merger, Tanaka-san?" the man’s voice echoed from the void. "Now you’ll see what happens when the Parent Company splits the Subsidiary."