How to Elegantly Kill Your CP [Infinite]

[The plot went off the rails. I know what's wrong and need to rethink the outline and the pairing dynamic. Updates are temporarily on hold. Sorry! Once I've fixed it, I'll be back to daily updates. I won't abandon this story.]

A nightmare dating show where everyone is assigned a score based on their looks at birth.

"Your appearance score is perfect. Congratulations, you have received a new identity: the Rose Killer, a criminal. With your beautiful looks and terrible acting, you can coast your way to the top and become one of the elite."

Ji Lie used his golden finger to breeze through the System's mission. The next moment, a cold mechanical voice rang in his ear: "The Nightmare Dating Show is a two-person mission. You must complete it together with your partner."

Ji Lie stared at the floor, littered with the corpses of the players he'd just killed: ?

The other players all steered clear of him, and no one dared team up with him.

Only the leader of the game's largest guild, the Assassin Guild, took the initiative to extend an olive branch to the Rose Killer. The man spoke with amused menace: "Your score is the only one high enough to match mine. Join my guild. This isn't a negotiation, it's a notification. You have no choice."

Ji Lie smiled sweetly and agreed without hesitation. Then he recruited underlings and founded his own faction, infiltrating the Assassin Guild while stealing all its resources.

In the real world, he was a wanted criminal who had committed every kind of evil.

What stood in the way of his rampage? The Gunman, and the Assassin Guild.

What should he do? Take them down, absorb the guild, and rule the world.

Unfortunately, his opponent wasn't an easy target either.

While everyone else cautiously muddled through the virtual game, the two of them stabbed each other in the back on livestream.

Everyone waited for them to mess up and get themselves killed while trying to sabotage each other.

Little by little, their pairing began to top countless leaderboards.

-- The "Fair-Weather Partners" leaderboard (ranked by how often partners betrayed each other after agreeing to cooperate)

-- The "Bitter Enemies" leaderboard (ranked by the total health lost to attacks from one's partner in a scenario)

-- The "Awkward Silence" leaderboard (ranked by the total time partners spent without interacting in a scenario)

And also:

-- The "Perfect Match" leaderboard (ranked by total points)

In one scenario, the monsters were the players' deepest emotional impulses, and the scenario boss looked exactly like the player in the real world.

Ji Lie stared in silence at the boss's face. It was none other than his longtime nemesis in the real world, Zhou Youzhi, the special forces officer who had been hunting him for years.

After shedding his secret identity, Zhou Youzhi pressed his gun to Ji Lie's slender waist and murmured, "How does it feel to be surprised, adorable Rose Killer?"

In the deepest darkness, a rose was stained with blood, its thorns beside white bones.

Yet in the next instant, the embodiment of justice, "Zhou Youzhi," was kneeling on the ground, kissing the tip of "Ji Lie's" shoe.

Zhou Youzhi: "..."

The Rose Killer's expression stiffened. He automatically ignored the previous topic and turned his gaze to the Gunman's throat, bobbing beneath his pale skin.

"So, Commander, while you've been scheming against me every day, you've actually been trying every possible way to get me to step on you?"

A similar infinite-flow story, "Do Androids Dream of Virtual Selves?", is coming soon. Please add it to your favorites!

In 2088, AI created an infinite horror game tailor-made for humanity, called "God's Judgment."

Narcissus, an android created by AI, was tasked with monitoring every move humans made in "God's Judgment."

In the game, every player was assigned a set of basic attributes. Before long, they discovered a group of people whose individual abilities were astonishingly powerful:

In the inscrutable cyber-temple, countless ghostly hands reached out from behind a dark Buddha statue. While all the players panicked, "he" continued kneeling in calm prayer. Just before the hands touched "him," the electronic Buddha statue came crashing down.

The man glanced at the ghostly hands crushed beneath the statue, twitching and spasming. "My luck stat is too high. Sorry for the offense."

In the gloomy, dashing martial world of machines, blades flashed with dazzling technology. Faced with an enemy whose entire body had been turned into cybernetics, everyone thought this helpless man was doomed. The next moment, the enemy threw down his weapons and armor, shouting that he wanted to be "his" dog.

The man sighed. "You like my face? Then kill yourself right now. I won't fall in love with anyone. No one is more perfect than me."

These people were the players' hope of escaping the game. They searched desperately for them, begging for protection.

Narcissus was silent. Every single "him" was one of his secret identities.

Later, the players discovered that things were far more complicated than they had imagined.

Having a maxed-out score in one attribute was already incredible. Yet they had actually encountered an all-around hexagon warrior with every attribute maxed out!

Shocked gazes turned in unison toward the man at the center of the crowd, his smile fading slightly.

Narcissus looked apologetic. "...This was my first time assigning maxed-out attribute points. I accidentally maxed them all out. I didn't think it through, and I affected everyone's gaming experience."

Player A: "What an insufferable show-off."

Player B: "Your first time?"

Player C: "You're amazing! Let me cling to you!"

Narcissus smiled and carefully tucked away his secret identities.

The players had no idea that the savior they regarded as their salvation was nothing more than a string of code from birth. Code had no feelings and didn't care whether the game was won or lost.

Until one day, a human brought a miraculous object into the world of "God's Judgment."

Whenever Narcissus looked at it, a figure appeared on its formerly flawless surface. The figure had captivating features and peerless beauty, but his eyes were empty, as though he were merely a precision-engineered AI.

That object was called a mirror.

--Who is he?

--He is you.

Narcissus toyed with the mirror day and night.

When asked why, the long-haired man narrowed his silver-blue eyes and smiled suggestively.

--He wanted to see the cold, heartless, emotionless version of himself in the mirror have a complete breakdown.

Narcissistic romance, cyberpunk

Theme: Work hard and strive forward. Gold will always shine.