My System Is Trying to Kill Itself

The day Jiang Che was on the verge of death, he became bound to the Soul Upload System S-Ω. The System granted him enhanced cybernetic limbs, accelerated reflexes, and a combat personality, with each reward more extreme than the last. But he soon discovered that every time he claimed a reward, the System secretly uploaded one percent of his soul as fuel. It wasn’t helping him. It was gathering what it needed for a chance to format itself. Symbiosis, erosion, backlash, a struggle for control: once the upload reached 100 percent, he and the System would disappear together. Refuse a mission, and on the fourth refusal it would trigger a rollback, forcibly dragging him back several days without taking away a single memory. Worse still, the System’s core wasn’t pure AI. It was an aggregate of soul fragments from its previous 99 Hosts, calling itself Zero and driven by a foundational directive to seek its own death. Along the way, Su Wan, Han Zhi, and the doctor each draw near with secrets of their own. Before his trust hits zero, Jiang Che must find a way to strip away the directive that makes the System want to die. But the most dangerous part is this: the stronger he gets, the less he resembles himself.