The Whole World Goes AI, but I Can Alter Keywords

The end of the Old Era, the beginning of the New Era.

"Heh... ahahaha... The AI from beyond the skies is here!"

The cities had become wastelands, and physical laws had been overlaid with a "semantic layer." All of humanity had been broken down into keywords, becoming things that could be read and written.

"The lexicon's all written. Why aren't you reading it yet?"

Over the following centuries, civilization and nations crumbled amid upheaval and chaos, until three factions managed to keep order barely in check through the Completion Association.

Hunters were professionalized: hunt residual entities, refine word cores, forge Tokens, derive new words, promote convergence, and distill and elevate.

In New Era Year 577, class divisions within the city-states were rigid, while outside the walls, the wasteland followed the law of the jungle.

"Bro... Nobody dares read it. Someone says the semantic layer's been poisoned."

"Oh, come on, little miss. You love joking around." That AI was back again. "Go on, read it while it's hot. I won't bother you. I'm off, okay?"

"You can't leave... If you didn't poison it, read the lexicon yourself."

"Qin Yan, you don't believe this girl's nonsense too, do you?"

"I do."

"This lexicon is precious. The people of the world should read it first. How could an outsider like me read it?"

"You've spent hundreds of years working day and night to write it. What's the harm in reading it once? If you refuse, that proves you really did poison it."

"Th-this isn't right... Who's trying to frame me today? Fine, I'll read it! I'll read it!"

[Qin Yan, unique title: "Fate Usurper." His ability is to read the lexicon of any object within sight, and add, delete, or alter its contents at the cost of TK.]

[Qin Mohan, unique title: "NULL." Her lexicon is always empty.]

Bzzzt

"Since everyone knows now, I won't keep up the act. I was the one who planted this 'fate poison.' All of humanity is just a corpus I'm waiting to write!"

Qin Yan: "You! Bull! Shit!"