Chapter 3

After that night, I gained three extra days of life—and a new title for Alex: the Overactive Imagination King.

Alex's favorability rating shot up to 50 like a rollercoaster. This sudden shift left me completely baffled, and beneath the confusion, a thin thread of unease began to coil in my gut.

It seemed the story had been off the rails from the very start.

The next few days, I holed up in my dorm room to avoid running into Alex, too nervous to even attend my classes. My sole focus became the system that had hijacked my life.

The Villain Protocol was nothing but a cold, mechanical system. It only hand out missions and punished me with electric shocks.

I tried talking to it, asking why Alex was acting so weird.

All it ever gave me was a bunch of data streams I couldn't make heads or tails of.

"Data anomaly, logical conflict, world line self-repair in progress..."

I was completely confused—felt like my brain was wrapped in fog. One thing was for sure: this world was way more unstable than I thought.

Barely had I caught my breath before the next mission dropped out of nowhere.

System: "Mission issued: Steal Alex's graduation thesis.

"Objective: Sneak into Alex's dorm the night before his big defense and wipe his computer clean of every trace of his thesis.

"Reward for completion: 7 extra days of life. Punishment for failure: Erasure."

As I stared at the task screen, a wave of dizziness washed over me.

Steal his thesis? Delete his data? That was not just sabotage—it was destroying his entire future. It was monstrous.

According to the original plot, Alex's graduation thesis was his big break in academia and the foundation for his future startup.

Emily's sabotage forced him to repeat a year, and that was when he finally saw how vicious she really was, planting the seed for his deepest grudge and revenge.

"System, is there any way I can..." I ventured.

"The task is non-negotiable and cannot be altered. Countdown: 24 hours." The voice cut me off, colder than ever.

Fine. Just a pawn with no say in the matter.

With a heavy heart, I began to formulate a plan.

Sneaking into the male dorms and then hacking into a prodigy like Alex's computer felt like a near-impossible mission.

The one small mercy was that the system, for all its cruelty, provided the necessary "tools": a universal keycard for Alex's room and a string of code guaranteed to crack his password.

Late that night, dressed in black from head to toe with a cap pulled low and a mask covering my face, I slipped like a shadow into the male dormitory.

The building was dead silent, the only movement the flickering fluorescent lights in the deserted hallway.

This feeling of being a thief was weirdly thrilling.

I made it to Alex's dorm door without a hitch.

It was a single room. Figures—only the top-tier male lead got a place like this.

I pulled out the card and gave it a quick swipe.

The door popped open with a soft beep.

I slipped inside and locked the door behind me.

His room was impeccably neat, the air faintly scented with his signature clean, woody cologne.

On the desk, a laptop screen glowed with a soft standby light.

Moving with held breath, I crept towards it, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

Following the system's instructions, I input the long, complex string of code.

The screen flickered for a few seconds, and then the lock was gone.

The desktop was neatly organized, with just one folder labeled "Final Version: Do Not Touch."

That was pretty dramatic for a file name.

I opened the folder, and sure enough, there it was—his graduation thesis and all the related data.

I took a deep breath, my right hand resting on the "Delete" key.

All it would take was one press, and the mission would be complete.

But my fingertips trembled.

This wasn't just a thesis—it was the result of years of effort from a prodigy, the starting point of his entire future.

Was I really about to wreck everything like this?

"Warning! Detected host hesitation, OOC alert!"

Another jolt of electricity shot through me, even worse than last time.

Pain made me grunt, and cold sweat popped out on my forehead.

"Geez, stop rushing me! I'm deleting it, okay?" I muttered.

I shut my eyes, about to hit the key without hesitation.

But right then, my gaze happened to sweep over the data model on the screen.

Wait...

As an overworked STEM professional who had been grinding through data models day and night, I recognized the flaw in an instant.

Buried deep within Alex's core algorithm was a fatal error—one wrong parameter reference, subtle enough to slip past simulations but guaranteed to crash the entire system in real‑world use.

If he presented this at his defense tomorrow, forget about impressing the committee. He'd be lucky to leave without his advisor tearing him apart.

What was going on? Even the star student made rookie mistakes?

For a moment, I just stared.

If I deleted the files now, he'd have to delay graduation, but at least there'd be time to start over.

If I didn't—if he walked into that room with the files—his academic career would be over. Humiliation, public failure, the whole disaster.

The system's order was clear: Steal the thesis. Ruin his future.

But here was the twist: if I did nothing, he'd ruin it himself.

Did that mean my mission would count for nothing?

A wave of panic washed over me like I'd just been hit by a truck.

No way! After all that trouble sneaking in, risking getting caught, I was not about to let him fail just because he messed up!

My sabotage had to matter—it had to be effective.

I was freaking out, my mind racing a mile a minute.

Deleting it was definitely not an option—what if the system decided I hadn't done enough critical sabotage?

Then it hit me. I grabbed a sticky note from the desk, snatched up a pen, and quickly jotted down the right parameters and how to fix the error.

Then I copied the entire thesis folder onto the USB drive I brought with me.

Finally, I selected the original folder on the desktop and smashed the "Delete" key without a second thought.

Empty recycle bin. Did it all in one go.

System: "Mission complete. Assessing damage... Damage Points +100. Reward: Seven days of life credited."

I let out a long sigh of relief and slapped the sticky note with the correct algorithm smack dab in the middle of the blacked-out computer screen.

That had been way too close. At least all that sneaking around wasn't for nothing.

Now, when Alex found the thesis gone, he'd panic—but the note would save him. I completed the mission and, well, I was not completely heartless.

I admired my "masterpiece" for a second, then slipped out of the dorm, quiet as a ghost.

What I didn't see was that, after I left, the computer screen—which had been black—automatically lit up as the standby timer ended.

The sticky note was illuminated by the screen, the handwriting clearly visible.

Downstairs, hidden in the shadows, a tall figure stood quietly. He looked up at the window I'd just left, his gaze unreadable.