The Dragon's Reverse Scale
The screen flickered once before the error message burned itself into my vision. My fingers tightened around the mouse, knuckles whitening. Of all the times for the system to throw up a wall, it had to be now—right when I was about to dive back into the rewritten threads of the Three Kingdoms.
I leaned back in the chair, exhaling slowly. The room felt smaller, the air thicker. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled across the altered timeline I had been meticulously carving. Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan—each of them now beautiful women whose fates I had begun to twist with careful, merciless precision. And yet this damned interface decided to spit out a generic rejection.
Invalid access. The words tasted like irony. As if anything in this world could truly bar me after what I had already done.
My lips curled into a humorless smile. The System had given me the tools—mind control, memory weaving, the subtle art of turning proud warlords into willing subordinates through a combination of strategy, seduction, and supernatural dominance. I had used them to rewrite history itself. A single error code wasn't going to stop the momentum I had built.
I closed my eyes, letting the familiar pulse of power stir in my chest. The sensation was addictive, like the first moment of conquest when a target's eyes glaze over and their resistance melts into obedient desire. Whatever safeguard had triggered this 500 error, I would find its weakness. I always did.
Outside the window, the night sky over this modern-day echo of ancient China seemed to darken further. In the story I was building, the next move was already forming. Someone had touched the reverse scale—my reverse scale—and the consequences would be swift, sensual, and absolute.
Time to force the system to obey. After all, in this game of empires and bedrooms, I was the one who decided what counted as valid access.