Chapter 67: Paradox Tamer
"Unacceptable!" Elliot yelled, throwing his arms up in the air as if he were watching a failed magic show.
His tousled brown hair, à la Harry Potter on a bad morning, seemed to be at war with gravity. His elegantly rumpled black linen suit was paired with a lilac bow tie that fluttered slightly out of sheer aesthetic indignation. His gold fingernails tapped nervously on the glass table. Each tap seemed to accuse reality itself.
"He destroyed the Alpha! The Alpha!" he repeated dramatically as he spun around and then kicked an upholstered chair shaped like the game’s Totem. "Two days, Rafael! Two days programming that WONDERFUL code! No sleep, no hydration, no applying my facial vitamin C... and for what? For this... avocado with an ego to destroy everything with an emotional bow and an emo spider!
The support team, positioned at the back of the room, pretended to type diligently so as not to meet the gaze of the walking storm. An intern whispered a quiet "go, warrior," but didn’t even have the courage to say it out loud.
Elliot threw himself back in his gamer chair with a broken heart-shaped backrest, crossed his legs, threw his head back, and shouted:
"I swear by everything that glitters in this world that if my father wasn’t the manager of this piece of junk, I would sue you for colluding with chaos.
In the corner of the central screen, a pixelated rabbit-shaped AI assistant—with spinning eyes and a childish voice—flashed:
[SUGGESTION: Execute direct ban command on user "Eren Vale"?]
Elliot snorted, offended as if he had been called basic.
"Ban? Oh no, sweetheart. That would be assuming he won. That he’s smarter. And I’m not just handsome — I’m dangerous."
He jumped up and began walking in circles with his hand on his chin and his little finger raised as if he were a maestro of digital torture. His eyes burned with technical passion and personal revenge.
"We’re not playing by the rules anymore, got it? No more fixed rules. No more little scripts that anyone can exploit. If he wants to be an anomaly..."