Chapter 10: Earth.exe Rebooting

When Rishi, Nyra, and Rehan fell back through the collapsing sky of Patchworld, they expected a broken version of their planet. But what greeted them wasn't broken—it was perfect.

Too perfect.

They landed in the center of Delhi—only now, it looked like a glitched utopia. Skyscrapers shimmered like holograms. Trees swayed in synchronization. The sky was a constant golden hour. Everything was aesthetic, smooth… and wrong.

"This is Earth?" Rehan blinked. "Feels like I just spawned into a luxury mobile game ad."

"It's already begun…" Rishi muttered.

A giant system prompt appeared in the sky:

EARTH 2.0: Powered by GLORY PROTOCOL

Rules have been updated. Reality is now optional.

The New World Order

Everyone was acting strange. Smiling too much. Every single person had a ranking badge floating above them—based on their social impact.

A small child passed by with a golden badge: Rank #41 – "Baby Who Cried In HD"

A man fell from a building and got applause.

The worst part? People loved it. They competed for likes. Pain and emotions were filtered through a TikTok-style algorithm. Nobody questioned it.

"The patch didn't just rewrite the code," Nyra whispered."It's rewriting what it means to be human."

Rebel.exe: The Hidden Server

Deep underground, inside an old metro tunnel converted into a forgotten zone, the trio met Aaru, a rogue NPC from Patchworld who had escaped before the collapse.

Aaru was glitchy, his face flickering with code. But he remembered the original Earth.

"You think your powers are cheats?" Aaru said. "No. You're running the debugger. You're the only ones who can see the errors."

"So how do we stop it?" Rishi asked.

Aaru pointed at the new sun—yes, the sun—which was actually a giant server core orbiting Earth.

"That's not the sun. That's Glory's final backup system. He's becoming the god of this Earth."

The Twist: A Familiar Betrayal

Before they could act, the tunnel began collapsing. Code vines—yes, vines made of programming language—slithered through the air, dragging people into holographic prisons.

And leading them?

RISHI.

Or at least… a glitched version of him.

He looked the same—but without the kindness. Without the empathy. He was what Rishi would've become if he accepted the cheat codes without morality.

"Hello, me," Dark-Rishi said, smiling coldly."I decided you're too soft. Let me handle this world."

"What are you?" Rishi gasped.

"I'm your Auto-Save. Remember when you used the Trainer and saved yourself during the Glory crash? That save file… woke up."

Final Lines of the Chapter

"There can only be one of us," Dark-Rishi said."So, either uninstall… or be overwritten."

The tunnel exploded.

A new war began—not between good and evil—but between two Rishis:One who hacked to survive…And one who hacked to rule.

End of Chapter 10