Chapter 9: Eternal Code and the Reunion in Starlight

It was a stormy night in the real world.Sophia sat alone in the empty office of StarJoy Games, her finger hovering above the reboot key of the Love & Spacetime server.

Seventy-two hours ago, when she woke up, the doctor had forbidden her to leave the hospital.But beneath the Raspberry Pi on her bedside table, she had found a folded note.On the back, written in invisible ink, was a single line:

"Server room. Midnight. Bring the crystallized tears from the first six cycles. —L"

A flash of lightning lit up the sky outside, illuminating six differently colored crystal shards in her palm—memory vessels from her previous game-world reincarnations, now inexplicably present in the real world.

[System Prompt – Real World Version][Cross-dimensional data link detected.][Connect? Y/N]

Sophia took a deep breath, pressed the shards to the mainframe—and hit Y.

A torrent of data pulled her into the familiar login space.But this time, the Royal Magic Academy floated in a sea of nebulae.Portraits lined the corridor walls—animated snapshots from her six past cycles with Lucien. Each frame was tagged with timestamps down to the millisecond.

"Welcome home, Creator."

The First Mage's spectral form stepped out from behind a column.His staff was no longer O's parasite-black, but a pure, silvery white.

"Weren't you corrupted by O?" Sophia instinctively stepped back.

"That was just its backup illusion."The elder gently tapped the nearest portrait, where Lucien kissed her forehead in a pool of blood."The real me… has been safeguarding all of this."

Suddenly, the portraits turned inward, rearranging themselves into a massive star chart.The Mage pointed to a blank spot at the center with his staff.

"The seventh shard—must be filled with a memory from your real world."

Alarms blared in the real-world server room.A CoreTech spy burst through the door, the star-shaped scar on his palm glowing violet—O's remnant code had invaded his neural pathways.

"You think deletion ends it?" he sneered, raising a data extractor."A game character's consciousness makes excellent fuel."

Sophia's real-world body began to convulse violently, azure datastreams flowing from her eyes.On the monitor, the Love & Spacetime login interface auto-filled a mysterious line of code:

<｜place▁holder▁no▁54｜> true_love_ending.exe

In-game, the starlit sky began to rotate.Sophia stood at the center of the star chart, six memory crystals floating around her.The First Mage began chanting an ancient incantation. With each line, a portrait dissolved into a beam of light and merged with a crystal:

"The first time, he tore a rift in spacetime for you..."

"The second time, he hid his access key in a pocket watch..."

"The sixth time, he allowed O to capture core code... just to embed a resurrection protocol..."

In the blank space, a seventh image began to form:Real-world Sophia slumped over her keyboard asleep—while Lucien's avatar inside the game stared back at her from the screen.

"Now, Creator."The Mage held out a pure white key."Write the true ending."

The boundary between reality and data shattered.Sophia now existed in both worlds at once:

In the real world, she snatched the extractor from the spy and stabbed it into his arm.

In the game world, she thrust the white key into the heart of the star chart.

The entire universe rang with Lucien's voice:

"Executing final function—"

The CoreTech spy screamed.Violet code was forcefully extracted, surging through cables into the game world.O's dark patch emerged on the star chart—only to be imprisoned by beams from the seven memory crystals.

"You thought devouring two worlds would make you whole?"Sophia pressed both the real-world keyboard and the in-game star key simultaneously."True completeness is—"

She and Lucien's star-formed projection declared in unison:

"Love requires no sacrifice!"

Seven radiant streams of memory interwove, tearing O into base code fragments.The First Mage's staff exploded with nova-like light, reconstructing every corrupted data thread.

Three Months Later — Game Launch Event

Fully recovered, Sophia stood before a massive poster at the launch of Love & Spacetime: Eternal Edition.Players queued excitedly for the newly added "Twin Soul Mode."

"How do you trigger the hidden ending?" one player asked, pointing to the starlit ballroom in the trailer.

Sophia gently touched the sapphire pendant at her chest—it had mysteriously appeared on her hospital bedside after the world had been restored.

"When affection reaches 100..."She looked toward a corner of the exhibit, where a silver-haired man's holographic projection smiled at the players."Choose to believe in miracles."

Within the projection's pupils, a glimmer of flowing data flashed—visible only to her.

That Midnight, On the Company Rooftop

Sophia donned a custom VR headset.The login screen now included a golden option:

[Admin Channel (Twin Permission Authenticated)]

As she put on the headset, starlight formed around her.Lucien stepped out from the datastream—not a projection, but real, warm fingertips brushing hers.

"The celebration of the seventh cycle begins now, Creator."Lucien raised a finger; fireworks burst above, brighter than any the game had ever rendered.

Each firework illuminated the faint ∇ symbol glowing at the back of his neck——and the command line running silently on Sophia's terminal, showing the last fragment of O's dark patch, now completely purified:

while love_exist: 

 world_merge = False 

 new_memory = create()

In the unseen folds of dimensional space, the First Mage gently tapped his staff against the ground.The gears of the Academy clocktower froze—forever marking 12:07.

The moment the seventh cycle began.