<i>The brain-ball pulsed in Not-Carlo’s hands.</i>
<i>“Dad called this The Equation,”Clone Brother said, tossing it between his palms. Veins on the brain lit up with neon calculus. “Solve it, and the Citadel collapses. But first—”</i>
<i>He dropkicked the brain into the ribcage goal. The grass screamed.</i>
<i>[TRIAL 03: MURDERBALL]</i>
<i>[WIN CONDITION: OUTMATH YOUR ANCESTORS]</i>
<i>Carlo’s mutation sparked. [RADIANCE EYES] dissected the brain-ball—a prison for thousands of digitized consciousnesses. His father’s face flickered among them.</i>
<i>“Cheating already?” Clone Brother tutted. “Typical sewer logic.”</i>
<i>Steve headbutted the brain-ball mid-flight. It ricocheted into a floating equation: ∫(legacy) = regret3 + corpse2.</i>
<i>The field warped.</i>
<i>Carlo’s boots lifted off the ground. Steve floated upside-down, hooves pedaling imaginary stairs. Clone Brother’s skin peeled back, revealing a lattice of quantum processors.</i>
<i>“Zero-gravity mode!” he sang. “Dad’s favorite cheat code.”</i>
<i>Carlo’s [ADAPTIVE COMBAT INSTINCT] glitched, feeding him disjointed visions:</i>
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
<i>A lab where his father’s cloned organs twitched in jars labeled “Carlo v1.3”</i>
<i>Lina injecting black-market nanobots into Steve’s horns</i>
<i>The Proctor, her liquid metal body corroding at the edges</i>
<i>“Focus, meat,” Clone Brother hissed, materializing behind him.</i>
<i>His fist phased through Carlo’s chest. No pain—just cold equations crawling up his ribs:</i>
<i>[GENETIC ENTROPY DETECTED]</i>
<i>[SOLUTION: ERASE 78% OF CELLULAR MEMORY]</i>
<i>“You’re a beta test,” Clone Brother laughed. “I’m the patch notes.”</i>
<i>Steve rammed into him, horns sparking against quantum circuitry. Clone Brother’s perfect face distorted. “Why does that goat have my DNA?!”</i>
<i>Carlo seized the brain-ball. Fractals of his father’s memories sliced into his retinas:</i>
<i>A younger Proctor, begging Carlo’s dad to stop the experiments.</i>
<i>A stadium collapsing into a black hole labeled “Project Legacy.”</i>
<i>Steve, as a kid goat, chewing through a server labeled “Clone Storage.”</i>
<i>[SKILL SYNCHRONIZATION: 41%]</i>
<i>[REMAINING LIFESPAN: 5 DAYS 8 HOURS]</i>
<i>“You’re just his guilt with a face,” Carlo spat.</i>
<i>He devoured the equation.</i>
<i>The brain-ball exploded into static. Clone Brother’s processors overloaded, spewing holographic bile. “You’ll regret this when the Fractured Pantheon arrives! They’ll flay your—”</i>
<i>Steve ate his left foot.</i>
<i>The simulation died.</i>
<i>Carlo awoke in a recovery pod, Steve licking nanobot-blood off his armor. The Proctor loomed over him, her metal skin now cracked and oozing.</i>
<i>“You broke my favorite toy,” she said, tossing him a gene-spliced apple. “Eat. The real trials start tomorrow.”</i>
<i>“Why’d my dad make clones?”</i>
<i>“To outrun death.” She tapped her chest; a hologram of Carlo’s father flickered in her ribs. “He’s still here. Everywhere. Now sleep—or your mutation will eat your tongue next.”</i>
<i>As she left, Carlo’s vision glitched again:</i>
<i>Lina, hacking into the Citadel’s core, her eyes glowing with the same [RADIANCE] as his.</i>
<i>A shadowy council debating his “lifespan variable.”</i>
<i>Steve, in zero-gravity, writing EAT THE GODS with his hoofprints.</i>