QT: I hijacked a harem system and now I'm ruining every plot(GL)-Chapter 63: System points

Chapter 64 –

The system had never seen this, it’s host a shell of what she once was.

Han Li, once the force of chaos, now barely moved. Her sharp eyes were dulled with grief, her once-meticulous suit jacket rumpled and stained with drink.

She spent her days by the grave.

Every single one.

It had been months.

Months since Jiang Yuxi had died.

Months of silence.

And now, the system couldn’t take it anymore.

With a blink of light and the hum of static, System 404 materialized, glowing faintly against the gray headstone.

Han Li didn’t even flinch.

"Well, well," she slurred, lifting her head from where she was sprawled against the base of the gravestone. "Look at what the cat dragged in."

She took another sip straight from the bottle. Whiskey. Cheap.

Her eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, narrowed.

The system hovered silently.

"Oh wow," she laughed bitterly, "for months I called for you. Cried for you. Screamed. When she was still alive." Her voice cracked. "And now you show up?"

[Even if I responded,]System 404 said calmly, [there was nothing I could do.]

"Heh? Really?" Han Li barked a laugh.

"Is this revenge? For breaking your stupid story? Is that it? Watch me fall apart like a punished child?"

She stood unsteadily and hurled the bottle at the system’s glowing core.

It passed through, shattering on the stone behind it.

The system didn’t blink.

[In the original narrative,] it said

[Jiang Yuxi was supposed to live into her eighties. See her grandchildren grow. This deviation was... unnatural.]

Han Li’s breath hitched. Her fists clenched.

"So it’s my fault she died."

[Her karmic thread was entangled with a role she was never meant to play. You disrupted a closed fate line. It collapsed prematurely.]

"What about those two lovebirds, Lin Meyu and Liang Ruo?" Han Li hissed.

"They’re still alive. Still together. Shouldn’t their damn fate lines have exploded too?"

[They remain part of the male lead’s karmic cluster,] the system said.

[Even if they deviated romantically, their roles did not sever completely.]

Han Li’s laugh was hollow, a scraping sound from her chest.

"So it’s really all my fault. Got it. Thank you. That’s just what I needed to hear today."

She turned, brushing dust from her lap.

"So?" she said. "When do I leave this world? My job here is done. She’s gone. There’s nothing left."

The system pulsed, almost hesitant.

[Your projected lifespan in this world ends in twenty years. You will be extracted then.]

Han Li was silent.

Then she laughed once more, too soft, too final.

"Yeah... no."

She reached into her suit jacket.

Click.

The sound of a gun being cocked.

"I’m not spending twenty years like this. Visiting a grave. Pretending to breathe."

[If you die prematurely, your soul will carry the fracture—]

"Let it."

And before the system could say another word—

Bang.

System 404 hovered in silence as it completed the final protocol.

The world around it—the one meant to showcase love, glory, and the rise of a male lead—was no longer salvageable. The host, Han Li—Daphne—had terminated her physical body, forcing an early extraction.

The portal shimmered open, a ring of low-grade spatial data designed for last-tier transitions. It crackled faintly as it stabilized, barely up to standard. The Harem Building System was the lowest-tier, after all. The resources allocated to System 404 were meager.

But it had a job to finish.

[Retrieving host soul]

A pale wisp rose gently from the collapsed form beside the gravestone. It shimmered, pulsing softly with remnants of emotion and memory.

Daphne.

The soul drifted forward, weightless and quiet, drawn toward the portal by the call of its assigned system.

But—

Unbeknownst to System 404... another wisp followed.

Fainter. Smaller. Barely a flicker of light.

It lingered at the edge of Daphne’s soul, tethered not by system code or karmic alignment—but by something looking like a knot.

The second soul glowed the way a heartbeat might. It clung to Daphne’s trail, invisible to System 404’s diagnostics. The system’s sensors swept the area, registered only the assigned soul, and dismissed the faint anomaly as environmental residue.

The portal closed with a hum.

Two souls passed through.

Only one had permission.

***

It expected tears. Despair.

Emotional fallout.

What it did not expect... was Daphne Han, once again standing in the sterile white Initialization Room, perfectly composed in her usual tailored black suit, one hand in her pocket and the other flipping a nonexistent speck of dust off her lapel.

Her dark eyes locked onto the glowing blue orb floating above her.

The system experienced a flash of what humans might call déjà vu. And dread.

"Well, that was a mess," Daphne said, voice flat, tone unimpressed. "Let’s start fresh. You and I both made mist—"

> [YOU messed with the original plot!!!]

System 404 shrieked, its robotic voice peaking into static as it flashed red in rage.

Daphne blinked slowly. "Again. We both made mistakes."

> [YOU hijacked the narrative, disrupted the karmic lines, and—]

The system stuttered into silence as Daphne took a single step forward.

She didn’t even say anything.

She just looked at it.

And the system—a supposedly emotionless AI—felt fear.

"So," she said, stepping calmly into the light of the Initialization Room, "let’s do better next time."

And before System 404 could zip away, she reached up and snatched the orb out of the air.

> [LET ME GO!!!] it screeched.

She gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Huh. You’re... soft," she murmured, rolling it between her palms like a stress ball. "Like cotton candy. Or a marshmallow. Or a soul-sucking bureaucratic cloud."

> [I am a sentient multi-threaded dimensional stabilizer, not a TOY!]

"Mmhm." She twisted it.

> [STOP THAT! YOU’RE STRETCHING MY DATA LATTICE!]

Daphne smiled.

System 404 had never in its short, tragic existence been treated with such disrespect. It wasn’t even sure how she was doing this. It was a digital construct, not a physical object.

And yet.

Here they were.

"Let’s start with the basics," she said, pacing the white void with the orb tucked under her arm like a football. "Where exactly are you sending me? Are these novels? Scripts? VR games? Something else?"

The system hesitated.

She pinched it.

> [OW—YES AND NO!] it blurted.

[These are unstable alternate dimensions. We use narrative threads—novels, myths, poems, dramas—as stabilizers. They’re not fiction. They’re glue.]

"Fascinating." She nodded. "And how do you decide what narrative is used for each world?"

> [Not. My. Department.]

"Uh huh. And what happens when the ’main characters’ die before their plot ends?"

> [World collapse. Temporal disintegration. Karma thread implosion. Very messy. Again—NOT my department.]

Daphne narrowed her eyes.

"You keep saying ’die,’ not ’deviate.’ Funny, that."

System 404 went very, very still.

She slowly began to squeeze it again.

> [...]

"Spill."

> [SYSTEM POINTS!!] it yelped. [We gain System Points when the world completes successfully! That’s all! That’s what I get, okay?! Points!! I’m poor!! Stop twisting me!!]

Daphne paused.

Raised an eyebrow.

"...You’re farming cosmic side quests for a bonus system currency."

> [It’s more dignified than that.]