Infinite Survival: My 10,000x Return System

"Boss!" Cassia yelled from the chandelier, pointing her pistol down the hall. "Manager is making a run for the vault!"

Arthur casually swept the legs out from under a charging guard, letting the man crash face-first into the carpet.

"Vane! Clear the lobby!" Arthur commanded, adjusting his suit jacket. He didn’t even look out of breath. "Cassia, with me. We’re going to go audit the back rooms."

Arthur stepped over the groaning bodies and broke into a dead sprint toward the dark VIP hallway. The real heist was just beginning.

The VIP corridor of the Neon Exchange was a stark contrast to the loud, flashing chaos of the main casino floor.

It was quiet here. The walls were lined with dark mahogany and gold trim. Thick, heavy velvet curtains absorbed the sound of Arthur and Cassia’s rapid footsteps as they chased the fleeing floor manager.

"He’s fast for a fat snake," Cassia muttered, reloading her stun pistols on the run without breaking stride.

"He’s terrified," Arthur corrected smoothly. "Fear is a great motivator."

Two Spire Guards stepped out from a side room, raising their plasma rifles to block the hallway.

Cassia didn’t even slow down. She dropped into a slide, her knees gliding across the plush carpet, and fired two rapid shots upward. The stun bolts hit the guards perfectly under their chins, dropping them before they could pull their triggers.

Arthur stepped cleanly over the falling bodies.

They rounded a sharp corner and skidded to a halt.

At the very end of the corridor was a dead end. But it wasn’t a wall. It was a massive, circular vault door forged entirely from deep-blue condensed starlight metal. Intricate, geometric runes pulsed angrily across its surface, locking it down completely.

Standing frantically in front of the door was the snake manager.

He was bashing his scaly fists against the keypad, his four eyes wide with absolute terror.

"Open! Open, you piece of garbage!" the manager shrieked, hitting the console.

"I don’t think it likes your password," Arthur said loudly, his voice echoing in the enclosed space.

The snake whipped around. Arthur stood at the end of the hall, perfectly relaxed, his hands tucked into his pockets. Cassia stood beside him, her pistols raised and aimed directly at the manager’s chest.

"It’s over, Gildas’s pet," Cassia smirked. "Step away from the door and put your hands... or claws, or whatever, where I can see them."

The manager hissed, his forked tongue flicking out wildly. He was cornered. There was no escape.

"You think you have won?" the snake bubbled, a manic, desperate laugh escaping his lips. "You think the Iron Consortium just hides behind metal doors? We have assets you cannot comprehend! We deal in the dark!"

The manager reached into his gaudy purple vest. He didn’t pull out a gun. He pulled out a small, thick glass vial.

The liquid inside the vial wasn’t glowing with divine light. It was shifting, bubbling, and completely pitch-black. It seemed to absorb the light around it, radiating a sickening, rotting aura that made the air in the hallway taste like ozone and copper.

Arthur’s pitch-black eyes narrowed. The system in his mind violently flared to life.

[Ding!] 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

[Hazard Detected: Unformatted Chaos Data.]

[Entity possesses raw ’Paradox’ energy.]

"What the hell is that?" Cassia whispered, her rogue instincts screaming at her to back away.

"Desperation," Arthur said coldly.

The snake manager didn’t hesitate. He jammed the thick needle of the vial directly into his own neck and slammed the plunger down.

"GRAAAAAAAH!"

The manager’s scream was horrific. It didn’t sound like a single voice. It sounded like a dozen overlapping echoes of pure, unadulterated agony.

The vial shattered in his hand. The pitch-black liquid didn’t just enter his bloodstream; it violently rewrote his physical form.

"CRACK! SQUELCH!"

The snake’s body bloated grotesquely. His green scales ripped apart as thick, jagged spikes of dark bone erupted from his spine. His four eyes merged into a single, massive, weeping red orb in the center of his face. His humanoid arms swelled with shifting, unstable grey muscle, the fingers fusing together to form massive, jagged bone-blades.

He was mutating into a hulking, scaled abomination right in front of them.

"Cassia, shoot it!" Arthur ordered.

Cassia fired three rapid stun bolts directly into the creature’s chest.

The plasma rounds hit the grey flesh and simply fizzled out. The Paradox energy passively deleted the kinetic force before it could even register.

"Stuns aren’t working!" Cassia yelled, stepping backward. "It’s eating the energy!"

Heavy boots thundered down the hallway behind them. Vane rounded the corner, his chipped broadsword covered in the scorch marks of the lobby battle.

The frontiersman took one look at the towering, twelve-foot abomination blocking the vault door and didn’t even blink.

"I leave you two alone for two minutes and you find a boss fight," Vane grunted. He stepped past Arthur, raising his heavy blade in a two-handed grip. "I’ll handle the snake. Cassia, get that door open. We need what’s inside before reinforcements arrive."

Vane bent his knees, preparing to launch himself in a suicidal, protagonist-fueled charge against the monster.

"Hold it," Arthur snapped.

Arthur reached out, his hand clamping firmly onto Vane’s shoulder, stopping the hero dead in his tracks.

"Arthur, let me go! It’s going to charge!" Vane argued, trying to pull away.

Arthur didn’t let go. His eyes were locked onto the abomination. He wasn’t looking at the scary bone-blades. He was looking at the system interface rapidly analyzing the creature’s physiology.

[Target has ingested unformatted Chaos data. Structural integrity failing.]

[Notice: Target’s biological vessel cannot contain Paradox energy. Cellular collapse estimated in 45 seconds.]

Arthur smirked. He let go of Vane’s shoulder.

"He’s unstable," Arthur said, his voice entirely calm. He pointed at the massive, glowing grey blisters forming along the creature’s mutated joints. "He took a bad loan. His body can’t cash the check. He’s literally melting from the inside out."

The abomination roared, raising its massive bone-blades to strike.

"Don’t fight it, Vane," Arthur commanded smoothly, stepping back and gesturing lazily toward the monster. "Just hit him where it hurts. Break the joints, and the whole structure falls down."