Chapter 7 – “The Phantom Arena and the Four Kings”
Chapter 7 – “The Phantom Arena and the Four Kings” (Oliver’s POV)
I was napping in the Maharaja’s game room when it all went down.
The top-rankers had gathered for a “victory party,” but the second the Machida reverse-transfer news dropped, the whole place went up like a kicked hornet’s nest.
Emile was desperately trying to calm everyone down.
Right next to him, glowering like a thundercloud, sat Alessandro Bianchi — CEO of the haute-couture clone-body company, the one with the legendary fifteen-year waitlist.
Even a guy like him couldn’t stop glaring at Emile’s current form.
He knew. He just didn’t say it.
And Emile? He noticed and totally ignored it.
That guy’s annoyingly adult when it comes to stuff like this.
A few minutes later, Emile shook me awake and dragged me deep into the server room.
From there we jumped into the virtual world—Heaven’s Matrix.
This place… it was the “black hole” I’d bought for six trillion credits when the Black Panther unit nearly stomped me into paste.
Of course, I used the Maharaja’s money. He’s gonna flip when he finds out.
But that black hole became a door.
Data of the dead, echoes of great minds—all of it started to flow in—
and this space had begun to move again as a kind of heaven.
⸻
“This is… Heaven?”
My mother’s ghost answered her.
“Welcome to the Matrix world. I’m Hera, Oliver’s mother.
And you must be Rafaela. We finally meet.”
Rafaela’s eyes went wide.
“I… I thought you were gone…”
“She is,” I said. “She and the others live here as souls in the black hole. I was shocked at first too.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jones,” Rafaela whispered, bowing.
She still couldn’t quite believe it.
Just then, Feitaro bounded in, bragging.
“I even met Mozart for Katie the other day. He said he wrote a new song!”
“No way,” Rafaela murmured.
At her feet, an infinite stage unfolded.
“I built this. …With Maharaja’s money,” I whispered to her.
I was wearing the Maharaja’s avatar, but inside it was me.
Light-cube ground, rainbow solar veils in the sky, and at the center—an empty “God Throne.”
My avatar was on login restriction—Maharaja’s busy in the real world.
Instead, my kids had shown up.
The moment they heard I was going in with Rafaela, they all threw a fit.
Now the four of them stood before us—each dressed, armed, and thinking differently.
⸻
The Four Kings:
•First King – Julius
A tactician of pure logic. Wields the Scale of Data Judgment to dominate the field.
•Second King – Nero
A blazing brawler who smashes code with crimson fists.
•Third King – Mireille
Calm, balanced, manipulates the space itself.
•Fourth King – Noah
A dreamlike illusionist who believes napping is the ultimate tactic.
⸻
Rafaela stared, mouth open.
I—wearing Maharaja’s form—spoke calmly:
“This space mirrors reality. It’s also where the dead return.
But left unchecked… it will start to invade the real world.”
“So it has to be contained,” Rafaela said.
“Yeah. By the way, I was invited here too. Thirteenth on the leaderboard, you know.”
I leaned closer to whisper:
“Maharaja’s actually been grinding hard as a player—using my name and avatar.”
And just as I finished, the world began to ripple.
Emile’s eyes glowed. His avatar: a Black Panther warrior—the form he once had.
Feitaro’s feed blinked onto the monitor.
“Data anomaly confirmed. A huge wave of consciousness is pushing from the Machida residents’ archive. Feitaro, can you crack it? Target’s sealed under Dome Machida.”
“Piece of cake! Send me the map, Panther!”
“Uploading now,” Emile’s teammate said.
Feitaro slid into a crack too small for humans.
“Thanks!!”
⸻
Then it hit.
Rey’s cat-robot “Heart” shifted into machine-gun mode.
“Nyaa… Situation critical. Barrier down in 27 seconds.”
I snapped:
“Hachiko, log in! Deploy Layer Defense!”
The robo-Akita dove in, golden code streaming out to form a defensive net.
And from above… prayers fell.
Not words, but light, sound—the hopes of Machida’s citizens, flowing out of the Matrix.
The boundary between real and virtual was breaking.
And beyond even our own identities, we were stepping into a battle of souls.
⸻
(To be continued)
