The Scum Emperor's Redemption System

[Warning: Old Draft. Volume 2 is being edited.]

Argider awoke to the harmonious—no, the absolutely deranged—chanting of the newly formed Order of the Blessed Squish. She groggily pushed herself up and shuffled toward the window, rubbing her eyes. The second she peered outside, she regretted every life decision that had led her to this moment.

In the palace courtyard stood a massive statue of Squishy. Not an artist's rendition, no. A horrifyingly accurate, gelatinous, marble-carved abomination that somehow blinked despite being made of solid stone.

In front of the crowd stood the High Priest, his glowing robes illuminating his self-proclaimed divine presence. "O' Great Squishy! Divine Unraveler of Perceived Reality! Corrector of the Flawed Cosmos! May we be squished in your eternal, wriggling embrace!"

Argider groaned. "I knew this would happen."

She turned to Faeralys, who sat on her bed, flipping through a book titled How to Disband a Cult in Ten Easy Steps.

"We need to fix this."

Faeralys turned a page. "Step one: Remove the divine entity the cult is worshipping. Which… seems like a you problem."

A very enthusiastic, glowing Squishy wriggled into the room through the ceiling, its entire body vibrating with joy.

Argider pointed at it. "Undo. All of this. Right now."

Squishy blinked. "But they are happy now."

Argider buried her face in her hands.

Meanwhile, in another room, Fialova was practically vibrating with excitement. She had been guarding her prized egg—an egg that had somehow grown to the size of a boulder and was now pulsating like an eldritch heart.

Esmeralda, standing by the doorway with her sword drawn, twitched. "I know that thing is evil."

"Shhh," Fialova whispered, pressing her ear to the shell. "It's about to hatch~!"

Cracks formed.

Then—BOOM.

A surge of cosmic energy exploded outward. The palace trembled.

What emerged was neither a baby bird nor a harmless creature.

It was a sentient, glowing void—a swirling mass of nonexistence, floating ominously. It had no face, yet Argider swore it was staring directly at her soul.

Fialova gasped. "IT'S BEAUTIFUL."

Esmeralda raised her sword. "I'M KILLING IT."

The creature cooed, its voice echoing from every direction at once.

Squishy floated over, utterly delighted. "Oh! A younger sibling!"

The voidling cooed again. The palace walls flickered out of existence for three seconds.

Argider clenched her jaw. "Nope. No. We are not doing this today."

In the middle of all this disaster, Faeralys, utterly unfazed, suggested a break.

"Your brain will melt if you panic too much," she reasoned, sipping tea. "Also, Fialova's void horror baby seems to like you."

Indeed, the swirling nonexistence was now nuzzling against Argider's leg like a cat, making weird interdimensional purring noises.

"Of course, it does," Argider muttered, exhausted.

She turned to Esmeralda. "Please tell me you have some normalcy left in you."

Esmeralda, fresh from the shower, stepped out of the bathroom with her hair still dripping, wrapped in nothing but a towel. "What?"

Argider opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Her brain short-circuited.

Fialova, ever the enabler, smirked. "Oh? Flustered, are we?"

"I WILL THROW SQUISHY AT YOU."

Unfortunately, Squishy took this as an invitation and immediately latched onto Argider's face, phasing both of them out of reality for a solid five seconds.

When they reappeared, Argider's entire outfit had transformed into something overly regal and worryingly revealing.

Squishy chirped happily. "You needed new garments! I optimized them!"

Argider inhaled deeply. "Fialova."

"Yes?"

"Kill it."

Just when Argider thought things couldn't get worse—they did.

A divine rift split the sky open.
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Descending from the heavens was a celestial envoy, clad in radiant robes, their golden aura radiating pure divinity. Their expression was one of supreme judgment.

The High Priest immediately fell to his knees. "Oh, Holy One, have you come to bless the Squishy?"

The envoy scowled. "No. I have come to ERASE IT."

Squishy, delighted, immediately latched onto the divine figure.

"New friend!!" Squishy chirped.

The envoy's halo flickered like a broken lightbulb. "GET IT OFF ME."

But Squishy had already decided. It had found a new best friend.

Argider, arms crossed, smirked. "Well, you wanted to erase it. Good luck with that."

The envoy screamed.

As the chaos reached a crescendo, Squishy suddenly stopped moving.

Everything fell eerily silent.

Then, it spoke—its normally cheerful voice now unnervingly serious.

"I see now. The only way to correct reality is…"

The air trembled.

"…A reset."

The sky rippled.

Reality buckled.

Argider's soul left her body. "NO, NO, NO—WAIT—!"

But it was too late.

Squishy had already begun…

A universal undoing.

Argider woke up to the sound of... absolutely nothing. No chanting cult. No screaming celestial envoy. Just eerie, all-consuming silence.

Her eyes snapped open, and she bolted upright, heart pounding. Something was wrong. The last thing she remembered was Squishy unleashing a wave of chaotic energy, but now—

She wasn't in the palace anymore.

Instead, she was floating. Weightless. Adrift in a white void so empty it felt like the concept of space itself had been erased. There was no sky, no ground, no horizon—just her, suspended in nothingness.

Then, a single voice echoed around her, smooth and oddly cheerful:

"Welcome to the Beta Test."

Argider turned sharply, and her stomach dropped.

Squishy loomed before her, now the size of a moon, its previously small, squishy form expanded to something monstrous. It had far too many wriggling appendages, shifting unpredictably as if it couldn't decide how many limbs it should have.

"I fixed the world!" Squishy announced gleefully.

Argider's eye twitched. "Fixed?!" She screeched, her voice rising several octaves. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

A Reality Gone Wrong

Before she could properly grab the eldritch creature and shake it until it reversed whatever horror it had unleashed, the void cracked open like glass.

Reality reassembled in front of her eyes, unfolding in layers, piece by piece. She felt her body drop—no, plunge—back into existence, until she landed with a sharp jolt onto cold, polished marble.

She was back in the palace.

Sort of.

The architecture was wrong. It had been grand before, but now it was too grand. Gilded, ethereal, and absurdly divine, as if some overeager god had gone overboard in designing their dream temple. The pillars gleamed with an unnatural glow, the chandeliers dripped liquid light, and the air itself shimmered like a mirage.

Something about the atmosphere felt off. Reality itself was still buffering.

Then she saw the High Priest.

Or, at least, what had become of him.

He stood at the end of the hall, his once-human figure twisted into something barely recognizable. His hair had transformed into writhing tentacles, each one pulsating with an eerie glow. His eyes were solid pools of radiant gold, and his robes had fused with his flesh, creating a grotesque yet oddly majestic form.

"O' Great Squishy!" he cried, dropping to his knees. "Your Perfected World is a masterpiece beyond mortal comprehension!"

Argider groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Squishy. WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?!"

Her Friends Have... Changed.

Desperate for some semblance of sanity, Argider stumbled through the palace, hoping to find one thing that hadn't been rewritten into madness.

She was sorely disappointed.

First, she found Faeralys.

The girl stood proudly in a golden suit of armor, looking like some kind of holy knight. But instead of a sword, she wielded an absurdly large feather quill.

"I have been assigned the role of Divine Archivist," she declared in a monotone voice. "I now record all events of this perfected timeline."

Argider gaped at her. "...You're kidding."

Faeralys simply dipped her quill into a floating inkwell and wrote her reaction down.

Next, she found Fialova.

She was still cradling her eldritch baby, except now it had evolved into a miniature swirling galaxy. Star systems pulsed within its form, shifting and expanding as it made quiet, cosmic gurgling sounds.

Fialova stared at it in awe. "Oh my god. It's even more beautiful than before."

"No, it's not!" Argider snapped. "That thing has its own gravitational field now!"

Finally, she found Esmeralda, standing stiffly on the balcony, staring at the endless horizon.

She didn't move. Didn't speak. Not until Argider stepped beside her.

Then, finally, she clenched her fists and muttered, "This world... is too perfect."

Argider inhaled sharply. "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE THE FIRST PERSON TO MAKE SENSE TODAY!"

The World's New Rules

Through trial, error, and a lot of screaming, Argider discovered the new laws of reality:

Everything is optimized for Squishy's pleasure.

The concept of 'ugliness' does not exist. Everything is absurdly pretty.

The stars in the sky have been replaced with blinking eyeballs that "watch over" Squishy's followers.

Anyone who denies Squishy's divinity immediately gains extra limbs. (She learned this the hard way after calling Squishy an overgrown jellybean.)

"I gave the world perfection!" Squishy chirped, hovering gleefully.

Argider, who now had three arms, screamed, "YOU GAVE THE WORLD AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!"

The Gods Are Furious.

Suddenly, the ground shook.

A deafening, celestial voice boomed from above: "THIS ABOMINATION MUST BE UNDONE."

A divine army descended from the heavens, led by the celestial envoy from before, now fully healed and radiating divine fury.

Their mission was clear: Erase Squishy. Reset the world. Purge the corruption.

But the High Priest, now glowing with eldritch divinity, refused.

"The old world was flawed!" he cried. "Squishy's Perfection must remain!"

And just like that, war erupted.