“Trainer conflict detected,” the voice said, now cold and mechanical. “God Mode cannot coexist with Permadeath flag. Please choose.”

Ethan smiled. It was not a kind smile. He raised a single finger and pointed at the bandit’s gas mask. There was no gunshot. No bang. The bandit simply ceased – his body folded into itself like a crumpled piece of paper and vanished. A small floating text appeared: At first, it was a game. Ethan sprinted past convoys at superhuman speed, snatching ethanol barrels before drivers could blink. He jumped from the top of Joseph Seed’s statue, landed on his feet without a scratch, and walked through the fires of the Scrapyard like a tourist in a warm rain. The Highwaymen’s bullets became flies. Their bombs became firecrackers.

He reached out his finger. He touched the second option.

The gray void shattered. The sun snapped back into place. The shotgun blast was real again, and this time, it hurt.

Ethan fell to his knees in the dirt of Hope County, bleeding from a dozen wounds he had ignored for days. And for the first time since he arrived, he felt the weight of being alive.

But somewhere, deep in the code of a dead world, a tiny cursor blinked. Waiting for someone else to press .