Jax was too deep in his own rage to register what was happening around him."Jax." Mira called his name. He didn't hear her. His eyes stayed fixed on the Primordial Overseer.A cold chill ran through his body and settled at his fingertips. He gripped the Flame Sword and charged forward again, yelling with everything he had left.The Primordial Overseer didn't falter. It shifted left and fired a wiring code straight at his chest. The hit landed clean. Jax skidded across the ground and his legs gave out under him.He caught his breath and forced himself up. His teeth ground together. He swallowed the pain and kept it off his face. He thought that was what his team needed from him.He was wrong. He just didn't know it yet.His eyes were bleeding red from the strain. Tears blurred the edges of his vision. Pain registered in every fiber. He didn't stop.The system was going offline. He felt it happening in real time and it scared him more than the Overseer did. The tab flickered in and out

The sword that appeared out of nowhere couldn't do much. Rusted at the edges, blunt at the tip. Jax charged at the beast with it anyway.He rolled away from its incoming claws just before they caught him and slammed himself against the confinement wall. When he steadied himself, he came around from behind and confused the beast.The beast turned. It expected to find Jax in front of it except he wasn't there. He had spent the whole time learning its movements. How it tracked and how it saw."Hey." Jax said from the other side, ready to counterattack.The beast snorted and stirred. The moment its eyes flicked toward the sound, they met the sharp end of the rusted sword. Jax drove it deep into the socket. The air swirled violently as the beast roared, the force blowing Jax's hair back and throwing its body sideways into him.He deflected the hit and kept moving. The sword snapped halfway before it could do permanent damage. Jax didn't wait. He climbed over the beast and drove the broken

The room was more of a prison dressed up as a fancy residence. Jax wasn't given the chance to go outside. He had attempted to break the lock countless times but the handle never budged, and the door, which appeared wooden, didn't take a single scratch no matter what he threw at it. Most of the furniture was broken by the third day. He had smashed pieces of it against the door until his arms gave out. The door didn't crack. On that third day, Jax gave up on breaking out and spent most of his time at the window instead, watching the outside because it was the only thing that wasn't controlled. Mira loved nature and Jax immersed himself in it to remind himself of her. He barely slept. His wounds still throbbed with soreness but the warm baths kept them clean and uninfected, and the first aid kit in one of the cabinets gave him enough to disinfect them properly. His body was a map of damage. Fresh wounds layered over old scars, scratches running across skin that had barely healed from

Every second between then and now had kept Jax awake. He spent every moment strategizing, plotting his next move, calculating how he was going to get his team out. Orin's words had been the one thing holding him steady, keeping his focus fixed on what lay ahead rather than what was already done. Outside the walls, an arena had been built. The stadium was enormous, stretching across a vast width of land, and players from across the game world had been filing in since before sunrise. Characters who had heard about the Glitch Overlord and wanted to see him for themselves. The moment word spread that he had been captured, revenue skyrocketed for the old Creators. Tickets sold. Crowds gathered. His suffering had become their entertainment. Many of them had registered to fight him. Not only for the bounty on his head but to stake their own name against the NPC who had taken down high level players in Lumora and lived to be spoken about. Jax felt something different today, even befor

Pain exploded inside Jax's consciousness like fire and ice colliding. Then it went numb. He felt his own heartbeat slow, every muscle heavy and unresponsive. He couldn't move or even open his eyes and he didn't fight it.Lina's voice cut through the noise of the crowd."Jax!" He felt his collar gripped but couldn't respond to it. "Wake up, Jax!"Slowly, her voice faded into the dark.Something pulled him back. A low, steady humming sound. His eyes opened to a bright room and he shut them again just as fast. He opened them slowly this time, letting the light in by degrees. His legs hung over the edge of a healing slab. He recognised it from his time at Sera's colony, and the recognition settled something cold in his chest. It made sense now why her people had that kind of equipment. Someone had taught them. Someone had supplied it. And it was Lina.He wondered where Sera was. Whether the colony members were safe. He needed to find a way to reach them before anything else went wrong.A