Cracked Pillars of Fate

Chapter 6: Core Data

The darkness didn't last long, but it felt long enough to make Dylan feel as if his soul were being shredded. When the digital gravitational pull finally released him, Dylan was slammed onto a floor that felt like a giant printed circuit board. The pungent smell of ozone stung his nose, mixed with the scent of hot metal he had known all too well during his years in the lab.

Dylan coughed, trying to clear his vision. He was no longer in the neat crystal corridors. This place was a data dump—a ruin of digital architecture where the pillars were formed from cracked, ancient CRT monitors and copper cables that dangled like giant veins.

"Where am I now?" Dylan rose slowly, brushing static dust from his suit. "The disposal sector? The system's trash bin?"

[Location: Fragmented Archive – Sector 0. Status: Unstable.]

The system's voice now sounded noisier, as if its signal were being disrupted by the magnetic interference surrounding them. Dylan ignored it. His eyes were fixed on a console in the center of the room, surrounded by stacks of hard drives the size of wardrobes. The console looked ancient, with a monochrome green screen that flickered weakly.

"If this is a labyrinth, I need a map," he muttered. He stepped toward the console, his feet treading on piles of destroyed magnetic tape. "And if this is a system terminal, then there must be an access path to the next level."

Dylan placed his hands on the mechanical keyboard, its surface already covered in a crust of data residue. As soon as his fingers touched the keys, the green screen exploded with rows of unreadable commands. Dylan was not surprised. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let the blue circuits beneath his skin pulse.

"Stop fighting me," Dylan hissed. "I am not a virus. I am your new administrator."

His fingers danced across the keyboard with inhuman speed. Each keystroke produced a wave of blue light that rippled into the ancient machine. Dylan could feel the data structure of this labyrinth flowing through his mind. He saw thousands of dead ends, algorithmic traps, and locked gates.

"Found it," Dylan smirked as a partial map appeared on his screen. "Only thirty percent of the total labyrinth, but enough to keep me alive."

[Warning: Data D******d Detected. Assimilating Code Fragments...]

A sudden cold sensation crawled from his fingertips throughout his entire body. Dylan felt as if his brain were being forcibly downloaded with information he had never seen before. The geometric symbols he had studied earlier began to rearrange themselves, forming terrifying new functions within his consciousness.

"Argh! Too much... stop!" Dylan clutched his head, kneeling before the terminal which was now vibrating violently.

[Class Evolution Detected. Unlocking New Capacity: Data Fragmentation.]

Dylan felt his hands pulse with heat. When he opened his eyes, the air in front of him seemed to consist of stacks of transparent pixels that he could touch. He reached out toward a pillar of cables nearby and flicked his fingers. The pillar did not break; it unraveled into rows of pure code before reassembling into a floating staircase that led into the darkness above.

"Micro-reality modification..." Dylan stared at his palms in awe. "I'm not just hacking the software. I can hack the hardware of this dimension."

"Are you so proud of your new toy, Dylan Smith?"

A heavy, distorted voice echoed from the pile of digital trash in the corner of the room. Dylan turned quickly, his hands ready to manipulate the data around him. From behind the shadow of the cables emerged an entity far larger than the previous Glitches. The creature resembled a faceless man, but its body consisted of thousands of error message windows that constantly appeared and vanished.

"Master of Data Corruption," Dylan whispered. "Are you the one orchestrating all this chaos?"

"I am the manifestation of every failure you have ever made," the creature stepped forward, and with every step, the floor around it decayed into black pixels. "I am the code you deleted. I am the dreams you sacrificed for your career. Do you think you can leave this place?"

Suddenly, the scenery around Dylan changed. He was no longer in the labyrinth. He was standing at his father's funeral ten years ago. Rain fell heavily, but the raindrops were black like ink.

"This isn't real," Dylan said, though his voice trembled. He saw his younger self standing before the headstone, sobbing uncontrollably. "This is just an illusion. Just psychological data manipulation."

"Is it?" the Master of Corruption appeared beside the young Dylan, placing its static hand on the boy's shoulder. "This pain is real, Dylan. Your regret is real. Let me absorb it, and you will never feel pain again. Merge with this corruption."

Dylan felt his sanity beginning to peel away. The image of his father emerged from behind the headstone, staring at him with hollow, accusing eyes. The world around him began to crack—not because of the system, but because of his own heart surrendering to despair.

"No..." Dylan shook his head violently. "Logic. Use your logic!"

He closed his eyes, ignoring the sound of crying and the scent of wet earth that tortured his memory. He focused his entire mind on the energy frequencies around him. He searched for the fake heartbeat of this simulation.

"Target detected," Dylan muttered. His eyes snapped open, now glowing with a sharp blue light. "This simulation has a refresh rate of sixty hertz. There is a gap at every sixtieth second."

Dylan did not attack the figure of his father. He attacked the empty air beside him. He grabbed the vacuum with his hands and screamed, "Fragmentation!"

Crack!

The reality of the funeral shattered like glass. Dylan was back in the fragmented archives, but the Master of Corruption still stood before him, looking shocked that its illusion had been so easily destroyed.

"You dare refuse the peace I offer?" the creature roared. It lunged at Dylan, its static hand transforming into a long blade of black code.

"Your peace is nothing but an infinite loop that will suck the life out of me!" Dylan countered.

Dylan moved with a newly acquired agility. He didn't dodge physically; instead, he shifted his position by altering his own data coordinates within the labyrinth space. The Master of Corruption attacked blindly, but its strikes only passed through the remnants of Dylan's afterimages.

"You're too slow," Dylan appeared behind the creature. He touched the Master of Corruption's back with his palm. "Let's see how you handle a buffer overflow firsthand."

Dylan channeled all the code fragments he had gathered from the terminal earlier into the creature's body. The Master of Corruption began to swell, error message windows appearing on its body at a rate of millions per second, until its roar turned into a deafening static shriek.

"Too much data for you to digest?" Dylan stared at it without mercy. "Goodbye, garbage collection."

BOOM!

The entity exploded in a cloud of black pixels that then evaporated into pure white light. As the Master of Corruption vanished, a heavy steel door at the end of the room opened on its own, emitting an orange glow from the next zone.

However, Dylan's victory was met with a far more violent tremor. The entire archive began to collapse. Pillars of monitors fell, and the floor beneath Dylan's feet began to disappear into a hollow abyss.

"What now? Automatic cleanup?" Dylan ran toward the door.

[Warning: Critical Sector Damage. Initiating Sector 0 Deletion in 30 Seconds.]

"Of course," Dylan panted, leaping over the gaps in the floor that continued to appear. "You guys aren't going to let me go easily, are you?"

He reached the threshold just as the wall behind him crumbled into digital dust. Dylan grabbed the lever beside the door and pulled it with all his might. A notification window appeared before him, red and pulsing.

[Emergency Exit Active. Redirecting to Threshold Zone.]

Dylan looked back one last time. The labyrinth he had traversed for hours was now gone, replaced by an endless gray void. He felt he was no longer the same man who had given that presentation in San Francisco. He had transcended the boundaries of a researcher; he was a hacker of fate.

As he stepped into the portal, Dylan saw a speck of blue light in the distance, far beyond the reach of this labyrinth. The speck felt warm, as if there were another human presence there.

"I'm coming," he whispered before the portal's light swallowed his body completely.

Just as the portal closed, a crystal-clear voice transmission—not the system's voice—echoed in Dylan's ear, making his heart nearly stop.

"Dylan Smith... you're late. The other pillars have already begun to crack."

The portal exploded in silence, leaving Dylan on an uncertain transdimensional journey toward a meeting that would determine the fate of the entire world.