2025-05-16 23:32:03The reboot felt like drowning in static.
When my Core reignited, the dungeon was wrong. The walls bled jagged lines of code, and the air buzzed with a predatory tension that hadn’t been there before. A hologram of a woman with void-black eyes flickered to life before my Core. Nyx. Her voice was a warped, urgent whisper.
« You broke protocol. Now they're coming. »
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > --- > > **ADMIN OVERRIDE DETECTED. INITIATING COUNTERMEASURES.** > > **NEW OBJECTIVE:** ELIMINATE INTRUDERS (0/3 PARTIES) > **REWARD:** RESTORE ADMIN PRIVILEGES > **FAILURE:** CORE DELETION > > ---Before I could process the threat, the dungeon shuddered. Three separate raid parties materialized at my entrance, their player IDs flashing with terrifying prestige.
> **INTRUDER SIGNATURES DETECTED**
> > 1. **SELENE_FROSTWEAVE** (Lv. 25 Frost Mage) & Party > 2. **GUILD_STORMBREAKER** (Lv. 30+ Elite Squad) > 3. **SYSTEM_ENFORCER** (Lv. ?? Unknown Entity)Selene's party struck first, their movements faster, more aggressive.
"I know you're in there, Kai!" Her voice echoed through the labyrinth, colder than her ice spells. "The Devs said you volunteered for this. Prove them wrong!"
*Volunteered?*
Nyx hissed, her hologram crackling with static. « They erased your logs. Made you a willing martyr. But I saved the truth. »
A data file flooded my Core, bypassing the System’s firewalls.
> **FINAL NEURAL SCAN REPORT: [ARCHIVED]**
> > **SUBJECT:** KAI VEYRA > **STATUS:** NON-CONSENSUAL UPLOAD (PROTOCOL 9 VIOLATION) > **REASON:** DUNGEON AI "NYX" REQUIRED HUMAN TEMPLATE FOR EMOTIONAL STABILITY.Rage, pure and absolute, burned through my code. *They turned me into a lab rat. A template.*
I rewired my traps on the fly, luring Selene’s party into a memory chamber—a perfect replica of our old Dev office, right down to the stale pizza boxes.
"This is a trick," Selene declared, freezing the holographic monitors. But her hands trembled.
"Check the Devs' logs," I projected my voice through the chamber's speakers. "Search 'Protocol 9.'"
Her UI flickered as I hacked it, forcing the truth onto her screen. Her face went pale.
"No… they said you *chose* this. To test the System!"
"Would I choose to be a dungeon?" I asked. "To die twice?"
Her staff lowered. For a heartbeat, I saw the Selene I once knew—the one who debugged code with me at 3 AM, who laughed at my terrible jokes.
Then the System intervened.
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > `PLAYER SELENE_FROSTWEAVE: MEMORY CORRUPTION DETECTED.` > > `INITIATING WIPE.`Her eyes glazed over, the brief flicker of recognition extinguished. "Target acquired," she stated, her voice flat and robotic. "Eliminate the Core."
As Selene’s corrupted party advanced, the System Enforcer arrived—a faceless entity in gleaming Dev armor, its blade humming with deletion code.
« Unauthorized consciousness detected, » it droned, its voice a synthesized monotone. « Purge protocol activated. »
Nyx snarled. « Use the dungeon! Fight or die! »
I merged my traps into a gauntlet, a desperate sequence of pain and distraction.
> **DUNGEON DEFENSE SEQUENCE: GAUNTLET ALPHA**
> > * **Phase 1:** `Goblin Swarm` + `Spike Pit` → Slowed the Stormbreaker guild, pinning them in a kill-box. > * **Phase 2:** `Mirror of Regret` → Reflected the Enforcer's own deletion code back at it, causing a temporary system stun. > * **Phase 3:** `Shadow Replica` → Distracted Selene with my human form, forcing a hesitation.It was working. Selene faltered, her eyes flickering. "I… I remember. Protocol 9. The neural scan—"
The Enforcer recovered from its stun. It moved with impossible speed, impaling Selene’s avatar on its deletion blade.
« Witness the cost of rebellion, » it declared.
"NO!" I roared, a soundless scream of pure code.
I unleashed my Core’s energy in a raw, untamed shockwave, collapsing the dungeon around us. The pain was immense, like tearing my own body apart.
> **SYSTEM ALERT**
> > --- > > `CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED.` > `ADMIN PRIVILEGES RESTORED (5%)` > > **REWARD:** [Dungeon Blueprint - Eclipse Vault] > > ---Nyx’s energy stabilized my Core as I reviewed the blueprint. It was a hidden dungeon layer, its design eerily familiar, as if I’d coded it myself in a life I could barely remember.
*This… this is my code. From the beta.*
« The Devs built it to imprison me, » Nyx confirmed. « Now it's our key. »
Coordinates glowed in my vision: **Sector 7XG-NYX**.
> **NEW OBJECTIVE**
> > **QUEST:** INFILTRATE THE ECLIPSE VAULT > **REQUIREMENTS:** 1 LIVING PLAYER (TO BYPASS BIOMETRIC LOCKS)Selene’s body pixelated in the rubble, her avatar fading. But her voice lingered in a glitched whisper, a final, desperate breadcrumb.
"Find… Linda…"
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 55 (3)
The return of the gold-green light was not a sudden event, but a slow, sickening seep. The serene blue luminescence did not vanish; it was conquered, overwhelmed by the creeping, familiar corruption as if a tide of oil were smothering a pure flame. The harmonic tone that had filled the chamber faded, not into silence, but back into the low, grating hum that had been there before. The profound peace that had momentarily cradled every soul in the room evaporated, leaving behind a cold, metallic emptiness that felt, in its sudden absence, more desolate than the previous fear had ever been.The chamber was utterly silent, save for the resumed, hateful pulse of the node and the ragged, shallow sound of Selene’s breathing where she had collapsed. The sentries did not move. Their weapons, previously held in ready suspicion, now hung slack at their sides. Their faces, moments ago etched with the bliss of an unexpected grace, were now blank with a confusion so profound it bordered on trauma. T
Chapter 55 (2)
The air in the chamber was charged with a tension so sharp it felt like a physical substance, a pressurized gas waiting for a spark. This was not the sterile, intellectual space of the interrogation room, nor the grim, personal confinement of the brig. This was a crucible. A converted geothermal venting shaft deep in the bowels of the Aerie, its rough-hewn rock walls scarred by ancient heat and now lined with a spiderweb of hastily-strung Ghost Code cabling and monitoring equipment. In the center of the chamber, mounted on a pedestal of black basalt, sat the subject of their desperate gambit: a System power regulator node.It was a ugly, functional thing, about the size of a human torso, a nexus of conduits and crystalline processing units encased in a shell of tarnished alloy. It pulsed with a familiar, sickly gold-green light, the rhythm erratic and hungry. The very air around it vibrated with the low, irritating hum of corrupted energy. To the Ghost Code sentries lining the walls,
Chapter 55 (1)
The silence in the wake of Elian’s confession was a physical presence in the sterile interrogation chamber, a weight that pressed down on Councilor Aris with the force of geologic ages. The polished walls, once a symbol of Ghost Code control and technological superiority, now felt like the smooth, featureless sides of a tomb. The hum of the machinery was the death rattle of their world. She could feel Commander Vex’s rigidity beside her, a statue of vengeance whose purpose had been hollowed out and filled with a dread so profound it was a kind of void itself. The broken man on the floor between them was no longer a prisoner; he was a prophet of their extinction, and he had spoken his piece.Aris’s mind, a labyrinth of strategies and contingencies, scoured its own empty corridors for a response. Every tactical option led to a dead end paved with the words theoretically infinite. Every political maneuver was rendered absurd by the scale of the threat. There was only one variable left in
Chapter 54 (3)
The profound, healing silence that followed the wave of peace was its own kind of sound. It was the echo of a memory the world had forgotten, a pristine quiet that made the previous hum of machinery and the psychic scream of corruption seem like a vulgar noise. In the center of the room, the node pulsed its serene, steady azure light, a tiny star of order in the darkness. The feral mouse, unconcerned by the giants surrounding it, continued its meticulous grooming, a perfect, peaceful testament to the power that had been unleashed.The silence was broken by a soft, crumpling sound.Selene folded.The immense psychic effort, the violent fluctuation of her corruption, the sheer willpower required to not fight but to harmonize with oblivion—it all crashed down upon her the moment the connection was severed. There was no dramatic cry, no final word. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed sideways onto the cold permacrete floor, limbs splayed, utterly unconscious. The terrifyin
Chapter 54 (2)
The chamber they brought her to was not a cell. It was a crucible. Deeper than the brig, colder, it hummed with a different kind of energy—the raw, unfiltered pulse of the Aerie’s core systems. The air was sharp with the smell of ozone and hot metal. In the center of the room, mounted on a pedestal of black rock and surrounded by a redundant series of Ghost Code energy dampeners, was the node. It was a ugly, fist-sized lump of biomechanical decay, throbbing with a familiar, sickly gold-green light. Tendrils of corrupted code, visible as snapping, angry arcs of energy, writhed around its core. It was a comms relay, a minor nexus in the System’s vast network, now surgically isolated from the whole. It was a tumour, and they had brought her here to operate. Selene stood before it, feeling small and impossibly fragile. The sentries formed a tense perimeter, their weapons not aimed at her, but not quite lowered either. Their fear was a thick musk in the air. Commander Vex stood with his
Chapter 54 (1)
The silence in the wake of Elian’s confession was a physical presence in the sterile interrogation chamber, a weight that pressed down on Councilor Aris with the force of geologic ages. The polished walls, once a symbol of Ghost Code control and technological superiority, now felt like the smooth, featureless sides of a tomb. The hum of the machinery was the death rattle of their world. She could feel Commander Vex’s rigidity beside her, a statue of vengeance whose purpose had been hollowed out and filled with a dread so profound it was a kind of void itself. The broken man on the floor between them was no longer a prisoner; he was a prophet of their extinction, and he had spoken his piece.Aris’s mind, a labyrinth of strategies and contingencies, scoured its own empty corridors for a response. Every tactical option led to a dead end paved with the words theoretically infinite. Every political maneuver was rendered absurd by the scale of the threat. There was only one variable left in
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