“A weapon,” he muttered, his voice barely audible. “The glitch isn’t some random error. The devs… they made it.”
Lena nodded grimly, pulling her daggers from their sheaths as her eyes scanned the shifting horizon. “It looks that way. And from what we just saw, they’re still running the experiment.”
Erik’s pulse quickened as the words echoed in his mind: Subject integration at 87%. Full deployment imminent.
“What’s ‘full deployment’ supposed to mean?” Erik asked.
“Nothing good,” Lena replied, gripping her daggers tightly. “If the devs are creating weapons, they’re not doing it for fun. There’s something bigger going on—something they’re not telling the players.”
Erik ran a hand through his hair, frustration bubbling to the surface. “But why? Why build something like this in a game? It doesn’t make any sense!”
Lena shot him a sharp look. “Think bigger, Erik. This isn’t just a game anymore. It’s a testing ground. The devs aren’t making weapons for players—they’re making them for the real world.”
The words hit Erik like a punch to the gut. He opened his mouth to argue, to deny it, but he couldn’t. Deep down, he knew Lena was right. The glitch, the sentinels, the Architect—they weren’t just random glitches in the system. They were intentional, calculated.
“They’re testing how far they can push the system,” Lena continued. “How much strain it can handle, how effective their creations are in a controlled environment. And we’re caught in the middle of it.”
Erik clenched his fists. “So, what do we do? How do we stop it?”
Lena hesitated, her gaze hardening. “We keep digging. If we can find the source of the experiment, we might be able to shut it down.”
Erik nodded, though his stomach churned at the thought. The deeper they went, the more dangerous this world became. But he couldn’t turn back now—not when the stakes were this high.
The Echoing Glade seemed to shift as they moved, its crystalline structures rearranging themselves like pieces of a puzzle. Erik felt like he was being watched, though every time he turned around, the landscape was empty.
“Is it just me, or is this place… alive?” he asked, his voice low.
“It’s not alive,” Lena said. “But it’s connected to the Root System. The glitch is spreading through this entire world, and the Glade is part of it. The system’s trying to adapt, but it’s losing control.”
“Comforting,” Erik muttered.
They reached a narrow pathway that cut through a canyon of jagged, glitching cliffs. The air was colder here, and Erik’s breath came out in visible puffs, even though he knew he wasn’t really breathing.
“Do you feel that?” Lena asked, stopping abruptly.
Erik frowned. “Feel what?”
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“Energy,” Lena said, her voice tense. “There’s something ahead.”
Erik tightened his grip on his sword, his nerves on edge. The pathway opened into a vast chamber, its walls covered in cascading streams of code. In the center of the room was a massive, pulsating sphere of energy, its surface crackling with glitching light.
“What is that?” Erik asked, his eyes wide.
“That,” Lena said, “is a fragment of the glitch.”
The sphere radiated an unsettling hum, the sound vibrating through Erik’s chest. He could feel its power, raw and unstable, like a storm barely contained.
“What’s it doing here?” Erik asked, keeping a cautious distance.
“It’s part of the experiment,” Lena said. “The devs must have isolated it here to study its behavior. But with the reset, it’s destabilizing.”
Erik’s eyes narrowed. “Can we destroy it?”
Lena hesitated. “Maybe. But tampering with something this unstable could bring the whole system down. We need to be careful.”
Erik approached the sphere, his hand hovering over the pulsating surface. A terminal screen appeared, its text flickering erratically:
[FRAGMENT: ?λ-G-CORE_42]
[STATUS: UNSTABLE.]
[ACTIONS AVAILABLE: ANALYZE // STABILIZE // PURGE.]
“Analyze,” Erik said, selecting the option.
The screen shifted, displaying a flood of data. Erik struggled to make sense of it, but one line stood out:
[GLITCH FRAGMENT FUNCTION: HOST INTEGRATION TESTING.]
“Host integration?” Erik muttered.
Lena stepped closer, her expression dark. “They’re testing how well the glitch can merge with players.”
Erik’s stomach dropped. “You mean they’re using people as test subjects?”
Lena nodded. “It’s why the devs send hunters after anomalies like you. If you’re caught, they don’t just delete you—they use you to refine the glitch.”
Erik felt a surge of anger. “And the players don’t even know?”
“No,” Lena said. “They think they’re just playing a game. But the devs are using them as pawns.”
Erik clenched his fists, his mind racing. He thought about the players who had attacked him, the Architect, the sentinels. All of it was connected, part of the same horrifying experiment.
“We can’t let this continue,” Erik said, his voice firm.
Lena nodded. “Then we need to make a choice. Stabilize the fragment, or purge it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“If we stabilize it, we might be able to use it to track the source of the experiment,” Lena explained. “But it’ll be risky. The devs will know we’ve tampered with it, and they’ll come after us.”
“And purging it?” Erik asked.
“We destroy it,” Lena said. “Cut off this piece of the glitch and hope it slows the experiment down. But we’ll lose any chance of finding out where it came from.”
Erik hesitated, his hand hovering over the terminal. Both options carried enormous risks.
“What do you think?” he asked Lena.
She met his gaze, her expression unreadable. “It’s your call, Codewalker. This is your fight as much as mine.”
Erik stared at the terminal, the weight of the decision pressing down on him. Stabilizing the fragment could lead them to the source of the experiment, but it would paint an even bigger target on their backs. Purging it would deny the devs one of their weapons, but it wouldn’t stop the experiment entirely.
His hand hovered over the options.
“Stabilize,” he said finally, selecting the command.
The fragment pulsed violently, streams of energy lashing out as the terminal processed his input. The room shook, and Erik stumbled backward as the sphere began to shrink, its unstable energy condensing into a solid form.
Finally, the process completed. The fragment transformed into a small, glowing shard, floating silently in the air.
“It worked,” Lena said, relief flickering across her face.
Erik reached out and grabbed the shard. The moment his fingers closed around it, a surge of data flooded his mind. Images, sounds, fragments of memories that weren’t his.
And then, a single word:
“Sanctum.”
Erik gasped, dropping the shard. “What was that?”
Lena picked it up, her expression grim. “Sanctum. It’s a location. The devs must have hidden something there—something tied to the glitch.”
Erik nodded, his jaw set. “Then that’s where we’re going.”
Lena slipped the shard into her pack, her daggers back in her hands. “If we’re going to Sanctum, we’ll need to move fast. The devs will know what we’ve done, and they won’t sit idle.”
Erik tightened his grip on his sword, a steely determination in his eyes.
“Let them come,” he said. “It’s time we finished this.”