The microwave hummed, a low drone in the quiet apartment. 00:01:23. Leo Chen stabbed the plastic film of his instant ramen cup, ignoring the see-through blue prompt stuck in the lower left of his vision: ⌈ SYSTEM INTEGRATION: EARTH PRIME IN 00:01:22 ⌋. "Stupid VR ad," he muttered, peeling back the lid. Steam fogged his glasses. Ads always took over his cheap, second-hand brain implant.
Behind him, a wet, rasping cough broke the quiet. Mia. Her wheelchair sat by the dirty window, her small body lost in it. The health monitor on her thin wrist flashed a constant, sick yellow: ORGAN FAILURE: 72%. The smell of cleaning alcohol and old noodles hung in the air. 00:00:05.
"Leo?" Mia's voice was thin, barely heard over the microwave. "The sky… it's… not right."
He turned, ramen forgotten.
The window cracked. Not like breaking glass, but splitting into glowing, six-sided shapes. Across the street, the brick front of Mrs. Henderson's bakery vanished. Not fell down – vanished. Rivers of bright green code rose like digital smoke, taking the building apart piece by piece. A delivery drone hung frozen in the air, humming one second, then bursting into a million glowing pieces the next, blowing away like ash in a digital wind.
⌈ WARNING: CELESTIAL SYSTEM ASSIMILATION OF TIER-3 WORLD (EARTH PRIME) COMMENCING. STABILIZING REALITY MATRIX... ⌋
Panic exploded from the streets below. A woman holding grocery bags turned into glowing squares mid-scream, her fear frozen in light before disappearing. A blue car smashed into the vanishing bakery wall, its front melting into streams of liquid light that flowed up into the broken sky. The sound was wrong – not metal crunching, but data tearing.
"Mia, hold my–" Leo grabbed for her wheelchair.
His fingers went through her arm like smoke. Cold. Empty.
Her eyes met his – wide, scared, confused – the eyes of his little sister who'd been sick her whole life. Then, like a sandcastle hit by a wave, her body broke apart. Not into blood or bone, but into countless points of pure, cold starlight. The light flashed brightly for a second, lighting up the dust in the air, before going dark.
No.
The sound of the city, the microwave, Mia's breathing – everything stopped. A deep, total silence fell, broken only by Leo's own heart pounding against his ribs. The smell of antiseptic was gone, replaced by sharp air and something like hot metal.
Cold blue text burned across his vision, impossible to miss:
⌈ ASSIMILATION COMPLETE. EARTH PRIME DESIGNATED: FLOOR 1, TOWER OF ETERNITY. SURVIVING POPULATION: 3.7 BILLION. SYSTEM INTERFACE ACTIVATED FOR ALL VIABLE ENTITIES. WELCOME TO THE ASCENSION. ⌋
Leo stood frozen in the wreckage of his apartment. The counter where the microwave sat was half gone, showing twisted pipes and sparking wires. His ramen cup steamed peacefully on the small piece left. Mia's empty wheelchair, somehow untouched, shone dully under the strange, blood-red light of a huge moon now filling the torn sky. The familiar buildings were replaced by broken shapes of half-vanished skyscrapers and twisting whirlpools of wrong-colored light.
Grief, cold and sharp like broken glass, stabbed him, followed by a wave of pure, burning anger. Mia. Gone. Wiped out. Like bad code.
A soft chime sounded in his mind. A see-through panel flickered before him, showing the ruined room:
NAME: Leo Chen
LEVEL: 1 (0/100 XP)
HP: 30/30
SANITY: 100%
STATS:
STR: 4 (Below Avg) [Carry Capacity: 40kg]
AGI: 5 (Average) [Movement Speed: 5m/s]
INT: 8 (Above Avg) [Mental Processing +20%]
VIT: 3 (Poor) [Stamina Regen -15%, HP +30]
SKILLS:
⌈ OBSERVE (COMMON LVL 1) ⌋: Allows basic look at things and people. Range: 10m.
TITLE: None
CURRENCY: 0 Celestial Credits (CC)
INVENTORY:5/10 Slots
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Leo stared blankly. Stats. Levels. Skills. It was crazy. Like the worst kind of video game forced onto real life. A game that had just erased his sister. His fists clenched tight.
As he looked at the stats panel, a flicker of static washed over it. Glitches. Jagged lines cut through the blue screen. The text for his SANITY stat shook, replaced by messy symbols before fixing. Then, a new prompt, jagged and shaky, pulsed with angry red light over everything:
⌈ ABNORMAL ENTITY DETECTED: LEO CHEN (ID: ERR_404_NOT_FOUND). PRIMARY COUNTERMEASURES… FAILED. SECONDARY… FAILED. ADMINISTRATOR PROTOCOL FORCED… SKILL GENERATION REQUIRED… GENERATING… ⌋
Leo stumbled back, a new wave of dizziness hitting him. *Abnormal? Administrator?* The red text pulsed, matching a sudden sharp pain behind his eyes.
⌈ SKILL GENERATED: [REALITY EDITOR] (ADMINISTRATOR TIER - CORRUPTED). ⌋**
DESCRIPTION: Change bits of the world's hidden code. WARNING: UNSTABLE. COST: VARIABLE (SANITY/LIFESPAN).
[REALITY EDITOR] (LVL 1): Change small things within 1 meter. Complexity: LOW.
Hope, wild and dangerous, fought with his grief and rage. A cheat? An Admin power? In this nightmare game? His eyes darted around the ruined room, landing on the small, broken plastic bottle near Mia's wheelchair – her pain pills. Only three white pills left in the broken plastic.
Could he? Should he?
He focused on the pills. Nothing. Then, remembering the glitchy prompt, he didn't just look. He reached. Not with his hand, but with a sudden, gut feeling push from his mind, towards the faint, almost invisible lines of code he suddenly saw around the pills. It felt like stretching a muscle in his head he never knew was there.
⌈ TARGET ACQUIRED: OXYCODONE TABLETS (QTY: 3). EDIT VARIABLE: QUANTITY. CURRENT: 3. DESIRED? ⌋
Leo's breath caught. *More. I need more.* He pictured the number changing. Double it.
⌈ DESIRED: 6. CONFIRM EDIT? Y/N ⌋
Yes!
A quiet snap echoed in his head. The three pills shimmered. For a split second, they doubled, becoming six before settling. The broken bottle now held six white pills.
⌈ EDIT SUCCESSFUL. COST: SANITY -1% ⌋
A spike of pain stabbed Leo's temples, sharp and sudden, followed by dizziness. He gasped, grabbing his head. His vision swam, and a faint, wrong ringing filled his ears. The SANITY meter flickered: **99%**. The cost was real. But so were the pills. He grabbed them, the plastic cool in his hand. Proof. Power. A scary, broken power.
A deep growl tore through the silence outside, shattering his shock. Followed by a scream – human, raw, and suddenly cut off.
Leo scrambled to the torn edge where his apartment wall had been ripped away. Below, the street was a nightmare. Broken pieces filled the road. Fires burned with strange green and purple flames. People ran, fell, fought. And among them, moving horrors.
Rat-like things, big as large dogs, with greasy black fur that seemed to swallow the bloody moonlight and sharp bone spikes sticking from their backs. Their eyes glowed sick yellow.
⌈ VOID SCAVENGER - LVL 2 ⌋
HP: 50/50
DESCRIPTION: Feeders drawn to leftover energy from the change. Low threat alone.*
He saw a man, strong and wild-eyed, swing a broken pipe at one. ⌈ OBSERVE: HUMAN (LVL 3) - NAME: UNKNOWN. HP: 45/50 ⌋. The pipe hit with a nasty crunch. The Scavenger yelped, its health bar dropping to 30/50. The man yelled, swinging again. ⌈ VOID SCAVENGER DEFEATED! +10 XP AWARDED! ⌋ The words flashed above the man's head as the creature turned into dark fog, leaving a small, grey stone.
Survival. Levels. XP. Loot. The rules of this hell were brutally simple.
Leo ducked back, heart pounding. STR 4, VIT 3. He wouldn't last seconds against one of those. He needed to move. He needed… Bastion.
A new prompt appeared:
⌈ NEW QUEST: REACH SAFE ZONE 'BASTION'! ⌋
OBJECTIVE: Get through the ruins of Sector 7-G to the Safe Zone on your map. Distance: 2.3 km.
REWARD: 100 XP, Common Loot Box (x1)
FAILURE: Hit by the Cleansing Wave.
A small, pulsing blue dot showed on a map in the corner of his vision. Bastion. Safety? His eyes dropped to the timer under the quest:
⌈ NIGHTFALL IN: 01:47:22 ⌋
⌈ CLEANSING WAVE IMMINENT AT NIGHTFALL ⌋
Cleansing Wave. The name sent a chill through him. Failure meant death. He had less than two hours.
He grabbed a dented metal thermos from the floor – empty, but solid – and stuffed it into his hoodie pocket. Inventory Slot 1 filled. He paused, then grabbed Mia's faded blue scarf from her wheelchair. It smelled faintly of her, of antiseptic and lavender soap. Slot 2. He couldn't leave it.
Moving to the shattered doorway, now just a hole opening onto a crumbling stairwell, Leo looked down. Sounds of fighting and Scavenger screeches echoed up. He focused on a lone Scavenger sniffing trash below. ⌈ OBSERVE: VOID SCAVENGER - LVL 2. HP: 50/50. AGI: 7. THREAT: LOW ⌋. Maybe he could sneak past...
A whimper cut through his thoughts. Across the street, half-buried under fallen bricks, a girl, maybe ten, was trapped. Her leg was bent wrong, blood soaking her torn jeans. A Void Scavenger, bigger than the others (LVL 3), was creeping towards her, drool dripping from its sharp mouth. Its health bar pulsed: 70/70.
"Help! Please!" the girl cried, her voice thin with fear.
Leo froze. Hide. Run. That was the smart move. STR 4. VIT 3. Against a Level 3? Suicide. But her eyes… wide with the same fear Mia's had held.
No. He couldn't just… watch. Not again.
[Reality Editor]. The thought was wild, desperate. He focused on the girl, pushing past the dizziness, reaching for the shimmering code around her. It was messier than the pills. He saw lines for her shape, her life signs… her HP: 12/30.
He could see the number. Current HP: 12. He pictured it changing. Go up. Heal her. Make it 20.
⌈ TARGET ACQUIRED: HUMAN (LVL 1 - INJURED). EDIT VARIABLE: HEALTH POINTS. CURRENT: 12. DESIRED: 20. CONFIRM EDIT? Y/N ⌋
The cost warning pulsed red. Unknown. High.
Yes.
He pushed. Hard.
A silent, mental *rip* tore through him. It felt like his brain was in a vice. White-hot pain exploded behind his eyes. At the same time, a heavy weight crushed his chest, stealing his breath. He gasped, bending over.
⌈ EDIT SUCCESSFUL. COST: HEALTH -10, SANITY -3% ⌋
His own HP bar dropped to 20/30. His SANITY fell to 96%. The world spun violently. He tasted metal, vomit rising. He threw up onto the cracked floor, shaking badly.
But across the street… the girl gasped. The sickly look faded a bit. The bleeding from her leg slowed. Her HP bar flickered: 20/30. The Scavenger paused, confused.
Leo didn't wait. Gasping, wiping his mouth, he turned and scrambled down the broken stairs away from the girl, away from the Scavenger, driven by pain and shame. He'd helped, maybe. But the cost… it was too much. He couldn't save everyone. He had to get to Bastion. He had to live. For Mia. Because if he had this power… maybe she wasn't truly gone. Maybe the System could be broken.
The next hour was a blur of fear and tiredness. He moved like a ghost through the ruins, using Observe constantly, hiding behind burned cars and fallen shops. He saw horrors: groups of Scavengers tearing into the dead, desperate people fighting over food, a man glowing with strange energy (LVL 5) burning Scavengers with fire from his hands. Leo avoided it all, staying in shadows, his VIT 3 energy draining fast, forcing him to rest often. He found a half-crushed vending machine and used [Reality Editor] to copy a water bottle (COST: SANITY -1%), the effort making his head ache but stopping his thirst. His map showed Bastion's blue dot slowly getting closer. 1.8km.
As dusk started to turn the bloody light deeper purple, Leo crouched behind the burned, flipped hull of a delivery van. His breath came in rough gasps. HP: 20/30. Sanity: 95%. Energy felt dangerously low. Ahead, the highway he needed to cross was a death trap.
A group of creatures, different from the Scavengers, blocked the way. Bigger, leaner, with smooth, rust-red fur that seemed to smoke. Their eyes burned like hot coals, and smoke curled from their open mouths.
⌈ FLAME JACKAL - LVL 5 ⌋
HP: 120/120
SKILLS: Inferno Bite (Ignores 50% armor, sets on fire)
THREAT: HIGH
Three of them. Level 5. HP 120 each. Inferno Bite. They were ripping apart the remains of people who had tried to fight. Burned bodies lay on the road. The Jackals tore into them fast. Leo watched one survivor, a woman with a homemade spear (LVL 4), get surrounded. A Jackal jumped, its mouth suddenly on fire. The spear broke. The woman screamed as fire spread across her chest. Her HP bar vanished.
Too strong. Panic gripped Leo's throat. He couldn't fight them. He couldn't sneak past on the open highway. Bastion was right there, just past the overpass they guarded. The timer on his screen was a steady countdown:
⌈ NIGHTFALL IN: 00:03:15 ⌋
⌈ CLEANSING WAVE IMMINENT ⌋
He needed an edge. Anything. His eyes fixed on the lead Jackal, the biggest, chewing on a body. [Reality Editor]. The broken skill flared in his mind, a sign of scary power and cost. He pushed past the headache, focusing on the Jackal. The shimmering code around it was more complicated than anything he'd tried. He couldn't touch its HP – too big, too important. But maybe… something easier. He looked at the numbers. STR: 12. END: 10. AGI: 9.
Agility. Speed. Reflexes. If he could slow it down, even for a second, cause trouble…
He picked the AGI number. CURRENT: 9. He pictured it falling. Dropping hard. Make it slow. Make it clumsy.
⌈ TARGET ACQUIRED: FLAME JACKAL (ALPHA) - LVL 5. EDIT VARIABLE: AGILITY. CURRENT: 9. DESIRED: 4. CONFIRM EDIT? Y/N ⌋
The cost warning screamed in his mind, red and jagged. High. Very High.
No choice. Yes.
He threw his will into the change, a mental shove against the Jackal's very being.
⌈ EDIT SUCCESSFUL. COST: SANITY -8% ⌋
Pain, ten times worse, exploded in Leo's skull. It felt like ice picks driven into his temples and twisted. He yelled, slamming his fists against his head, vision blurring, the world turning to static and screaming colors. His SANITY bar dropped: 87%. He felt sick, but fought it, blinking tears.
Across the highway, the Alpha Jackal stumbled mid-jump. Not just stumbled – it tripped over its own feet, legs tangling, crashing hard onto the road with a surprised yelp. Its pack mates froze, turning to their suddenly clumsy leader, heads tilted. A low growl came from one.
Leo managed a pained, tight smile through the dizziness. It worked. It actually…
The thought died.
A shadow, huge and impossibly deep, covered the swollen, bloody moon above.
Leo looked up, the smile freezing on his face.
Something massive hit the highway fifty meters behind him. Not landed. Crashed down.
The sound was huge. Concrete broke like glass, exploding up in dust and pieces. The flipped van Leo hid behind groaned and moved violently. Shocks rippled through the ground, throwing Leo onto his back.
The living Flame Jackals didn't wait. They whined, sounds of pure fear, and ran, scattering into the ruins, leaving their meal and their fallen leader.
Leo scrambled back to the van, peering over its broken edge, heart hammering.
Through the settling dust, it rose.
Twelve points of cold, purple light – eyes – stared down from a nightmare body. Hard plates, blacker than space, covered a long, insect-like body the size of a truck. Six legs, ending in scythe-claws that dripped sizzling, green-black acid onto the melting road, held it up. A pair of torn wings hung useless. Its mouth opened up and down, showing rows of jagged teeth that seemed to shift shapes.
Its health bar burned into Leo's vision, red and huge, filling the top of his screen:
⌈ VOID LURKER - MINI-BOSS - LVL 25 ⌋
HP: 5,000/5,000
DESCRIPTION: Frontline creature of the Cleansing Wave. Sent to destroy big problems.
A new, urgent quest flashed, pulsing like a scared heart:
⌈ WARNING: NIGHTFALL IN 00:02:45! CLEANSING WAVE IMMINENT! VOID LURKER DETECTED! RUN OR DIE! ⌋
The timer ticked down: 00:02:44… 43… 42…
The Void Lurker took one step forward, shaking the ground, its shifting mouth opening wider, making a low hum that vibrated Leo's bones. Its twelve purple eyes locked onto the small, shaking human behind the broken van.
Leo's breath stopped. Level 1. HP 20. Sanity 87%. Against a Level 25 Mini-Boss with 5000 HP. The huge difference almost crushed him.
But deep in the pain and terror, [Reality Editor] flickered. A raw, shaky power hummed in his mind, sensing the impossibly complex, terrifyingly strong code surrounding the Lurker like a digital storm.
The jagged teeth shone. The acid dripped. The countdown to death continued.
Leo Chen, the glitch in the System, the Level 1 Admin, bared his teeth in a snarl that matched the monster's.
Okay, you big bug, he thought, the wild energy of [Reality Editor] forming into a desperate, sharp focus. Let's see what part of you… breaks first.