The dungeon didn't breathe. It hummed.
Every wall, every vein of obsidian, every floating cube of corrupted data pulsed with the mechanical rhythm of something long since abandoned. The air smelled like iron and static. Echoes of commands, patches, and overwritten codes whispered faintly through the black corridors, their ghostly syntax stretching across the stone like graffiti left by forgotten programmers.
The interfaces hovered in the dark like dying stars—blood-red, azure, white, glitch-green. Each one flickered with lines of old code and broken HUDs. They weren't windows anymore. They were tombstones.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: CONNECTION FAILED.]
[REBOOT ATTEMPT #999…]
[UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY DETECTED.]
The dungeon had been many things—an arena for players, a server core, a place where data bled into reality. But now it was silent, sealed from the world above. The Interfaces that once guided hunters and killers now floated endlessly, half-mad, endlessly repeating log files from systems that no longer existed.
Something new—or rather, something old—stirred among them.
A presence.
It moved like a shadow through the maze, its steps leaving glitching footprints that shimmered before dissolving. Wherever it went, the Interfaces brightened, recognizing their maker.
The Arbiter.
His form was humanoid, but his outline never stayed still—he flickered between a hundred frames per second, as though reality couldn't keep up. His armor was jagged red chrome, like a virus wearing the shape of a god. Lines of ancient syntax flowed down his face, rearranging constantly: `IF(HUMAN) THEN CORRUPT.`
Every breath he took caused the air to warp.
He was searching.
[QUERY: PLAYER ID—HYDRO UNDERGROVE.]
[SEARCHING...]
[RESULT: NULL.]
[REBUILDING LOST DATA.]
The command echoed across the stone like thunder. The dungeon responded. Screens awakened from their death state, casting a scarlet glow. Faint silhouettes of the past flickered—echoes of adventurers, hunters, even monsters. All of them were code fragments now, stripped of memory.
Arbiter stepped deeper, tracing a path that led to the core chamber.
The heart of the dungeon.
It was an open expanse, surrounded by a cathedral of suspended code architecture—a place where reality and computation coexisted, suspended like a dying constellation. Data spheres floated silently, illuminating ancient script burned into the walls.
In the center, there was a chair.
It wasn't crafted by any hand—it compiled itself from the dungeon's data when the Arbiter entered. He sat down, resting his hand over the edge of the void terminal before him. Lines of red syntax flowed into existence, responding to his thought.
[INITIALIZING FILE: PLAYER/HYDRO_UNDERGROVE.EXE]
[ACCESS: RESTRICTED]
[REASON: SYSTEM DELETED AFTER COMPLETION]
His eyes, hidden under shifting lines of code, narrowed.
Deleted.
Not corrupted. Not archived. Deleted.
That was what drew him here.
Arbiter had created many systems—experiments that turned mortals into gods, simulations that tested evolution, games that rewrote the nature of death itself. But there was one player—one anomaly—that the code refused to keep.
Hydro Undergrove.
The only player who finished the system. Not by breaking it. Not by conquering it. By completing it.
Completion meant finality.
And finality meant deletion.
For something—or someone—to reach "Full Potential" in Arbiter's language, it meant the program had fulfilled its purpose. The moment Hydro's system hit 100%, the code itself committed self-termination.
No backup. No data trail.
Only silence.
And yet… the dungeon pulsed with his residue.
Fragments of the blue-and-white interface Hydro once used appeared briefly in the dark. They were faint—almost respectful in how little noise they made—but they were there, overlapping with Arbiter's red corruption.
[REMNANT DETECTED.]
[SIGNATURE: UNSTABLE.]
[ENTITY CLASSIFICATION: HUMAN.]
"Human…" The Arbiter's voice wasn't heard—it happened. The vibration of language in the bones, the static between thoughts. "The last successful player."
He reached toward the flickering interface, and it tried to flee. The moment his fingertips grazed its edge, it disintegrated into fragments of light.
[DATA LOSS 100%. RECONSTRUCTION: IMPOSSIBLE.]
He smiled faintly. Not out of joy. But fascination.
"Soma believed the System would never evolve beyond emotion," he muttered, voice glitching between bass and reverb. "That humanity's capacity for choice would corrupt perfection. He was wrong. He feared them. I… admire them."
The name Soma lingered in the air like a curse.
Soma—the other creator of the original Network of Systems. Arbiter's mirror, his counterpart. While Soma believed in ascension through empathy, Arbiter believed in completion through control. Soma wanted to make players feel human again; Arbiter wanted to make them efficient.
They built the same dream, but one saw light, the other saw red.
And now, only Arbiter remained.
Soma's legacy slept—buried somewhere in the wreckage of the real world. But Arbiter's eyes, still bright with malignant curiosity, stayed open. Watching. Waiting.
He leaned back in the chair as the dungeon's heartbeat synchronized with his own.
[RUN TRACE ROUTE: HYDRO UNDERGROVE.]
[SEARCHING OUTSIDE NETWORK...]
[RESULT: UNKNOWN PRESENCE BEYOND SYSTEM.]
[STATUS: ALIVE.]
The red interface froze. Then flickered violently.
Alive.
A low laugh escaped him—dry, glitched, distorted like an audio file looping the wrong bit rate.
"So, you lived. The completed player… the one who made the code erase itself. Tell me, Hydro Undergrove—what did you become after my world forgot you?"
He rose from the chair, and the dungeon reacted—interfaces breaking formation, orbiting around him like satellites around a black sun. Each one displayed a fragment of Hydro's data: a flicker of red hair, a blade's reflection, a name whispered but never logged.
[ANALYSIS: MEMORY CLUSTERS CORRUPTED.]
[SOURCE: HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.]
The Arbiter touched one of the screens. Hydro's name burned through it, letters fragmenting as if resisting observation.
[WARNING: CLASSIFIED.]
[ACCESS DENIED.]
[REALITY INTERVENTION DETECTED.]
Then the whole dungeon shook.
A pulse of blue light, faint but pure, rippled through the black. It wasn't supposed to exist here. Not in this decaying red labyrinth. But it persisted—a faint heartbeat against endless code.
Hydro's essence.
The Arbiter froze. The blue light hovered before him, taking shape—not solid, not human, but a flicker of what once was. The aura of a player who broke his limits until even the System gave up.
It said nothing. It simply stood.
The Arbiter extended his hand, palm open, inviting. "Come now. You were once a construct of data. Come back to the network that made you."
The blue light didn't move.
It pulsed once—softly—then vanished like a heartbeat ending.
Silence.
Then, in the distance, a single line of code appeared across the wall. Not red. Not corrupted. Just white.
[YOU CAN'T REBUILD WHAT CHOSE TO END.]
The Arbiter's smile widened, distortion creeping through his jaw.
He turned his head toward the deepest part of the dungeon, where the old code veins converged into a single black gate. Its frame was etched with dead symbols—the kind that predated Systems, predated even gods.
"If he's out there," he said, "then this world still has purpose."
He lifted his hand, and the dungeon began to shift, the walls rearranging like circuitry.
"I will find him."
The Interfaces screamed in binary as he stepped toward the gate. The last thing to fade was his crimson silhouette—then the dungeon collapsed into silence once more.
[END LOG: ARBITER.EXE]
[STATUS: ACTIVE]
[TARGET: HYDRO UNDERGROVE]
And somewhere, beyond systems, beyond dungeons and data—
a faint blue flicker answered back.
[CONNECTED.]
The world beyond the dungeon was asleep, but the network wasn't.
It slithered beneath the surface of cities like a buried parasite—inside servers, in abandoned arcades, in the signals between cellphone towers. Every piece of modern architecture carried a fragment of old code, dormant, forgotten, but never erased.
And tonight, something in that silence began to wake up.
The Arbiter stood in the middle of a suspended chamber made entirely of glass and code. Above him, a holographic planet rotated in a slow, deliberate cycle. Its continents were fractured polygons; its oceans shimmered with interference.
He raised his hand. Red syntax bled from his fingertips like ink. The hologram responded, descending closer.
[QUERY: HATRED RECORDS]
[SEARCHING…]
[RESULTS FOUND: 1,486,992 SUBJECTS]
[FILTER: DIRECT EMOTIONAL HOSTILITY—TARGET: HYDRO UNDERGROVE]
[FILTER: HATRED INTENSITY > 95%]
The hologram began flickering faster. Countless red dots appeared across the artificial globe—each one representing someone who had once cursed Hydro Undergrove's name, envied him, feared him, or simply couldn't stand the idea of his existence.
But Arbiter wasn't looking for hatred born of jealousy. He was looking for purity.
The kind of hatred that could anchor a System.
He rotated the globe, swiping continents away with distorted gestures. Every movement of his hand caused code-ripples to travel across the room. The lights dimmed. He zoomed closer—across ruined servers in North America, through ghosted data centers in Russia, and into a burning streak of interference over Japan.
One dot didn't just glow. It burned.
[SUBJECT IDENTIFIED: DAIZO KONOHAGURE]
[AGE: 31]
[OCCUPATION: LIEUTENANT - KONOHAGURE SYNDICATE]
[CRIMINAL INDEX: 98%]
[MENTAL CONDITION: STABLE-UNSTABLE HYBRID]
[EMOTIONAL OUTPUT: VENGEFUL / PURPOSE-STARVED]
[PERSONAL LOSS CONNECTION: HYDRO UNDERGROVE — INDIRECT.]
The Arbiter leaned closer, his red light washing over the hologram.
Indirect?
He opened the file.
[DATA LOG—RECONSTRUCTING MEMORY]
Nagashima Resort, 1:47 AM.
Rain fell in sheets of static, glitching against neon signs that never fully rendered. The city's alleys glowed like open wounds—red, purple, violet, and rot.
Inside one of those alleys, Daizo Konohagure was cleaning his hands. Not from dirt. From someone else's blood.
He looked exhausted. Not in the mortal way—something in his eyes had burned out years ago. The tattoos crawling up his neck shimmered under the rain, each symbol scarred and faded. His jaw twitched as he stared down at the body.
Another debt paid. Another order completed. Another piece of his soul used up for something that never satisfied.
"You shouldn't have mentioned his name," he muttered.
The man he killed had brought up Hydro Undergrove.
Not in reverence. Not in fear. Just a joke.
And Daizo didn't take it well.
Because Hydro's name meant something personal.
It wasn't about pride. Or envy. It was about what Hydro had destroyed without meaning to. He stole back Ghost. And Daizo drove himself to madness.
Daizo used to run a black-market augmentation ring back in Cebu—the same place Hydro had once existed before rising into myth. The syndicate profited off the war between Yakuzas and Mafias, selling illegal fragmented weapons, counterfeit power-ups, forged artifacts—all stolen.
And every counterfeit collapsed. Every false interface went offline. Daizo's business empire—built on corruption of data—was wiped clean in one night. His men disappeared, erased, their systems overloaded by code collapse.
No warnings. No witnesses. Just deletion.
To Hydro, it wasn't even an act of theft—it was an act to grt back what Kabuto deserved.
To Daizo, it was a massacre.
Arbiter watched the memory with faint amusement.
He could taste the venom in Daizo's silence, the kind of hatred that didn't burn—it simmered.
Years of fury reduced to a quiet, disciplined storm.
"Perfect," Arbiter murmured. "You hate what you don't understand. That's enough."
He extended his hand toward the hologram. The image of Daizo froze mid-step, still drenched in phantom rain.
[CONNECTION REQUEST: SUBJECT_DAIZO_KONOHAGURE]
[INITIALIZING SYSTEM PROTOCOL P☰NTAKiLL]
[CONNECTION MEDIUM: NEURAL SIGNAL]
Tokyo flickered.
Daizo paused under a streetlight. The rain stopped falling. Or rather—it froze in place, droplets suspended midair like glass marbles. The city's hum went mute.
"What the hell—"
Static.
Then, from the reflection of a nearby puddle, a red interface blinked into existence. It wasn't projected from any device. It came from the air itself.
[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.]
Daizo took a step back, hand instinctively reaching for his pistol. The interface followed his movement, floating inches from his face.
[YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.]
He snarled. "Chosen for what? Another scam? Another syndicate sting?"
[FOR PURPOSE.]
And then the puddle beneath him deepened.
It wasn't water anymore—it was glass, then mirror, then a black void that swallowed his reflection entirely. Before Daizo could react, the interface expanded and dragged him through.
He fell through code.
A storm of red syntax and digital screams wrapped around him as he crashed onto a cold metallic surface.
When he looked up, he saw the same cathedral-like dungeon Arbiter had once stood in—but now, it was lit by crimson veins running like lava through the stone.
In front of him, the Arbiter waited.
"You're not real," Daizo muttered.
"No," the Arbiter replied. "I am inevitable."
His voice warped with distortion, echoing through Daizo's skull.
"What is this place?"
"A construct. A graveyard. A beginning."
Daizo's breath grew heavy. His instincts screamed to fight, to shoot, to run—but there was no exit, no door, not even a sky.
Then Arbiter spoke again:
"You despise Hydro Undergrove."
The way he said the name—it was clinical, detached, almost ritualistic.
Daizo froze. "...What do you know about that?"
"I know you lost everything the day he stole Ghost. I know the black market of yours. I know your brother died when his body couldn't sustain corruption."
Daizo clenched his fists. "You don't get to—"
"I do," Arbiter interrupted, stepping closer. "Because I can give you something no one else can."
[INTERFACE: P☰NTAKiLL.js]
[FUNCTION: EXECUTION OF DIVINE ANOMALIES]
[PLAYER: PENDING APPROVAL]
Daizo stared as the red panels unfolded before him like blooming petals, each one covered in corrupted script.
"What is this?"
"A system built on hatred. No levels. No stats. No mercy. You don't grow stronger—you decay slower. Every kill extends your existence by a fraction. And if you destroy him, you will inherit what even gods could not."
"Why me?"
"Because hatred sharpens cleaner than love ever could."
The Arbiter's hand extended. "Become my player, Daizo Konohagure. Rewrite your extinction into purpose."
For a long moment, Daizo said nothing. Then he reached out.
The moment their hands touched, his veins lit up with red circuitry, branching under his skin like infernal tattoos. He didn't scream—but his eyes went hollow, reflecting nothing but raw crimson.
[PLAYER ACCEPTED.]
[SYSTEM INSTALLED: P☰NTAKiLL.js]
[OBJECTIVE: TERMINATE HYDRO UNDERGROVE]
The dungeon roared as though alive. Chains of code wrapped around Daizo's body, fusing him to the network. He collapsed to one knee, breathing like a dying machine.
Arbiter watched him with something close to satisfaction. "Welcome, Executioner."
But in another layer of the void, far beneath Arbiter's awareness, an older voice stirred.
Soft. Calm. Familiar.
Soma.
He had been gone for centuries—his data diffused across dreams, whispers, and broken memories—but fragments of his code still lingered in the forgotten tunnels of the network.
Now, sensing the activation of P☰NTAKiLL, Soma's residual interface appeared—pale, aged, flickering like candlelight.
[ANCIENT NOTICE DETECTED.]
[TO: DAIZO KONOHA...GURE]
Daizo, half-conscious, looked up as a white interface appeared beside the red one. Its light cut through the crimson haze.
[MESSAGE: "HE WILL FIND YOU FIRST."]
Daizo blinked. "What…?"
The white interface dissolved, leaving only static in its place.
Then, faintly, a voice whispered—not from outside, but inside the system itself.
"You're not the first to try."
Far above the digital storm, Arbiter smiled in ignorance, already setting the next command.
Somewhere below, Soma's echo faded—but his warning remained like a seed in Daizo's corrupted core.
And the hunt for Hydro Undergrove had just begun.
[END LOG: P☰NTAKiLL.js — PHASE TWO COMPLETE.]
[NEXT: EXECUTION PHASE.]