The rhythmic hum of engines vibrated through the floor, a steady mechanical heartbeat that matched the pulse of Neo Manila outside. The EDSA Bus Carousel glided along its magnetic lane, its sleek metallic frame reflecting the shifting neon sky—violets, blues, and streaks of electric pink bleeding across the glass panels.
Inside, the air carried a faint scent of ozone and synthetic leather. Rows of passengers—avatars of every imaginable shape and style—sat absorbed in their own holographic feeds. Floating screens hovered over each seat, displaying route maps, data logs, or clan chat threads. The soft murmur of conversations blended with the low thrum of the engine, wrapping the cabin in a quiet rhythm of life.
I slid into a seat by the window. The cushions adjusted to my posture automatically, syncing to my neural feedback. Beside me, TraceZero dropped into the seat with casual ease, one leg propped against the frame. The faint red pulse of his cybernetic lens reflected on the glass, blinking like a heartbeat.
Outside, Neo Manila unfolded like a digital dream. Holographic billboards towered over the highway, flashing updates about Pro Circuit Matches, Gear discounts, and Warzone Championship events. A convoy of armored trucks roared past in the opposite lane, leaving trails of luminescent dust. Above, monorail lines shimmered with blue light, weaving between skyscrapers that pierced the smog like obsidian needles.
"This thing's faster than I remember," I said, leaning slightly as the bus curved past Cubao Station. The view blurred—a cascade of color and motion.
Trace smirked, tapping on his wristband. "Welcome to the new patch, old man. Devs added express transports for major hubs. This bus? It'll drop us straight at NAIA Terminal 3."
I frowned. "Directly? That's not how it worked before. You had to stop at Taft, transfer to a jeepney, maybe hail a cab if you were lucky."
"Yeah," Trace said, chuckling. "That was before Season 18. Now we've got HyperLink Routes. The grinders love it. Less time riding, more time earning."
The lights dimmed briefly as the bus entered a tunnel. The neon glare outside dissolved into darkness, replaced by the soft glow of the interior holo-screens. A gentle vibration rippled through the floor, followed by the whisper of automated announcements:
"Next Stop: NAIA Terminal 3."
I turned to the window again. My reflection stared back—aged, weathered, the faint scarring of an avatar that didn't quite fit the new textures of this world. The glow from the signs painted streaks of blue across my armor.
The bus rumbled as it sped along the elevated lane, its engines thrumming in low harmony with the hum of the city.
Trace leaned back in his seat, arms folded across his tactical jacket. The glow from the passing billboards painted his face in shifting hues — cyan, crimson, gold. "You know," he said casually, "there's a new rumor floating around. Something about a hidden event at NAIA. No one's ever managed to trigger it."
I looked up, my gaze meeting the faint red gleam of his cybernetic lens. "A hidden event?"
He nodded, eyes fixed on the scenery sliding past. "Yeah. Word is it's tied to the airport's maintenance zone. Some dev Easter egg from the early patches. People say if you perform a specific sequence, you unlock an unlisted mission. But every squad that's tried… just burns tokens and rage-quits."
The bus jolted slightly as it passed a curve. I steadied myself, my fingers brushing against the cool steel handle beside my seat. The vibration traveled through my palm, grounding me. My chest tightened — not from fear, but from recognition.
I knew that rumor. Not as a rumor… but as a memory.
"I've heard of it," I said slowly. "Back in Season Twelve, I might've triggered it once."
Trace turned sharply, the lens on his eye flaring brighter. "You what?"
"It was different back then," I said, watching the blur of streetlights streak by. "No class systems, no Ciphers, no neural sync gates. Just Operators. We were running a recon mission near the departure terminal when I found a locked console — a plain terminal by a restricted door. I scanned something from my loadout and…" I paused, the memory flickering back to life like static. "The whole floor lit up in red code. Lines of script pulsing like veins beneath the tiles. It felt like the system itself was watching."
Trace leaned forward, voice low. "And?"
"It started like any other mission." I said to Trace and continue telling him about that time.
Our squad was about to go to a different country for a mission. Along the departure concourse of NAIA Terminal 3, back when Call of Duty: VR still had that gritty, beta-era texture — less polish, more chaos. The corridors were dim, flickering under the half-deployed lighting grid. You could almost smell the ozone from broken electrical panels, hear the static buzz of half-rendered code whispering through the walls.
That's when I saw it — a maintenance door that wasn't supposed to exist.
No quest marker, no waypoint, just a faint "ACCESS OVERRIDE" prompt pulsing in amber light near the floor. My visor flickered in warning, reading:
"Developer Console Detected — Unauthorized Entry."
Curiosity won.
I held my rifle steady and scanned the door with my loadout badge. A ripple of light surged outward — code streaming across the floor tiles like veins of red lightning. Then, the world glitched.
My squad's voices vanished.
The corridor dissolved into static.
When the light faded, I was alone.
The air was cold, humid — different. The walls were carved metal, lined with writhing strands of data cables that pulsed faintly like arteries. A faint red glow bled through the seams, and distant echoes reverberated down the halls — a low, guttural chittering.
[Hidden Event: V.A.U.L.T. — Classified Zone]
I loaded my weapon, heart thudding. A digital mist rolled across the ground, glowing faintly with corrupted code. Then they came — crawling out from the shadows.
The first was a Data Wraith — a humanoid shape flickering between forms, like a broken hologram trapped in mid-render. It moved fast, whispering in binary tones. Behind it, Code Leeches slithered from the vents, gelatinous creatures that latched onto armor, feeding on neural energy. Further down the corridor, I caught sight of a massive Firewall Behemoth — a quadrupedal construct with molten-red circuitry running down its spine, roaring like a corrupted processor overheating.
The dungeon felt endless — a labyrinth of old code, abandoned architecture from pre-release builds. Every corridor looked like a fragment of something once familiar — an airport hangar, a subway station, a half-rendered tarmac, all stitched together with glowing veins of data.
I fought through them all. Bullet casings clattered against the floor, light and smoke twisting into chaos. For every monster I exterminated, another spawned deeper in. My HUD screamed warnings: "Server Integrity Failing — Unauthorized Zone Detected."
At the heart of the dungeon, I found it — a vault. A massive, obsidian door, covered in pulsating glyphs. It hummed like it was alive.
A single line of text appeared above it:
"CIPHER REQUIRED."
I stared at it, panting, health bar flickering low.
"Cipher? What the hell is a Cipher?"
No response. The vault refused to open. Every exit route blinked red — locked. My ammo was low, my armor cracked. I tried calling out to my squad through comms, but all I heard was static.
I was trapped.
I had one grenade left.
With a grim laugh, I pulled the pin. "Guess this is my respawn ticket."
The explosion flared white — then darkness swallowed everything.
When my vision returned, I was back in the safe zone. The familiar chatter of the base hit my ears, sharp and grounding. My teammates were there, standing over me.
"Where the hell did you go, Drum?" Vega snarled.
"You left us hanging," another spat. "Mission was cancelled because of you."
I tried to explain — the hidden door, the monsters, the vault — but the mission logs showed nothing. My death record was blank. The event data had been wiped.
No one believed me.
All I had was the memory… and the faint image of what I saw inside that vault — a glowing item resting beyond the locked gate. When I was about to give Meihua my gift, that's when I realized that it was dropped when I killed myself in the hidden dungeon.
And I left it behind.
My voice grew quiet. "The only exit says: 'Cipher Required.'"
The hum of the bus seemed to fade for a moment. Outside, the skyline gave way to open space — the outskirts of the city. Distant aircraft hovered above a sprawling terminal glowing like a grid of molten light.
Trace frowned deeply. "That's impossible," he said. "Ciphers didn't exist until Season Seventeen."
"Exactly."
The bus rumbled softly along EDSA's elevated lane.
I leaned against the window, visor dimmed to half-opacity. The reflection of my avatar stared back at me—older build, unmodified textures, a relic from pre-class seasons. Trace sat beside me, relaxed but alert, one leg crossed, his cybernetic lens flickering every few seconds as it synced with the world feed.
Without warning, Trace flicked his wrist.
A holo-screen bloomed in midair, flooding our seats with soft amber light. Icons rotated slowly between us—five glowing emblems, each pulsing with a distinct rhythm like living sigils.
"These," Trace began, "are the new classes. Introduced back in Season Seventeen—revamped again this patch."
He swiped through the air, the symbols magnifying one by one, accompanied by flickers of motion—animated silhouettes performing combat maneuvers.
"Vanguard—frontline assault, heavy adaptability. Great for push strategies." He pointed to another.
"Cipher—data infiltration, stealth hacks, information warfare. My class."
"Phantom—scouting, cloaking, precision strikes."
"Forge—support engineer, resource crafting, field tech. You'll like that one—good for improvised builds."
"Ranger—mobility, terrain advantage, parkour and long-range adaptability."
"And last, Engineer—machine repair, automated defenses, drone and turret deployment."
Each emblem shimmered as he spoke, projecting faint sound cues—radio chatter, weapon diagnostics, the hum of field generators. The holo light danced across Trace's armor, turning the steel-blue of his shoulder plates into molten reflections.
He leaned back, letting the display spin lazily between us.
"Everyone who hasn't chosen yet," he added, "stays under 'Operator.' A legacy tag. Basically means… you're a blank canvas waiting to evolve."
"But if you created your avatar past Season Seventeen, you won't be able to get the 'Operator' class since the system will force you to choose a class."
The bus hit a turn, the holograms distorting slightly before auto-stabilizing.
I watched them hover—five categories that didn't exist back when I started. My voice came out quieter than I expected.
"Back in my time, we didn't need classes," I muttered. "We adapted."
Trace smirked. "Yeah, well… the system adapted too."
He flicked to a new window—lines of scrolling data and heatmaps of player behavior. "Starting around Season Ten, the devs started recording hidden metrics—reflex timing, accuracy, environmental awareness, even emotional stress from your neural readings. It wasn't public back then. But it was there, feeding the algorithm."
My brows knit. "So the system was already measuring us before the class system even launched?"
"Exactly." His tone softened, but there was an edge of amusement. "Some of us just didn't realize we were already being ranked… by the way we played."
Outside, a cargo drone drifted past the window, its spotlights cutting through the neon fog. The bus vibrated softly as it accelerated, a deep hum reverberating through the metal floor.
Trace closed his display, letting the holograms fade.
"Funny thing," he said. "The more I think about it, the more it feels like this world's been watching us since day one."
I said nothing at first. The silence stretched, filled only by the steady rhythm of the bus engine and the faint hiss of passing air vents.
Then the realization struck—quiet, heavy.If the system had been profiling us that early…Then that event back in Season 12—
I turned toward the window, eyes unfocused as old memories surfaced.
Maybe it wasn't a glitch.
Maybe I was the trigger.
I turned to Trace, hesitant but resolute.
"Trace… you're a Cipher, right? So, you know how to analyze stats?"
He glanced at me, smirk tugging at his lips, cybernetic lens flickering faintly. "Depends. You asking me to check your performance logs?"
I nodded, swallowing the last of my nerves. If what he'd been saying was true—that the system had been tracking us since Season Ten—then maybe there was something in my stats, something that had triggered the hidden event years ago.
He swiped his wrist, holographic screens blooming between us like shards of light. Numbers, graphs, and heatmaps spun in midair, scrolling faster than the passing city outside. His lenses reflected the glow as he studied them, eyes widening.
"No way. No freaking way," he muttered, fingers swiping furiously through the data. "Seventy-eight percent headshot accuracy? Ninety-nine percent reload timing? You've got a better KDR than half of Eurasis' pro scene!"
I leaned back against the seat, feeling the bus's vibrations hum through my spine. "Old meta habits die hard," I said with a shrug.
Trace pinned me with that flickering lens of his, awe written into every shift of light across his cybernetic eye. "Were you… a Sniper?"
I shook my head. "No. ARs and shotguns. Close range, high risk. Back then, we didn't rely on precision. We built it. Every encounter was a grind… a puzzle in motion."
The bus dipped into a tunnel, lights outside replaced by a gentle, synthetic glow from the cabin panels. The hum of engines blended with distant chatter from other passengers, the soft vibration under my fingertips grounding me in the present. Trace's fingers moved almost instinctively over the holo-interface, analyzing, comparing, calculating.
"If you registered today?" he said slowly, eyes never leaving the readouts. "You'd instantly qualify as Tier 5 Vanguard. Top percentile worldwide. Hands down."
I froze, the numbers reverberating in my mind. Then, unbidden, a memory surfaced—her face, Meihua, smiling across the comms during long matches, her quiet encouragement when I faltered, her laughter cutting through the tension of hours of play.
"I wasn't playing for ranks," I murmured, voice low, almost swallowed by the bus's steady engine hum. "I was playing for someone."
Trace didn't push. He simply gave a slight nod, the corner of his mouth lifting in acknowledgment. He let the silence stretch, letting me sit with my memory.
I leaned against the window, watching the skyline recede into the distance.
"So, Trace," I said after a moment, breaking the silence. "You're saying I have abnormal stats."
Trace glanced up from his holo-pad, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Uh-uhm… not abnormal. More like excellent. The kind that makes algorithms panic."
I let out a faint breath, my gaze drifting toward the window where a fleet of drones zipped past in formation. "Then I might've just figured it out."
He tilted his head. "Figured what out?"
"I'm the key to that hidden event we were talking about," I said quietly. "And you're the solution."
Trace blinked, then leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. The bus lights shifted blue as we entered a long tunnel, the ceiling lined with digital billboards flickering with travel advisories for Eurasis and Pacifica. "So," he said finally, "you triggered an event that requires a Cipher—before Ciphers even existed."
"Looks that way."
A grin spread across his face, the red tint of his cybernetic lens glowing brighter. "Then we might actually have a shot at this. You're the key… and I'm the solution."
The words settled between us, quiet but heavy. My reflection in the window wavered with the motion of the bus—older, harder, yet still haunted by a memory that refused to fade.
For a moment, I saw it again—the hidden terminal from Season 12, dim light flickering across metallic walls, and the weapon I dropped when I killed myself.
The DLQ Flame Lotus.
My gift for Erica.
I remembered the explosion of light, the ground splitting beneath me, and my final desperate act—pulling the pin on a grenade to escape the dungeon's endless spawn. I had died inside that mission, respawning miles away with nothing to show for it but confusion and loss. The Flame Lotus was left behind, trapped in that inaccessible dungeon.
My jaw tightened. "This time… maybe I can re-enter," I said softly. "Maybe it's still there."
Trace looked at me curiously. "What were you saying?"
I met his gaze, determination flickering in my voice. "In the dungeon."
"Trace," I said, his cybernetic lens pulsing to a sharp red glow, "how'd you like to be the first player to officially trigger the NAIA hidden event?"
I smirked faintly, eyes shifting to the glowing horizon ahead. "Hell yes, old timer. Let's make history."
The bus slowed, its brakes hissing softly as the neon skyline gave way to a vast expanse of glass and light. The terminal rose before us like a futuristic cathedral—NAIA Terminal 3, Season 21 edition, its structure a fusion of steel, hologlass, and AR panels projecting the arrivals of both flights and data convoys.
Passengers stirred as the automated voice chimed:
"Next Stop: Neo Manila International Gateway — NAIA Terminal 3."
I hadn't even noticed we'd arrived.
The doors slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss, spilling warm light into the aisle. Trace stood first, adjusting his jacket, while I stared out at the sprawling entrance ahead.