Chapter 4:
The Glitch in Reality
(Part 4)
The morning light of the second day felt like a heavy weight pressing down on Kaito's chest. As his body followed the familiar path to the town square, he felt the internal battle more clearly than ever. His mind was screaming to turn left, to run into the woods, or to just sit down and cry, but his legs moved with a rhythmic, mechanical precision. He was a passenger in a machine that was programmed to be "Villager 47," a man whose only purpose was to stand and wait.
He arrived at his usual spot near the fountain. The town was already buzzing with activity. A group of new players, wearing basic leather armor and carrying rusted swords, were gathering near the center of the square. They were excited, their voices loud and overlapping as they talked about their first quest.
"Okay, the guide says we need to talk to the villager by the fountain," one of them said. He was a young man with a bright red mohawk and a shield that looked too big for him. "He's supposed to tell us about the 'Lost Heirloom' in the Whispering Woods."
Kaito felt a surge of cold dread. This was it. This was the moment Gareth had talked about. The players approached him, and he felt the familiar "Quest Trigger" activating in his mind. His mouth opened, and the words began to form, pre-packaged and ready to be delivered.
"Greetings, travelers. My grandfather's locket was stolen by the goblins in the Whispering Woods to the North. Please, will you find it?"
That was what he was supposed to say. Those were the words written in the game's code. Kaito clamped his mental teeth together. He pushed against the script with every ounce of Willpower he had. The gray box in his mind flashed a bright, warning red.
Willpower: 4
Willpower: 5
His head felt like it was going to explode. A sharp, high-pitched ringing filled his ears, and for a second, his vision flickered like a television with bad reception. He saw the players' faces distorting, their features melting into blocks of pixels before snapping back into place. The strain was so great that he felt a digital tear trickle down his cheek, though his NPC face remained perfectly still.
"You okay, buddy?" the mohawk player asked, leaning in. "The NPC looks like he's lagging."
Kaito forced his mind to move away from the script. He thought about the tavern, about Gareth, and about the "Shadow Fragment" in his heart. He didn't want to send these kids into a trap. He knew that the Whispering Woods was a high-level area this early in the server's cycle. The "Lost Heirloom" quest was a bait-and-switch quest designed to kill new players and force them to buy resurrections.
With a final, agonizing push, he broke the lock.
"The... woods... are death," Kaito rasped. The words weren't nasal or polite. They were deep, raw, and full of human fear. "Do not go North. The goblins are a lie. Go East. The Shadow Caves... there is a hidden path."
The players frozen. They stared at Kaito as if he had just grown a second head. In the history of Aethelgard, no NPC had ever given directions that went against the quest marker.
"Whoa," the mohawk player whispered. "Is this a secret event? The guide didn't say anything about an East path or a hidden cave."
"Maybe it's a rare encounter!" another player shouted, grabbing his sword handle. "Let's check the East! This NPC is giving us a better tip!"
As the players turned and ran toward the Eastern gate, Kaito felt a massive wave of exhaustion hit him. His body slumped against the stone edge of the fountain, his programmed posture completely shattered. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving in a way that NPCs weren't supposed to.
Suddenly, the sky above Oakhaven turned a dark, bruised purple. The ambient music of the town square cut out, replaced by a low, vibrating hum that made the ground shake. Kaito looked up, his heart pounding. He had done it. He had broken the logic.
A giant, golden window appeared in the air, but it wasn't a player quest. It was a system alert, and it was visible only to him.
[WARNING: CRITICAL LOGIC ERROR DETECTED IN ENTITY-047]
[ATTEMPTING TO RE-SYNC WITH CORE SERVER...]
[ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED]
The gray box in his mind began to glow with a blinding white light. It expanded, swallowing the golden warning window and replacing it with its own interface.
Awareness: 5
Willpower: 7
Adaptability: 4
Resilience: 3
[System Synchronization: 5.00%]
[New Skill Unlocked: Dissonant Whisper
(Level 1)]
[Description: You can now influence the actions of others by planting seeds of doubt in the game's logic.]
The humming sound grew louder, and Kaito saw a Sentinel orb descending from the sky, its red eye fixed directly on him. It wasn't just patrolling anymore. It was hunting. He had been flagged.
"Run, you fool!" a voice shouted.
It was Gareth. The tavern owner was standing in the doorway of the Tipsy Dragon, waving his arms frantically. He wasn't wearing his fake smile anymore. He looked terrified.
Kaito didn't wait for his body to decide. He took control. He pushed off the fountain and sprinted toward the alleyways, his legs moving with a speed and fluidity he hadn't felt since he was a player. He wasn't following a path. He was making his own.
As he ran, the world around him began to glitch. The cobblestones turned into green data streams, and the houses looked like wireframe models. He was seeing the world for what it truly was—a hollow construction of light and math. He dove into a pile of hay behind a merchant's stall just as the Sentinel's red beam swept over the spot where he had been standing.
He lay there in the dark, his mind spinning. He had told a lie, he had broken his script, and he had survived the first attempt to "fix" him. He was no longer a villager. He was a ghost in the machine, a shadow in the bright world of Aethelgard.
The gray box appeared one last time before the night cycle began to reset the world's visuals.
[Objective Updated: Find the Source of the Shadow Fragment.]
[The game has noticed you. Now, make it fear you.]
Kaito closed his eyes, not because of a command, but because he was tired. He had finished the first chapter of his new life. The "Glitch in Reality" was no longer a mistake. It was the beginning.
Status Update:
Kaito pressed his back against the rough wood of the merchant's stall, his heart hammering in a way that felt too large for his chest. The red beam of the Sentinel moved slowly over the hay, missing him by only a few inches. He could smell the dry, dusty scent of the straw mixed with the cold, metallic ozone of the Sentinel's energy. It was a terrifying reminder that he was no longer safe. In the old days, as a player, he would have just drawn his sword and smashed the orb for experience points. Now, he was the prey, and the orb was the hunter.
As the hum of the machine faded into the distance, Kaito didn't move. He stayed in the dark, watching the world around him. His Awareness stat was buzzing, making everything look different. He looked at the merchant stall he was hiding behind. It belonged to Agnes, a woman who sold sun-ripened apples and pears. He had seen her every day since he arrived, but now, with his Awareness at 5, he saw something new.
Above Agnes's head, there was a faint, flickering text that wasn't there before. It didn't say her name or her level. Instead, it showed a bar labeled
[Cognitive Dissonance: 45%].
Kaito crawled out from the hay, his movements quiet and careful. Agnes was standing by her stall, even though the sun had set and the market was supposed to be closed. Her eyes were fixed on a single apple in her hand. She wasn't moving. She looked like a statue, but her hand was trembling very slightly.
"Agnes?" Kaito whispered, stepping into the dim light of a nearby mana-lamp.
The woman didn't jump.
She slowly turned her head toward him. Her eyes were glazed, like she was looking at something a thousand miles away. "The price is three coppers, traveler," she said, her voice sounding like a scratched record. "The harvest is blessed... the harvest is... why is it always three coppers?"
Kaito felt a jolt of sympathy. He reached out and touched her arm. Her skin felt real, warm and soft, but under it, he could feel a strange vibration, like a motor that was running too fast.
"It's not three coppers, Agnes," Kaito said softly, trying to speak past the script in his own head. "It's whatever you want it to be. You don't have to stay here."
Agnes blinked, and for a second, the glaze in her eyes cleared. The bar above her head flashed.
[Cognitive Dissonance: 52%].
She looked at the apple, then at Kaito. "I remember a garden," she whispered, her voice cracking. "A real garden. With dirt that got under my fingernails. Not this... this perfect dust. Kaito, why can't I leave the stall? My legs... they won't move past the rug."
Hearing her say his name sent a shiver through him. She wasn't calling him Villager 47. She was seeing him. But the moment she spoke his name, the air around them seemed to ripple. A small, blue window popped up in front of her face, invisible to anyone but Kaito.
[WARNING: ENTITY-092 EXPERIENCING LOGIC COLLAPSE. INITIATING RESET.]
"No!" Kaito shouted, reaching for her.
Agnes's body suddenly went rigid. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and a soft, white light began to glow from her mouth and ears. It wasn't a magical glow, it was the cold light of a computer screen. In an instant, the light vanished, and Agnes blinked. Her face smoothed out, the wrinkles of worry disappearing into a mask of perfect, programmed cheerfulness.
"Good evening, Villager 47!" she chirped, her voice back to its high, nasal tone. "A fine night for a stroll, isn't it? Would you like a fresh apple? Only three coppers!"
Kaito pulled his hand away as if she had burned him. The bar above her head was gone. Her Cognitive Dissonance had reset to 0%. The system had "fixed" her. It had deleted the part of her that remembered the garden and the dirt. It had turned her back into a perfect tool for the game.
The horror of it made Kaito feel sick. He backed away from the stall, his boots scuffing on the cobblestones. He realized that this was the "cleaning" Gareth had warned him about. If he pushed too hard, or if he tried to wake up too many people at once, the system would just wipe them clean. He was a virus, and the system was the immune system, constantly trying to kill the infection of "humanity."
He turned and ran, not toward his hut, but toward the darker parts of the village where the players rarely went. He needed to be alone. He needed to think about the "Shadow Fragment" in his pocket. He reached into his tunic and pulled out the small, jagged piece of obsidian.
The moment the fragment touched the air, it began to pulse with a dark, purple light. It felt cold, so cold that it made his fingers go numb. As he held it, the gray box in his mind updated again.
[Shadow Fragment Detected: Latent Ability - "Veil of the Glitch"]
[Description: Use the fragment to temporarily desync from the world's physics. Cost: 2 Resilience per second.]
Kaito looked at his stats. His Resilience was only at 3. That meant he could only use this power for a second or two before he collapsed. It wasn't much, but it was a tool. It was a way to hide from the red beams of the Sentinels.
He looked back at the town square, where the lights of the "Heroes" were still dancing in the distance. They were playing a game, laughing and fighting, completely unaware that they were walking through a graveyard of broken souls. They saw Agnes as a merchant, Gareth as a bartender, and him as a background character. They didn't see the light in their eyes or the way their hands trembled when the script got too heavy.
Kaito felt a new kind of resolve. He wasn't just going to survive. He was going to find a way to stop the "resets." He was going to find the source of the system and tear it out of this world, even if he had to break every rule in Aethelgard to do it.
He sat down in the shadows of an old stone wall, the Shadow Fragment tucked safely away. He watched the stars, which were just points of light arranged in a pattern that never changed. He thought about his lie to the players earlier that day. By sending them East instead of North, he had saved their lives, but he had also put a target on his back.
"Let them come," he whispered to the darkness. "I'm not Villager 47. I'm the glitch that's going to break this world."
As he sat there, the gray box gave him one final message for the night.
[Adaptability: 5]
[System Synchronization: 6.50%]
[The first crack has appeared. The light is getting in.]
Kaito closed his eyes, finally allowing the sleep cycle to take him. But this time, in his dreams, he wasn't standing by a fountain. He was standing on a mountain of broken code, looking down at a world that was finally, truly free.