The stench of rust and stale blood was the first thing Ren noticed—a raw, metallic smell hanging thick in the humid air of the Catacombs. His vision, which had been a blur of stone and shadow moments before, slowly snapped into painful focus. His head pounded like a drum, matching the frantic beat of his heart. The cold, unforgiving rock beneath his cheek reminded him exactly where he was.
And how bad his situation had become.
"Look at him. Pathetic to the very end, isn't he?"
The voice—smug and dripping with contempt—belonged to Jax.
Ren coughed, the dry, rattling sound scraping his throat. It tasted like dust and defeat. Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself onto his elbows, every muscle screaming in protest.
His eyes lifted.
Three figures stood over him.
Jax, their so-called leader, wore a crooked smirk as his armored boots scraped across the moss-covered stone. Beside him stood Lyra. Her eyes—once kind—were cold now. She avoided looking directly at Ren.
And then there was Kael.
His hand still gripped the blood-stained shortsword that had delivered the final, crippling blow.
"We told you, Ren," Kael said flatly, his voice stripped of the camaraderie they had shared for months. "The Non-Player Zone is a dead end. We can't carry dead weight in High-Tier Dungeons. Not when we're this close to a promotion."
He gestured deeper into the twisting tunnels, where a distant, rhythmic thud echoed through the stone—the slow movement of a Dungeon Guardian.
A bitter laugh tried to escape Ren's throat but died before it could form.
Dead weight.
That was all he'd ever been to them.
A convenient 'spotter' during scouting runs. His strange ability to notice environmental glitches had always been brushed off as luck or weird habits. They had brought him here—into the deadly Glitchfang Catacombs—under the excuse of a "major loot run."
In reality, they had brought him here to die.
"The Glitchfang Queen is a Tier-3 Dungeon Guardian, Ren," Jax continued, sighing in fake sympathy. "You—a Non-Player with no real skills except spotting flickering textures—wouldn't last ten seconds. Better you die here than slow us down."
His words twisted deep in Ren's gut.
Not just because of the betrayal.
But because part of it was true.
He was weak.
His stats were terrible. His abilities were practically nonexistent in a world ruled by combat skills and System-granted powers.
He was just a boy from the Non-Player Zone.
A place the powerful Players treated like a digital wasteland ever since the Merge.
"You… you swore," Ren rasped, forcing himself upright, his back scraping painfully against the damp stone wall. "We were a guild. You swore to protect your guildmates."
Lyra finally looked at him.
For a brief moment, something flickered in her eyes.
Regret? Maybe pity?
Then it vanished.
"A guild of equals, Ren," she said quietly. "You never were one. We gave you a chance. You just couldn't keep up."
Kael scoffed.
"He was always a liability. Remember when he almost fell through that 'missing collision box' into a Grime Ooze nest? Idiot."
Ren's breath caught.
He remembered that moment perfectly.
He had seen the flickering patch of ground—the visual glitch no one else noticed—and warned them. They had laughed at him.
Then almost died because they ignored him.
Those "quirks" were the only reason he had survived growing up in the unstable chaos of the Non-Player Zone.
"Good luck, Ren," Jax said as he turned away. His voice was already fading as he walked deeper into the Catacombs.
"May the System… grant you a quick respawn."
A cruel joke.
Non-Players didn't respawn.
They died.
The sound of their boots crunching against gravel echoed down the tunnel until silence swallowed it completely.
Ren was alone.
Truly alone.
His hand tightened around the silver locket resting against his chest.
His mother's locket.
The last thing she had given him.
The cool metal felt strangely comforting against his skin. A worn crescent moon symbol was barely visible on its surface.
"This will protect you, my little glitch hunter," she had whispered before the sickness took her.
"You see the world differently. Never forget that."
He had promised her.
Promised to survive.
Promised to build a safe place—a kingdom—for forgotten Non-Players like him.
A place where they wouldn't be treated as useless.
But how?
He was bleeding out in a monster-infested dungeon.
A low growl echoed through the darkness.
Two crimson eyes appeared in the shadows.
Then the creature stepped forward.
A Glitchfang Grotesque.
Its body was a horrific mix of rotting flesh and flickering pixels. Massive claws dripped with acidic slime. Parts of its body distorted and glitched like corrupted data.
Normally it was a low-tier monster.
For Ren, it was certain death.
Its hitbox shimmered strangely—a sign of a rendering bug that made its movements unpredictable.
Panic flooded his body.
He tried to stand.
His legs refused.
Kael's sword wound burned like fire.
Copper flooded his mouth.
This was it.
The end of Ren.
The Grotesque lumbered closer, roaring.
Ren clutched the locket desperately.
And then—
The silver crescent grew warm.
Not warm.
Vibrating.
A strange digital hum spread through his mind.
His vision flickered.
Not blurry.
Different.
The world shattered into glowing lines of symbols and flowing code.
The Grotesque wasn't a monster anymore.
It was data.
A structure.
A sequence of commands.
Its flickering skin wasn't a visual bug.
It was a Syntax Error.
Then the message appeared.
Not in front of him.
Inside his mind.
Core Weaver?
The words echoed inside him like a distant memory.
Suddenly the world made sense.
Every wall.
Every monster.
Every object.
All of it was code.
He saw the Grotesque's attack command forming.
[ATTACK_STRIKE_LEFT_CLAW_STRONG]
Its movement pattern.
[PATHFINDING_TARGET_REN_ID:001]
Everything was instructions.
Everything had flaws.
The creature raised its massive claw.
Ren focused.
Lag.
The thought came instinctively.
Something in his mind connected—like a circuit snapping into place.
A ripple of invisible energy spread outward.
The Grotesque froze mid-attack.
Its movement stuttered.
Like a broken video buffering.
Its roar glitched into distorted noise.
Ren scrambled sideways just as the delayed attack slammed into the ground where he had been.
The monster turned toward him again—confused.
But slower.
Glitched.
Ren leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
His heart pounded.
But now it beat with something new.
Possibility.
Another message appeared.
A system prompt.
Ren scanned the area quickly.
His eyes landed on a small pile of rubble near the monster's feet.
Minor object.
Non-critical.
Perfect.
He focused.
The connection felt stronger this time.
[DESPAWN_OBJECT_PILE_OF_RUBBLE_ID:007]
The rocks vanished instantly.
The Grotesque stepped forward—
And fell straight into the empty space.
Its massive body crashed onto the stone floor.
Commands inside its code collided violently.
[PATHFINDING ERROR]
[ATTACK INTERRUPTED]
Ren didn't hesitate.
Pain still burned in his side, but a cold determination replaced his fear.
Jax.
Lyra.
Kael.
They had called him weak.
Dead weight.
But now—
He could see the code of the world itself.
He had the Codebreaker Protocol System.
And he would survive.
Even if he had to rewrite reality itself.
The Grotesque began to recover.
Ren pushed himself away from the wall.
Ahead, the deep thrum of the Glitchfang Queen echoed through the tunnels.
Something far stronger waited deeper inside the Catacombs.
Then another message appeared.
A warning.
Ren's blood ran cold.
Retreat.
But where?
The exit was behind the Grotesque.
The Queen was ahead.
He was trapped.
A newly awakened Tier-1 Debugger facing a monster immune to his current abilities.
The dungeon pulsed like a living predator.
The System itself seemed to say he was already doomed.
The locket warmed again faintly against his chest.
Ren's eyes scanned the wall beside him.
A faint shimmer.
A deeper glitch.
The stone phased in and out of existence.
A hidden error.
A path only he could see.
The Queen's footsteps grew louder.
He had seconds.
Ren placed his hand on the flickering stone.
Feeling the strange resonance within it.
After all—
He was a glitch hunter.
And the Catacombs were full of bugs.
Including himself.