When Kuraish stepped out of his 5th-floor apartment, the sight before him sent a chill down his spine. The corridor floor tiles weren't just cracked—they were pixelating. The plaster on the walls wasn't peeling; it was dissolving into clouds of digital smoke, drifting away like corrupted data.
The hallway felt unnaturally long, stretching into a hazy darkness. The elevator was dead, its buttons flickering with red error codes. The only way out was the stairs.
Suddenly, a guttural, distorted sound echoed from the floor below. It didn't sound human; it was like the screech of a broken radio through a blown speaker. A new system window flashed in front of Kuraish's eyes:
[Warning: Glitched Entity Detected nearby!]
Current Objective: Reach the Ground Floor.
Reward: Skill Point +1, Unlock 'Eraser' Tool.
Kuraish began to descend, his heart hammering against his ribs. As he reached the 4th-floor landing, he saw it—a shadowy figure. It looked vaguely human, but its entire body was vibrating violently, leaving "after-images" behind. Its face was a blurry mess, like a low-resolution thumbnail stretched too far.
It was a 'Glitched Wanderer.' The moment it spotted Kuraish, it let out a digital shriek and charged, sparks of static electricity flying from its distorted claws.
Panic flared, but Kuraish's designer brain kicked into high gear. 'If this is a digital glitch, it must be selectable!' he thought.
He traced a rectangle in the air with his fingers. Instantly, a glowing blue Selection Box snapped onto the monster, locking it within a frame.
[Entity Selected: 'Glitched Wanderer']
Command Menu:
Resize
Adjust Opacity
Fill with Solid Color
Kuraish grabbed the 'Adjust Opacity' slider and slammed it down to 0%.
In an instant, the monster began to fade. It reached out for Kuraish's throat, but its hands had become transparent—mere ghosts of data. It passed through Kuraish like a wisp of smoke and vanished entirely, erased from the immediate reality.
Kuraish leaned against the wall, gasping for air. He had survived, but he knew this was just the beginning. From the stairwell below, the sound of multiple footsteps—heavy and rhythmic—began to rise. A whole swarm of them was coming up.
His only hope was to reach the ground floor and unlock the Eraser Tool. Tightening his grip on his imaginary interface, Kuraish prepared to dive deeper into the glitch.
How do you like the English version, bro? In the next part, we can have him meet another survivor on the 3rd floor, or maybe he finds a "Resource Pack" that gives him more energy. What do you think?Kuraish stood frozen for a moment, watching the space where the monster had been. The concept of "Opacity" working in real life was mind-blowing, but his stamina bar—a thin blue line at the edge of his vision—had dropped significantly. Reality-bending was expensive.
He began to move again. The 4th-floor hallway was a nightmare of architecture. The doors were sliding up and down the walls like broken UI elements. He reached the stairwell, but as he looked down, he saw the stairs were no longer a continuous path. They were floating blocks of concrete, disconnected from each other, suspended over a bottomless void of static.
"Great," Kuraish muttered, his voice trembling. "The world is literally losing its 'Group Layer' settings."
From the floor below, the distorted shrieks grew louder. He had to cross this gap. He looked at the floating concrete blocks. In his mind, he saw them not as heavy stone, but as Objects on a canvas.
He reached out, his fingers mimicking a 'Drag and Drop' motion.
[Command: Move Tool Activated]
[Stamina Cost: 10 per second]
He 'clicked' on a floating slab of concrete and dragged it closer. It felt like pulling a ton of weight with a single thread, but the slab moved. He repeated the process until he had created a bridge. He leaped across, his heart nearly stopping when his foot slipped on a pixelated edge that felt like wet sand.
As he landed on the 3rd-floor landing, a door suddenly burst open. A young woman, clutching a kitchen knife, stumbled out. She looked terrified, her eyes wide as she saw Kuraish's glowing interface.
"Don't... don't come closer!" she screamed. "What are you? One of those things?"
"I'm human! My name is Kuraish," he yelled back, keeping his hands visible. "I live on the 5th floor. Look, I don't have time to explain, but this building is falling apart. We need to get to the ground floor."
The woman hesitated, then looked at the hallway behind her. Three 'Glitched Wanderers' were crawling along the ceiling, their limbs snapping and rotating in impossible angles.
"Help me!" she cried.
Kuraish didn't think. He raised both hands, performing a 'Multi-Select' gesture.
[Selection Error: Insufficient Stamina for Multi-Target Opacity]
"Dammit!" Kuraish cursed. He couldn't erase all of them at once. He needed a different strategy. He looked at the floor—the tiles were glowing with a 'Fill' color.
"Get behind me!" he commanded.
He accessed his Layer Mask menu. Instead of targeting the monsters, he targeted the floor in front of them. He 'painted' a black stroke across the hallway.
[Command: Layer Mask Applied to Environment]
[Effect: Transparency Hole Created]
A literal hole appeared in the hallway floor, but it wasn't a hole to the floor below—it was a hole into the 'Void' of the system. The three monsters, unable to stop their momentum, plummeted into the blackness. They didn't even scream; they simply ceased to exist as the system 'deleted' their coordinates.
Kuraish collapsed to one knee, his stamina bar blinking red. His vision blurred.
"You're... you're a god?" the woman whispered, approaching him cautiously.
"No," Kuraish panted, a weak smile on his face. "I'm just a designer who's tired of the world's bad UI."
The system chimed in his head.
[Objective Update: 50% Complete]
[Stamina Regeneration: 5%]
[New Passive Skill: 'Quick Export' – Reduced time for simple commands]
They weren't safe yet. The building groaned, a deep metallic sound that suggested the entire structure was about to 'Crash' like an overloaded software. They had two more floors to go, and the ground floor was where the 'High-Level Dungeon Zone' began.
"What's your name?" Kuraish asked, standing up with effort.
"Nila," she replied, her grip on the knife loosening slightly.
"Okay, Nila. Stay close. If you see anything that looks like a glitch, tell me before it moves."
Together, they stepped into the darkening stairwell. The air was getting colder, and the smell of ozone and burnt silicon was overwhelming. Kuraish knew that once they reached the lobby, he would have to use every tool in his kit just to stay alive. The 'Eraser' tool was so close, he could almost feel the icon burning in his mind.