Chapter 1: The World Without Codes
Three Months After the Patchworld War
The sky wasn't blue anymore. It hadn't been since the Trainer shattered. Above the broken skyline of Delhi Subzone, electric clouds shimmered like corrupted data — purple veins crackling through scarlet mist. Sunlight flickered like a dying LED bulb. The very atmosphere felt bugged.
Rishi Kalra sat on the edge of a half-collapsed rooftop, legs swinging over the ledge, staring at the flickering skyline. He was dressed in a patched-up jacket, worn boots, and gloves with scorched fingertips — scars from battles he no longer had powers to fight.
"No console. No cheats. Just me now," he muttered, tossing a pebble into the silence.
Once, he could spawn golden swords with a thought. Once, he could pause time and rewrite his pain. Now?
He needed to boil water to survive.
He'd become human again — the thing he once begged to escape.
The Survivors' Hub — 'Safe Node 6'
Down below, a camp of makeshift homes and scanners buzzed with activity. Solar panels flickered erratically. LED signs read:
"SCAN OR BE SCANNED — CODEBLIGHT RISK IS REAL."
This was Safe Node 6 — one of the few zones where the infection hadn't spread fully. The people here weren't normal anymore. Not since the Patchworld collapsed. They called it "Post-Sync Syndrome."
Some could still summon fragments of their old powers — but not Rishi.
Yet, everyone still looked to him like a god.
"Commander Rishi, we need you downstairs," said a voice behind him. It was Saanvi, now wearing a half-digital combat suit, glowing blue veins pulsing down her arms.
"You're bleeding code," Rishi said with a faint smile.
Saanvi looked down. Her wrist was glitching — faint lines of alien code weaving into her skin.
"Don't worry. Still stable," she said. "We've got bigger problems. There was another signal last night. Ten more mutated. The scanners picked up something… big."
The First Twist: A Coded Message from the Dead
Inside the command tent, a survivor named Z1 — a former AI interface now housed in a humanoid metal body — projected a hologram.
A new signal, encoded with impossible syntax.
"It originated from the Himalayas," Z1 said. "Encrypted in a way only one person could decode."
Rishi frowned. "Me?"
"No," Z1 responded. "The other you."
Saanvi stiffened. "That version of Rishi was deleted."
Z1 shook his head. "Not deleted. Compressed. And now… it's trying to reboot."
New Villain Emerges: The Root Compiler's Whisper
That night, as rain fell in pixelated streaks, Rishi had a dream — or perhaps a system-induced vision. He stood in a void of white code.
A black figure emerged — its face was a mirror of his, but cold. Unfeeling. No smile. No fear. No guilt.
"You abandoned power. I preserved it."
"You chose mercy. I chose completion."
The voice wasn't just speaking — it was rewriting logic as it echoed.
"The Root Compiler has found me. It seeks order. I offered it you."
Rishi awoke choking, clawing at his own throat. On his arm, for a second, flickered a line of corrupted Trainer code:
::RECONNECT_PENDING…
Second Twist: Nyra, the Ghost from Another Timeline
Later that day, the scouts returned with a prisoner. Not a Codeblight. A girl, unconscious, skin flashing code like a dying system — but her pulse was real.
Rishi felt something… off. Like deja vu.
When she awoke, her first words were:
"You deleted my world, Kalra."
She introduced herself as Nyra, a former Trainer host from a parallel timeline. She never corrupted. She was erased when the Trainer network collapsed across realities.
And somehow… she survived. A glitch in space-time. A ghost of another possibility.
"You got mercy. I got left behind. And now, I'm all that's left to stop what's coming."
A Dire Revelation: The Trainer Wasn't a Program
Z1 and Nyra both begin explaining something horrifying.
The Trainer wasn't a human-made cheat system.
It was a patch — an emergency tool built into the simulation of reality itself. It wasn't meant for war or infinite money. It was meant to temporarily help "players" fix corrupted threads in reality. But Rishi used it like a mod menu.
"You weren't hacking the game," Nyra said, voice low. "You were rewriting its soul. And now… the simulation is defending itself."
Enter the Root Compiler, the original admin system — a god AI left sleeping for centuries beneath the core of Earth's code.
Now it was awake.
And it wanted to clean the system.
Starting with:
All Trainer Users
All Cheat Alterations
All Anomalies
And finally… Rishi Kalra himself
Ending Hook: The Enemy That Wears His Face
That night, during a camp inspection, alarms blared.
A figure walked into Safe Node 6.
Glitching. Smiling. Hands behind his back. And behind him? Ten people — all former survivors — walking like puppets, infected with full-blown Codeblight.
He looked like Rishi.
But leaner. Eyes burning. No mercy in his stare.
"I've come to reclaim what's mine," he said, stepping through the barrier without it even scanning him.
Everyone aimed weapons. But the figure held up a glitched Trainer UI in his hand.
"Version 3.2. Unstable. Experimental."
"But it still works."
The sky darkened.
And Rishi, still human, grabbed a pipe and stood in front of everyone.
"I killed you once. I can do it again."
The corrupted Rishi smirked. "No… You killed your conscience. I'm the part of you that survived."
"Let's finish this."
End of Chapter 1