Pain. That was the first thing Aster felt.
A cold, bone-deep ache, as if someone had left his body out in the rain overnight. His limbs felt too heavy. His chest burned with every breath. Blood stuck to his lips, copper and warm.
Then came the second thing: confusion.
Where was he? Why was he lying on stone?
A flicker of memory surfaced—bright screens, clicking keyboards, late-night gaming sessions. Eterna: Realm of Heroes. His favorite MMORPG. The one he played more than he studied. The one he cursed out in forums for its unbalanced heroes, broken events, and trash-tier characters.
And yet... this wasn't a chair. This wasn't his room.
This was stone. Broken stone.
He opened his eyes.
Ruins stretched out before him, cracked towers clawing at a blood-red sky. Smoke coiled through broken archways, trailing up from shattered brazier stands. Shattered glass crunched under his trembling fingers.
And through the smoke, burning faintly, he could just make out a symbol—a crest of twin swords crossed over a shattered crown.
His stomach dropped.
He knew that crest.
No...
It couldn't be. Not here.
But recognition hit like a blade to the gut.
This was the starting dungeon.
The Ruined Keep of Valehart.
The very first zone in the Trash Hero prologue.
The memories rushed in now, sharp and cruel. In the game's story, the weakest hero, Aster Vale, was betrayed here by his party, left to die during a "failed" dungeon run to hide their own incompetence. It was a meme among players. "Trash Hero's Death Scene," they called it.
Now he was here.
In his body.
"Shit..." he whispered. "I've transmigrated."
[Initializing Hero System…]
[ERROR: Data Corruption Detected]
[Attempting System Recovery—]
[Failure. Critical Errors Present.]
[Compatibility with Host: 2% → 3%]
Ghostly blue text flickered across his vision like a broken HUD. Some characters twisted sideways, others dissolved into strings of symbols, jagged and meaningless.
He blinked hard. It was like watching glitching UI elements layered over reality itself.
This wasn't a dream. This wasn't just some weird immersion VR experience.
This was real.
And I'm stuck in the body of the worst hero in the entire damn game.
Footsteps echoed across the broken tiles.
Aster's head snapped toward the sound—and his heart sank further.
A group of five figures emerged from the smoke. Their silhouettes were unmistakable, even through the haze. Lionel at the front, polished armor gleaming faintly with enchantment runes, his greatsword slung lazily over his shoulder. Behind him, Vika with her bow half-drawn, her long green cloak trailing like a noble's banner.
And behind them... the others. Teammates. Party members.
Murderers.
In the game, this was the moment they turned on Aster. To everyone else, they'd later claim he died fighting a "glitched boss."
Now that moment was here again—except this time, it was real.
"Damn," Lionel muttered, glancing at him with cold amusement. "Still alive?"
Vika clicked her tongue, drawing an arrow. "What a pain."
"You don't have to do this," Aster rasped, pushing himself up on trembling arms. His body felt wrong. Weak. This wasn't his original body—no gym training, no muscle memory. Trash-tier stats, trash-tier physique. "I helped you. I—I fought—"
Lionel snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. You were bait. Nothing more."
The words felt like knives cutting into flesh that was already bruised.
"Besides," Lionel continued, stepping closer. "The raid failed. We need someone to blame when we get back to Grayholt. Guess who gets the honor?"
The others laughed, casual and cruel.
Aster clenched his fists. Anger rose, bitter and sharp. In the past, sitting behind a screen, he'd watched this scene with annoyance, frustration at the developers for writing such a pathetic story for this character. But now—now—it wasn't pixels. It wasn't just words on a wiki.
It was betrayal. It was real.
[Emergency Update in Progress…]
[Error: System Instability at 94%…]
[New Skill Generated: [GLITCH.EXE]]
[Effect: Unknown | Warning: Activation may result in Reality Distortion.]
His breath caught.
Glitch.EXE.
It wasn't a normal skill. It didn't exist in the real Eterna meta. This wasn't part of the original Trash Hero build. It was something else.
Something broken.
"I'm not trash," Aster whispered.
Lionel raised his blade, letting the flames reflect across the polished steel. "Could've fooled me."
[Quest Active: "Die Pathetically in the Prologue"]
[Reward: None]
[Status: In Progress.]
Aster's lips curled into a bitter smile.
If this world wanted him to die here...
If the system thought he was supposed to die here...
Then it was time to break the rules.
"Execute," he growled.
[Skill Activated: GLITCH.EXE]
[Effect: Spatial Distortion (3m)]
[Stability: 5% → 2% → 1%]
[Warning: Consequences Unknown.]
Everything shifted.
The broken tiles under Lionel's boots rippled like disturbed water. The air shimmered with lines of corrupted code, symbols he half-recognized from debug screens, twisting into fractals and then tearing themselves apart.
For a moment, the very floor ceased to exist.
Lionel's eyes widened just before the stone gave way beneath him—falling apart like collapsing polygons, a hole opening into… nothing. No bottom. No structure. Just pure void.
His scream echoed as his body twisted unnaturally, stretching, flickering, then—gone.
Vika screamed, backpedaling, firing arrows wildly, but the shafts dissolved into glowing pixels mid-air. Another teammate tripped on nothing as the environment glitched around him, bricks spiraling up like data fragments caught in a tornado.
Only one of them didn't panic.
Serra.
She stood at the edge of the distortion, her silver hair whipping in the artificial wind, pale lips parted slightly—not in fear, but curiosity.
For a terrifying second, her glowing violet eyes locked with his.
Not hatred. Not horror.
Interest.
Then she turned and fled into the smoke, cloak trailing behind her.
As quickly as it began, the glitch storm flickered, collapsed, and was gone, leaving only swirling dust and faint echoes of broken code behind.
Aster collapsed back onto his knees, panting.
[Quest Completed: "Die Pathetically in the Prologue"]
[Reward: You Didn't Die. (Yet.)]
[System Instability Critical → Recommend System Stabilization Protocol Activation.]
[Initiate Protocol? → Y/N]
He stared at the text. His hand trembled. His muscles burned. But something else burned stronger now:
Resolve.
This wasn't a dream.
This wasn't a game anymore.
He wasn't going to be the meme. The joke. The trash pick.
If this system was broken… then he was going to break the world with it.
"Y," he whispered, grinning through bloody teeth.
[Stabilization Protocol Initiating…]
Somewhere deep inside the corrupted architecture of this broken world, the system's gears began to turn.
It wouldn't be smooth. It wouldn't be pretty. And it sure as hell wouldn't be fair.
But fairness was for games.
This… was survival.
And survival, in a broken world, was the first step to domination.