[Warning: You have exited System-Controlled Territory.]
[Zone: The Deep Layer]
[Status: Unmapped | Laws: Unstable | Entities: Unknown]
[Survival Rate: 3.6%]
I landed hard.
Not on ground—on data.
The floor beneath me looked like obsidian but pulsed with white lines that flickered like heartbeat monitors. Every step I took echoed in binary. No wind. No smell. Just an overwhelming presence, like the world was… aware of me.
And watching.
[System: ERROR – Location Undefined]
[System: ERROR – Map Corrupted]
[System: ERROR – Identity Conflict Detected]
I grinned.
"Good. Finally somewhere the rules don't apply."
The Deep Layer wasn't a place.
It was a broken idea.
Walls floated in midair, endlessly shifting—sometimes pixelated, sometimes hyperreal. Gravity twisted. One moment, I was upright. The next, walking sideways across a vertical slab of stone that shouldn't exist.
And yet—I felt more alive here than anywhere before.
I wasn't a bug in the system anymore.
Here, I was part of the virus.
Something moved.
Not like an animal. Not like a person. It glitched.
A shadow blinked into existence, flickered, then walked forward in jagged, unnatural frames. Its eyes were static. Its face—my face. But wrong. Warped. Twisted.
[Glitched Echo Detected]
[Origin: User Data Fragment – Subject: You]
It lunged.
I sidestepped just in time, activated Stunning Backstab, but my blade passed through it like smoke.
No hit. No damage.
"Physical attacks… useless."
I activated Reality Recode.
The glitch faltered. For two seconds, the air bent, stabilizing just enough for code to form structure.
That was enough.
I lunged and slammed my dagger into its throat.
[Glitched Echo Deleted.]
[Corrupted Memory Recovered.]
The moment it vanished, something poured into me.
Not just code.
A memory.
[Memory Recovered – Fragment 1 of 7]
"You knew what they were doing, didn't you?"
"I had no choice."
"You let them strip free will from millions. You helped build this system."
"…I didn't know it would become this."
I gasped.
Not a player memory.
Mine.
From… before.
Minutes passed. Or hours.
Time here was meaningless.
I wandered deeper. The world kept shifting—like I was walking through a dream being rewritten in real-time.
And then I found it.
A monolith. Taller than any structure I'd seen. Covered in code that rippled like water.
But one line stood out:
> IF user_class = Exploiter THEN ACCESS_GRANTED
A port opened.
I stepped through.
I emerged into a room of mirrors.
Dozens of versions of me stared back—each slightly different.
One was armored like a knight. Another draped in blood-red robes. One wore a lab coat. Another had eyes like fire. All of them wore the same expression:
Regret.
Then, one spoke.
"You're the furthest we've made it."
"How many times have we failed?" I asked.
"Six. You're the seventh."
"So I'm another ghost?"
"No. You're the last shot."
The mirrors shimmered.
Each reflection stepped forward.
"Every path failed. Warrior. Mage. Engineer. Prophet. Killer."
"But Exploiter? That… was never supposed to exist."
The room darkened. One final message blinked to life:
[ROOT CORE UNLOCKED]
[Choose a Directive:]
Rewrite the System
Destroy the System
Become the System
I stared.
Three choices.
Three betrayals.
I didn't pick one yet.
Not until I knew more.
But the moment I turned to leave—
they arrived.
Figures clad in code-armor. Faces hidden. Eyes like voids.
[System Purifiers – Rank Omega]
[Command: Eliminate All Echoes and Unauthorized Fragments]
Their weapons weren't blades.
They were erase tools.
Not to kill me.
To unmake me.
I ran.
Through fractured data corridors. Through collapsing logic walls.
Behind me, the world burned in silence—code lines torn apart like cloth.
This was no longer a game.
No longer survival.
It was a war.
And I'd just found the edge of the battlefield.