[Loading...]
[Creating Landmasses...]
[Generating Infrastructure...]
[Ai downloading...]
[Error...Failed to download files]
[Error...Failed to download files]
[Error]
[#######]
Jake opened his eyes to a sky that looked like someone had painted it in a rush. The blue was too flat, the clouds nothing more than smeared white shapes that didn't move. He blinked, rubbed his face, and sat up slowly. The ground beneath him was rough grass, but when he focused on it, the blades flickered between two textures, one sharp and one blurry, as if the world couldn't decide which to keep.
For a moment, he thought it was a dream. Then the familiar system chime echoed in his head.
[WELCOME, PLAYER.]
[LOADING RESOURCES… ERROR.]
[ERROR: WORLD DATA MISSING.]
Jake froze.
…What?
More text spilled in front of his eyes, lines of red code flickering like warnings.
>[SYSTEM INITIALIZED. PLAYER STATUS: LEVEL 1.]
[LEVEL UP FUNCTION… ERROR.]
[INVENTORY… EMPTY.]
He waited for more, but the text faded into static before vanishing. The silence that followed was deafening.
"…Okay," Jake muttered, forcing a laugh. "So this is… what? Some kind of bug? A messed-up server?"
He looked around. The landscape stretched endlessly in all directions — rolling fields that repeated the same hill shapes like a lazy copy-paste. In the distance, a forest loomed, but the trees were paper-thin, like cardboard cutouts propped against an invisible wall. No NPCs. No town. No players.
Only him.
Jake pulled up his menu, but the command opened to nothing but another red block of text:
>[ERROR: MENU NOT AVAILABLE.]
His heart sank.
"Okay. No big deal. Beta test. Maybe a stress trial." His voice wavered despite his attempt at confidence. "They'll fix it soon. Just… just gotta wait."
But he knew better. This wasn't just a bug. This world felt unfinished.
---
The sound came suddenly — a low growl.
Jake snapped his head toward the noise. Something crouched at the edge of the barren plain: a wolf. Or at least, something trying to be one. Its body glitched at the edges, fur flickering between black and gray, legs stuttering like broken animation frames. Its eyes were empty white spheres, no pupils, no light.
"Great," he muttered. "First enemy encounter. No tutorial, no weapon…"
The wolf lunged. Jake jumped back, instinctively scooping up a branch lying nearby. The moment his fingers closed around it, the system blipped:
>[ACHIEVEMENT: First Fight]
[+1 to all stats]
[Reward: Starter Sword]
>[LmGENDARY ???? ACQUIRED.]
[You are too low level to use this]
[Error...]
He blinked. Looked at the flimsy stick in his hand. "Legendary, huh? Sure. Let's see how legendary."
The wolf pounced again. Jake swung wildly. The stick cracked across its face, and the creature yelped — but the sound was distorted, a harsh static burst that made his ears ring. The wolf staggered, then collapsed, dissolving into shards of broken polygons.
Jake panted, clutching the stick like a lifeline. His heart hammered. He expected loot, maybe experience points. Instead, the system chimed:
> [ITEM DROP: NULL.]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED… ERROR.]
"Null," he muttered. He bent to look at the glowing cube left behind, but the moment his fingers touched it, the thing flickered and vanished.
His stomach growled. He hadn't noticed until now, but hunger gnawed at him, sharp and real. He glanced at the spot where the wolf had died. No meat. No drops. Nothing.
"…Fantastic."
"ha....say that again...".
---
By nightfall — or what he thought was nightfall, since the sky didn't change much — Jake had killed three more wolves. Each one left the same "NULL" cube, each one dissolved before he could use it. No food. No water. No firewood — the trees weren't even solid.
When exhaustion took over, he collapsed onto the grass. The ground was cold, unyielding.
"Day one," he whispered, staring at the unchanging sky. "Stuck in a game that doesn't work. No resources. No NPCs. No system. Just me and…"
His eyes closed before he could finish.
---
He dreamed of menus.
Dozens of translucent blue screens flickering around him, their text garbled and broken. Some showed his name: Jake. Level 1. Others were filled with words he couldn't understand. Error codes, system alerts, warnings that bled across one another.
And then, a voice.
Not human. Mechanical, but uneven. Like a text-to-speech program skipping lines.
"…You… are not… supposed… to be… here."
Jake jolted awake, heart racing. The sky above him hadn't changed, still that same artificial blue. His throat was dry. His stomach screamed for food.
And then he saw it.
A figure at the edge of the hill.
It stood tall, facing him. Human-shaped, but wrong. Its arms were too long, swaying at its sides. Its head tilted unnaturally, neck bent too far. The figure had no face. Just a flat blur where features should be, like the game had forgotten to texture it.
Jake's breath caught.
"…Hello?" he called, his voice hoarse."…
The figure twitched. Then, in a voice that made his blood run cold, it repeated:
"…Hello…?"
It was his own voice.
Jake staggered back, gripping his stick. The figure didn't move closer. It just tilted its head, watching him with its blank face.
Then it flickered. Once. Twice. Gone.
Jake stood there, chest heaving, every muscle frozen.
"…Just… a glitch," he whispered. "Just a broken model. That's all."
But deep inside, he knew. The game was missing resources. Missing data. And if the world had nothing else to use…
It would use him.
---
That night, he didn't sleep. He sat clutching his stick, staring at the horizon where the faceless thing had stood.
Every shadow in the distance felt like eyes. Every sound in the grass felt like footsteps. His hunger gnawed deeper, twisting his gut.
And in the back of his mind, the system whispered again, faint, broken, but clear enough to chill him to the bone:
> [DEFAULT TEMPLATE: PLAYER.]