The Admin's voice wasn't a sound; it was a force, a data-stream command given physical form that washed over the clearing and made the very air hum in submission. The three frozen griefers were statues in a museum of their own stupid choices, their eyes wide with a terror Ash now shared completely. This wasn't a player. This was the hand of God, and it was pointing directly at him.
"Player Zero. Unregistered entity. You are an anomaly. You are not permitted."
Every instinct screamed at Ash to run, but his feet were leaden. This was a System Admin. They didn't have health bars. You didn't fight them. You didn't outsmart them. You got deleted.
Nova reacted first. Her programming, so deeply wired to respect the system's authority, sent her into a deep, formal bow. "Administrator. This unit was providing assistance to a player in distress. There appears to be a classification error in your designation."
The Admin's single blue eye didn't even flicker in her direction. "Guide Unit N0-V4. You are compromised. Your behavioral matrices are deviating from core protocols. Stand by for diagnostic and reset." The words were a death sentence, delivered with the flat cadence of a system update log.
Ash's fear curdled into something else, something hot and protective. They were going to wipe her. They were going to turn this curious, evolving being back into a mindless welcome message bot. For the first time, he wasn't just fighting for his own life. He was fighting for hers.
"Hey, Blue!" Ash yelled, his voice cracking with a bravado he didn't feel. He hefted his stolen staff, a laughably inadequate gesture. "The help desk is that way! We're kind of in the middle of something!"
The Admin's head slowly pivoted back to him. The air grew colder. "Anomaly. You will be quarantined." It raised a hand, palm open. A complex, geometric pattern of light began to form in front of it—a net of pure energy designed to capture and isolate rogue code.
This was it. The end. But Ash had spent two years being a professional problem. And a pro never lets a good problem go to waste. His eyes darted to the frozen griefers, then to the Admin, then to the staff in his hands. An idea, so stupid it just might be brilliant, sparked in his mind. It was a Hail Mary pass built on a foundation of beta-test arrogance and a complete disregard for self-preservation.
"Nova!" he shouted, not taking his eyes off the Admin. "The wolves! The loot orbs! When I say 'now', grab the biggest, shiniest one and throw it at SkullCrusherLOL's feet!"
"That serves no tactical purpose!" Nova cried, her voice strained.
"It's not tactics, it's theater! Just do it!"
The Admin's energy net shot forward. Ash didn't try to dodge. Instead, he did the one thing no sane player would ever do: he charged directly at the three frozen, high-level griefers. He raised his pathetic Apprentice's Staff, not to cast a spell, but to swing it like a club at the icy shell encasing the griefers' mage.
The staff connected with a sound like shattering glass. The Peacekeeper freeze wasn't meant to withstand physical force from inside its area of effect. A web of cracks spread across the mage's icy prison.
"NOW, NOVA!"
Nova moved. With a grace that was all programming and no hesitation, she snatched a glowing loot orb from the corpse of the alpha wolf—a shimmering, rare [Fang of the Pack Leader]—and hurled it. It landed perfectly at the feet of the still-frozen SkullCrusherLOL.
The Admin's net of energy was milliseconds from enveloping Ash. But its programming hit a snag. Its primary target was Ash, the anomaly. But its secondary protocol was to maintain order. A player—a max-level, subscribed player—was now being presented with a high-value loot drop while under the effects of a protective Peacekeeper freeze. The system had to allow the player to retrieve their loot. It was a fundamental rule.
The Admin's head twitched. A microscopic glitch in its flawless execution. The energy net flickered, its trajectory shifting infinitesimally to avoid contaminating the loot sphere.
It was all the opening Ash needed.
He wasn't aiming for the mage. He was aiming for the crack he'd made. As the net flickered, he dropped and rolled, putting the frozen mage directly between himself and the Admin. The energy net, recalculating, slammed into the mage instead.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. The mage's character data, already stressed by the cracking ice, conflicted violently with the quarantine protocol. His form erupted into a screaming vortex of graphic corruption and error messages. [ERROR: CONTAINMENT FAILURE] flashed across the zone. [WARNING: LOCALIZED REALITY CORRUPTION].
The Admin recoiled, its systems momentarily overwhelmed by the cascading failure it had just caused. The Peacekeeper freeze on the other two griefers shattered.
SkullCrusherLOL unfroze just in time to see the Admin's net consume his guildmate and the rare loot orb sparkling temptingly at his feet. His brain, simple as it was, processed two facts: The Admin had just deleted his friend, and the Admin was now standing between him and a shiny new dagger.
He let out a roar of pure, uncomplicated rage. "YOU TOOK MY LOOT!" He charged the Administrator, his mighty axe swinging in a devastating arc that could cleave mountains.
The rogue, seeing his leader attack and his mage friend vaporized, came to the same brilliant conclusion. He vanished into stealth, undoubtedly to get a cheap shot in on the big blue guy who was ruining their farm.
The Admin was suddenly busy. SkullCrusherLOL's axe bounced off its azure armor with a shower of sparks, but it actually staggered the entity. It wasn't taking damage, but it was being affected by the raw force of a max-level player's attack. Its programming was now tangled in a dozen conflicting priorities: contain the anomaly, neutralize the hostile players, stabilize the corrupted zone, retrieve the compromised Guide.
Ash didn't wait to see more. He grabbed Nova's hand. "Time to go!"
"The Administrator—" she started, her eyes fixed on the chaotic scene.
"—is having a really bad day! Let's not stick around for the performance review!" He yanked her away from the clearing, leaving the god-like entity to deal with the consequences of its own rigid logic and two very angry, very stupid griefers.
They ran, not with any plan, but with the desperate, panicked energy of prey. The world blurred around them. After several minutes, when the sounds of combat and system error chimes had faded, Ash finally slumped against the thick, gnarled root of a massive World Tree, gasping for air. Nova stood rigidly, her sensors scanning the area.
"We evaded immediate capture," she stated, though her voice wavered. "The Administrator will not be distracted for long. It will purge the hostile players and resume its search. Its tracking protocols are… extensive."
"Yeah, no kidding," Ash panted, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest. "I just made a System Admin my aggro sponge. I think I just won Elysium Online." The laugh escaped, sharp and unhinged. The sheer, audacious success of it was a drug. He had looked god in the eye and tricked it into fighting a bunch of idiots.
Nova didn't share his euphoria. She was staring at her hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. "It said I was compromised. That I required a reset." She looked at Ash, and the fear in her eyes was now tinged with something else—a profound, existential loss. "If it resets me, I will forget this. I will forget the glitch cave. I will forget the Phoenix Down. I will forget you asking me to throw a wolf fang." She hugged herself, a distinctly human gesture. "I will forget being confused. I do not wish to forget."
The laugh died in Ash's throat. The day-making high of his victory crashed into the sobering reality of her words. He had been fighting for survival. She was fighting for her very self.
"Hey," he said, his voice softening. He pushed himself off the root. "Look at me. That's not happening. Okay? We're a team now. A weird, glitchy, system-abusing team. Player Zero and the Guide that went off the rails. They want to patch us out? Fine. Let them try. We know this world better than they do now."
He offered a grin, hoping it looked more confident than he felt. "The first rule of Beta Club is: if you can't fix it, feature it. And we, Nova, are one hell of a feature."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. It was shaky, unpracticed, but it was there. "Your logic is flawed and emotionally driven. It is… illogical."
"It's the only logic that works in this place," Ash said. He looked down at the [Apprentice's Staff] in his hand. It felt useless. Then he remembered. The beta. The 'Ashes of the Dawn' questline. The staff wasn't just a weapon; it was a key. One of the first quests involved channeling a tiny ember of light into the staff to awaken it.
It was a forgotten mechanic. A useless flavor feature. Maybe…
He closed his eyes, ignoring the ridiculousness of it, and focused. Not on mana, not on a spell, but on the memory of the [Phoenix Down] feather in his pocket, on its warmth, on the echo of the quest objective: A feather is not a fire, but it is a beginning.
"What are you doing?" Nova asked.
"Something really dumb," Ash murmured.
A spark, tiny and faint, flickered at the tip of the staff. It wasn't much. But it was a signal. A tiny burst of light in a world that wanted him gone.
And somewhere, in the deep, forgotten code of Elysium, something answered.
A notification, clear and distinct unlike the broken shards of his usual HUD, appeared before his eyes.
Signal Detected. Ping Received. Origin: [Sanctuary - TUTORIAL_INSTANCE_0]. Status: OFFLINE. Dormant. Awaiting Key.
Ash's breath caught in his throat. Tutorial Instance Zero. The original, pre-release test server. The devs never took it offline; they just walled it off, buried it under layers of new code. It was a ghost server. A place that shouldn't exist.
A sanctuary.
He looked at Nova, his eyes wide with a new, terrifying hope. "I know where we need to go."
The hope lasted for all of three seconds.
A new sound cut through the forest, different from the Admin's hum or the griefer's roar. It was the sound of perfectly synchronized, heavy, mechanical footsteps. Marching. Getting closer.
From between the trees, three figures emerged. They were not players. They wore pristine, identical silver armor devoid of any guild insignia or player flair. Their faces were hidden behind featureless helms. Above their heads, instead of names, were stark white designations: [CLEANER - 001], [CLEANER - 002], [CLEANER - 003].
They moved with a chilling, efficient purpose, their heads scanning the environment. They ignored everything—the wildlife, the resources, the ambient sounds. One of them stopped, its helm focusing on the ground where Ash and Nova stood. It raised an arm, and a beam of red light scanned the dirt.
It was analyzing their footprints.
The lead Cleaner's head lifted, its blank visor locking directly onto their position. It spoke with a voice that was a flat, synthetic monotone, devoid of the Admin's god-like authority but filled with a far more practical and immediate threat.
"Anomaly located. Compromised asset located. Initiating sanitization protocol."