Kaito Ren had been awake for seventy-two hours straight.
His eyes burned, his fingers ached, and his chair had permanently molded to the shape of his body — but none of that mattered.
Because he was this close to clearing the final raid in Eclipse Online, a game so brutally hard that even its creators had given up balancing it.
"Just five more minutes," he muttered, slamming keys with caffeine-fueled precision.
His screen flashed as his digital avatar — Rendark the Shadow Coder — unleashed a final chain of attacks.
The boss screamed, pixels scattering into digital dust.
The victory banner popped up.
[RAID CLEARED.]
[YOU ARE THE FIRST PLAYER TO COMPLETE "ECLIPSE OMEGA."]
Kaito raised a shaky fist. "I did it. I actually—"
Then his head hit the keyboard.
Darkness swallowed everything.
When Kaito opened his eyes again, he expected a hospital ceiling or maybe the glowing lights of heaven.
Instead, he saw this:
A floating blue screen.
[SYSTEM BOOTING…]
WELCOME BACK, DEVELOPER ACCOUNT: GOD_01.
WARNING: WORLD FILE CORRUPTED. PLEASE RESTORE REALITY.]
Kaito blinked.
"Uh… excuse me, what?"
He sat up — and realized he wasn't in his cramped apartment anymore.
He was sitting on a hill made of floating data cubes, overlooking a sky that shimmered like broken glass. In the distance, fragments of cities floated upside down, and glowing code streamed like rain.
A cold wind carried a whispering sound — like hundreds of lines of programming running at once.
"This looks familiar," Kaito muttered. "Wait. This is…"
He froze.
It was Eclipse Online.
His game.
Except it was broken — half-rendered terrain, glitching monsters, missing textures.
A half-destroyed version of the world he'd spent years playing.
"Okay," he said slowly. "So either I'm dead, or I've finally lost it."
[SYSTEM: DETECTED USER MENTAL INSTABILITY LEVEL 57%. ACTIVATING SUPPORT AI.]
A small orb of light appeared in front of him, pulsing softly. Then, it spoke — in a cute, teasing voice.
"You're awake, Master Kaito."
Kaito jumped. "Who said that?"
The orb shifted, forming into a holographic girl — long silver hair, glowing blue eyes, and a maid outfit that looked like it was designed by an overexcited anime artist.
"I am Airi, your support AI," she said with a polite bow. "You died. Congratulations."
"Wait, WHAT?" Kaito choked. "I what?!"
Airi tilted her head. "Cause of death: cardiac arrest due to excessive caffeine intake and poor life decisions."
Kaito blinked twice. "…Rude, but fair."
"You have been successfully uploaded into the Eclipse Core System," Airi continued cheerfully. "As the original developer's test account, you now possess administrative authority."
"Administrative… what?"
[PERMISSIONS GRANTED: WORLD EDITOR – 2% FUNCTIONAL.]
[NOTICE: 98% OF FILES CORRUPTED.]
[OBJECTIVE: RESTORE REALITY.]
The words appeared in midair like a quest notification.
Kaito rubbed his temples. "Okay, okay. So I died, and now I'm inside a half-broken version of my favorite game… with god powers that don't even work?"
"Affirmative!" Airi said brightly.
"Great. Fantastic. Exactly how I wanted to spend the afterlife."
He stood up, brushing off nonexistent dirt. "Alright, let's test this 'god mode.'"
He raised his hand dramatically. "/spawn legendary_sword_of_infinite_power."
[ERROR: COMMAND INVALID. PLEASE REPAIR SYSTEM FILES FIRST.]
"Of course."
He tried again. "/fly."
[FLYING DISABLED UNTIL WINGS ARE INSTALLED.]
Kaito sighed. "So I'm a god who can't fly, can't fight, and can't even spawn a sandwich."
"But you can do this!" Airi said, and flicked her wrist.
A small menu popped up in front of him — "World Editor (Beta)."
Inside it were three options:
Spawn Object (Glitched)
Modify Code (Corrupted)
Rebuild Zone (Partially Functional)
"Well," he muttered, "partially functional is better than totally useless."
He tapped "Rebuild Zone."
The ground beneath his feet shimmered — cubes shifting, trees forming, and a soft green glow spreading outward like ripples in water.
For a moment, it was beautiful. The sky reassembled itself, and the floating city fragments began to merge.
Then everything exploded.
[WORLD ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED LIFEFORM DETECTED.]
A sound like static screamed through the air.
From the horizon, something massive rose — a creature made entirely of corrupted data, eyes flickering like dying pixels.
It was a Debug Beast, a creature that shouldn't even exist in the game files.
"Oh, come on!" Kaito yelled. "I didn't even finish the tutorial!"
"Master, it's hostile!" Airi cried. "You must defend yourself!"
"With what, my sarcasm?!"
The beast lunged — a blur of glitching code and roars that shook the sky.
Kaito dove aside, rolling down the hill. His "health bar" appeared in the corner of his vision, dropping by 20%.
"Oh, that's new," he muttered. "Apparently gods can bleed."
[TIP: YOU CAN MODIFY ENVIRONMENTAL CODE.]
Kaito's eyes widened. "Wait… I can hack the world?"
"In theory," Airi said. "If you can remember your old developer commands."
"Oh, I remember plenty."
He stretched out his hand and shouted,
"/delete_enemy_nearby TRUE"
The beast froze mid-lunge. Its body flickered, screamed in binary, and burst into a cloud of code fragments.
[ENEMY FILE DELETED.]
Airi blinked. "You did it, Master!"
Kaito stared at his glowing hand, chest heaving. "Okay. Maybe this god thing isn't so bad after all."
When the dust settled, a message appeared in front of him:
[QUEST UNLOCKED: REBUILD THE WORLD.]
[REWARD: RESTORE SYSTEM STABILITY / ACCESS FULL GOD POWERS.]
"Rebuild the world, huh?" Kaito muttered, looking out over the fractured horizon.
Chunks of floating cities, broken NPCs, frozen monsters — a dead digital universe waiting for a player.
Airi floated beside him. "Master, it seems this world was abandoned long ago. But… something else is here."
"Something else?"
"Yes. A user."
"What? That's impossible. Eclipse servers were shut down years ago."
"And yet… someone just logged in."
A faint notification appeared in the air.
[NEW PLAYER DETECTED: USERNAME — ZERO.]
Kaito's breath caught.
No one should be here.
No one could be here.
Unless… this wasn't just a game anymore.
He looked up at the fractured sky.
"Well," he said with a grin, "if I'm stuck in here, I might as well beat the game again."
[SYSTEM: QUEST STARTED — "REBIRTH OF A GOD."]
And somewhere in the distance, behind the corrupted clouds,
a pair of glowing red eyes opened.
End of Chapter 1