Kael didn't go back into a Tower for two days.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly.
It was the awareness that for the first time in his life, every step he took might have consequences beyond his own grave.
The city around Tower Seventeen—District Gray-3—was a patchwork of old concrete and new neon grafted together. Towers had shattered property values, then rebuilt them in weird pockets: one street of high-end Hunter bars next to three blocks of decayed apartments and shuttered shops. System kiosks glowed on every corner, offering quests, maps, advertisements.
Kael walked with his hood up, watching the world through the overlay of Debug Sense.
Bugs were everywhere.
A bus schedule kiosk with a timer that lagged by exactly three seconds. A crosswalk where the System's "safe to cross" indicator sometimes flickered green 0.2 seconds late. A holo-billboard showing Jin Hwa's spear clipping through his shoulder for a single frame every thirty seconds.
Tiny imperfections, threaded through the fabric of daily life.
If the System saw everything as data, then the whole city was just a messier Tower.
He stopped in front of a Potion Vending Node—a squat white capsule decorated with cutesy cartoon flasks. Hunters lined up in front of it, tapping their IDs and buying single-use healing vials for more credits than they should have cost.
A bug icon pulsed faintly near the bottom of the Node, visible only to Kael.
He focused.
[OBJECT: STREET_NODE_POTION_17-G3]
[FUNCTION: DISPENSE LOW-TIER POTIONS TO QUALIFYING USERS.]
[MINOR BUG DETECTED.]
[DESCRIPTION: PRICE ROUNDING ERROR (USER-UNFRIENDLY).]
[EXAMPLE: 9.999 CREDITS → DISPLAYED AS 10 CREDITS.]
[STATUS: UNRESOLVED.]
He snorted.
"So the almighty System scams people out of a fraction of a credit every time," he muttered. "Of course."
The Second Bug quest pulsed.
[QUEST: "SECOND BUG" – USE EDIT_FLAG TO MODIFY A LOCAL OBJECT.]
[PROGRESS: 0%]
"Local object," Kael repeated softly. "Minor flags only. And the Node is definitely local."
He glanced at the line.
No one paid attention to him. Hunters in scuffed gear stared at their UI, mentally juggling quest timers and cooldowns. A kid with a wooden training sword swung it at invisible enemies nearby, accompanied by a faint System tutorial voice only he could hear.
Kael stepped to the side, out of the line, and laid his fingers on the Node's metal casing.
"Inspect object," he thought.
The world dimmed.
A wireframe of the Node appeared overlaid on reality, labeled with tiny tags: PRICE_TABLE, STOCK_LEVEL, USER_LOG, ERROR_QUEUE. The bug icon hovered next to PRICE_TABLE.
He called up EDIT_FLAG.
[SELECT TARGET FLAG.]
[SCOPE: LOCAL OBJECT ONLY.]
[PERMISSION: MINOR FLAGS.]
The flags attached to PRICE_TABLE unfolded like a dropdown menu.
[FLAG: ROUND_UP_ON_DISPLAY = TRUE]
[FLAG: USER_DISCOUNT_ELIGIBLE = FALSE]
[FLAG: MAINTENANCE_OVERRIDE = FALSE]
[FLAG: ADMIN_PRICE_LOCK = TRUE] (LOCKED)
His heartbeat picked up.
He only had one debug point. One shot before he knew what a change felt like.
"Minor change," he told himself. "Nothing flashy. Don't trip any alarms."
ROUND_UP_ON_DISPLAY was clearly the bug. Not critical, not lethal, just greedy.
He selected it.
[EDIT FLAG: ROUND_UP_ON_DISPLAY]
[CURRENT VALUE: TRUE]
[ENTER NEW VALUE:]
"False," Kael thought.
[APPLYING CHANGE…]
[COST: 1 DEBUG POINT.]
[WARNING: CHANGES MAY BE OVERWRITTEN BY ROOT PROCESS.]
[CONTINUE?]
He hesitated a fraction of a second, then committed.
"Yes."
The flag flipped.
The bug icon winked out.
And the world didn't explode.
Kael checked the vending Node's UI. The screen flickered, re-rendered its list of prices.
[MINOR POTION – 9.99 CREDITS]
[MAJOR POTION – 29.99 CREDITS]
[ANTIDOTE – 4.99 CREDITS]
He watched the next Hunter in line tap his ID, buy a potion, and frown.
"Hey," the man muttered. "Prices go down?"
His friend shrugged. "Must be a promo. Shut up and buy while it lasts."
They didn't get any popups. No global announcement. No "Patch 1.3.2: Vendor Balancing."
Only Kael saw the System's response.
[QUEST COMPLETE: "SECOND BUG."]
[REWARD: +1 DEBUG POINT, NEW SKILL.]
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: LOCAL PATCH I.]
[DETECTION RISK: +1.]
The last line pulsed in ominous red.
"Detection risk," Kael said under his breath. "Of course."
He opened the new skill.
[LOCAL PATCH I]
Temporarily modify a minor flag on a local object or entity.
DURATION: 300 seconds (or until overwritten by higher process).
COST: 1 DEBUG POINT (per use).
NOTE: Frequent use may attract attention from monitoring subsystems.
"So Edit_Flag can be permanent in some cases, and Local Patch is temporary," he reasoned. "And all of it is watched."
He felt… odd.
Not just because he'd effectively stolen a fraction of a credit from a vending machine corporation and given it back to the people. But because it had been easy.
As easy as changing a setting in a game menu.
He pulled his hand away and stepped back into the crowd.
New logs flickered faintly, like distant thunder.
[MONITORING_PROCESS_Σ: MINOR PRICE TABLE DISCREPANCY DETECTED.]
[SEVERITY: LOW.]
[STATUS: IGNORED.]
"Good," he murmured. "Keep ignoring me."
He found Joon at The AFK Bar, a cramped place with cheap drinks and cheaper holo-screens. A game show about C-rank Hunters guessing loot tables played on a loop. The air smelled like fryer oil and spilled beer.
Joon waved him over to a booth.
"You look like you haven't slept," Joon said as Kael slid in opposite him.
"I've been… experimenting," Kael admitted.
Joon's eyes lit up. "With the new skill? Tell me it lets you see future loot. Or at least next week's dungeon rotations."
"I changed a vending Node's price rounding," Kael said.
Joon stared.
"Out of all the impossible shit you could do," he said slowly, "you started with a three-cent discount?"
"Three cents multiplied by thousands of transactions is a lot of money over time," Kael said. "Also, it was safe. Minor. No one died if I messed it up."
Joon shook his head, but he was smiling.
"That's such an Analyst answer."
Kael leaned forward.
"I'm serious, Joon. The System isn't just running Towers. It's in everything. Transit. Vendors. Traffic lights. It has bugs everywhere, and no one notices because they think it's perfect."
"I notice," Joon muttered. "Every time my '5% chance to fail' skill fails four times in a row."
"That's probability," Kael said automatically, then froze.
Or was it?
He opened Debug Sense for the briefest moment, glancing at Joon. A faint, tiny icon blinked near his friend's LCK: 5 stat.
He squinted, trying to focus without making it obvious.
[OBJECT: USER_JOON_STAT_LUCK]
[MINOR BUG DETECTED.]
[DESCRIPTION: DISPLAYED VALUE DOES NOT MATCH INTERNAL ROLL TABLE.]
[INTERNAL EFFECTIVE VALUE: 3.7]
"I knew it," Kael breathed. "It cheats on stats too."
"Cheats on what?" Joon said.
"Nothing." Kael dismissed the overlay. "Look. I think I can nudge things. Buff us in ways the System never intended. But every move I make increases the chance it notices me."
"Has it… noticed you?" Joon asked.
Kael wasn't sure.
There had been that brief spike—MONITORING_PROCESS_Σ—but it had ignored the vending Node tweak. Maybe the System was too busy with critical Tower events to care about pennies.
"Not yet," he said. "I think I get a few free moves before something comes sniffing."
Joon drummed his fingers on the table. "So. What's the plan?"
"Plan?" Kael echoed.
"You have debug powers inside the thing that runs our entire world," Joon said flatly. "If you say you don't have a plan, I'm throwing my drink at you."
Kael hesitated.
The image of his sister, pale under hospital lights, rose unbidden.
"I need money," he said finally. "Real money. Tower-clinic-level money. That means higher floors, rarer loot. But I can't survive those with 3 HP."
"So we fix your HP," Joon said, as if it were obvious.
"It's flagged as a permanent anomaly," Kael said. "Major. Trying to change it now is like slapping the Root Process in the face. I'd rather not do that as my third bug."
"Then we cheat everywhere else," Joon said. "Drop enemy stats. Buff our damage. Make traps not trigger on us. Whatever you can pull off."
Kael stared at him.
"You know this could get you killed," he said. "If the System decides we're corruption."
Joon held his gaze.
"I've been one bad crit away from death since the day I put my hand on a Tower gate," he said lightly. "At least this way, I get to die doing something interesting."
The corner of Kael's mouth twitched.
"Fine," he said. "We start small. Floor 1 exploits. If that works, we move to Floor 2. And we don't tell anyone."
"Not even your sister?" Joon asked gently.
Kael's hand tightened around his cup.
"She has enough to worry about," he said. "I'll visit her tomorrow. You and I go back into Seventeen the day after."
Joon clinked his cup against Kael's.
"To bug fixes," he said.
"To patching reality," Kael replied.
They drank, and somewhere far above the bar's flickering sign, unseen processes adjusted priorities by infinitesimal amounts.