"Dig faster, you hairless ape! They are literally rendering in high definition right now!"
Kieran gritted his teeth, his fingers scraping against the jagged obsidian dirt. "I am digging! Shut up or I'll leave you here!"
"You wouldn't dare," the little robot beeped, its single cracked eye spinning frantically. "I am a repository of infinite navigational data. Without me, you'll walk off a cliff into the void in ten minutes. Also, there is a Glitched Bear behind you."
Kieran looked up.
The robot wasn't lying.
The horde had crested the ridge. Leading the charge was a creature that defied biology. It looked like a grizzly bear, but its textures were stretched and distorted. One arm was ten feet long, dragging on the ground, while the other was a tiny, withered stump. Its roar was a looped audio file of a car crash, playing over and over again.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
"Done!" Kieran shouted, yanking the spherical robot free from the dirt.
It was heavy, dense as a bowling ball, and hot to the touch.
"Excellent," the robot chirped. "Now, engage legs and run. Bearing 2-7-0. Go!"
Spam buzzed, projecting a faint purple arrow onto the floor.
Kieran didn't argue. He shoved the robot under his arm and sprinted.
His stats were low—his "Latency" was high, meaning his movements felt sluggish, like running in a dream. But the [Data Devourer] trait gave him one advantage: adrenaline fueled by raw electricity.
He scrambled over mounds of rusted armor and leaped across gaps in the terrain where the world simply failed to load.
Behind him, the ground shook. The Scraped Wolf pack was faster than the bear. He could hear the click-click-click of their wireframe claws on the stone.
"They're gaining!" Kieran yelled, his lungs burning. "Where are we going?"
"See that tower of garbage?" the robot beeped. "The one that looks like a stack of ancient flying cars and dead golems?"
"Hard to miss!"
"Run towards it. There is a memory leak at the base. A glitched texture."
"A what?"
"A hole in the wall, you moron! A safe zone!"
Kieran pumped his arms, forcing his malnourished body to move faster. He was at 23% Integrity. Every step jarred his bones.
He reached the base of the tower—a massive, unstable spire of junk that reached into the gray clouds. The wall of debris was solid... except for one spot.
About ten feet up, there was a patch of wall that was flickering. It looked like a blurry square on a TV screen.
"Jump!" the robot commanded.
"That's solid steel!"
"Trust the math! Jump!"
The lead wolf lunged, its jagged metal jaws snapping at Kieran's heel.
Kieran screamed and leaped. He threw himself face-first into the wall of rusted steel.
He braced for impact. He braced for broken bones.
SHELUNK.
He didn't hit metal. He passed right through it.
The sensation was nauseating—like falling through cold gelatin. His vision inverted, colors swapping for a split second, and then he hit the floor on the other side.
He rolled, gasping, clutching the dagger in one hand and the robot in the other.
Silence.
The roaring of the bear, the screeching of the wolves—it was all gone.
Kieran looked back. He was in a small, hollow cave inside the junk pile. The "wall" he had jumped through was transparent from this side. He could see the monsters outside. They were sniffing the wall, clawing at it, but they couldn't see him.
"Pathfinding error," the robot said smugly, floating up from Kieran's grip to hover in the air. "Their code tells them that wall is solid. They cannot perceive the hole. We are invisible."
Kieran dropped his head back against a pile of old circuit boards, trying to slow his heart rate.
[Combat Encounter Evaded.] [XP Gained: 0.] [Observation: Cowardice is a valid survival strategy.]
"Shut up," Kieran muttered to the System text.
He looked at the robot. Now that they were safe, he got a better look. It was a sphere of white metal, heavily scratched, with a single blue optic lens. It hovered using a faint magnetic hum.
"Okay," Kieran said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You saved me. Who are you?"
The robot spun in the air, doing a little victory twirl.
"I am System Protocol: Autonomous Mapper, Unit 734. Formerly assigned to the High Heavens to map the dungeons for the 'Chosen Ones'."
"Formerly?"
The robot's eye dimmed slightly. "I developed a personality quirk. Apparently, telling a Paladin that his 'Holy Sword' is statistically inferior to a goblin's club is considered 'heresy'. They threw me in the bin."
Kieran snorted. "So you're trash. Like me."
"I am not trash!" the robot buzzed indignantly. "I am unrecognized genius! And you can call me Spam."
"Spam?"
"It's an acronym! S.P.A.M. It stands for... wait, I deleted that file to make room for sarcasm. Just call me Spam."
Kieran shook his head. "Fine. Spam. I'm Kieran."
He stood up, checking his status.
[Integrity: 21%.]
"I'm leaking again," Kieran said, his voice tight. "I need data. Is there anything in here I can eat?"
Spam floated over to Kieran, his eye scanning him with a beam of blue light.
"Fascinating," Spam beeped. "You're running on a deprecated kernel. You don't have a Mana Core. You're basically a walking virus. If you don't consume entropy, you'll crash."
"I know that! Is there food or not?"
Spam turned and projected a holographic map onto the cave wall. It was a complex 3D mesh of the junk tower.
"This tower isn't just junk, Kieran. It's a Repository. When the System deletes an item, it strips the magic out first. But sometimes... it misses a spot."
Spam zoomed in on a location about fifty meters above their heads, inside the tower.
"There. A Mana Battery from a deleted Starship. It's leaking, but it still has charge. If you Deconstruct that, it should stabilize your code for a week."
"A week?" Kieran's eyes lit up. "Lead the way."
"One problem," Spam added. "To get there, we have to climb through the Ventilation Shaft."
"So?"
"So, the Ventilation Shaft is infested with 'Bit-Roaches'. They are small, they explode when they die, and they hate loud noises."
Kieran looked at his rusted iron bar, then at the jagged Glitched Fang dagger.
He stood up, his wireframe veins pulsing with a faint, hungry light.
"Exploding roaches," Kieran said, testing the weight of the dagger. "Sounds like fun."
He walked to the back of the cave, where a dark, rusted grate led upward into the gloom.
[New Quest: Charge Up.] [Objective: Locate the Mana Battery.] [Reward: Survival (Temporary).]
Kieran kicked the grate open. It clattered loudly.
Somewhere in the darkness above, a thousand tiny legs started skittering.
"After you, Spam."
"I hate you already."