Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: Corrupted Beginnings

The world outside the Guild of Rejects blinked like a cracked neon sign—half-backgrounds, missing textures, even sky chunks that refused to render properly. D.J. stood by the warped doorframe, sipping the last of Madison's "stabilizing tonic" while code static danced at the edges of his vision. Every few seconds, his menu would blink out and back in again, refusing to stay anchored. If Eternum had a heartbeat, it was stuttering.Madison leaned on the alchemy bench behind him, flipping through hand‑scribbled pages filled with formulae that read more like chaos equations than potions. "Okay," she said, eyes bright with exhaustion and caffeine. "Now that you didn't explode, we can test the rewrite interface somewhere safe.""Define safe," D.J. muttered."Relatively less likely to get deleted," Ryan supplied. He clattered his broken sword back into its half-functional sheath, a weapon that shimmered between steel and static. "Toro found a dungeon under the market district. It's flagged 'deprecated content,' which means no admins ever check it."Toro grunted from across the room, still hammering new rivets onto his golem's chest plates. "Safe-ish," he corrected, sparks spraying. "Still teeth.""Teeth?" D.J. asked."Everything here has teeth," Madison said, already grabbing her pack. "Most of them used to be furniture."---They stepped outside, the four of them moving through alleys where reality flickered on a ten-second delay. D.J. felt the hum of data currents under his boots—raw fragments of code patched together just to keep the world from unraveling. Other players passed by now and then, most flickering specters more than humans: connection ghosts, trapped echoes from half-crashed instances.The guild's own quest beacon pulsed in D.J.'s HUD: **[Test Rewrite – Objective: Interface Stability 10 seconds or longer]**"Let's make this quick," Ryan said as they reached a sewer grate yawning open at the corner of Aetherport Square. The pavement around it bled texture seams like black veins. "Deprecated Dungeon: Vermin Protocol. Level range: two to four. Watch your footing—gravity bugs down here."As they dropped into the tunnel below, D.J. noticed something new at the edge of his HUD. A faint progress meter labeled **CORRUPTION: 0.01%**. It pulsed once, then faded. He frowned, but said nothing.---The sewer maze glistened, water replaced by swirls of luminescent code. Some bricks simply evaporated whenever he looked directly at them. The air smelled faintly sweet, the scent of ozone after lightning. They walked in formation—Ryan front, Toro rear, Madison muttering test notes while vials clinked at her belt."So… what exactly should I be rewriting?" D.J. asked."Start simple," Madison said. "Find an object with a stable form, apply the Rewrite, and see if you can modify an attribute. Cooldown's unpredictable, so don't blow your fingers off."Ryan chuckled. "Yeah, Cross, try not to crash the map. I kind of like existing."D.J. knelt beside a floating lantern that emitted sickly green glow. His hand tingled as he reached for it, and the cube of light materialized again—his Rewrite core, humming with potential. He focused on the flickering lantern, picturing it steady, golden, warm.The cube pulsed and dissolved, spilling honey‑colored light through his fingers. The lantern's hue stabilized, its flicker smoothing into a steady beam.A notification blinked: **[Rewrite Instance Successful – Environmental Node Stabilized | +EXP 40 | ABILITY COOLDOWN ESTABLISHED (90 seconds)]**Madison clapped once. "Ha! You can patch the world manually! You're literally debugging reality."Ryan smiled—maybe the first genuine one D.J. had seen. "That could save us in a fight."D.J. felt the small rush of leveling—then a faint static shiver snapped through his mind. A voice, distorted, whispered across his neural feed: *"AUTHORITY KEY DETECTED…"* and was gone.He rubbed his temples. "Did you hear that?""Hear what?" Madison asked."Forget it. Probably lag."---The dungeon widened into a large chamber—part cathedral, part data vault. Broken pillars jutted from the code floor, each inscribed with gibberish. At the far end, a pulsing mound of corrupted data writhed, oozing up from a breach in the wall. A pseudo‑rat, ten feet tall, compiled itself from the mess of polygons, its squeal modulated by the sound of tearing circuit boards.**[BOSS DETECTED: RENDERMOUSE V2.7 – LVL ??? – STATUS: CORRUPTED]**"Safe, huh?" D.J. said.Ryan drew his blade. "Stay close and support. Madison, Toro—same as before."Toro's golem lumbered forward, drawing aggro with a mechanical roar, metal plates clashing. Madison hurled explosive tinctures, each blast painting new holes in the boss's junk data. Ryan darted in, his sword trailing light.The beast countered with a screech that shattered three of Madison's vials and sent code ripping across the floor. D.J. stumbled, barely catching his balance as digital wind threatened to unmake them. His menu glitched—health bars scrambled, names swapping."D.J.!" Madison yelled. "Now! Use it again!"His rewrite cube appeared midair, unstable, twitching between forms. He wasn't sure what he was rewriting—instinct took over. He aimed at the Rendermouse's glowing core and thought, *break pattern—stabilize environment—recompile neutral.*The cube melted into blue threads of energy that lanced through the monster. Its polygons peeled away layer by layer, reforming into clean geometry. For a breathless instant, the creation stood reborn—not evil, not corrupted, just… an ordinary quest creature.Then everything seized.**[System Exception – Rewrite Conflict Detected]**The boss split in half, one side pristine, the other solid corruption. They moved independently, glitching over one another like overlapping ghosts. Its HP bar multiplied.Ryan swore. "You doubled it!""Not on purpose!" D.J. yelled back.Toro's golem slammed into the corrupted half while Ryan finished the clean one. Sparks, explosions, and packet tears filled the chamber. Madison hurled what looked like an entire cauldron of glowing acid. The noise peaked into static, and then silence.The room stabilized in a flicker. Both halves evaporated, leaving only a flickering item drop: **[Anomaly Core Fragment x1]**.D.J.'s HUD chimed—**[Quest Complete – Rewrite Interface Stable | +EXP 800 | LEVEL UP → 3]**Madison retrieved the cube fragment, holding it close like precious amber. "The code signature reads identical to your Rewrite object."Ryan wiped digital sweat from his brow. "Meaning what?""Meaning this glitch can duplicate system objects," Madison whispered. "He can copy reality."Ryan's look turned from impressed to quietly fearful. "That's the kind of thing that gets devs sending kill packets."Toro shrugged. "We needed firepower.""Yeah," Ryan said. "Until it decides *we're* errors."D.J. barely heard them. He'd knelt beside the empty space where the Rendermouse had been. One of its eyes—the clear one—had remained for a heartbeat, staring at him with unsettling intelligence before dissolving. *Did it thank me?* he wondered.---They made camp in a rendered‑out alcove just outside the dungeon, firelight flickering against rough data walls. Madison catalogued fragments, muttering about new recipe options. Ryan sharpened his sword—each scrape leaving momentary trails of code sparks. Toro's golem powered down beside him, humming low, a mechanical heartbeat in standby.D.J. stared into the fire and scrolled his stats:**Class: Glitchwalker (Lv. 3)** **STR 10 | AGI 9 | INT [???] | LCK 5** **Skills: Rewrite Instance [Lv. 2] – Functionality expanding.** **Status: Sync Stable. Memory Integrity: Warning.**That last line made him pause. *Memory Integrity?* He tried to open the submenu, but it blinked away before he could touch it."Something wrong?" Madison asked, sliding beside him. She smelled faintly of burnt sugar and static ozone."I think the system's tracking my memory. Like… how much of me is still real.""That's… unsettling," she admitted, then smiled—one soft and tired. "But welcome to the Rejects, where existential crises are daily specials."Ryan spoke from across the camp. "Enjoy the jokes while you can. The sandbox is shrinking. Tonight the purge wave hit zone 7—they nuked half the trade district. If they're cleaning corrupted dungeons, our hideouts won't last forever."Toro nodded. "Need new base. Deeper."Madison looked at D.J. "Guess it's your lucky day. You're the only guy who can rewrite the world map."D.J. leaned back, studying the unstable horizon. The skyline flickered between night and day, one massive rendering bug rolling across Eternum like a weather front. Somewhere out there was the Glitchspire Ryan mentioned—a lighthouse of broken data. He could almost feel it calling through invisible circuits.His HUD pinged one last time before fading for the night:> **NEW QUEST UNLOCKED: The Signal in the Static** > *Trace the unknown source from the Rendermouse logs. Location: Unknown.* > *Recommended Level: 5+*D.J. exhaled slowly. "No rest for the rejected, huh?"Madison grinned. "Rest gets patched out first."Above them, the sky glitched again and, just for a second, words shimmered across the stars: > **"HELLO, GLITCHWALKER."**