Kaelen didn't even have the strength to pull his arm out of the Wirefang Hound's throat. He just lay there in the slush of oil and blood, his chest heaving. The silence of the ravine felt heavy, like the world was holding its breath, waiting to see if he'd actually survive the next minute.
"Status..." he wheezed, the word tasting like copper.
The green light flared, brighter now with the influx of fresh T-Energy.
[SYSTEM_INTERFACE_V1.0]
USER: Kaelen (Arthur)
TITLES: The Glitch, The Exile, Root User (Tier 1)
RANK: NULL (NO_DATA_FOUND)
[RESOURCES]
T-ENERGY: 19.5% / 100% [RECHARGE_RATE: 0.1% / HR]
STAMINA: 3 / 100 [CRITICAL_EXHAUSTION]
INTEGRITY: 29% [SEVERE_LACERATIONS / BLOOD_LOSS]
[NEW_ASSETS_ACQUIRED]
Command: [
Data Fragment:
[ENVIRONMENT_LOG]
Alert: High-Volume Mana Discharge detected.
Alert: Biological scent-masking failed.
Warning: Multiple Hostile Signatures approaching at high velocity.
"Velo—what?"
Before the thought could finish, a howl ripped through the ravine. It wasn't a biological sound; it was a digital screech, like a speaker being pushed past its limit.
SCREEEEEEE-EECH!
Kaelen's head snapped toward the darkness of the canyon floor. Six pairs of orange, glowing eyes ignited in the gloom. Then twelve. Then twenty.
A pack. No, a goddamn swarm.
"You have got to be f*cking kidding me," Kaelen hissed. He scrambled to his feet, his left arm hanging limp, blood dripping from the puncture wounds Jax's "send-off" and the hound's teeth had left behind.
The Wirefang Hounds didn't wait. They moved with a terrifying, stuttering speed, teleporting forward a few inches every "frame" as if the local reality couldn't handle their movement.
[THREAT_ASSESSMENT: SURVIVAL_CHANCE < 0.04%]
"Shit!"
He turned and bolted. His legs felt like lead, and his lungs burned with the sub-zero air. Behind him, the sound of metal claws on stone was like a hail of needles.
Clack-clack-clack-clack!
He reached a narrow pass where the canyon walls squeezed together, forming a steep, icy incline that led to a higher ridge. To a normal human, it was an unclimbable sheet of glass. To the hounds, with their iron claws, it was a staircase.
Kaelen looked at his T-Energy. 19.5%.
He reached the base of the incline and turned. The lead hound—a massive, scarred beast with half its face missing—leaped. Its jaws snapped inches from Kaelen's throat.
Now or never.
Kaelen slammed his good hand against the icy ground of the slope. "Sudo!
[EXECUTING...]
[T-ENERGY: 19.5% -> 9.5%]
The surface of the incline didn't change visually, but the physics engine of the world just blinked. Kaelen grabbed a jagged rock protruding from the side of the wall—one he had deliberately left outside his "zero-friction" zone—and hauled himself up.
The hounds hit the slope at full tilt.
WHOOSH!
The lead hound's claws struck the ice, but there was no grip. No resistance. No traction. The beast's momentum didn't slow; it accelerated in the wrong direction. It slammed into the hound behind it, and the two of them went sliding backward like air-hockey pucks.
CLANG! THUD! YELP!
"How's that for a patch, you d*ckheads!" Kaelen yelled, though his voice was thin with exhaustion.
But there were too many. The hounds at the back of the pack saw their leaders sliding and began to leap over them, using the canyon walls to parkour upward. They were learning. They were adapting to the "glitch."
Kaelen reached the top of the ridge, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his broken ribs. He was trapped. The ridge ended in a sheer drop back into a different part of the ravine—a graveyard of rusted Vulkos pipes and ancient steam-boilers.
One hound, faster than the rest, cleared the friction-less zone and landed on the ridge, its orange eyes locked onto Kaelen's throat.
[STAMINA: 1/100]
[CRITICAL_FAILURE_IMMINENT]
Kaelen looked at the massive, rusted steam pipe beneath his feet. It was thick, ancient, and pressurized by some lingering geothermal vent deep below.
[OBJECT_DATA: VULKOS_VAPOR_PIPE]
Status: Overpressurized (900 PSI)
Condition: Rusted / Brittle
Kaelen didn't have the energy for another
Debug mode: ON.
"System... highlight the weak point," he whispered.
A small, flickering red crack appeared on the underside of the pipe, right beneath the hound's front paws.
Kaelen didn't use a command. He used the one thing he had left—his weight. He jumped, landing both heels directly on the rusted valve stem next to the crack.
K-POW!
The pipe didn't just leak; it exploded. A jet of superheated, high-pressure steam erupted like a dragon's breath.
HISSSSSSSSSS!
The hound was blasted backward, its synthetic fur melting instantly as it was tossed off the ridge like a ragdoll. The steam created a massive, opaque curtain of white fog, obscuring Kaelen from the rest of the pack.
[T-ENERGY: 5%]
[STAMINA: 0]
Kaelen rolled off the ridge, falling into the soft, soot-covered trash heaps of the lower ravine. He tumbled down a mountain of rusted gears and discarded armor plates, finally coming to a stop in the shadows of a massive, hollowed-out boiler.
He crawled inside the iron shell, his breath coming in jagged gasps. He was hidden. For now.
"F*cking... hell..." he panted, curling into a ball as the cold began to seep back in. "I need... a better... dev environment."
As his eyes began to close, he saw a flickering light deep within the trash pile. Not a monster. Not a glow.
A fire.
And sitting by it, a small girl with a terrified expression, holding a jagged piece of metal like a dagger.
[ENTITY_DETECTION...]
Name: Elara...