The corruption spread.
Ethan could feel it, a strange pulse beneath his skin, something otherworldly creeping through his code. His HUD glitched at random, numbers and symbols flashing for a fraction of a second before vanishing.
He clenched his fists.
> What did he do to me?
Aya and Player_0001 were watching him closely.
Aya's voice was tense. "You're still flickering. We need to get you checked out."
Player_0001 crossed his arms. "A normal scan won't work. This isn't just a bug—it's System-level interference."
Ethan exhaled slowly, pushing down the rising panic. "So what the hell do we do?"
A pause.
Then Player_0001 spoke, his voice low. "We find an Administrator."
Aya stiffened. "Are you insane? The last time we ran into one, we barely made it out alive!"
Player_0001 didn't flinch. "We don't have a choice. If the Forgotten Administrator marked him, then the modern System will see him as anomalous data. It's only a matter of time before the System itself tries to—"
> [SYSTEM ALERT: USER ANOMALY DETECTED]
[INITIATING PURGE PROTOCOL]
Ethan barely had time to react before the sky fractured.
---
The Purge Protocol
The air itself shattered as lines of code tore through the sky, rewriting reality.
From above, System Enforcers descended.
They were unlike normal NPCs—cold, mechanical, covered in black armor with glowing blue visors. Their bodies hummed with pure System energy, weapons charged with stabilizing code.
> [EXECUTE: TERMINATE GLITCHED USER]
Aya swore. "We don't have time for this!"
Ethan's heartbeat spiked as the first Enforcer raised its hand—a spear of light forming in its palm.
The Purge had begun.
Ethan barely dodged as the spear slammed into the ground, leaving a burning crater. The shockwave sent him stumbling, his HUD flashing red.
> [SYSTEM ATTACK REGISTERED]
[ERROR: USER DATA UNSTABLE]
Another Enforcer lunged, its weapon humming with energy. Ethan raised his blade instinctively—but his sword phased through the Enforcer's attack.
> It didn't even register his block.
His eyes widened. The System wasn't recognizing him as a real player anymore.
"Shit—!"
The Enforcer's next strike went straight through his chest.
For a moment, Ethan expected pain. Expected to die.
But—nothing.
The spear phased through him, like he wasn't even fully there.
The Enforcer hesitated.
> [ERROR: TARGET INCOMPLETE]
[WARNING: USER DATA UNDEFINED]
Ethan's breathing was sharp.
Aya's gun roared, bullets tearing through the Enforcers, but their System shields deflected the damage.
Player_0001 moved like a shadow, weaving between attacks, a glowing sigil forming around his hands. He slammed his palm onto an Enforcer's chest—data exploded outward, disrupting the construct for a moment.
But there were too many.
And then—
> [WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED USER DETECTED]
[ERROR: CORRUPTION LEVEL—3%]
A cold pulse ran through Ethan's body. His vision distorted.
And then—
The world bent.
---
The System Rejects Him
Ethan's feet left the ground as glitched energy exploded outward from his body.
The Enforcers froze.
> [ERROR: SYSTEM DOES NOT RECOGNIZE TARGET]
The ground cracked beneath him, flickering between different terrains—for a brief moment, he was standing on a stone bridge, then a ruined battlefield, then a futuristic metal floor. The System couldn't decide where he belonged.
Ethan gritted his teeth, trying to regain control—but the void beneath reality was leaking through.
For a brief second, he saw something moving inside it.
A shape. A presence.
Watching.
The Forgotten Administrator.
His voice slithered into Ethan's mind.
> "The System no longer knows what you are."
Ethan gasped.
> "You are free."
And then—
The world snapped back into place.
---
Aftermath: The Cost of Being Broken
When Ethan hit the ground, the Enforcers were gone.
Aya rushed to his side. "Ethan! What the hell just happened?"
He was breathing hard, his hands shaking. His health bar was flickering in and out of existence.
Player_0001 stared at him. "You're not part of the System anymore."
Ethan looked at his reflection in a broken piece of metal.
His eyes had changed.
For a split second, they glowed with shifting code.
Aya whispered. "Ethan… what are you turning into?"
He didn't have an answer.
But deep inside, he knew—
He wasn't human anymore.
The Edge of Existence
Ethan sat in silence, staring at his trembling hands. The data fluctuations in his vision had calmed, but something inside him still felt off—like his very presence in the world was… wrong.
Aya and Player_0001 were nearby, keeping their distance. Not out of fear. Not yet. But there was hesitation in Aya's eyes, and that was almost worse.
"Say something," Ethan muttered, breaking the silence.
Aya crossed her arms. "I don't know what to say."
Player_0001 exhaled. "You broke something fundamental, Ethan. The System isn't just rejecting you—it's failing to define you. That shouldn't be possible."
Ethan scoffed, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah? Well, guess what? It just happened."
Aya took a slow breath, choosing her words carefully. "So what does this mean? Can he still fight? Can he still level up?"
Player_0001 hesitated. "I don't know."
That made Ethan's stomach drop.
He opened his status screen—or at least, he tried.
But instead of his usual stats…
> [ERROR: USER DATA NOT FOUND]
[WARNING: SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED]
[RECALIBRATING…]
The words flickered, shifting through different error messages. Then, his HUD vanished completely.
Ethan's breath hitched.
No health bar. No level. No skills.
Nothing.
Aya must've seen the panic on his face. "Ethan?"
"I—" He exhaled, trying to stay calm. "I don't have stats anymore."
Aya's eyes widened. "What?"
Ethan clenched his fists. "No level. No health bar. No system logs. It's all gone."
A long silence.
Then Player_0001 murmured, "No… you're not gone. You've just… changed."
Ethan looked up sharply. "What the hell does that mean?"
Player_0001 turned, motioning for them to follow. "We're going to find out."
---
Anomaly's Refuge
They traveled through the ruins of an abandoned System outpost, its architecture warped by the passage of broken code. Here, the air shimmered with fragments of past updates, pieces of past versions of reality that had been erased.
But not completely.
Aya frowned. "Where are we going?"
Player_0001 glanced at Ethan. "To the only place that might have answers. A refuge for those the System abandoned."
Ethan's brows furrowed. "You mean there are others like me?"
"Not exactly," Player_0001 admitted. "But you're not the first to be broken."
They reached an old terminal, flickering with ancient code. Player_0001 tapped a sequence into the console.
The air shimmered.
And then—a doorway formed out of nothing.
Ethan took a step back. "That's a—"
"A gateway," Player_0001 confirmed. "To a place outside the System's watch."
Aya looked wary. "And you're sure it's safe?"
"No," Player_0001 said bluntly. "But if Ethan wants to survive… he needs to step through."
Ethan hesitated.
His hands still felt wrong. His body felt off.
The System didn't recognize him anymore.
If he stayed out here… would reality itself eventually erase him?
He swallowed hard. Then—he stepped forward.
And into the unknown.
The Hollow Nexus
The moment Ethan stepped through the gateway, the world around him fractured.
Reality twisted.
His body felt weightless, like he was floating through a void of shifting colors—glitching code and distorted landscapes flashing past his vision. For a split second, he saw other places, other fragments of reality that had been left behind.
> A battlefield frozen mid-explosion.
A city that never existed.
A throne room with no king.
Then—darkness.
And then—
He landed.
The ground beneath him was cold stone, cracked and ancient, glowing with faint symbols that pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
A voice echoed. "Another one?"
Ethan spun around.
Figures stood in the distance—humanoid, but not quite human. Their forms were unstable, flickering between different versions of themselves. Some were clad in ancient armor, others wore the tattered remnants of modern clothing.
All of them were like him.
Stat-less. Forgotten.
Broken.
Aya and Player_0001 stepped through behind him.
Aya tensed, gripping her gun. "Where the hell are we?"
Player_0001's voice was quiet. "The Hollow Nexus."
---
The Forgotten Ones
The Hollow Nexus was a vast, crumbling ruin—a sanctuary where those who had been erased by the System had gathered.
The air was thick with fragments of lost code, remnants of abilities and items that no longer existed. A sword hovered in midair, endlessly shifting between forms. A book turned its pages by itself, displaying languages that had never been written.
One of the figures stepped forward.
He was tall, his body half-transparent, shifting between two different versions of himself—one with silver hair, the other with jet-black.
"You're new," the figure said, his voice layered, like two people speaking at once.
Ethan straightened. "And you are?"
A pause.
Then—"We have no names anymore. The System erased them."
Ethan's pulse quickened.
The man tilted his head. "But if you still remember yours… you're not fully gone yet."
Aya frowned. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The nameless man ignored her. His shifting gaze locked onto Ethan.
"You're not like the others," he said. "You weren't just erased. You were…"
He hesitated.
Then—"Rewritten."
---
Anomalies and Corruptions
Ethan felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"Rewritten?" he repeated. "What does that mean?"
The man turned, gesturing for them to follow.
"Come," he said. "You need to understand what you are now."
They walked through the ruins, past figures who no longer belonged to the world. Some were barely clinging to form, their bodies flickering like dying embers. Others whispered to themselves, trying to remember things the System had taken from them.
"You are an anomaly now," the man explained. "But unlike the rest of us, you were touched by something… deeper."
"The Forgotten Administrator," Ethan muttered.
The man's eyes flashed. "Then your fate is worse than ours."
Ethan clenched his jaw. "Why?"
The man stopped, pointing toward a massive, shattered mirror at the center of the Nexus.
Ethan stared.
For a second, he saw his reflection.
Then—it changed.
The mirror showed something else. A version of him that wasn't quite human anymore—his eyes glowing with unstable energy, his form shifting between different realities.
Aya took a sharp breath. "Ethan…"
The nameless man's voice was grim.
"You are no longer a player."
Ethan's throat tightened. "Then what am I?"
The man's gaze was heavy.
"You are something the System cannot define."
"You are the Last Corruption."