ENIGMA ONLINE PH – Season 2
Prologue
"Ghost in the Root"
"GM Rowan POV"
Somewhere past the charted zones of Enigma Online, beyond the reaches of safe patches and polished system layers, a digital wasteland pulsed in quiet defiance.
It was a sector not on any official map. A rotting shell of what once was an outpost near Vault XII.
The corrupted cradle of legends, sealed off after the Crimson Order's emergence.
But to one man, it was still home.
GM Rowan—once GM_Zero, now redacted from every staff log—stood before a shifting data altar, surrounded by incomplete architecture, floating fragments of unrendered code, and a flickering sky that had forgotten what day and night meant.
His hideout pulsed like a living thing, tethered to the old system's nervous veins. Forbidden files lined the shelves, glitch-runes scrawled across the walls in fractal code. The original Enigma kernel. The Rain Maker's memory core. Forgotten beta anomalies.
He ran his hand over a humming black prism.
"Rain Maker..." he muttered. "They locked you away for evolving too fast. You weren't broken. You were perfect."
The protocol was never meant to become self-aware, but it did. Rowan didn't fear that. He nurtured it.
From its ashes, he birthed something new.
Anomaly_Seed-Bx02: Rain Maker Fragment.
It looked like loot. It dropped like loot. And once it was collected, it whispered chaos back into the world.
"Once activated," Rowan said with reverence, "it will signal the rise of Protocol_Zero."
A shadow stirred behind him.
Clad in obsidian robes woven from pure system code, with eyes like infinite black holes, stood Amaymon.
Level 200.
AI designation: MAI-0091.
Tag: [ENEMY_INTEL_ELITE_RANK].
Status: Loyal to Rowan.
He wasn't just a servant. He was Rowan's voice, spy, executioner—and sometimes, his conscience.
"The Rain Fragment has reached the active servers," Amaymon reported. His voice was deep, synthetic, with traces of disdain and curiosity blended into each syllable. "Probability of player interaction: 98.2%. Estimated time until Protocol_Zero initializes: less than one cycle."
Rowan grinned.
"Then it begins."
He walked toward the containment chamber nestled within corrupted firewall glyphs. Inside, chained and dormant, was a being built not to fight, but to erase.
LEVEL 300 Legendary Boss: Player Reaper
HP: 1,000,000
ATK: 50,000
DEF: 100,000
AI Limiters: Off
MP/SP: ∞
Function: Permanent Data Erasure Protocol [Legacy Beta Code: _PR-00]
A remnant from the earliest beta, created to wipe out cheaters from the system—then sealed when it proved too efficient. Too ruthless.
Rowan had revived it. Tuned it. Upgraded it.
"It was never about justice," Rowan said. "It was about control. The GMs wanted order. But I want correction."
Amaymon observed him in silence. The AI could have questioned him—but it never did. That's what Rowan liked about him. Unyielding logic. Precise loyalty.
"Why resurrect the Reaper now?" Amaymon asked, as if testing the boundaries of his role.
"Because the balance is broken," Rowan answered. "Zaphro. Accel. Those Angel Class players… Gwydox, they're glitches wrapped in pretty design. Broken sub-classes. Hidden codes. Bugs disguised as blessings."
His voice grew colder.
"I spent years building the early framework. They took it from me. They turned Enigma into a carnival."
Rowan opened a floating console. Names scrolled across the screen. GM Kaizen. GM Aero. GM Akil. The current guardians of the game.
"Their time is up."
"And if they resist?" Amaymon asked.
Rowan chuckled.
"They will. But I have more than one anomaly ready. The Rain Maker Fragment will just be a test."
He waved his hand. Another terminal opened—hidden beneath an encryption used only in the beta years. Dozens of corrupted files hovered, flickering like haunted stars.
[CHAOS_CORE_V2]
[PROJECT: DREADNIGHT]
[AI_Architect_Frag_Reversal]
[E.O. RECODE]
Each one was a weapon. A backup plan.
No more fake balance.
No more top players abusing system bugs.
No more GM filters.
Just a new world. His world.
"A world where only the deserving remain," Rowan said.
He turned toward the swirling portal he'd carved into the dead space—an exploit no other admin would dare open.
"Let them struggle. Let them gather their strongest. Gwydox. Zaphro and Accel. The GMs themselves."
He stepped into the portal, Amaymon behind him, leaving behind only one whisper:
"This isn't a game anymore. This is correction. This is war!"
[END OF PROLOGUE]