The air turned sharp.
Not cold. Sharp—like it was slicing across Elian's skin even without movement. A high-pitched tone rang in his ears as something beyond the dungeon's programmed design manifested from the darkness.
[Boss Entity Spawned – ID: Null][Classification: Undefined][Threat Level: UNCALCULATED]
Kalith stood frozen beside Elian, her staff lowered. Her eyes flickered with silver code—searching, scanning.
"I've never seen this ID before," she muttered.
The corridor trembled.
From the shadows ahead, a figure stepped forward—but it didn't walk. It glitched with every motion. One frame, it was tall and humanoid. The next, hunched and insectile. The next, a flicker of burning white static shaped like a man with no face.
"Kalith," Elian said slowly, "this isn't a tutorial dungeon, is it?"
"No," she whispered. "This was supposed to be a test. Low risk. Stable data. This... thing? It shouldn't exist here."
The creature paused ten feet from them. No eyes. No face. But Elian knew—it was watching him.
[Entity Message: "You're not supposed to be here."]
[Admin Trace Confirmed. Echo-Level Access Triggered.]
[Debug Protocol Beginning…]
The world around them warped.
Stone shattered. The floor peeled into jagged hexagons floating in a sea of code. Kalith cursed and slammed her staff into the ground.
[Skill Cast: Spatial Stabilization – Tier II]
A dome of shimmering energy snapped into place around them. For now.
"We can't kill it," Kalith said tightly. "It's not tied to this dungeon's loot table or progression flags."
"But it's coming straight for us!" Elian shouted.
"Exactly. It's tracking your Admin status."
The entity raised a hand, and the dome cracked—like glass under pressure.
Kalith pulled Elian back. "You're going to have to do something."
He looked at his interface. It shimmered, unstable. The command line blinked erratically.
>_
He typed instinctively.
> access.sys/command.inject/local
[Command Invalid. Suggestion: access/echo.bypass?]
> access/echo.bypass
For a moment—just a moment—time paused.
The entity froze mid-motion.
Then a box appeared:
[Admin Override Detected.][Do you wish to redirect threat to parallel instance? Y/N]
Elian slammed Y.
The creature twisted violently, like code being torn apart—and then it was sucked backward into a rift of blue light.
Gone.
Silence fell.
[Boss Despawned: Local Instance Integrity Restored]
[New Title Unlocked: "Glitchwalker"][+1 to Luck, +1 to Unknown Stat (???)]
Kalith stared at him.
"I don't know whether to be terrified of you or impressed."
"I pick neither," Elian muttered, breathless. "I didn't even know what I was doing."
"But you did it."
He stared at the flickering text still lingering in the air.
"Kalith… what was that thing?"
She exhaled slowly.
"Not part of the dungeon. Not part of the System. It was a… ghost in the machine. A corrupted entity spawned by your Admin Echo. That's not supposed to happen unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless you're connected to the back-end layer of the System. The one even the creators feared to access."
They climbed out of the dungeon just as dawn broke through the warped skyline. Elian's body ached, but his mind was spinning.
[Level Up – Lv. 2 Reached][Skill: Adaptive Reflex Lv. 1 Gained]
[System Notification: Instance Cleared. Bonus EXP Applied for First Completion.]
Kalith handed him a protein cube. "Eat. You'll need it."
Elian stared at the sky, where a large message now hung faintly behind the clouds:
[The First Update Arrives in 5 Days.]
"I'm starting to think this isn't about survival," Elian said.
Kalith looked up too.
"It's about who controls the rules before the world updates again."
And Elian realized something chilling:This world wasn't resetting.
It was being rewritten—line by line.