Sleep had become a rare and welcome peace. In my dreams, I wasn't a glitched player or a resident of a city made of dead data. I was just… me. The sleep was deep, dreamless, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I felt truly rested.
That peace was shattered not by a sound, but by a presence.
It was a weight in the room, a pressure that settled deep in my bones, as tangible as the rough-spun blanket covering me. It was the scent of cool stone, dry earth, and the faint, sharp tang of ozone. It was the feeling of a mountain having silently materialized at the foot of my bed.
My eyes snapped open.
The Builder was standing there, a dark, solid silhouette against the faint light filtering through my window. His unkempt hair was shadowed, but his eyes… his eyes were sharp and focused, carrying an exhaustion so profound it seemed to have been carved into his very soul. He wasn't looking at me with anger or disappointment. He was looking at me with the same intense, pragmatic focus he gave his blueprints.
My heart seized in my chest, a frantic, panicked drumbeat against my ribs. My mind scrambled, trying to process the impossible sight. The Builder? In my room? At this hour? A hundred terrified thoughts crashed through my head at once. Did I do something wrong? Did I break the wall yesterday? Am I being kicked out of the faction?
I shot upright in bed, the blanket pooling around my waist. "Builder! Sir! I—"
"I have a mission for you, Kael."
His voice was low and calm, cutting through my panicked stammering as easily as a diamond cuts glass. There was no preamble, no polite greeting. Just a simple, direct statement of fact. It was so utterly different from Lyra's gentle morning calls that the gravity of the situation hit me with the force of a physical blow.
This was not a daily chore. This was not a routine task. Lyra handled the day-to-day. The fact that the Builder himself, the rarely-seen, almost mythical founder of this city, had come to my room personally… this was something else entirely. This was important. More important than delivering a document, more important than my own registration.
I managed to calm the frantic hammering of my heart, forcing myself to take a slow, steadying breath. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my mind now sharp and focused. "A mission? What is it?"
"It concerns the future of this city," he began, his gaze drifting toward the window, as if he could see every soul residing within his creation. "The influx of deleted characters is increasing. The data stream is stronger than my initial projections allowed for. At the current rate, this city will exceed its maximum sustainable capacity within the next few cycles."
I tried to picture it. The bustling plaza, the crowded markets, the ever-growing roster of adventurers. The city felt alive, but I hadn't considered that it could become too alive. That it could collapse under its own weight.
"We need more space," he continued, his gaze returning to me. "We need to expand. And for that, I need you to scout a suitable location."
"Scout?" I repeated, the word feeling foreign in my mouth. "Where? I thought this city was the only safe zone."
"It is," he confirmed. "Which is why the expansion must take place in the wasteland."
The wasteland. The word alone sent a chill down my spine. The desolate, broken landscape where I had first woken up, where I had fought the High Orc. A place of corrupted data and unlisted monsters. The idea of building anything there, let alone a new part of the city, seemed insane.
A logical question, born from my recent days of labor, immediately sprang to mind. "But… why? Why the wasteland? I've been working on the outer walls with Fen. There are miles and miles of empty, stable land just outside the city. Why not just… build outward? Extend the walls?"
For the first time, the Builder's impassive expression shifted. He looked at me, truly looked at me, and his eyes held a seriousness that was heavier than any stone I had ever lifted.
"Because I can't," he said, and the words were quiet, but they held the crushing weight of an absolute, unbreakable law. "This world… this city… it is all data, Kael. Code and information, structured and given form. Think of this entire city, this zone we live in, as a single, massive file on a server. It has a finite size. A limit to how much data it can hold."
He took a step closer, and for a moment, I felt like a student in the presence of a master artisan, about to be taught a fundamental secret of his craft.
"Every building I raise, every wall I mend, every street I pave… it adds to that file. It increases its size. For a long time, I have been optimizing, compressing, finding ways to build more with less. But the limit is a hard one. A fundamental parameter of this world's architecture." He let out a slow breath, a sound of profound weariness. "I have reached the building limit. I cannot add a single new brick to this zone without risking a cascade failure. The entire city's data structure could become unstable. It would collapse."
The revelation was staggering. The Builder, the man who had seemed like a god, who could raise structures from the very earth with a thought, was bound by rules just like everyone else. His power wasn't infinite. He was a master programmer working with a limited amount of hard drive space.
"So… the wasteland?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
"The wasteland is a different partition," he explained, the technical terms feeling strangely appropriate. "A vast, corrupted, and mostly empty server. The data there is chaotic, unstable. But there are pockets. Small zones where the underlying code is solid, where the foundation is strong enough to build upon. Your mission is to go out there and find one."
He saw the next question in my eyes before I could even ask it. "Why you?"
"During your trial," he said, his sharp gaze making me feel transparent, "you did not simply defeat the golem. When you channeled the orb's power into the floor, you weren't just breaking stone. You were temporarily rewriting the arena's environmental data. You were accessing the world on a level that no one else here can." He gestured vaguely toward my pocket, where the orb rested. "That lineage orb is more than a weapon. It's a key. It allows you to 'read' the code of this world in a way, to feel the stability or instability of the data around you."
My mind reeled. The strange connection I'd felt with the wall, the way I had mended it… it hadn't just been a new kind of magic. It was me, interacting with the world's base code.
"I need you to find a stable foundation, Kael," the Builder said, his voice now low and urgent. "A plot of land in the wasteland where the data is clean, solid, and large enough to support a new district. When you find it, you will plant a beacon. I will then be able to establish a stable teleporter, linking the new zone seamlessly to this one. We will create our own space."
The scale of the task was immense. He wasn't just asking me to be a scout. He was asking me to be a pioneer. To find the ground upon which the future of their entire civilization would be built. I, the glitched newcomer, was being entrusted with the single most important task in the city.
He turned to leave, his presence already receding. "Lyra will provide you with the beacon and supplies. The fate of many rests on this. Do not fail."
He was gone. Not through the door, but simply… gone. One moment he was there, a solid, overwhelming presence, and the next, only the faint scent of ozone and the heavy weight of his words remained.
I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time, the pre-dawn light slowly filling the room. My Gold ID card lay on the small table beside me, its luster seeming dull and insignificant now. Yesterday, I had been proud of becoming an official resident.
Today, I had been tasked with ensuring there would be a city left for anyone to reside in. The bricklayer's job was over. The real work was about to begin.