The sky above the Whispering Sands didn't just turn red; it began to pixelate.
Malakor looked up, his ancient, withered face twisting in confusion. The "clouds" were descending, but they weren't vapor. They were millions of tiny, glowing red cubes, cascading down like a digital avalanche.
"You speak of 'DDOS'," Malakor hissed, gathering his green soul-fire. "I know not this word. Is it a demon?"
"In a way," Elian replied, his eyes glowing with the intensity of a dying star. "It stands for Distributed Denial of Service. And you, my friend, are the service."
Elian snapped his fingers.
[Admin Command: /spawn_mob {Unit_ID: Tutorial_Slime} {Count: 50,000}]
[Target_Location: Malakor_Radius_5m]
Malakor braced himself for a grand magical attack. He raised a shield of screaming souls.
Instead, he was buried.
Fifty thousand Level 1 Pink Slimes materialized instantly in a five-meter radius around the Necromancer. They didn't do damage—they did something worse. They took up space. They had collision physics. They had idle animations. They made squishing noises.
Malakor roared, blasting green fire outward. A thousand slimes vaporized, but forty-nine thousand remained, jiggling, pressing against him, clogging his movements.
"What is this mockery?!" Malakor screamed, trying to wade through the gelatinous ocean. Every time he moved, he had to push against tons of calculated mass.
"It's called lag," Elian said calmly, hovering above the slime pit. "Your personal reality is trying to process the physics of fifty thousand independent objects. It slows your casting time. It ruins your reaction speed."
Malakor tried to weave a complex death curse. The mana fizzled. His hand moved in slow motion, trailing a blurred afterimage.
"I... will... consume... you..." Malakor's voice was distorted, stretched out like a slowed-down record.
"You're running at 5 frames per second," Elian noted, checking a holographic graph. "But you're still not crashing. Impressive hardware you've got there."
Elian decided to end it. He couldn't delete Malakor, but he could reformat him.
He flew down, landing on the roof of the half-buried tomb.
"Query! Initiate [Protocol: Dungeon_Instance_Creation]."
"Warning," Query buzzed. "Instance creation requires a Core Anchor and a Boss Unit. No compatible Boss Unit found."
"Force assign," Elian pointed at the struggling Necromancer in the slime pit. "Target: Malakor. Designation: Dungeon Boss."
"Processing..."
The ground shook violently. This wasn't just earth moving; it was the System enforcing a new set of laws on a specific geographic coordinate.
A massive, semi-transparent purple dome slammed down over the tomb and the surrounding dunes, trapping Malakor inside.
The slimes instantly vanished, deleted to free up memory.
Malakor stumbled, suddenly free but breathing heavy. He looked at the purple barrier. He lashed out with a claw of shadow. The claw hit the barrier and bounced off with a metallic ping.
[System Message: You cannot leave the Dungeon Instance while Combat is active.]
"You trapped me in a bubble," Malakor spat, turning to face Elian. "A child's toy."
"Not a bubble," Elian corrected. "A workspace."
Elian raised both hands. The sand around the tomb began to swirl and solidify. Stone walls rose from the dunes. Corridors formed. Traps materialized—pressure plates, swinging axes, dart traps—weaving themselves into existence around Malakor.
The tomb wasn't just a ruin anymore. It was a Level 15 Dungeon.
"You are an anomaly," Elian lectured, his voice echoing off the new stone walls. "You break the open-world rules. So, I'm putting you in a box where the rules are stricter."
Malakor felt a heaviness settle onto his soul. It wasn't magic suppression; it was a Role assignment.
[Role Assigned: DUNGEON BOSS]
[Constraint 1: Cannot leave the Boss Room until defeated.]
[Constraint 2: Loot Table Generated.]
[Constraint 3: Aggro Range set to 50 meters.]
"I am no slave to your text!" Malakor roared. He gathered every ounce of his prehistoric power. He didn't aim at Elian. He aimed at the purple barrier walls. "BREAK!"
A beam of pure entropy struck the instance wall. The purple light flickered.
Elian gritted his teeth, feeling the feedback in his own skull. A trickle of blood ran from his nose. "He's trying to crash the instance."
Elian had to offer a carrot, not just a stick.
"Listen to me, Soul-Eater!" Elian shouted. "If you break that wall, the System will view you as a corrupted file and delete you. Total erasure. No afterlife. No void. Zero."
Malakor hesitated. The beam faltered.
"But," Elian continued, pressing the advantage. "If you accept the Role... you get to feed."
Malakor lowered his hand. "Feed?"
"Players," Elian said, gesturing to the north. "Adventurers. They will come here. They will try to kill you for loot. And when they enter your domain... you can kill them."
Elian brought up a new menu window and flicked it toward Malakor.
[Contract Offer: Guardian of the Whispering Tomb]
[Salary: 10% of all XP lost by players who die in your dungeon.]
[Perk: Immortality. (If killed, you respawn in 24 hours).]
Malakor stared at the floating blue contract. "I... get to kill them? And keep their power?"
"Ten percent of it," Elian negotiated. "The rest goes to the server. But unlike before, the System won't stop you. It will encourage you. You can be the terror of the sands. The ultimate challenge. Immortal, feared, and fed."
Malakor looked at the stone walls. He looked at Elian. Then he looked at the contract.
The "Old Hunger" was vast, but it was also pragmatic. Being hunted by this blue god-being was dangerous. Being a god in his own private castle, fed a steady diet of adventurers? That sounded... agreeable.
"Ten percent is an insult," Malakor grumbled. "Fifteen."
Elian blinked. "Are you... negotiating my terms?"
"I am a Lord of Death. I have overhead costs."
Elian actually laughed. He wiped the blood from his nose. "Fine. Fifteen percent. But you have to drop a guaranteed Epic item every time you die."
"Agreed."
Malakor tapped the blue box.
FLASH.
The purple dome solidified into stone. The chaotic energy around Malakor stabilized. His glitched, red status window turned a crisp, dangerous purple.
[Dungeon Established: The Whispering Tomb]
[Boss: Malakor, The First Keeper (Level 15)]
[Status: OPEN]
Elian landed on the sand outside the newly formed dungeon entrance. A massive stone archway now marked the spot, with a skull carved into the keystone.
The pressure in the air vanished. The integer overflow was patched.
"Query," Elian sighed, leaning against the archway. "Status?"
"System Integrity restored to 99%. Anomaly contained. New Content added to the World Map."
Elian slid down the wall to sit in the sand. His head was pounding like a drum.
"I need a vacation," he muttered. "Or at least some aspirin. Does the Item Shop sell aspirin?"
"Item 'Healing Potion (Minor)' is available for 10 Credits."
"Close enough."
Elian pulled up the Global Map. A new icon had appeared in the southern desert—a purple skull.
He opened Global Chat.
[Global Announcement: New Dungeon Discovered!]
[Location: The Whispering Sands.]
[Level Requirement: 12+]
[Warning: High Difficulty.]
Almost instantly, the chat exploded.
[Xx_Slayer_xX]: NEW DUNGEON! LFG!
[Kaelen_Vanguard]: A new threat? The Vanguard will investigate!
[Merchant_Galt]: Buying Sand-Drake bones! paying top dollar!
Elian closed the window. He looked back at the dark entrance of the tomb. He could hear Malakor inside, laughing—a deep, resonant sound of anticipation.
"One hacker down," Elian whispered, looking at the stars. "But how many more Legacy monsters are out there waking up?"
He stood up, dusted off his coat, and prepared to teleport back to the capital. The Alpha Test was officially over.
It was time for the Beta. And the Beta was going to be brutal.
[End of Arc 1: The System Launch]
Arc 1 Summary & Stats
Administrator: Elian Vance
Admin Level: 2 (Progress: 45%)
World Population: ~380 Million
Active Guilds: 1 (
Dungeons Created: 2 (Riverbend Glitch - Cleared / Whispering Tomb - Active)
Current Crisis: Legacy Magic compatibility issues.