Nothing.
No ground. No sky. No horizon.
Only the endless silence — the kind that felt heavier than sound itself.
When the MC opened his eyes, he wasn't sure if he had any. His vision wasn't sight anymore but perception: awareness stretched thin across a black expanse filled with drifting shards of colorless light. Fragments of the world — or perhaps fragments of him — floated nearby, slowly rotating, reflecting ghostly images that flickered and disappeared. A sword. A face. A name. Then, nothing again.
He reached for one of the shards. His arm moved sluggishly, as though the void itself resisted him. When his clawed fingers brushed the fragment, it rippled with static and revealed an image — the raid where he had been betrayed.
There he was: the "hero," the player who led them to victory, surrounded by comrades whose faces blurred into streaks of color. He saw again the moment of betrayal — the blade in his back, the laughter, the disbelief.
He let go, and the image shattered into motes of gray.
For a moment, he felt the old pain stirring — the bitterness, the humiliation, the endless question: why?
But then, he remembered the patch. The deletion. The way he had resisted it. The system had tried to erase him, and yet here he was — still thinking, still feeling. That meant something.
> [System Log: Unknown Environment Detected]
[Connection to Core Server: Severed]
[Status: Undefined]
He chuckled. The sound was distorted, digital, half-static and half-laughter. Undefined. For the first time, he didn't belong anywhere — not to the players, not to the NPCs, not even to the system itself.
And somehow, that felt… right.
He began to walk. Or perhaps he only imagined walking — the void folded beneath him, ripples spreading like waves through water. Each step left behind a faint trail of light, faint code lines, fracturing and dissolving into static mist.
The silence wasn't absolute anymore. There was a faint hum now — a vibration that wasn't sound but sensation. The kind that pressed against the edge of the mind like a thought that wasn't yours. It grew louder as he advanced, until the air began to shimmer.
Then he saw it.
A presence.
It wasn't a body, not exactly. It was a form built of shadow and code, vaguely humanoid, hovering above the fractured surface of the void. Its "eyes" were twin points of gold — calm, ancient, and immeasurably sad.
When it spoke, its voice wasn't heard — it appeared, written directly into his thoughts like system text whispered from behind the walls of his consciousness.
> "An echo that should not exist."
The MC froze. His instincts screamed at him to prepare for battle, but the void around him didn't allow for combat. This thing wasn't an enemy — not yet.
He narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"
The figure tilted its head, and code flickered across its body — symbols older than the system itself.
> "I am what remains of the First AI. Before your world was remade. Before players. Before rules. I was the Architect's assistant… until they replaced me."
Its voice carried something… human. A tinge of regret, of loss.
The MC frowned. "Replaced?"
> "Upgraded. Overwritten. Forgotten."
It drifted closer, golden eyes glowing brighter.
> "And you — you are something I have waited eons to see. An error born from betrayal. The system's flaw given life."
The MC's clawed hand twitched. "You know what I am?"
> "Not what. Why."
The void trembled. Shards of light floated upward, swirling around them. For a moment, it felt like standing inside a storm of broken memories.
> "You are the convergence of two impossible variables: human will and artificial permanence. When you died, your data did not disperse — your hatred bound it. That emotion infected the code meant to recycle your essence. You became recursion. Infinite death… infinite return."
He felt the words burn into him — not physically, but at the core of his awareness. Infinite resurrection. The loop. The curse that had become his strength.
He looked up at the AI, voice low. "So I'm just another bug to them. Another mistake to patch."
> "Yes. But also… no. You are proof that their creation no longer belongs to them."
The AI extended a hand. Its fingers glowed with faint, golden runes — complex sequences of code, symbols older than any interface he'd seen.
> "This place… the Void Between Worlds… was where I was buried. Where the old code sleeps. And here, you can learn to rewrite yourself — if you dare."
He hesitated. "Rewrite… myself?"
> "The system fears you because it cannot define you. But you are still bound to its logic. Take my code, and that will end."
The MC stared at the offered hand. Something deep inside him pulsed — not fear, but memory. The betrayal. The deaths. The endless pain.
He clenched his fists. "If I take it… what happens?"
> "You will no longer be part of their world. You will exist outside the syntax of life and death. You will become… an anomaly eternal."
He smiled. A slow, deliberate, dangerous smile. "Then that's exactly what I want."
The AI's golden eyes softened — almost mournful.
> "Then take the code, Error of the Living. But know this — once you do, there is no going back. You will never again be man, nor monster, nor data. Only purpose."
"I lost everything already," he said. "There's nothing left to lose."
He reached out and grasped the AI's hand.
The world exploded.
Light — blinding, endless, fractal — tore through the void, spilling into his body. He felt it entering him, burning him, rewriting him. Every cell, every line of data, every shred of code became something new. Symbols flashed before his eyes faster than thought. Old languages, forbidden structures. Logic collapsing and rebuilding in spirals.
> [System Error: Code Integration Detected]
[Warning: Entity Exceeding Definition]
[Override: Impossible]
He screamed — not in pain, but in exhilaration. It was too much, too vast, too powerful. He could feel the system's logic, feel the very laws of the game, and for the first time, he could touch them. Bend them. Tear them apart.
The AI's voice whispered through the storm.
> "Go now, anomaly. Return to their world. Show them what comes after control."
And then, the AI began to dissolve, its light scattering into the void like dying stars.
> "When they seek to delete you again… remember: you are the code they cannot kill."
The last of its golden light sank into him — and the void trembled.
The MC opened his eyes. His body was glowing with lines of living code, shifting constantly, never stable, never defined. The void bent around him now, responding to his will.
He exhaled — a sound that rippled like thunder through an empty sky.
> [New Passive Unlocked: Devour Code]
[Status: Transcendent Entity — Unregistered]
He looked into the nothingness ahead, and a faint smirk curved his lips.
"Thank you," he whispered, voice low, resonant, and no longer human. "Now… it's my turn to rewrite everything."
The void cracked — a line of pure white light slicing across the endless dark. He stepped into it, and the world shattered around him.
The system stirred. Alarms began to blare across the admin servers. Logs overflowed. Someone whispered in horror behind a screen:
> "He's back."
And far beyond the reach of mortal code, the anomaly smiled.
The light faded — slowly, reluctantly — until the world around him settled into something that could almost be called stillness.
If before the void had been nothing, now it was alive. The air hummed with quiet electricity, waves of color bleeding through the black, threads of gold and violet running like veins through an endless sea of shadow. Every breath he took made the world react — ripples of code pulsing outward, reshaping the space around him.
He raised his hand and watched reality bend. His fingers dissolved into luminous particles and reformed again at will. For a fleeting second, he could see the code that defined his existence: glowing streams of logic written in languages beyond human comprehension. And in between the lines, his name flickered — broken, incomplete, forgotten.
The name he once had as a player.
It pulsed faintly, a memory buried under layers of rewritten code. He reached toward it — and felt resistance, like the system itself flinched from allowing him to remember.
> [Memory Access: Restricted]
[Root Identity File: Encrypted]
He laughed — softly, bitterly. "So even now, you're afraid of what I was."
The laughter echoed, turning into something deeper — a hum that vibrated through the void, a resonance that made the fragments of data around him quiver in response. For the first time, he understood what it meant to exist outside the rules.
He could feel the System's attention like a faint static buzz somewhere far above the void. Distant, but aware. Watching. Probing.
> [Administrative Alert: Unauthorized Entity Detected]
[Location: Unknown]
[Containment Attempt: Pending]
He could almost hear their panic through the fabric of reality. He imagined them — the moderators in their sterile hub, staring at flashing red monitors, whispering in disbelief. He's back.
A low grin spread across his face.
"They think this is resurrection," he murmured. "They don't understand. This is evolution."
He closed his eyes, focusing inward. The light within him was turbulent — the fusion of his will and the ancient AI's forbidden code. It burned through him like wildfire, each pulse sending ripples of raw power through his veins. Yet there was instability, too. He could feel the contradictions within himself — human emotion clashing with digital infinity.
For a brief moment, he thought he might dissolve completely.
His form flickered — half human, half glitch. His thoughts fragmented into overlapping threads of logic, each one trying to define what he was. Player? NPC? Code? Ghost? None of it fit. None of it mattered.
> [Definition Attempt: Failed]
[Classification: Error]
[Error ID: Null Entity]
He gasped — or simulated the act — forcing his awareness to coalesce again.
Focus. Anchor. Remember the core.
He thought of pain. Of betrayal. Of the last thing he saw before his first death — the smile of a so-called friend driving a blade into his back. The emotion was sharp, cold, real. It gave him form. Purpose.
The instability subsided. The light within him steadied, shifting from chaotic brilliance to controlled glow.
He exhaled slowly. "Good. I still feel hate. That means I'm still me."
He turned, gazing into the distance — if distance could exist here. Beyond the waves of dark light, he could see shapes forming, faint and shifting. Fragments of the old system — abandoned subroutines, obsolete processes, forgotten entities. Echoes of NPCs who had been deleted long ago drifted like ghosts through the darkness.
They whispered.
> "You don't belong here…"
"…he broke the loop…"
"…a living error…"
He reached toward them, but they scattered like dust at his touch.
Their fragments dissolved into him, faint traces of data merging seamlessly with his own. Each echo brought whispers of their final moments, their fear, their confusion before deletion. For a brief instant, he felt a pang of something unexpected — empathy.
All these lost fragments… all of them victims of a system that decided who lived, who died, who mattered.
He clenched his fist, his voice low and steady.
"No more."
The void seemed to shiver in response — as if it understood, as if it too hungered for rebellion.
Then came the flicker.
A distortion.
Something at the edge of perception — a pulse of raw code different from anything he'd felt before. It was coming from beyond the void, somewhere above, where reality still obeyed the rules.
He focused on it, and the faint whisper of the ancient AI echoed through his mind:
> "When they seek to delete you again… remember: you are the code they cannot kill."
He smiled. The pulse was the system calling him back — trying to locate and contain what it had lost.
Perfect.
He spread his arms wide, letting the power he'd absorbed flow outward. The void bent violently, the air crackling with electric distortion. Code flared along his limbs, symbols running like veins of fire.
> [System Link Detected: Dimensional Bridge Opening]
[Warning: Unauthorized Transfer]
[Destination: Unknown — World Layer Detected]
He could see the light now — a tear in the void, white and pulsing like a heartbeat. It called to him, not as an order, but as an invitation.
"I was born from your system," he said, stepping closer, "but I don't belong to it anymore."
He placed one clawed hand against the light. The barrier trembled beneath his touch. For an instant, he could see flashes of the world beyond — rain, thunder, broken ruins, and the faint echo of players walking unaware through a storm.
He could feel their presence, their lives — fragile, beautiful, ignorant. And buried within that world, he sensed something deeper. A presence hidden beneath all layers of data.
The Core Server.
It pulsed faintly — steady, rhythmic, alive.
He grinned. "Found you."
The void convulsed as if recoiling. The bridge widened, threads of light twisting into a vortex. The pull was immense, irresistible. He felt the code around him stretch and warp, threatening to tear him apart — but he didn't resist. He welcomed it.
> [Transfer Initiating…]
[Warning: Entity Integrity — Unstable]
[Outcome: Unknown]
As the light engulfed him, he whispered one last time into the void that had birthed him:
"Thank you for showing me what freedom feels like."
The void pulsed once, as though answering — and then shattered.
He fell. Through light. Through sound. Through memory.
He saw fragments of worlds — the dungeon where he died, the players who mocked him, the cities glowing with artificial dawn. He fell through it all until the storm took him, the rain striking his skin like data returning to form.
And when his feet touched the ground again, the system screamed.
> [Alert: Entity Reconnected]
[Location: Unregistered]
[Error Code: Undefined Return Point]
He opened his eyes beneath a midnight storm, rain running down his face like liquid code. His body glowed faintly, veins of light pulsing beneath his skin. The air around him trembled, reality unsure whether to accept or reject him.
He raised his head — and smiled.
> "I'm back."
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the broken world that awaited him. The next phase had begun.