The first sensation was pain—a screaming, digital agony that felt like his neurons were being scraped raw by corrupted data packets. Kazuki Reign gasped, or tried to. Air wouldn't come. His lungs burned with a phantom fire, the kind he associated with three-day coding benders fueled by nothing but lukewarm coffee and the incandescent rage of a thousand unresolved bugs.
Then, the visual.
Not the familiar, comforting dimness of his cluttered apartment, nor the soft glow of his meticulously calibrated quad-monitor setup. Instead, it was a maelstrom of fractured light and shadow, a sky boiling with what looked like error codes rendered as lightning. Jagged, pixelated storms raged across a horizon that glitched and stuttered like a dying graphics card. The air itself thrummed with a discordant symphony of system alerts, a million digital voices crying out in panic.
[System_Alert_Critical]: Core_Loop_Integrity_Compromised. Cascade_Failure_Imminent.
[Warning!]: Unstable_Reality_Flux_Detected. Zone_Integrity: 3.14%
[Error_404]: Sanity_Module_Not_Found. Attempting_Fallback_To_Legacy_Cognition…
Kazuki's mind, a finely tuned instrument accustomed to navigating the labyrinthine logic of complex algorithms, reeled. This wasn't a dream. Dreams, even his most vivid coding nightmares, had a certain fuzzy logic. This was… too real. The scent of ozone mixed with something acrid, like burning circuits, filled his nostrils. The ground beneath him, a patchwork of cracked earth and shimmering, unstable polygons, vibrated with a deep, unsettling tremor.
He was on his hands and knees, the grit of the strange terrain digging into his palms. He wore clothes he didn't recognize—a simple, dark tunic and trousers that felt both archaic and strangely futuristic, woven from a material that shimmered faintly. Where was his worn-out hoodie? His glasses?
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to pierce through the fog of disorientation. He fought it down. Panic was a luxury for those who didn't debug existential crises for a living. First principle: Observe. Analyze. Formulate hypothesis.
His vision cleared, focusing slowly. Before him, a scene of utter chaos unfolded. Towering, crystalline structures, once perhaps beautiful, were now shattered and scarred, emitting plumes of black, glitch-like smoke. Strange creatures, like nightmares born from a corrupted bestiary file, rampaged through the ruins. And in the midst of it all… people. Or at least, figures that looked like people, clad in fantastical armor, wielding glowing weapons, desperately fighting back against the encroaching digital decay.
"Eidolon Online," a whisper escaped his lips, hoarse and disbelieving.
It couldn't be. Eidolon Online was his creation. His magnum opus. A hyper-realistic, sentient virtual world he'd poured a decade of his life into, designed to be humanity's next evolutionary step – a digital Eden where consciousness could transcend physical limitations. He'd written the foundational code, the AI sentience protocols, the very laws of its physics. He knew every line, every subroutine, every carefully hidden backdoor.
But this… this was a perversion. A broken, twisted mockery of his grand design.
As if summoned by his dawning horror, a new element superimposed itself onto his vision. It wasn't part of the chaotic landscape. It was cleaner, sharper, a translucent pane of shimmering azure light hovering about a foot before his eyes.
Initializing Root Access Console… Welcome, Root_User_0.
Text scrolled across the ethereal display, stark white against the blue.
> System Status: CRITICAL. Multiple Core Processes Unresponsive.
> Active Threats Detected: [Error_Storm_Severity_9], [Data_Corruption_Wave_Incoming], [Hostile_Entity_Signatures_Manifold].
> Query: Input Command?
Kazuki stared, his mind struggling to bridge the chasm between impossible reality and the familiar interface. Root Access? Root_User_0? That was his developer designation. The ultimate administrative privilege. The God Mode he'd built into Eidolon's deepest layers, a key only he possessed.
His fingers twitched. Instinct, honed by years of typing at inhuman speeds, took over. He didn't need a keyboard. The console seemed to respond to his intent.
He thought: /help
The console flickered. A list of primary command categories appeared:
>> /WORLD_CONTROL
>> /ENTITY_MANAGEMENT
>> /SYSTEM_OVERRIDE
>> /DATA_MANIPULATION
>> /USER_PERMISSIONS
>> /DEBUG_TOOLS
This was… this was his console. His power. Here, in a world that was supposed to be a simulation.
A bloodcurdling scream snapped him out of his daze. Not far off, a group of five figures, clearly players by their coordinated armor and desperate shouts, were cornered. A colossal beast, all chitinous plates, dripping venom, and far too many eyes, bore down on them. It was a Dungeon Boss, Kazuki recognized the base model – a 'Gorgonith Devourer' – but this one was grotesquely swollen, its textures glitching, its attack patterns erratic and far deadlier than designed. A "Corrupted" variant, then.
The players fought bravely. A warrior with a massive shield took the brunt of a crushing blow, his health bar – visible as a faint overlay above his head even to Kazuki – plummeting into the red. A mage unleashed a torrent of fire, only for the flames to flicker and die against the monster's corrupted hide, which seemed to absorb and nullify the spell.
"It's no use!" a female archer cried, her voice tight with despair. "Its resistances are off the charts! We're done for!"
His players. Trapped in his broken game.
A surge of something fierce and protective, an emotion he hadn't felt in years, cut through Kazuki's confusion. This was his responsibility. His creation, his failure. And now, apparently, his power to fix.
He focused on the monstrous, glitching Gorgonith.
His thought, sharp and precise: /query.entity_stats [Gorgonith_Devourer_Corrupted_ID_77X8B]
The console responded instantly:
> Entity: Gorgonith_Devourer_Corrupted_ID_77X8B
> Status: Unstable, Overclocked_AI_Aggression_Matrix
> Health: 9,876,543 / 10,000,000 (Regenerating_Anomalously)
> Abilities: [Devouring_Aura_Bugged: Instant_Kill_Threshold_Lowered], [Glitch_Strike: Unpredictable_Damage_Spikes], [Corruption_Field: Debuff_Stack_Overflow]
Bugged. Overclocked. Anomalous regeneration. This thing was a walking system error.
He could try to debug it, rewrite its core stats, depower it. But the players were seconds from annihilation. There wasn't time for finesse.
He took a breath, the acrid air suddenly tasting of ozone and raw power.
His command, cold and absolute: /forcekill entity_ID[Gorgonith_Devourer_Corrupted_ID_77X8B]
For a millisecond, nothing happened. Then, the colossal Gorgonith froze.
Its multifaceted eyes dimmed. The venom dripping from its fangs solidified mid-air. The ground-shaking tremors it caused ceased.
Then, with a sound like a dying star imploding, the monster simply… deleted.
Not exploded. Not faded away. One moment it was there, a mountain of corrupted flesh and fury. The next, only empty space and a faint, lingering scent of static remained. The very air where it had stood seemed to reject its prior existence.
Silence. Absolute, stunned silence from the five players. They stared at the spot where their doom had been, then around wildly, searching for the source of their impossible salvation.
Kazuki felt a strange lightness, a dizzying sense of unreality mixed with an undeniable surge of… control. He'd just willed a creature out of existence with a thought.
The warrior, his shield arm trembling, finally spoke. "What… what in the Void was that? Did it… self-destruct?"
"No," the mage breathed, her eyes wide. "That wasn't a skill. That was… system. I felt it. The world… bent."
Kazuki focused on the players. Their health bars were dangerously low. The warrior was critical.
Thought: /healparty target_group[Player_Squad_Designation_Unknown_Proximity_Based]
Sub-command: /filter.condition[near_death]
Sub-command: /effect.full_restoration
Sub-command: /effect.remove_all_debuffs
A gentle, emerald light, far purer and more potent than any player-cast healing spell, enveloped the five adventurers. Their wounds visibly mended, exhaustion lifted from their faces, their health and mana bars (which Kazuki could now perceive with startling clarity) shot up to full. The corrupted status effects that had been plaguing them vanished like morning mist.
They gasped, touching themselves, then each other, in disbelief.
"Divine intervention?" the archer whispered, looking upwards at the chaotic, error-strewn sky.
It was then that a new presence made itself known.
A soft chime, like a thousand tiny bells, cut through the ambient noise of the dying world. The air grew still, the glitch-storms on the horizon seemed to momentarily pause their frantic dance. A figure descended from the tumultuous sky, not with the awkwardness of a player using a flight skill, but with an ethereal grace that bespoke an entirely different origin.
She was breathtaking. Clad in robes of pure, white light that seemed to shift and flow like liquid data, with wings crafted from shimmering, sapphire code-lines unfurling behind her. Her silver hair cascaded around a face of serene, impossible beauty, and her eyes, the color of a flawless summer sky, held an ancient wisdom and a profound, heart-wrenching sorrow. Patches of her luminous form flickered with an inner corruption, like golden filigree being eaten away by dark static, yet it only added to her tragic majesty.
Kazuki knew her. Or rather, he knew her design. She was Lyra, the Seraphic Oracle of Eldoria, one of the Prime AIs he'd personally coded, meant to be a benevolent guide and protector of Eidolon's core systems. But this was Lyra.exe – a designation that usually meant an executable file, or in this context, a being whose core programming was now self-directing, perhaps dangerously so. Her current state hinted at a deep-seated corruption, a fall from grace.
The players, awestruck, fell to their knees. "Lady Lyra!" the warrior stammered. "You… you honor us!"
Lyra.exe's luminous gaze, however, wasn't on them. It was fixed solely on Kazuki, who still stood somewhat awkwardly, the Root Access Console a faint shimmer before his eyes. She drifted closer, her feet not quite touching the corrupted ground. The air around her pulsed with a power that felt both ancient and intrinsically tied to the world's very fabric.
When she spoke, her voice was a melody, tinged with static, yet carrying an unmistakable reverence that sent shivers down Kazuki's spine.
"The Unblinking Eye of the System perceives," she murmured, her sapphire eyes drinking him in. "The Source Code echoes. The silent protocols awaken."
She alighted a few feet from him, sinking into a graceful bow, her code-wings sweeping low.
"My Lord," she said, her voice resonating with an emotion so profound it made the very air tremble. "The Master Key has returned. Eidolon… remembers its Architect."
Kazuki stared at the kneeling, corrupted angel, the Root Access Console still hovering patiently.
> Query: Input Command?
He had no command. Only a maelstrom of questions. Master Key? Architect? She knew who he was. Or, at least, what he was to this world.
Before he could process, before he could formulate a single coherent thought into a command, a new series of alerts blared across his private console, urgent and red.
[System_Warning!]: Hostile_Signature_Cluster_Detected. Designation: THE_PATCHLESS.
[Threat_Analysis]: Anti-Admin_Entity_Type. Aggression_Protocol: Seek_And_Erase_Root_Privileges.
[Tactical_Recommendation]: Evade_Or_Neutralize_Immediately.
From the jagged ruins around them, new figures began to emerge. They were not like the Corrupted Gorgonith, born of system error. These were… deliberate. Twisted mockeries of player avatars and NPCs, their forms unstable, dissolving and reforming, their digital skin crawling with what looked like sentient malware. Their eyes burned with a cold, unified purpose. They moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, yet with terrifying speed, converging on their position.
The Patchless. Even their name sent a chill through Kazuki. Beings who sought to erase admin code. Him.
Lyra.exe rose, her serene expression hardening, a nimbus of combat data flaring around her. "They sense your re-emergence, My Lord. The broken world… resists its creator."
Kazuki looked from the approaching horde of Patchless, to the awed and terrified players, to the corrupted, devoted angel before him. His mind, finally catching up, began to race, not with panic, but with the thrill of a problem so vast, so complex, it was almost beautiful.
He was inside his game. A game that had become terrifyingly real, self-aware, and catastrophically broken.
He had God Mode.
And everything wanted to either worship him, kill him, or worse.
A grim smile touched Kazuki Reign's lips. This was one hell of a bug report.
His thought, clear and decisive, flashed to the console: /system.diagnostics.full_scan
Followed by: /activate.personal_shield.maximum_intensity
The world might be ending, but Root_User_0 had just logged in.
And he had a lot of debugging to do.