The Silence That Followed Was Louder Than the War Itself.
Rishi stood frozen as his corrupted double vanished in a flicker of glitched static, leaving behind a burnt patch of earth and ten infected victims—now lifeless, drained of data and soul. Their skin shimmered with zeroes and ones before crumbling to ash.
He clenched his fists. They were once people—camp members. Survivors.
"He's not just a threat… he's a virus."
And worse, he was him.
The Council of the Broken Node
Inside the Safe Node war room, blueprints of old code clusters lit up the walls. Holographic maps projected data points from across the Indian subcontinent. Red zones were increasing.
Every time his corrupted self, now dubbed "Glitch-Rishi," appeared… something in reality snapped. Roads rewrote themselves. Forests looped in impossible geometry. Animals and humans merged into codebound creatures — infected hybrids. Abominations.
Saanvi paced the floor, adrenaline high.
"He's using a Trainer version we've never seen before. V3.2? That never existed."
Nyra crossed her arms, her white eyes pulsing faintly. "Not in your timeline."
"What does that mean?" Rishi asked.
Nyra stepped forward, tone grave. "He's you from a timeline where the Trainer never broke… where you never showed restraint."
Rishi's voice dropped. "Then how do we stop someone who knows every trick I could use?"
Reclaiming Power… the Real Way
They had no cheats. No immortality. No copied skills. Not anymore.
Rishi had only one thing left—his memory.
He remembered a fragment—an unstable file buried beneath the ruins of Old Delhi University, once the portal's impact site. A Trainer Debug Room.
A hidden dev node.
Z1 confirmed the anomaly. A pocket space. Buried in corrupted layers of real-world architecture and quantum data.
It was a trap if Glitch-Rishi got there first. But if Rishi reached it… he might reclaim a part of the Trainer. Not the cheat tool — the source key.
"Gear up," he said. "We leave at dawn."
A Squad Built on Broken Lines
Rishi assembled a strike team:
Saanvi, still glitching, her nerves fighting back corruption.
Z1, half AI, half-human—an unstable firewall given flesh.
Nyra, the ghost girl with knowledge of alternate Trainers and forbidden data.
And lastly, Rehan — a survivor boy Rishi had saved months ago, now trained with old-school weapons and raw instinct. He had no powers. Just loyalty.
"If we die, we die unplugged," Rehan said with a grin. "Like real gamers."
The Journey Through Ruined Delhi
Their journey through post-Portal Delhi was horrifying.
Buildings looped. Gravity bent sideways. Rivers of code flowed in alleys where water once did. Glitch-fires burned forever but gave no heat. All the while, mutated creatures roamed—once-humans twisted by rejected Trainer code: centipede-men with browser-window faces, winged police bots screaming in broken sirens.
At night, Rishi dreamed of the Compiler — the simulation's godlike core program watching him.
And always, Glitch-Rishi stood beside it, whispering:
"I could've made a perfect world, brother. You chose to suffer."
The Dev Room — Hidden Level in Reality
They reached the ruined library of Delhi University.
And there, under a broken data-spire, they found it — a staircase of floating code, leading downward into the Dev Room.
Inside, the laws of physics vanished. They walked upside-down. Memory fragments floated midair: Rishi's first kill, his first cheat, his first death.
At the room's center, a holographic console floated — inactive. But Rishi stepped forward, and it recognized him.
::ROOT ACCESS PENDING…
Nyra stepped back. "If you take this power, the Compiler will notice. It will send a Root Wipe."
"Then we take it first," Rishi said. "Before he does."
But then—
BOOM!
The ceiling exploded.
And Glitch-Rishi descended, wearing armor made of digitized bone and corrupted command lines.
He smiled.
"You really thought I wouldn't beat you here?"
The Final Duel Begins… But Not How You Think
Weapons rose. Z1 fired lasers. Saanvi leapt into the air, her fist bursting with corrupted energy. Rehan swung his old-fashioned blade.
But Glitch-Rishi didn't fight.
He absorbed.
Every hit made him stronger. He laughed — mocking. He summoned corrupted clones of Rishi's past victims, forcing the team to fight hallucinations of people they couldn't bear to hurt.
"This is why I win," Glitch-Rishi said. "Because you still care."
And then… he struck.
Z1 exploded in static, his body shattering into data crystals.
Nyra screamed, eyes white, glitching out.
Saanvi dropped, her code finally destabilizing.
Only Rishi and Rehan remained.
"Take the key," Rishi yelled. "Go!"
But Rehan refused.
"I'm not leaving another hero behind."
They ran toward the central console as Glitch-Rishi raised his palm to unleash a world-ending beam.
Rishi touched the hologram.
::ROOT ACCESS GRANTED. BACKUP TRAINER CORE ENABLED.
The console asked:
"Which module do you want to restore?"
And Rishi smiled.
"None. Let's rewrite everything from scratch."
End of Chapter 2