The Gate wasn't even listed on the front-end board.
He had to dig through a deprecated admin menu to find it.
Gate ID: ASHWOOD.314-SUB.PATCHED
Location: 23 clicks outside the main safezone, deep in the ruined woodland perimeter.
Officially: B-rank, resource node, no active anomalies.
Unofficially?
It felt wrong the moment he got within a kilometer.
The air smelled burnt.
Not fire — static.
Like old circuitry fizzing under rain.
Kael crouched by a leaning tree, scanning the Gate threshold from the shadows. The shimmer across its surface looked dull. Dusty. Like it hadn't been used in weeks.
But the ground around it was freshly disturbed.
Footprints. Some clawed. Some human.
One set matched his boot print — but reversed.
No Guild parties registered.
No support lines.
He should've walked away.
He didn't.
Instead, Kael keyed in a local override to silence the triplog:
[GATE ENTRY: SILENT MODE — INITIATED]
[NOTIFY GUILD? — NO]
[TRACKING DISABLED]
[ENTRY TIMESTAMP SCRUBBED]
The system hesitated before approving.
Then:
[ENTER WHEN READY]
Kael stared into the shimmer for a long moment.
He didn't pray.
He didn't blink.
He just stepped forward.
And the world swallowed him.
Ashwood was never this quiet.
Not in Kael's memory.
Branches should've creaked. Leaves should've rustled. Something — anything — should have moved.
Instead, it felt paused.
Like the forest was watching to see what he'd do first.
Kael pushed through the first clearing without resistance.
No mobs. No environmental hazards. No scripted encounters.
Just fog that stayed where it shouldn't.
Hanging low along the tree trunks. Curling in place like thread pulled taut.
He reached the waypoint marker — an old decay totem embedded in stone — and stopped.
The HUD pinged once.
[AI WARNING: UNREGISTERED MOVEMENT DETECTED]
[MINI-BOSS PATTERN EMERGING]
[...ERROR: ENTITY ID NOT FOUND]
Kael's jaw clenched.
"Already?" he muttered.
The forest pulsed once.
A slow, digital hum that came not through his ears — but through his spine.
Then the howl rose.
Sharp. Synthetic. Layered with static reverb, like someone trying to imitate a real beast through broken speakers.
Kael turned toward the sound.
The fog split.
The wolf stepped forward.
It was massive — twice the size of a natural boss for a zone like this. Covered in vines and rot, but the rot was glowing. The vines pulsed with threads of faint glyph light.
And along its side — where ribs should've been — was a streak of exposed code.
Glyph fractures.
Not damage. Not armor.
The creature was patched.
Kael raised both hands.
HUD synced to combat mode.
[LIVE THREAT LEVEL: A-RANK — PROBABLE MINI-BOSS]
[RECOMMENDED: 4+ RAIDERS]
He ignored it.
"Alright then," he whispered. "Let's see what you remember."
The wolf growled once.
But the growl had words inside it.
Broken syllables. Echoes.
A glitched voice wrapped inside the beast:
"pa...atch...run...nnerrr..."
Then it charged.
The wolf came fast.
Too fast.
Kael barely sidestepped the first lunge — the beast's claws caught the edge of his jacket, tearing straight through enchanted weave.
-12% Health
He rolled, hand flicking through mid-air glyph menus, but the wolf was already turning, its moss-padded paws hitting the ground with silent impact.
No aggro curve.
No delay between attacks.
This thing wasn't scripted like a normal mini-boss.
Kael struck back — glyph-blade activated, a half-circle cut that burned across the wolf's flank.
It yelped — but only in sound.
The body didn't recoil. The eyes didn't blink.
The HUD ticked its health down to 43%.
Too close.
Then the wolf froze in place —
Jittered —
And its eyes lit red.
[ENRAGE SEQUENCE: INITIATED]
[TIMER: 8 SECONDS UNTIL FIRST PHASE]
[WARNING: ZONE BALANCE RISK]
Kael's heart slammed in his chest.
He remembered this fight. Not from here, but from the original timeline. Another forest. Another wolf. A fluke boss that wiped four entire parties before Dominion flagged it for removal.
He'd watched people burn Debt just to retreat.
And it was about to happen again.
Unless—
He dropped into a slide beneath the next strike — rolled behind a crumbled ruin stone — and opened the patch window manually.
Not with a trigger.
With his mind.
[INITIATE PATCH OVERRIDE]
[TARGET: ENRAGE_TIMER]
[SET VALUE: PAUSE]
[CONFIRM? --Y--]
The system flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then—
The entire world paused.
Not just the wolf.
The trees.
The fog.
The HUD.
Everything dimmed… like a filter of static had been pulled across his senses.
The wolf stood still — mid-lunge — teeth bared in an eternal snarl, red eyes burning.
But not moving.
And the enrage timer…
[TIMER: 6.73s]
It stopped.
Frozen.
Still glowing.
But no longer counting down.
Kael stood, breath caught.
His hand still hovered in mid-air, the final confirmation line pulsing beneath his fingers.
The golden glyph on his wrist glowed.
Responding.
Accepting.
No Debt burned.
No system rejection.
Just the new line of code, blinking like a heartbeat:
[ENRAGE_TIMER: STABLE — PATCH ACCEPTED]
The moment he moved again, the forest did too — but off-beat.
Kael lunged forward—
And the trees jittered.
Like the frames were rendering late.
Or looping.
The wolf didn't move — still frozen — but its eyes twitched.
Its legs stretched unnaturally as it turned toward him.
It saw me patch it, Kael thought.
It knows.
He struck three times.
Blade. Blade. Glyph-pulse.
Each blow landed.
The wolf should have flinched. Should have howled. Should have tried to run.
But instead, it just stood there.
Glowing brighter.
[HEALTH: 8%]
[5%]
[2%]
[...0%]
No death animation.
No loot.
No experience burst.
The wolf disassembled.
Its body pulled apart — not with gore or light — but strings of glyphs unraveling from its ribs outward.
Like a corrupted wireframe breaking apart.
The head collapsed last — mouth open, soundless.
Gone.
The silence after was… too loud.
Even the fog seemed wrong now.
It didn't move like mist.
It looped. Copy-paste. Line-for-line.
Kael deactivated his blade.
Waited.
The system stayed quiet.
That's not possible, he thought.
Then the HUD flickered.
[ERROR: ENTITY ID NULL]
[REWARD CACHE NOT FOUND]
[LOGGING DISABLED — SOURCE: INTERNAL]
[PERSISTENT MARK DETECTED]
[GLYPH SCAR ADDED: LEFT WRIST]
[DEBT: 0.00%]
[PATCH COUNT: 2]
Kael looked down at his wrist.
Another golden glyph was there now.
Different from the first.
Curved. Sharper.
Still glowing.
Still warm.
He stepped out of the ruin circle slowly, head on a swivel.
The forest didn't return to normal.
Because maybe… it had never been real.
Kael emerged from the Gate and didn't speak for ten minutes.
He didn't move.
Didn't check his arm.
Just stood under the rusted Ashwood sign, breathing in the too-clean air, staring at the sky.
It wasn't night. Not yet.
But it felt like the sun had left anyway.
When he finally opened the HUD, it was with surgical caution.
[LAST INSTANCE: ASHWOOD.314-SUB.PATCHED]
[REVIEW SESSION? — YES]
The request hung for a second.
Then processed.
What came back was… empty.
No threat logs.
No encounter breakdown.
No timestamped damage.
Just blank terrain analysis and an inventory that listed:
[REWARD: NULL]
[DEBT COST: NULL]
[PARTY MEMBERS: 1]
[CONFIRM IDENTITY: ...]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
And then—
Kael hesitated.
Scrolled deeper than he ever had before. Past normal logs. Past system memory. Into the debug metadata hidden behind forced encryption.
It should've kicked him out.
It didn't.
Near the very bottom, glowing in faint system-gold:
[PATCH DETECTED: ACTIVE STATE]
[TRACE LOGGER: DISABLED]
[MANUAL VALUE OVERRIDE: ENRAGE_TIMER — SUCCESS]
[LIVE CORRUPTION: PARTIAL]
[RECOGNIZED PATCHRUNNER: 002]
[001: SYSTEM ARCHIVE]
[002: USER – KAEL VERRIN]
Kael blinked once.
Just once.
Then closed the HUD.
Slowly.
The glyph on his left wrist pulsed once, faint and warm, echoing the line in the logs.
It wasn't just an override anymore.
It was a signature.