Chapter 11: The Hostile Data-Burst
Jera stood in the dark, ruined chamber, his arm still raised from the final blow that had collapsed the ceiling. Millions of tons of iron and slag were now piled on top of the black, anti-systemic crack.
He could no longer feel its presence. The heavy, sick, corrosive feeling in the air was gone, buried under a mountain of his own making.
His [Aetheric Shield] was still sizzling faintly. The few drops of black oil that had spattered onto it were still actively trying to corrode it, even now. This was a power that did not obey the rules of death; it was a persistent, fundamental wrongness.
He had won the fight, but the encounter had shaken him to his core. His Unlimited Inventory—his absolute defense, his perfect-getaway-tool—had failed. It could not store the corruption.
This meant he was not, as he had believed, completely invincible. There was something in the world that could, theoretically, fight him. Something that his System was powerless against.
He had buried the problem. But he had not understood it. And for a man whose entire existence was now based on cold, perfect understanding, this was an intolerable new variable.
He turned to leave the collapsed chamber, his mind already calculating the implications. He needed to find more of this corruption. He needed to find a way to destroy it, not just hide it.
He took one step, and his world dissolved.
It was not a sound. It was not a voice.
It was a burst of information, so vast and so cold it felt like a star exploding in his mind.
A crippling, white-hot agony lanced through his skull. His System interface, usually so clean and perfect, screamed. It filled with static, with corrupted code, with symbols and languages he had never seen.
[WARNING! WARNING! HOSTILE DATA-BURST DETECTED!]
[SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED! UNKNOWN ENTITY ATTEMPTING TO BREACH CORE!]
[...PURGING... PURGING... PURG--ERROR! ERROR!...]
Jera collapsed to one knee, clutching his helmet. The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt. It was worse than the System Trial, worse than the betrayal. This was a direct assault on his very soul.
Then, as if burned directly onto his vision over his glitching System, a new message appeared. It was written in a different font—ancient, stark, and terrifyingly clear.
It was not from his System. It was from something else.
[...THE CORRUPTION IS A LIE...]
[...THE SYSTEM IS A CAGE...]
[...THE TRUTH IS IN THE FRACTURES...]
The three lines of text hung in his vision for three agonizing seconds. Then, they vanished.
The static in his vision cleared. The pain snapped off, as if a switch had been flipped.
Jera was left kneeling in the dark, his breath ragged, his body trembling from the psychic shock.
His System rebooted.
[...Rebooting Multiplier Core... OK.]
[...Scanning... Scanning... Hostile Data-Burst has retreated.]
[Core Integrity: 99.9%.]
[...Data-Fragment... FAILED TO PURGE. Fragment has been logged in long-term memory.]
[...Analyzing Event... Result: Unknown. Source: Unknown.]
Jera stayed on one knee for a full minute, processing.
"The corruption is a lie." A lie? It had felt absolutely real. It had nearly breached his shield.
"The System is a cage." He looked at his interface, his source of godhood. A cage?
"The truth is in the fractures." Like the black, oily crack he had just buried?
He had been so sure of his path. Get strong. Reach Ascension. But this... this changed everything. It implied he was a pawn in a game he didn't even know existed. There were two sides. The Corruption and the System. And this new, third "voice" was telling him they were both traps.
He felt a new, unfamiliar emotion: paranoia.
He had assumed his System was an ally. A tool. Now, he had to consider that it, too, had an agenda.
"If I can't trust the System," Jera murmured, his voice low, "then I can only trust myself."
His System, as if in defensive response, suddenly flashed a new notification. It was not a warning, but a discovery.
[Anomaly Detected. Unidentified object revealed by combat.]
[Location: 10 meters, north-east.]
[This object is NOT corrupted.]
Jera stood up, his body still tense. He walked to the spot his System had indicated. Half-buried in the rubble from his Golem fight, he saw it.
It was a small, thin, metallic object. It looked like a piece of a compass or an ancient tablet, about the size of his hand. It was made of a dull, bronze-like metal he didn't recognize, and it was covered in the same ancient, unknown symbols from the data-burst.
He reached down and picked it up.
The moment his glove touched it, the symbols on its surface glowed with a faint, white light.
[Ancient Relic Fragment Detected.]
[Item: Runestone of the First War.]
[...Scanning... Data is fragmented. Partial translation:]
[...When the worlds were... (unreadable) ...the Weavers tore the Dimensions... (unreadable) ...and the Bleed began...]
Jera's mind seized on the words. The Bleed. The Dimensions.
The "voice" had called the System a cage. The relic spoke of "Torn Dimensions."
This was the truth. This was the real mystery.
He closed his hand around the cool metal. His goal was no longer just leveling up. His new goal was to find the other pieces of this relic. He had to understand what "The Bleed" was, and what this "Torn Dimensions" meant.
Jera stored the [Runestone of the First War] in his Unlimited Inventory. It vanished without a problem. His System had no issue with this truth. It only had an issue with the corruption.
He walked out of the Blood Furnace, his mind a cold, calculating storm of new theories.
He emerged from the rusty factory hatch into the late afternoon sun. As he did, a small, fist-sized surveillance drone, painted in stealth-black, whirred from its hiding spot on a nearby rooftop.
It was Captain Elara Kane's eye in the sky.
Jera saw it. He had known it was there the entire time.
He looked directly at the drone's camera lens. He stood there for a full ten seconds, a silent, black-helmeted figure staring down his hunter.
Then, he calmly raised his hand and gave the drone a small, dismissive wave.
He turned, walked into the nearest subway station, and vanished.
In her office, Elara Kane watched the feed as her target waved at her, and then disappeared.
"He knew," she seethed. "He knew we were watching him the entire time. He's toying with us."
"Captain!" her analyst ran in, his face pale. "The readings from the Blood Furnace... they're... they're stable."
"What do you mean, 'stable'?" Kane snapped.
"The energy fluctuations that prompted the contract? They're gone. Completely. Vanished. The dungeon's energy signature is as flat as a board. It's... 'clean'. Whatever was causing the problem, he fixed it."
Kane stared at the blank screen where Jera's icon used to be.
He had gone into a B-Rank dungeon that was showing anomalous, dangerous energy spikes. He was in there for less than three hours. And he had pacified it. He hadn't just cleared some monsters. He had performed a miracle... again.
"He's not just a powerhouse," Kane said, her voice filled with a new, grudging respect. "He's a surgeon. A problem-solver."
She looked at the last, frozen image from the drone: the black helmet, the cold, emotionless wave.
"I don't care what it takes," she ordered. "I want to know everything about that dungeon. Send in a full S-Rank investigative team. I want to know what he was really fighting in there. And I want to know what he found."