The Whispering Woods were aptly named, though Elian suspected the author had spent less than five minutes coming up with the title. It was the standard "Stage 1 Danger Zone"—a dark, misty forest bordering the starting village, usually populated by low-level wolves and bandits designed to help the hero grind their first few levels.
But as Elian stepped past the treeline, leaving the smoking ruins of the village behind, he realized that without a hero to observe it, the world was struggling to render.
To his left, a massive oak tree flickered in and out of existence, its texture replaced momentarily by a wireframe grid of neon blue lines. To his right, the fog didn't drift naturally; it moved in jagged, jerky loops, like a video game suffering from a memory leak.
"The Narrative Integrity is dropping," Elian muttered, stepping over a root that looked suspiciously like a low-resolution polygon. "The world doesn't know what to do. It's waiting for Arthur to walk down this path."
He tightened his grip on the rusty dagger. He wasn't Arthur. He was a glitched file in a corrupted system, and he had no idea if the monsters here would scale to his level or simply delete him.
He walked for ten minutes, his heart pounding in his throat, until he reached a clearing where the dirt path narrowed. According to the standard trope, this was where the first "Scripted Event" usually occurred.
Sure enough, three figures emerged from the bushes.
They were bandits—grimy, wearing mismatched leather armor, and holding chipped axes. They jumped onto the road, blocking Elian's path.
"Halt!" the leader shouted, raising his hand. "Your money or your—"
The bandit froze mid-sentence. His mouth hung open, his eyes glassy and unfocused. The other two bandits stood perfectly still behind him, swaying slightly in a synchronized, idle animation loop.
Elian stopped, confusing battling fear with fascination. "Hello?"
The bandit leader blinked, then reset to his starting position. "Halt! Your money or your—" He froze again.
"Script error," Elian realized, exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding. "They are programmed to interact with the 'Chosen One'. I don't have the 'Hero' tag, so their AI doesn't know how to complete the dialogue tree."
It was eerie. These weren't people; they were broken automatons waiting for a master who was currently headless in a ditch. Elian stepped cautiously around them. The bandits didn't turn to look at him. They just stared blankly down the empty road, trapped in an eternal loop of an attempted robbery.
"Pathetic," Elian whispered. He felt a strange pang of pity for them. "You're just waiting to die for experience points, aren't you?"
Snap.
The sound came from behind him. It wasn't the mechanical loop of the bandits. It was the wet, heavy crunch of a dry branch breaking under a predator's weight.
Elian spun around.
Emerging from the fog behind the frozen bandits was a wolf. But this wasn't a standard Level 1 Forest Wolf. Its fur was matted with black sludge that dripped onto the grass, hissing like acid. Its eyes were missing, replaced by hollow sockets that leaked purple light—the same chaotic color as the dragon's eyes.
[Target Identified: Corrupted Dire Wolf.]
[Level: 3.]
[Status: Aggressive. Unscripted.]
"Of course," Elian hissed, backing away. "The script is broken, so the containment measures are failing. The high-level mobs are leaking into the starter zone."
The wolf didn't howl. It didn't circle. It launched itself at the frozen bandit leader.
With a sickening tear, the wolf's jaws clamped around the bandit's throat. The bandit didn't scream or fight back; he just stood there, stuck in his idle animation, while the corrupted beast tore him apart. Pixels, not blood, sprayed into the air as the bandit dissolved into data.
The wolf swallowed the data, and Elian watched in horror as the [Level 3] above its head flickered and changed to [Level 4].
"It's leveling up," Elian realized, panic turning his legs to ice. "It's farming the glitched NPCs."
The wolf turned its head. The purple light from its empty sockets locked onto Elian. It crouched, muscles coiling for a spring.
Elian raised the rusty dagger. His hands were shaking so badly the tip of the blade vibrated. He had never been in a fight in his life. He was a man who complained about fight choreography on internet forums, not a warrior.
Use the skill, his mind screamed. It's the only thing you have.
"Annotate!" Elian shouted.
[Ink Level: 98%]
[Activating skill...]
Time seemed to slow down. A translucent red line appeared in the air, drawing a trajectory from the wolf's hind legs to Elian's throat. A text box popped up next to the beast's flank:
[Weakness: Previous injury on left ribcage. Armor Class: 0.]
The red trajectory line flashed. The wolf lunged.
Elian didn't think; he obeyed the text. He threw himself to the right, feeling the wind of the wolf's snapping jaws pass inches from his ear. He landed hard in the dirt, rolling awkwardly, but he scrambled up and thrust the dagger blindly toward the spot the system had highlighted.
Squelch.
The rusty blade sank into the wolf's side. It wasn't a clean strike, and there was no majestic sword glare, but the wolf yelped—a sound that was distorted, like audio played in reverse.
The beast thrashed, knocking Elian backward. He hit the ground, losing his grip on the dagger which remained stuck in the wolf's ribs.
"No, no, no," Elian scrambled backward on his elbows.
The wolf snarled, bleeding purple sludge, and prepared to pounce again. But before it could leap, its body began to convulse. The wound Elian had inflicted glowed with a bright, white light.
[Editorial Correction Applied.]
[Logic Error: Level 4 Monster cannot exist in Zone 1.]
[Executing Deletion.]
The wolf howled as its body fractured into shards of glass. It shattered into a million tiny particles of light, dissolving into the wind.
Elian sat alone in the mud, chest heaving, staring at the empty space where the monster had been. He looked at his hands. They were covered in the purple slime.
[Combat Encounter Resolved.]
[Experience Gained: 50 XP.]
[Level Up!]
He had survived. Not because he was strong, and not because he was brave. He had survived because he had used his authority as an Editor to point out a plot hole in reality, and the System had deleted the enemy to fix the inconsistency.
"I didn't kill it," Elian whispered, a hysterical grin forming on his face as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I just reported it to the admins."
He stood up, retrieving his dagger from the grass where it had fallen. The forest was silent again, save for the remaining two bandits who were still politely asking a ghost for its money.
Elian turned away from them. He needed to understand what he was. He needed to know exactly what this "Editor" class could do before something bigger than a wolf decided to show up.
"System," Elian commanded, his voice gaining a shred of confidence. "Open Status Window."