Kieran gasped, his chest heaving as he pulled himself further onto the shore of black jagged rock. The "air" in the Abyss tasted like biting on tinfoil—metallic, electric, and wrong.
He looked down at his hand. The skin was pale, translucent, and flickering. One moment he saw veins and muscle; the next, he saw a wireframe grid of green lines.
[System Alert: Host Stability Critical.] [Integrity: 11%.] [Data Leak Detected. You are fading...]
"Fading," Kieran rasped. He understood immediately. He wasn't regenerating. The energy keeping him existing was leaking out into the void. If that number hit 0%, he wouldn't die. He would just... stop being.
He needed fuel. Now.
He pushed himself up. His knees shook. The gravity here was heavier, pressing down on him like a physical weight. He looked out at the landscape.
It was a graveyard of geometry.
Massive cubes of gray stone floated in the sky, defying physics. A river of static flowed nearby, the "water" made of millions of scrolling numbers. And everywhere, there were piles of junk—weapons, armor, and bones that the System had deleted.
Clang.
The sound was sharp and close.
Kieran froze. He crouched behind a twisted slab of metal that looked like half a tank turret.
[Active Skill: Scavenger's Eye (Lv. 1)]
His vision shifted. The world lost its texture. The gray rocks became green wireframes. The dark sky became a black grid.
And the source of the noise lit up in angry, pulsing red.
It was a wolf. Or it had been, once. Now, it was a nightmare of polygon errors. Its jaw was missing, replaced by a floating jagged knife. Its fur was a matted texture of gray static. It walked with a limp, its back leg phasing through the ground with every step.
[Entity: Scraped Wolf Model (v.0.4)] [Status: Hostile / Glitched.] [Danger Level: Low.]
"Low danger," Kieran muttered, wiping black sludge from his mouth. "Easy for you to say. I'm armed with a mop handle."
He looked at the rusted iron bar he had picked up in Chapter 1.
[Weapon: Rusted Iron Bar.] [Damage: 2-4 Physical.] [Durability: 3/100.]
"Garbage," he spat.
The wolf sniffed the air. It didn't smell flesh; it smelled Data. And Kieran was leaking premium, fresh Data.
It turned its head. The floating knife where its jaw should be snapped shut with a metallic click. It let out a howl that sounded like a modem screeching.
SCREEEEE—
It charged.
"Shit!"
Kieran scrambled back as the wolf leaped. It moved unnaturally fast—one second it was ten meters away, the next it was in the air, skipping the frames in between.
Lag, Kieran realized. It's skipping frames.
He rolled to the left. The wolf crashed into the tank turret where he had been standing, sparks flying. The impact shook the ground.
Kieran didn't run. He couldn't outrun a creature that teleported.
He lunged forward.
"Scavenger's Eye!" he screamed in his mind.
Time seemed to slow. As the wolf recovered from its miss, Kieran saw it—not the metal, not the fur, but the Code.
A bright, glowing red line ran down the wolf's spine. A text box hovered over it, invisible to anyone else.
[Code Flaw Detected: Texture Seam.] [Structural Integrity: Null.]
It was a gap in the armor. A place where the developer forgot to stitch the model together.
The wolf turned, snarling, preparing to lunge again.
Kieran didn't swing the iron bar like a club. He didn't have the strength to pierce metal.
He jammed the tip of the bar directly into the glowing red line on the spine.
[Contact Established.] [Skill: Deconstruct.]
Kieran didn't try to hurt the wolf. He poured his will into the iron bar, shouting a single command into the universe's terminal.
"BREAK."
[Command Accepted.]
The effect was instant and silent.
The wolf didn't bleed. It didn't yelp. It simply... came undone.
The binding code holding its atoms together snapped. The metal legs fell off. The static fur evaporated. The floating jaw clattered to the floor. In less than a second, the terrifying monster was reduced to a pile of scrap metal and a floating cloud of blue particles.
[Target Destroyed.] [Absorbing Data...]
The blue particles rushed into Kieran's chest.
He gasped, arching his back. It felt like drinking ice water after a week in the desert. The numbness in his fingers vanished. The flickering of his skin stopped. The wireframe veins filled with color.
[Data Recovered: 15 Bytes.] [Integrity Restored: 11% -> 24%.] [Throughput Increased: +0.1.]
Kieran fell to his knees, panting, sweating. He felt... good. He felt powerful.
He looked at the pile of scrap metal that used to be a wolf. A notification pinged.
[Loot Detected.] [1x Glitched Fang (Dagger).]
He reached into the pile and pulled out the floating knife that had been the wolf's jaw. It was jagged, vibrating slightly in his grip.
[Item: Glitched Fang.] [Effect: Attacks have a 5% chance to ignore armor.] [Description: It shouldn't exist, and neither should you.]
Kieran gripped the dagger. A grim smile twisted his face.
"I can do this," he whispered. "I can hunt them."
[Warning.] [Local Sector Scan Complete.] [Entities Detected: 400+.]
Kieran's smile faded. He looked over the ridge.
In the valley below, hundreds of the red eyes flickered on. Distorted bears, skeletons with missing heads, floating balls of spikes. They were all looking up.
They smelled the fresh Data.
Kieran tightened his grip on the dagger. His Integrity was at 24%. He was hungry.
"Come and get me," he said, his eyes glowing with the blue light of a system crash.
But before the horde could charge, a new message popped up. A blue box, different from the System's red text. It was clean. Polite.
[Ping!] [Private Message Received.] [Sender: Unknown ID.]
"Hey! You! The squishy meat-bag standing on the ridge!"
Kieran blinked, looking around. "Who's there?"
"Down here. Look down, you idiot."
Kieran looked down at his feet.
Buried in the black dirt, half-covered by the wolf's remains, was a small, spherical robot. It looked like a floating eyeball, but its lens was cracked, and it was smoking.
"Help me out," the little robot beeped. "I know the way out of this trash heap. But first, you have to dig me up before those Scrappers eat us both."
Kieran looked at the horde approaching. He looked at the robot.
[Entity: Navigation Bot (Model: Guide).] [Status: Corrupted / Sarcastic.]
Kieran grinned. Finally. A friend.
He started digging.