Heuk-jae stayed in the alley for a long time, watching his hands. They looked normal, but every few seconds, a faint trail of blue "after-images" followed his movements, like a video game with the motion blur turned up too high.
"Stability of the physical form..." he muttered, reading the quest description again. "If I don't 'debug' this error, do I just... vanish?"
He focused on the red blinking icon in his peripheral vision. As he concentrated, a translucent map expanded. It wasn't a GPS map; it was a Wireframe Overlay. He could see through the walls of the convenience store, through the pipes in the street, and deep into the basement of a nearby abandoned warehouse.
In that basement, a pulsating red mass was thumping like a heartbeat.
[Target: Anomalous Data Fragment (Rank: E-Bug)]
"It's inside the building," Heuk-jae whispered.
He approached the warehouse's side entrance, but the heavy steel door was chained shut and padlocked. Normally, he'd need a Rank-D strength stat or a heavy bolt cutter to get through.
Heuk-jae reached out, his fingers trembling. As his hand touched the cold steel, the System flared to life.
[Collision Detected: Object_Door_01]
[Active Skill Triggered: 'Phase-Clip' (Level 1)]
[Description: For 0.5 seconds, ignore collision physics by exploiting a 'Clipping' error.]
[Warning: Partial clipping may result in 'Stuck-in-Wall' status. Use with caution.]
"Wait, wait—!"
Before he could process the warning, Heuk-jae felt a strange, nauseating sensation—like his body had turned into liquid air. He leaned forward, and instead of hitting the door, he fell through it.
He tumbled onto the dusty concrete floor on the other side. He scrambled up, looking back. The door was still locked, still solid.
"I just... went through it." He looked at his hands. "I'm a walking cheat code."
But the cost was immediate. A blue bar appeared in his vision: [Resource: System Stability — 88%]. Using the skill had literally made his existence less stable.
He moved deeper into the warehouse. The air grew cold, smelling of ozone and rotting meat. In the center of the room, the "Error" was waiting. It looked like a standard Dungeon Wolf, but it was horrifyingly distorted. Its head was detached, floating two inches above its neck, and its legs moved in a jittery, frame-skipping motion.
[Error_Entity: Glitched Fang-Wolf]
[HP: 150/150]
[Status: Out of Sync]
The wolf noticed him. It didn't growl; it let out a sound like a corrupted audio file—a screeching, digital hiss.
It lunged. But to Heuk-jae's eyes, the wolf was moving in Slow Motion. Or rather, he was seeing its "hitboxes." A red glowing box appeared where the wolf was going to be in one second.
[Notice: Predictive Pathing enabled.]
"If I can see where it's going..." Heuk-jae grabbed a discarded lead pipe from the floor.
The wolf snapped at his throat, but Heuk-jae didn't dodge like a normal human. He waited until the last possible millisecond and triggered the "Lag-Step."
To the wolf, Heuk-jae simply vanished and reappeared three feet to the left.
CLANG!
Heuk-jae swung the pipe with everything he had, catching the wolf in its floating neck.
[CRITICAL HIT!]
[System Note: Damage multiplied by 'Physics Engine' error.]
The wolf's body spasmed, its pixels scattering like broken glass.
As the wolf dissolved, it didn't leave a corpse. It left a small, glowing cube of white light. Heuk-jae touched it, and the cube absorbed into his chest.
[Quest Complete: Debug the First Error.]
[Reward: +5% Stability, 100 XP, and 1 'Stat Point'.]
[Current Stability: 93%]
Heuk-jae sat on the floor, breathing hard. He realized that the "Stat Point" wasn't just a number. When he looked at his status screen, he saw something a normal Hunter would find terrifying:
Strength: 10 [Edit]
Agility: 12 [Edit]
Perception: 15 [Edit]
He didn't just have stats. He had the ability to re-write them.
****
Heuk-jae stared at the flickering [Edit] buttons next to his attributes. It felt like holding a marker in front of his own DNA. In the traditional Hunter world, stats were determined at Awakening and grew painfully slowly through years of life-and-death combat.
For him, it was a menu.
He pulled up his full profile.
+
[User Status Window]
Name: Kim Heuk-jae
Level: 2 (100/200 XP)
Title: [The Glitch]
Stability: 93.2%
Attributes:
Strength: 10 [Edit]
Agility: 12 [Edit]
Perception: 15 [Edit]
Sense: 8 [Edit] (Detection & Instinct)
Intelligence: 14 [Edit] (Processing Power)
Magic: 5 [Edit] (Mana Capacity)
Available Stat Points: 1
+
"Magic is my lowest," he muttered. As a Remnant Collector, he never had enough mana to even light a match. "But in this world, speed is survival."
He tapped the [Edit] button next to Agility.
[Warning: Modifying 'Agility' will alter your Frame-Rate. Proceed?]
"Proceed."
The single point vanished, and the number '12' flickered before solidifying into 13.
Suddenly, Heuk-jae's heart skipped a beat—not out of fear, but rhythm. The world around him didn't slow down, but he felt lighter, as if the gravity of the Earth had been turned down by 5%. He took a step forward and accidentally moved twice as far as he intended, nearly slamming into a concrete pillar.
"It's not just that I'm faster," he realized, looking at his blurrier-than-usual hands. "The System is reducing my 'Air Friction' variables. I'm literally slipping through the world's physics."
He experimented with his other new stats, focusing on Sense and Magic.
As he focused on Sense, the warehouse changed. He didn't just see the walls; he felt the vibrations of the city outside. He could hear the humming of the electrical wires in the street and the distant, rhythmic footsteps of a drunk man walking three blocks away. It was sensory overload, a "radar" he never knew he had.
Then, he focused on Magic. The value was a measly 5, but as he looked at it, he saw a hidden sub-menu:
[Mana_Source: Corrupted_External]
"I don't have my own mana," Heuk-jae whispered, the realization hitting him like a cold wave. "I'm a Glitch. I don't generate power—I have to steal it from the environment."
This explained why he had to "Debug" the wolf. He wasn't just a hero; he was a scavenger for the universe's spare data.
Just as he was about to test his Intelligence stat—which seemed to govern how many "Code Strings" he could read at once—the warehouse floor began to vibrate.
[ALERT: Synchronized Error Detected.]
[The 'Glitched Fang-Wolf' was a Sub-Process.]
[The 'Main_Process' is now initializing.]
The shadow of the wolf he had just killed didn't disappear. Instead, it stretched across the floor, defying the light from his flashlight. It began to rise, folding and twisting like a piece of paper being crumpled by an invisible hand.
[Emergency Quest: Delete the Boss_Bug.]
[Target: Void-Stalker (Rank: D-Bug)]
[Reward: Skill Unlock - 'Memory Leak']
Heuk-jae gripped his lead pipe. His Agility was higher, but his Stability was still under 100%. If he took a direct hit from a Rank-D creature, his "Physical Form" might simply break apart into raw data.
"Level 13 Agility," Heuk-jae gritted his teeth, his eyes turning a faint, glowing digital blue. "Don't fail me now."