Arlan's legs felt like lead pipes as he dragged himself into the cramped, stale air of his rented unit in the Jakarta Sector. Every breath he took felt like swallowing sandpaper, leaving a bitter, metallic tang on his tongue that no amount of mana water could wash away. His bronze armor, once a source of pride, was now a battered mess of dents, digital grime, and streaks of rust from his feverish scavenge through the city's jagged outskirts. He fumbled with the doorknob, his fingers trembling with a exhaustion that went deeper than just his muscles. All he wanted—the only thing keeping him from collapsing right there in the hallway—was to see his mother smile. Even a ghost of a real smile would have been enough to keep him sane.
But the universe, or whatever sick system was running this show, didn't deal in mercy.
In the dim, flickering light of the kitchen, his mother stood like a statue. She was positioned in front of a cold, dead stove, her hands moving in a rhythmic, mechanical loop. She was stirring an empty pot with a spoon, the metal-on-metal scraping sound echoing through the room with a hollow, soul-crushing persistence. Her eyes weren't eyes anymore; they were just glass marbles staring into a void Arlan couldn't see. Floating above her head, pulsing with a nauseating, neon-green glow that made Arlan's stomach churn, was that goddamn system label: [Maid NPC - Level 1].
"Mom... I'm back," Arlan croaked. His voice was a wrecked shadow of itself, catching in a throat that felt like it was lined with broken glass.
He reached out, his hand hovering inches from her shoulder, but he hesitated. When he finally touched her, she didn't turn around with the warmth he remembered. She just twitched, her mouth moving to release a flat, distorted string of words that sounded like a scratched CD. "Dinner is ready, son. Come eat before it gets cold."
Arlan's hands balled into white-knuckled fists, shaking with a fury that made his teeth ache. Those words—words that used to mean safety, home, and love—were now just a corrupted script. A broken line of code looped in an endless, meaningless cycle. The unfairness of it hit him like a physical blow to the solar plexus. Arlan collapsed, his knees hitting the cold, grimy floor of the apartment. He was a high-level player, a man who had stared down a Level 25 Elite Boss without blinking, and yet here he was, reduced to a shivering mess in front of a woman who didn't even know he was there. He felt pathetic. High stats meant nothing if he couldn't even save his own mother from becoming a glorified kitchen appliance.
He sat there for God knows how long, cursing his luck and the world, his hands mindlessly digging through his cluttered inventory. In his frustration, he accidentally knocked a small object out of his bag. It hit the floor with a dull thud and rolled across the tiles, coming to a stop right at his mother's feet.
It was the Opaque Crystal—the one he'd scavenged from the digital trash heaps of Stasiun Kota. He'd almost thrown it away, thinking it was just another piece of "trash data" taking up space. But the moment the crystal's surface grazed the toe of his mother's shoe, the room changed. The dull rock suddenly flared with a warm, blindingly white light—a pure, honest glow that cut through the dimness of the apartment like a razor. A second later, a transparent notification window flickered into existence, hovering right in front of Arlan's face.
[Item Identified: Fragment of Reality (Uncommon)]
Description: Compressed remnants of the old world's memories, poorly processed by the system. Triggers resonance in NPCs with powerful emotional anchors.
[Resonance Status: Detected!]
Apply item to NPC 'Mother'? (Yes/No)
Arlan's heart hammered against his ribs so hard his ears started to ring. He didn't even think. He slammed his hand against the [Yes] button so hard the virtual window blurred.
The soft white light exploded outward, wrapping around his mother like a warm, protective shroud. The mechanical, jerking movements of her arms stopped instantly. The spoon clattered into the empty pot. Her pupils, which had been vacant for weeks, started to vibrate violently. Slowly, agonizingly, the porcelain-pale color of her skin began to flush with a deep, human pink. Life—real, messy, beautiful life—was flowing back into her.
"Arlan...?" Her voice was a mere whisper, but it was perfect. It was human. The digital echo, that hollow metallic tang, was gone. "Why... why are you crying, baby?"
"Mom! You're back! You're actually back!" Arlan didn't just hug her; he crashed into her, clinging to her as if she were the only thing tethering him to the earth. He was terrified that if he let go, she'd just evaporate into a cloud of pixels and leave him alone in the dark again.
But the hope was a cruel joke. The light from the crystal began to dim almost as soon as it had appeared. The warmth he felt in her arms started to fade, replaced by that familiar, chilling stiffness. The crystal in his hand crumbled into fine, grey dust that slipped through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. His mother's body locked up again, her hands returning to the empty pot, her eyes going back to that vacant, glassy stare. The label above her head flickered, changing for a fleeting second to [Maid NPC - Consciousness 5%] before snapping back to its original, dead status.
Arlan sat back on his heels, his hands still hanging in the air where she had just been. He felt hollowed out. The crystal had worked, but it was too small, too weak. It was like trying to jump-start a car with a flashlight battery. But it gave him one thing he desperately needed: a target. The old world hadn't been erased; it had been shattered into millions of tiny shards, buried under the layers of this new, fake reality.
"So that's the play," Arlan growled, his eyes narrowing with a look that was sharper than any blade he'd ever held. The grief was still there, but it was being rapidly replaced by a cold, calculating resolve. "If I need more Fragments to bring you back, I'll find every single one of them. I'll tear this city apart if I have to."
He pulled up his system logs, his mind racing. He mentally mapped every coordinate he'd visited, every weird glow he'd ignored in his rush to level up. One place stood out: Mall Taman Anggrek. The system had flagged it as a Glitch Zone—a place where the old world's data and the game's code were crashing into each other in a chaotic, violent mess. It was a deathtrap for most, but for Arlan, it was a goldmine of memories.
He didn't waste a second. He checked the edge of his sword, refilled his mana vials, and packed enough supplies to last him through hell. He wasn't grinding for numbers anymore. He wasn't playing a game. He was on a rescue mission, and God help anything that stood in his way. On his way out, he crossed paths with a few low-level mobs, slaughtering them with a brutal efficiency that pushed his status bar up to Level 25, but he barely noticed the "Level Up" notification. It was just a means to an end.
"Wait for me, Mom. I'm going to find every piece of us, no matter the cost."
He stepped out of the apartment, crushed a Teleport Stone, and vanished into a swirl of blue light, heading straight for the pitch-black ruins of Grogol. In the distance, the violet lightning scarred the Jakarta sky again, a reminder that the system was still busy erasing the world. But Arlan didn't care about the system anymore. He was going to break it.
PLAYER STATUS - AZUREBOUND
- Name: Arlan
- Level: 25
- Job Class: Sword Magician (1st)
- Mother's Status: Maid NPC (Consciousness 5%)
- Current Objective: Hunt for Fragments in the Glitch Zone (Mall Taman Anggrek).
- Skill Update: Elemental Infusion - Frost (Movement Impairment).