[Emergency Shutdown imminent.]
[Do you wish to claim rewards before neurological collapse? Y/N]
The blue, semi-translucent text flickered violently, glitching at the edges as if the System itself was struggling to render the words.
Jinsu's vision was tunneling. The edges of the world were bleeding into black, and the pain in his skull felt like a physical spike being driven between his eyes. His Host Stability was at 41%—the Nihil Engine was effectively eating his nervous system to keep itself running.
He didn't have minutes. He had seconds.
He dragged his body forward, his bloodstained fingers scraping across the shattered marble. Above the dissolving, ash-like corpse of the Failed Guardian, the fist-sized shard of black static hovered. It wasn't rotating like a standard dungeon drop. It was twitching.
"Yes," Jinsu rasped, his voice a dry, ragged wheeze. "Confirm."
He reached out and grabbed the shard.
It didn't feel like solid matter. It felt like plunging his bare hand into freezing, electrified water.
[Processing Loot...]
[Warning: Item Format Unrecognized by the Standard System.]
[Item 'Fragment of the First Error' detected.]
The standard blue UI suddenly shattered like thin glass.
In its place, a jagged, blood-red notification window ripped across Jinsu's vision, heavily overlaid with the violent violet static of his own Engine.
[Nihil Engine is forcefully decrypting the Fragment...]
The black static didn't move to his inventory. It liquefied, sinking directly through the pores of his palm and shooting up the veins of his arm like dark ink.
Jinsu's back arched as a soundless scream tore through his throat.
For 0.01 seconds, the beautiful, sterile marble hall of the Sanctum vanished entirely. Jinsu wasn't looking at a dungeon anymore. He was looking at the Truth.
He saw a sky made of rotting, organic flesh, pierced by thousands of massive, glowing golden needles. He saw the "Monsters" not as beasts, but as chained, distorted silhouettes weeping beneath the weight of those needles. And high above it all, he felt the cold, indifferent gaze of something massive—something that was watching Earth not as a battlefield, but as a petri dish.
The vision snapped shut as violently as it had opened.
[Decryption Partial. ROOT ACCESS: 0.001% Acquired.]
[New Passive Skill Acquired: Eyes of the Architect (Lvl 1)]
[Description: You can now perceive the structural code of reality. Hidden Gates, System 'Lies', and foundational weaknesses are visible to the Host.]
[Alert: An Administrator has noticed a localized Deletion event. Masking signature...]
Jinsu read the word Administrator, a chill far colder than the dungeon air settling over his dying consciousness.
They're watching.
[Host Stability: 38%. Critical Threshold Reached.]
[Emergency Shutdown: Initiated.]
The violet light in Jinsu's eyes abruptly died. His body went entirely limp, collapsing face-first onto the cold marble.
Absolute silence reclaimed the Sanctum.
High above, in the rusted iron corridors of the C-Rank dungeon, the silence was equally suffocating.
Elena gripped her staff so tightly her knuckles were white. She was shivering, leaning against the cold wall. Down the tunnel, Hu-seung was still slumped exactly where Jinsu had left him, his eyes vacant, drool pooling at his chin. His mana circuits were gone. A B-Rank Vanguard, reduced to a hollow shell in less than a second.
Run, every instinct in her body screamed. Get to the Gate. Tell the Guild Master. Tell the Association.
But she couldn't move her feet toward the exit.
She kept looking back at the smooth, impossible void where the three-foot-thick blast doors used to be. A C-Rank dungeon didn't have the atmospheric pressure to suck the air out of a room. It didn't have monsters that deleted steel.
He saved me, she thought, the realization trembling in her chest. Hu-seung left him to die, and he saved me.
Swallowing her terror, Elena activated the small, glowing crystal at the tip of her staff. Casting a faint, pale blue light, she stepped through the perfectly circular hole in the blast door.
She followed the path of scorched dust until she reached the iron grating. Or rather, where the iron grating should have been.
Elena stopped at the edge of a massive, jagged chasm. She looked down.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
Below the rusted, blood-stained industrial pipes of the dungeon was a pristine hall of white marble and gold. It was a biome that completely violated the physical dimensions of the cavern.
And it was utterly destroyed.
The golden throne was split in half. The floor was cratered. Slowly, carefully, Elena floated a basic 'Light Orb' down into the chasm to illuminate the center of the destruction.
There, lying motionless in the center of the wreckage, was the boy in the torn, blood-soaked coat.
"Jinsu," she breathed.
He was unconscious, but the air around him was still visibly warped, as if reality itself was afraid to touch him.
Elena's Hunter Association communication device vibrated at her hip. It was a standard proximity ping. The Dungeon Break timer was stabilizing. The outside extraction team would be entering soon.
If the Association found him here, sleeping in a hidden room surrounded by unregistered, impossible destruction... they wouldn't heal him. They would vivisect him. They would lock him in a black site and study him until there was nothing left.
Elena looked at the unconscious boy, then back at her blinking communication device.
The System had taught her to always follow the rules. But the System hadn't saved her life today. The 'Glitch' had.
With a trembling hand, Elena reached down to her hip and turned her communication device off.