The walls of the glitch cave pulsed like a dying heartbeat, polygons stretching and snapping as the world struggled to maintain cohesion. Yamete stumbled as the ground liquefied beneath his boots, his foot sinking ankle-deep into what should have been solid rock.
"Move!" GLich-chan yanked his arm, her tiny fingers buzzing with static. "The cave's reverting to placeholder assets!"
Behind them, the darkness 'twitched'. Not the natural gloom of an underground space, but the artificial void of unrendered terrain—a black so complete it seemed to swallow the flickering error-code light. And within it, something 'shifted'.
Yamete didn't wait to see what. He ran.
His upgraded "Low Gravity Mode" activated instinctively, turning each stride into a surreal, bounding leap. The cave ceiling rushed toward him—
'CRUNCH.'
His skull clipped through the rock, the world glitching violently as his head momentarily occupied the same space as five cubic meters of stone. Pain flashed, not physical but 'systemic', like his very code had been compressed.
"Stop jumping!" GLich-chan swerved around a falling stalactite (which morphed into a floating baguette mid-fall). "You're overloading the collision detection!"
A sound like shattering glass erupted behind them. Yamete risked a glance back.
The void was 'spreading'.
And at its center, a shape resolved—
A single, massive "console window", its borders flickering between crisp white and corrupted static. Lines of debug text scrolled too fast to read, except for the occasional flashing warning:
[WARNING: CORRUPTED ENTITY DETECTED]
[PURGING UNSTABLE ASSETS...]
The cave trembled. The walls 'peeled' backward, polygons unraveling like yarn.
"That's not a boss," Yamete realized, stomach sinking. "That's the 'game deleting itself'."
GLich-chan's glow flickered. "Worse. It thinks 'we're' the corrupted files."
---
They burst from the cave mouth just as the entrance sealed behind them, the terrain stitching itself shut with a sound like a zipper closing. The forest beyond was no better—trees flickered between lush 3D models and flat, cartoonish sprites, their shadows stretching in impossible directions.
Yamete's breath came in ragged gasps. His cheat menu pulsed erratically in his vision, options distorting:
- Frame Perfect Dodge [ERROR: INPUT LAG DETECTED]
- Texture Swap [TARGET NOT FOUND]
- Low Gravity Mode [DISABLED: INSUFFICIENT MEMORY]
"GLich-chan," he wheezed, "tell me you've got a backup plan."
She hovered mid-air, her usual snark replaced by something uncomfortably close to fear. "There's... one place. The dev room. If we can reach it before the console purges us—"
A tremor cut her off. The ground 'rippled', grass textures warping into jagged pixels. In the distance, the debug console's glow pulsed brighter.
[SCANNING...]
"Run," GLich-chan whispered.
They ran.
---
The forest gave way to ruins—or rather, the 'idea' of ruins. Crumbling buildings rendered in clashing art styles, some hyper-realistic, others blocky as a child's drawing. Streets twisted into Escher-esque loops, and NPCs flickered in and out of existence, their dialogue boxes repeating fragments of cut content:
"Bring me 10 wolf—"
"—error in quest 'Save the Prin—"
"—this item has been removed in patch 1.0—"
Yamete's foot caught on a loose cobblestone—except it wasn't a cobblestone, but a floating "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" sign half-buried in the ground. He faceplanted into a wall that turned to mist on impact.
"Get up!" GLich-chan dragged him forward. "It's close!"
Ahead loomed a structure that defied physics—a tower built from stacked UI elements, its base a mammoth "Start Menu button", its midsection a spiraling ribbon of toolbars, and its peak a shimmering, unstable "Save Icon".
"The dev room," GLich-chan breathed. "Hurry!"
[SCAN COMPLETE: CORRUPTION CONFIRMED]
The console's voice boomed across the city, shaking the air.
[INITIATING CLEANUP...]
---
Yamete's muscles screamed. His vision blurred at the edges, the world stuttering like a lagging video. Every step sent jolts of wrongness up his spine—his very existence protested by the unraveling code.
The tower door was a "File Explorer window", its folders labeled with ominous names:
- /unfinished_quests
- /cut_content
- /bug_reports_ignored
GLich-chan slammed into the door, her form distorting. "It's locked! It needs—it needs 'admin rights'!"
Yamete skidded to a halt. The debug console's light washed over them, blindingly white.
[TARGETS LOCATED.]
[PURGING...]
Desperation clawed at Yamete's throat. He raised his hand—not to the door, but to his cheat menu.
There, buried under layers of glitches, was one final option:
> Enable Developer Mode (Y/N?)
His finger hovered.
"Do it," GLich-chan whispered. "Before it's too late."
Yamete pressed "Y".
---
The world 'stopped'.
Color drained away, leaving only wireframe outlines. The debug console froze mid-command, its text scrolling into gibberish.
And Yamete... 'remembered'.
Fragments flooded his mind:
- A dim office, monitors glowing.
- Lines of code, half-finished.
- A coffee cup knocked over in frustration.
- A sigh. "Maybe next patch."
GLich-chan floated before him, her usual snark gone. "You... you 'are' the admin," she said softly. "You just forgot."
The realization hit like a punch.
Yamete Kimochi wasn't just a player.
He was the 'developer'.
And this broken world?
It was 'his'.