Three days had passed since the fall of the Patchworld.
The group had found shelter in what was once a forgotten underground metro station—now overgrown with bio-luminescent moss, shifting crystal roots, and flickering tech shards embedded in the walls.
The world outside had changed. The glitch-ridden terrain had normalized, but not fully. It felt like reality was… rebooting itself.
Level System: Rebooted
Rehan was the first to notice it. He had once been a joke-cracking sniper with wall hacks. Now, he had to learn from scratch—but when he hit a moving can using a broken metal pipe from twenty feet away, something strange happened:
DING! +1 to Precision
"Bro… did you see that?" Rehan blinked. "The world's turning into a literal game now."
Rishi nodded, staring at his own reflection on a chrome wall panel. He had punched it earlier in frustration—bruised his hand too—but now he saw this:
DING! +1 to Strength
New Passive Unlocked: Bruiser's Will – Take 5% less physical damage.
The Trainer was gone… but the System had remained.
Only now, it rewarded effort, not cheating.
The Letter That Changed Everything
On the fourth night, Nyra stumbled upon a sealed metallic scroll inside the moss-covered cabin of an abandoned bus near their hideout. The scroll hissed open with a soft click, revealing a glowing script:
"To those touched by the Reset:The world you've remade is unstable.There exists a fault in the foundations—a dungeon that should not be.Seek the Broken Line Temple.Or risk the world collapsing again."
Attached was a crudely drawn map, marked with ancient-looking binary symbols.
"A dungeon?" Rishi asked, brow furrowed.
"In the new world," Nyra replied, "maybe that's the closest thing to truth left."
Journey into the Dungeon
Their journey took two days on foot. Along the way, they encountered strange phenomena:
Level Beasts—creatures formed from corrupted code, like a lion made entirely of shifting polygons and 1s and 0s. Defeating them granted actual EXP.
Stat Fruits—weird glowing orbs hanging from corrupted trees that boosted stats for a limited time.
Glitched NPCs—people who couldn't remember their names, but repeated strange phrases like, "You are not the first version of him..."
"Version?" Saanvi whispered. "Is this about Glitch-Rishi?"
Rishi didn't answer, but his clenched fist spoke volumes.
The Broken Line Temple
They arrived at sunset.
The temple looked like it was ripped straight from an ancient game dungeon—a stone pyramid floating mid-air, broken stairs levitating toward its entrance. Glitching lines of code bled from its cracks like veins.
At the base stood a statue.
It was Rishi.
But not him.
This one had no eyes, and a grin carved across the face like a Cheshire cat.
"This temple… was built in my image?" Rishi whispered.
"Not yours," Nyra said slowly, stepping forward, "his."
The doors opened with a groan like dying servers.
Inside: black stone corridors, time loop anomalies, echoes of past versions of themselves, and memory fragments re-lived as boss fights.
They saw:
A version of Rehan who betrayed them.
A Saanvi who chose the Trainer over humanity.
A Nyra who never joined them—turning to dust.
A Rishi… who let the glitch consume him.
Each illusion had to be fought—not just physically, but emotionally. Each one tested their doubts, their regrets, their guilt.
The Final Room: The Glitchheart
At the temple's core, a pulsing cube hovered above a pit of collapsing code. Inside the cube: a shard of the old Trainer interface.
The moment Rishi reached out, a voice spoke—not Glitch-Rishi… something else.
"Hello, Original.""You thought you won.""But the code was never yours to delete. I was only sleeping…"
From the cube erupted a humanoid figure—pure glitch energy, like a walking firewall, with the Trainer's classic interface tattooed across his chest.
"I am the Patch," it said. "Born of every cheat, every exploit, every lazy victory you ever took. I am your true creation."
"Then I'll unmake you too," Rishi said, stepping forward.
Boss Battle: The Patch
The Patch fought with mechanics pulled from all the worst cheat exploits:
Speed x9999
Auto-headshot glitch
Infinite dodge roll
And worst of all: Crash Code — it could crash a player's memory temporarily, erasing their stats for 10 seconds.
One by one, Rishi's team was pushed to their limits. Rehan couldn't aim. Nyra's shields vanished. Saanvi lost all spells mid-fight.
Only Rishi remained.
Powerless. No hacks. No god mode.
But he'd trained. He'd learned.
He remembered every glitch he abused—and used their counters.
A roll became a tackle.
A dodge became a parry.
When the Patch came for his core, Rishi jammed a data spike into its chest—the last piece of Z1's core, repurposed.
"You were born from my weakness," Rishi said."But I've learned… real power comes from growth."
The Patch screamed—shattering like bad code hitting real fire.
Aftermath
The temple crumbled. But no one was harmed.
The map's final line lit up, revealing something new:
"1/10 Temples Purged. Keep Going, Player One."
"Player One?" Saanvi asked.
Rishi only smiled.
"Looks like the game's not over yet."
End of Chapter 4