Being worshipped by a bunch of jiggly slimes is not how I pictured my day going.
And yet, here we are—me sitting on a glitched-out loot crate like it's a throne, crownless but weirdly respected, while my sentient jellybean disciples stack mana crystals like sacred offerings and Patch naps inside a floating error message.
[Tutorial Dungeon - Instance 00000001][Boss Status: Rogue Debug Entity - Not in Narrative Flow][Protagonist Spawn Status: MISSING]
Yeah. About that last one.
The Chosen One—the golden-haired, plot-armored hero who was supposed to burst through the gate and end me in four sword slashes and a cutscene?
Never showed up.
And I'm starting to think that wasn't an accident.
"So what, the devs forgot to add him?" I ask aloud.
Patch floats beside me now, lounging in midair like a nap-prone code glitch. "No. He was here."
I blink. "What?"
"Version 6.8.1. He spawned. Did the intro. Slapped a few monsters. Got his first love interest. You know, the usual. Then something changed."
"What changed?"
Patch squints. "He disappeared mid-quest. Left his system flags dangling like abandoned laundry. Game logic tried to compensate, but..."
"But what?"
Patch's voice goes low.
"The world rerouted."
[New Quest Acquired: Ghost in the Build]Find out what happened to Protagonist ID#00000001 – "Kael, Hero of the First Flag."Difficulty: Story-Wide Consequence.Reward: Stability. Probably.
Probably.
Because nothing says "trustworthy quest" like an asterisk and emotional instability.
The moment I accept the quest, the air gets colder.The walls flicker. The map zooms out briefly and flashes red:
[NOTICE: ANTI-DEBUGGER ENTITY DETECTED][WARNING: DO NOT ENGAGE.][Entity Class: "Narrative Purifier" – Designation: VORTAX]
I freeze.
Patch immediately swears. "That thing's not supposed to be awake yet."
"Who—or what—is Vortax?"
Patch floats to eye-level and speaks with something I never thought I'd hear from him: actual fear.
"He's the system's failsafe. A hunter for anything that messes with the narrative flow. Rogue files. Incomplete arcs. Glitched bosses."
"So... me?"
"Especially you."
The dungeon trembles.
Somewhere deep within its glitched-out tunnels, a gate unlocks itself with a hiss.
Dust swirls. Torches go out. The slimes stop chanting long enough to look terrified.
And then I hear it.
A voice—flat, synthetic, like it's being read off a corrupted audiobook.
"...DEBUG DETECTED.""...NON-PLOT ENTITY IN CONTROL OF A TUTORIAL ZONE.""...INITIATING CORRECTION."
My vision glitches for a second.
The map redraws itself.
Lines of code appear in the air, scribbling like angry handwriting:
[RUN_COMMAND: PurgeTutorial(Zerik)][CMD ACCEPTED][TARGET: LOCKED][COMMENCE DELETION SEQUENCE]
Patch hisses. "He's hijacking your zone."
"I liked this zone!"
"Move, idiot!"
A wall explodes.
And from the smoke steps... something.
It's humanoid in shape—barely.
A jagged, armored figure with a cracked dev-console face. No eyes. Just a static HUD across where a face should be, displaying a single word in flashing red:
[CLEANSE]
[VORTAX – NARRATIVE PURIFIER – LV: TOO HIGH TO MATTER]
"Oh. He looks friendly," I mutter.
Patch grabs me by the collar with telekinesis. "Run."
"Can't I just—?"
"No, you cannot sarcasm your way out of a Vortax encounter. That thing doesn't read irony. It kills typos."
I turn to run.
The door slams shut.
Of course it does.
[Your Escape Route Has Been Removed Due To Narrative Inconsistency.]
"…I hate this place."
[Emergency Skill Unlocked: Panic Warp]You warp to a location you emotionally associate with "less dying."Note: Destination may vary wildly.Cooldown: Yes. Forever.
I scream internally and activate it.
My body pixelates and explodes into light.
Vortax roars in corrupted binary:
"YOU. DO. NOT. BELONG."
And then—darkness.
When I rematerialize, I'm upside-down.
On top of a tavern.
In a city I've never seen.
And being stared at by an NPC holding a sandwich.
"…You okay up there, friend?" the NPC asks.
Patch groans, buried in my hood. "Next time, try not thinking of 'somewhere stupid.'"
"I panicked!"
"Yeah, I noticed."
[Location: Crown City – Population: Bugged to Hell][Time Until Vortax Relocates Target: UNKNOWN][Quest Updated: Survive Without Being Rewritten]
I sigh.
This is fine.
Everything's on fire.
But I have a cursed duck, a slime cult, a sarcastic cat, and just possibly... a head start.