Kael chose a cheap capsule hotel instead of going home.
His apartment in Gray-3 was a ten-minute walk from Seventeen, but its walls were thin and its neighbor's arguments loud. He needed somewhere no one would bother him while he tore into his own status screen.
The capsule he rented was barely bigger than a coffin, with a thin mattress and a built-in holo-plate on the ceiling. He shut the door, dimmed the lights, and lay flat on his back.
"Alright," he said to the air. "New quest. Hide from the watchdog."
The System didn't answer, of course.
The quest UI did.
[QUEST: "THIRD BUG – HIDE"]
[OBJECTIVE: REDUCE YOUR DETECTION FOOTPRINT BELOW THRESHOLD.]
[HINT: BUGS CAN PATCH BUGS.]
[TIME LIMIT: NONE.]
[PROGRESS: 0%.]
"Cryptic," Kael muttered.
He activated Debug Sense—not on the world, but on himself.
His own status window unfolded behind his eyelids.
[USER: KAEL RYU]
[CLASS: SUPPORT – ANALYST]
[LEVEL: 6]
[HP: 3 / 100]
[STATS: STR 7, AGI 9, VIT 1, INT 15, PER 12, LUCK 3]
[TITLES: NONE]
[FLAGS: …]
He focused on FLAGS.
A dense list appeared.
[FLAG: HP_BASELINE_OVERRIDDEN = TRUE]
[FLAG: HP_BUG_TAG = WONTFIX]
[FLAG: DEBUG_ACCESS_GUEST = TRUE]
[FLAG: DETECTION_RISK = 7%]
[FLAG: ANOMALY_TAG = TRUE]
[FLAG: WATCHDOG_INTEREST = LOW]
[FLAG: CLASS_LOCK = TRUE]
Most were locked.
[EDIT_FLAG PERMISSION: MINOR ONLY.]
[ERROR: ATTEMPT TO EDIT CRITICAL FLAG DENIED.]
He hadn't even tried to change the HP flags yet, but the System clearly anticipated the impulse.
"Bug can patch bugs," he repeated. "What counts as a bug here?"
He tried Inspect on DETECTION_RISK.
[FLAG: DETECTION_RISK]
[DESCRIPTION: APPROXIMATE PROBABILITY OF DRAWING ACTIVE SCRUTINY FROM MONITORING PROCESSES.]
[CURRENT VALUE: 0.07]
[SOURCE: AGGREGATED FROM RECENT ANOMALOUS ACTIONS.]
[MINOR FLAG: EDITABLE.]
His breath caught.
"Editable," he whispered.
He opened LOCAL PATCH.
[SELECT TARGET FLAG: DETECTION_RISK]
[CURRENT VALUE: 0.07]
[ENTER NEW VALUE:]
He stared at the blinking cursor.
"Too obvious," he muttered. "If I slam that down to zero, something smarter up the chain will notice the discrepancy."
But could he… reframe it?
He backed out of Local Patch and checked the logs attached to WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω.
[LOG: WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω]
[PURPOSE: MONITOR LOCAL VARIANCE IN FLAGS/BEHAVIOR.]
[THRESHOLD: DETECTION_RISK >= 0.15 → ACTIVE MONITORING.]
[CURRENT STATUS: PASSIVE.]
"Threshold at fifteen percent," Kael said. "I'm at seven. I have room to play."
The quest didn't say "set detection to zero." It said "reduce your detection footprint below threshold."
Below threshold was already true.
"Bug can patch bugs," he said again, frowning. "Maybe it wants me to add noise."
He inspected his ANOMALY_TAG.
[FLAG: ANOMALY_TAG]
[DESCRIPTION: MARKS USER AS STATISTICALLY ABERRANT.]
[REASON: HP_BASELINE_ANOMALY, DEBUG_ACCESS_GUEST.]
[STATUS: READ-ONLY.]
He couldn't touch it.
"Fine," he said. "If I can't erase my footprints, I can bury them under other footprints."
He opened the global log filters.
Thousands of anomalies flashed by. Minor ones, major ones, some so abstract he couldn't parse them.
[LOG: USER_453201_DAMAGE_OUTPUT_SPIKE – RNG STREAK.]
[LOG: TOWER_03_FLOOR_5_BOSS_PATHING_ERROR.]
[LOG: ECON_NODE_21-CURRENCY_DRIFT.]
An idea formed.
"What if I make more bugs," he said slowly. "But not tied to me. Spread them out. Dilute my signal."
The thought made his skin crawl. It felt… wrong. Dangerous. Like setting small fires to distract from the one you'd already lit.
He thought of Haneul.
"I'm not sabotaging hospitals," he said firmly. "Or traffic lights. Or anything that gets civilians killed. But inside Towers…"
He pulled up the parameters on WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω again.
[INPUTS: FLAG_VARIANCE(TOWER_17), DAMAGE_DISTRIBUTION(TOWER_17), USER_BEHAVIOR_PATTERN(TOWER_17_USERS)…]
[ANOMALY_SCORING: …]
It looked for patterns. Specific users whose presence correlated strongly with anomalies.
"If anomalies appear when I'm not there," Kael said, "my correlation goes down, even if I stay weird."
He exhaled.
"Okay," he told the System. "I'll give you bugs."
The next week blurred into a careful, calculated dance.
Kael and Joon ran Floor 1 of Seventeen multiple times, never pushing deeper. To anyone watching, they were just another pair of E-ranks grinding low-tier mobs.
Inside the Tower, Kael used Local Patch sparingly on his own runs, always tracking detection risk.
Between runs, he did something worse.
He used Debug Sense to peek at logs and flags tied to other Hunters' future runs—never touching anything lethal, never altering HP or core stats. Instead, he made tweaks like:
Slightly increasing goblin AGGRESSION_LEVEL in rooms far from the entrance, but also boosting FLEE_THRESHOLD so they would scatter more.
Causing traps to misfire harmlessly once in a while, so monitoring systems would flag variance without casualties.
Making loot tables spit out odd but not game-breaking drops: a rare herb in a low-tier room, a slightly too-generous shard payout.
He spread the changes out: different Towers, different floors, different users. Nothing that screamed "single saboteur."
Each time, detection risk ticked up.
[DETECTION_RISK: 0.07 → 0.08 → 0.09…]
Each time, the watchdog's logs filled with low-priority entries.
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: VARIANCE LEVEL = BASELINE + 0.002…]
[POSSIBLE CAUSES: RNG, LEGACY PATCHES, USER SKILL COMBINATIONS.]
[STATUS: NO ACTION.]
After the fifth day, he checked his own DETECTION_RISK again.
It had dropped.
[DETECTION_RISK: 0.06]
He blinked.
"What?" he said aloud, sitting up in his capsule.
[QUEST: "THIRD BUG – HIDE" – PROGRESS: 25%.]
"So creating noise works," he muttered. "The watchdog's model is adjusting. It's starting to treat me as part of the new normal."
He felt oddly guilty.
Somebody out there was getting weird loot rolls because of him. Some Tower analyst was probably tearing their hair out over variance charts.
Bugs can patch bugs, the quest hint had said.
He realized, slowly, what else that meant.
"Maybe I'm not the first," he said softly.
The idea made the air feel thinner.
If the System had an emergency debug access protocol, it might have used it before. On someone else. Somewhere else. Maybe that someone had pushed too hard and triggered defenses. Maybe that's why Root Process was offline.
He opened a different set of logs, this time searching by keywords.
[SEARCH: "GUEST DEBUG ACCESS" / "ANOMALY_TAG_USER" / "ACCESS TERMINATION."]
Results poured in.
Most were technical, low-level messages. But a few…
[LOG: USER_ID: REDACTED – DEBUG ACCESS: REVOKED.]
[REASON: ATTEMPTED EDIT OF CRITICAL STRUCTURE.]
[RESULT: USER PROCESS TERMINATED.]
[LOG: ROOT_PROCESS FAILOVER – FAILED.]
[REASON: CONFIGURATION CORRUPTED BY PREVIOUS ADMIN.]
[STATUS: OFFLINE.]
Previous admin.
Someone had more than Guest.
"What did you do?" Kael whispered.
The logs didn't answer.
Another notification did.
[NEW OPTIONAL QUEST: "INHERITANCE."]
[OBJECTIVE: LOCATE TRACES OF THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATOR.]
[REWARD: ACCESS UPGRADE (CONDITIONAL).]
[WARNING: HIGH RISK.]
He closed it.
"Not yet," he said. "One impossible problem at a time."
He focused back on THIRD BUG – HIDE. There were still progress segments unfilled. He'd blurred his signal, but he hadn't actively patched the watchdog itself yet.
He knew he'd have to.
Just… not tonight.
He dismissed his UI and stared at the capsule ceiling for a long time.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged him under.
He woke up to a message from Haneul.
Morning. Doctor Cho says they want to run another System-linked scan this week.
Something about "tracking soul structure degradation." Sounds fake. Do I get a discount for letting them poke my soul?
Soul structure.
Kael's stomach dropped.
The log about his HP anomaly had mentioned a "mismatch between soul structure and standard health metrics."
He'd brushed it off as technobabble at the time.
Now…
He sat up and opened his own HP-related flags again.
[FLAG: HP_BASELINE_OVERRIDDEN = TRUE]
[DESCRIPTION: USER'S SOUL STRUCTURE INCOMPATIBLE WITH STANDARD HP MODEL. FORCED RESCALE TO MINIMUM STABLE VALUE.]
[SIDE EFFECTS: PERCEPTUAL RED BAR.]
[NOTES: POTENTIAL LINK TO ROOT_PROCESS STATE?]
[STATUS: WONTFIX.]
A new line blinked beneath the notes, faint and recent.
[UPDATE: CORRELATED WITH HOSPITAL PATIENT ID: RYU_HANEUL.]
[STATUS: OBSERVATION ONLY.]
A chill raced down his spine.
"Haneul," he whispered.
Her condition wasn't just some random organ failure. The System had linked her "soul structure" to the same category of anomaly as his.
"What did you DO to us?" he demanded, but he didn't know who he was asking.
Tower Seventeen. The global System. The missing Root Process. The "previous admin."
All of the above.
His detection risk felt suddenly irrelevant.
If the System's bugs ran through his family, through their souls, then this wasn't just about climbing floors to pay hospital bills anymore.
"I'm not just patching Towers," he said quietly. "I'm patching whatever you broke in us."
His log view flickered.
For a brief, impossible moment, he felt something looking back at him from the data. Not WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω. Something bigger. Older. Fractured.
Then it was gone.
[WARNING: PROLONGED SELF-INSPECTION MAY CAUSE INSTABILITY.]
[RECOMMENDATION: RETURN TO NORMAL USER BEHAVIOR.]
Kael laughed.
It wasn't a happy sound.
"Normal left the building when you put a permanent error message in my HP bar," he said. "Get used to disappointment."
He sent Haneul a reply:
Let them scan. Ask for the full report. I'll swing by after a run. And don't sign anything without me checking it first.
Then he stood, shook the stiffness from his limbs, and headed back toward Tower Seventeen.
He had bugs to make, a watchdog to confuse, and a god's skeleton to dig through.
Somewhere in all that, if he was stubborn and clever enough, there might be a way to change "WONTFIX" to something else.
Like "PATCHED."