The lights of Seoul were reflected in a convenience store that bathed Dae-hyun in a blue glow as he checked his phone, sitting on a concrete bench.
He had spent three hours navigating the corrupted interface, mapping its limits, while being careful not to touch anything important.
COMMAND LIST NOT AVAILABLE.
ACCESS SCALED BY ERROR SEVERITY.
CURRENT AUTHORIZATION: MINOR DATA STREAMS (SOCIAL METRICS, SOURCE FILTERS, LOGISTICAL UPDATES).
Dae-hyun discovered that the system had some exceptions to keep in mind.
One of them was that he couldn't touch the main rankings (for now); he also couldn't grant himself powers.
He was simply a ghost in the machine, capable only of moving peripheral data, of altering perceptions, but without touching reality.
But even that had terrifying potential.
His experiment with the braggart Nam Min-jun had had mild repercussions. The guy had been investigated by the hunters' ethics agency: a public embarrassment that left him without any sponsorships for weeks. All because of a number changed to negative.
Dae-hyun closed the administrative session and opened the news.
The main headline on ErrorWatch News hit him head-on:
"ERROR ZONE #447: MANIFESTATION IN YONGSAN DISTRICT. CLASSIFICATION: CLASS D (STABLE). ASSIGNED TEAMS: SQUAD 'IRON FIST' (AVERAGE RANK E+), SQUAD 'GHOST EYES' (AVERAGE RANK D). OFFICIAL STREAM ACTIVATED."
A Class D Error Zone was low risk, perfect for rookie teams and streams hoping to get high ratings. A spectacle controlled by the Korean government.
The Watch Live button was blinking, already showing 800,000 viewers.
Something clicked in Dae-hyun's mind.
An Error Zone. An environment where the System was active, collecting data in real time, evaluating performance, adjusting rankings. A place where his small changes in the data streams could have… more interesting consequences.
Since he didn't have a legalized rank, he also had no authorization to get close. As Rank 0, his ID card would trigger an alert if he crossed the security perimeter. However, the corrupted interface had a tab:
"Peripheral Device Override (Unstable)"
In short: a command to send false instructions to devices connected to the System, such as card readers.
He stood up. The convenience store was only fifteen minutes away by bus from the Yongsan perimeter.
Of course, this was madness, a suicide mission for any ordinary person. Even so, the urge to test his power, to discover how far his anomaly could go in a real environment, ran through his body like an electric shock.
When he arrived, the spectacle bordered on the unreal. Luminous barriers raised by the police, news drones buzzing overhead, and a crowd of civilians recording every detail from a distance, clinging to their phones.
Normally it shouldn't be like this. Being a low-rank zone, it had no reason to have so many spectators, though well, people on social media would viralize any nonsense they could.
At the center, the Error Zone manifested as a simulated cube of distorted space about 50 meters on each side. Inside, the laws of physics didn't matter: fluctuating gravity, sounds looping endlessly, objects dematerializing into pixels.
It really looked like a monumental glitch.
On an elevated platform, the System's official streamers narrated the action.
"And we see Squad 'Iron Fist' applying Containment Protocol 3! Their coordination is impeccable for an E-rank team. Observe how the System adjusts their synchronicity scores in real time in the corner of the screen."
Dae-hyun approached a secondary checkpoint, unattended. It had a card reader blinking red. He took out his phone, opened the corrupted interface, and activated Peripheral Device Override. He aimed the camera at the reader.
TARGET ACQUIRED: SECURITY_SCANNER_YL-447B.
INJECTING OVERRIDE PROTOCOL: "MAINTENANCE CYCLE – FREE PASS".
DURATION: 1,000 SECONDS.
WARNING: PROTOCOL IS UNSANCTIONED.
The reader blinked yellow and then green. The luminous barrier beside it shut down. Dae-hyun crossed; cold ran through his body, though no one stopped to look at him. To everyone else, he was just another civilian slipping through the shadows.
He hid behind an abandoned cargo container, only twenty meters from the edge of the Zone. From there he could see the holographic touchscreens floating in front of the field commanders, showing vital data and performance metrics of the two squads in real time.
On his phone, the corrupted interface now detected a multitude of local data streams.
[STREAM CAPTURED: TEAM_PERFORMANCE_LOG – IRON_FIST]
[STREAM CAPTURED: ANOMALY_READINGS – SECTOR_G7]
[STREAM CAPTURED: PUBLIC_FEED_SENTIMENT_ANALYSIS]
The last one intrigued him. The System measured public reaction in real time through stream comments and social networks, and used that data to slightly adjust a parameter called "Social Momentum," which influenced the speed of rank point accumulation.
A brilliant idea came to his mind, though… certainly dangerous if discovered.
Squad "Ghost Eyes," the D-rank one, was having a mediocre performance. Their leader, a woman with a magical rifle, hesitated at every decision, which caused Ghost Eyes to end up in the public eye and the comments were anything but encouraging…
"Boring." "This is what D is?" "Iron Fist runs circles around them."
Dae-hyun opened the sentiment analysis stream. A cascade of data: keywords, emoticon scores, engagement rate. There was an editable field:
"Sentiment Bias Filter." By default, it was set to 0 (neutral).
His fingers hovered over the screen. The system he possessed was limited, so he couldn't make "Ghost Eyes" stronger. Much less could he give them powerful weapons.
Although there was something true… he could make the world think they were.
He changed the filter from 0 to +0.85. An extremely positive bias. Then he accessed the team performance log stream and found a minor, subjective metric:
"Apparent Tactical Confidence." He raised it from 34% to 79%.
He didn't change their real damage. He didn't alter their skill. He only changed how the System interpreted and presented their performance.
The effects were immediate and strange.
On the official stream, the narration changed tone.
"Wait a moment! The sensors are registering a surprising increase in the tactical signature of Squad 'Ghost Eyes'! It seems their apparent caution was actually a stratagem. Observe the fluidity in their movements now. The System is recalculating their 'Social Momentum'… and it's rising!"
In the comments, the narrative shifted.
"Wow, he had a plan all along!"
"It's like they woke up."
"That leader is cold as ice, I like her!"
Inside the Zone, the members of "Ghost Eyes" didn't even notice anything different. They kept clumsily fighting an anomaly that made debris float and attack.
But on the scoring screen, their "Momentum" bar began to fill with green, slowly surpassing that of "Iron Fist."
The leader of "Iron Fist," a man with prosthetic muscles, noticed the change on the public screens. His confident expression soured. He began to push, to take unnecessary risks to regain attention.
He made a mistake. A piece of concrete distorted by the anomaly struck his shoulder, making him stumble.
It was a minor injury. But the System, with its "Social Momentum" now biased toward "Ghost Eyes," overreacted.
A scandalous alert crossed all screens, including Dae-hyun's:
[CHANGE IN TEAM PERFORMANCE DETECTED]
[IRON FIST: MOMENTUM CRITICAL. LEADER COMPROMISED.]
[ADJUSTING THREAT ASSESSMENT OF ANOMALY G7… UPDATING FROM "PASSIVE" TO "AGGRESSIVE".]
[WARNING TO SQUADS: PARAMETERS HAVE CHANGED.]
Dae-hyun felt an abyss beneath his feet. No! He had only wanted to alter perception!
Had the System reacted by changing reality inside the Zone?
The anomaly of sector G7, now classified under the "Aggressive" parameter, displayed a different pattern. The floating debris clustered together, forming a larger, more defined structure: a golem composed of corrupted data, which charged at Iron Fist with renewed violence.
The stream exploded. The comments went from bored to frantic.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"
"The Zone went crazy!"
"Ghost Eyes predicted it, they're geniuses!"
The front collapsed in a matter of seconds. The Iron Fist squad, disoriented and wounded, began to retreat.
Ghost Eyes, now identified under the "stable" parameter, received the order to contain the threat. Between their momentary luck and the rival's panic, they managed to destabilize the data golem.
When the Error Zone finally collapsed, the victory was credited to "Ghost Eyes." Their average rank rose slightly. They received sponsorship contracts in real time.
"Iron Fist" was provisionally downgraded.
And amid the post-analysis, a curious datum appeared for system analysts: a brief anomalous spike in the sentiment data stream, marked as "NETWORK NOISE" and discarded.
Dae-hyun left the perimeter while still trembling, just before his override reached its limit. He slipped into a narrow alley and vomited.
The responsibility overwhelmed him. He had played under the rules of a broken god, and the response came in an unpredictable way. Highly dangerous.
His power was not based on that of a hunter; it was based on the fact that he had a real-time switch that allowed him to use a system far too broken with power. And the most unusual thing was that he had only discovered 1% of it.
His phone vibrated. A notification from ErrorWatch, sent to all users in Seoul.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: DUE TO ANOMALIES IN REAL-TIME EVALUATION DATA, A NEW VERIFICATION LAYER WILL BE INTRODUCED STARTING AT 00:00 HOURS. ALL "SOCIAL MOMENTUM" AND "PERCEIVED IMPACT" METRICS WILL BE CROSSED WITH PRIMARY BIOMETRIC DATA. DISCREPANCIES WILL BE FLAGGED AS "POTENTIAL MANIPULATION".]
The System was hardening. Closing doors and reacting to him.
Dae-hyun stared at the screen; his mouth was dry. Apparently, he had achieved something impossible: changing the fate of an incursion without being present in it.
Although that had also drawn the attention of the one entity he didn't want to notice him: the System itself…