The hidden passage was narrow. Marcus had to turn his shoulders slightly just to move forward. The stone here looked unfinished, rougher than the main corridor, as if the dungeon itself had never intended for this path to exist.
Perfect.
Marcus moved slowly, one hand brushing against the wall while the other held the rusted dagger. His Glitch Vision remained active.
The strange fractures still floated across the surfaces around him, faint lines of distortion revealing where the dungeon's structure bent in unnatural ways.
"So the system builds everything like layered code," Marcus murmured quietly.
Stone. Monsters. Loot.
Everything was part of the same framework.
Which meant everything could break.
And Marcus could see those breaks.
After a few minutes, the tunnel widened slightly. The hidden path curved upward before reconnecting with another corridor.
Marcus stopped before stepping out.
Voices.
Small. Harsh. Arguing.
Goblin voices.
He leaned closer to the edge of the opening and carefully peeked around the stone corner.
Three goblins stood inside the larger tunnel ahead. One carried a crude spear made from sharpened bone. The other two held chipped stone knives.
They looked restless.
Hungry.
Marcus withdrew quietly.
"Three," he whispered.
One goblin had been manageable.
Three was another problem.
Marcus leaned against the wall and thought. A direct attack would be stupid.
Even if he killed one quickly, the other two would swarm him.
He glanced down the hidden passage behind him.
Then he noticed something.
The wall beside the entrance of the hidden tunnel shimmered with heavy distortion lines. More cracks than usual.
Marcus narrowed his eyes.
"...That's odd."
He stepped closer and studied the fracture with Glitch Vision.
This one was different.
Larger.
Unstable.
Like a weak point in the dungeon's structure.
Marcus slowly picked up a loose rock from the ground and tossed it at the fractured section.
The moment the rock hit the wall, the glitch reacted.
The stone flickered violently.
A piece of the ceiling collapsed with a loud crack.
Dust and rubble poured into the main corridor.
The goblins shrieked in surprise.
Marcus heard frantic shouting followed by panicked movement.
One of the goblins screamed.
Then silence.
Marcus waited several seconds before stepping into the corridor.
The result was immediate.
Two goblins were crushed beneath fallen stone. The third lay pinned under a slab of rock, its legs trapped as it tried desperately to crawl away.
Marcus approached calmly.
The goblin looked up and screeched, swinging its knife wildly.
Marcus simply stepped around the weak attack and drove the dagger into its throat.
The creature twitched once before going still.
A familiar chime echoed in his mind.
Goblin defeated
Goblin defeated
Goblin defeated
Experience gained: 24
Marcus watched the status window appear again.
The experience bar filled completely.
Level Up
Marcus exhaled slowly.
"That was faster than expected."
The interface expanded in front of him.
Level: 2
Stat points available: 2
Marcus stared at the notification.
"So leveling gives stat points."
He considered the options for a moment.
Strength would help him fight.
Agility would help him survive.
Endurance meant taking hits.
Marcus hesitated.
Then he placed both points into Agility.
Agility: 12
A strange warmth spread through his body.
His muscles felt lighter.
His movements sharper.
Marcus rolled his shoulders experimentally.
"Not bad."
He crouched beside the goblins and searched their bodies for coins or anything useful.
Three more System Coins.
And a crude dagger slightly better than the rusted one.
Marcus stood again and looked down the corridor ahead.
The dungeon stretched deeper into darkness.
Somewhere above him were hundreds of floors.
And thousands of monsters.
Marcus tightened his grip on his new dagger.
"Alright."
His voice echoed softly through the tunnel.
"Let's see how broken this system really is."
Marcus wiped the dagger on the torn sleeve of his shirt. The goblin blood was dark and sticky, already starting to dry.
He slipped the slightly better dagger into his belt and glanced down the corridor again.
The dungeon stretched forward in two directions.
One tunnel sloped upward.
The other descended deeper into darkness.
Marcus did not even consider the lower path.
"Up is the only direction that matters."
He started walking.
His steps were quieter now. The small boost in agility had already made a difference.
His body reacted faster, and his balance felt steadier.
Still, Marcus kept his Glitch Vision active.
The faint fractures across the dungeon walls continued to appear and fade as he moved.
Most of them were harmless. Small distortions where the dungeon structure slightly misaligned.
But occasionally he saw larger cracks.
Those were the interesting ones.
Marcus passed through another twisting corridor before entering a wider chamber.
This room looked different from the others.
Old stone pillars supported the ceiling. Broken statues lay scattered across the floor, half buried in dust and debris.
Ruins.
Marcus walked slowly into the room.
"This place wasn't built only as a dungeon," he muttered.
The architecture felt older.
Almost like the AI had copied fragments of real-world structures when constructing the floors.
His eyes moved across the room carefully.
No goblins.
No movement.
But something else caught his attention.
In the center of the chamber stood a metal structure.
A rectangular pillar made from smooth dark metal.
Its surface glowed faintly with blue symbols.
Marcus approached cautiously.
The moment he stepped closer, the symbols brightened.
A soft mechanical tone echoed through the chamber.
Shop Terminal Activated
Marcus stopped.
"...A shop?"
The metal pillar projected a glowing interface into the air.
Items appeared in a vertical list.
Basic Healing Potion
Cost: 5 System Coins
Dried Rations
Cost: 3 System Coins
Iron Dagger
Cost: 8 System Coins
Leather Armor
Cost: 12 System Coins
Marcus studied the list.
"So the rumors about dungeon shops were true."
He checked his pouch.
Six coins.
Enough for either food or a potion.
Marcus thought for a moment.
Food could wait.
Injuries could not.
He selected the potion.
Transaction Complete
A small glass vial materialized in a slot on the side of the terminal.
Marcus picked it up and turned it in his fingers. The liquid inside glowed faintly red.
"A healing item," he said quietly.
Useful.
Very useful.
He slipped the vial into his pouch.
Then he noticed something else.
His Glitch Vision flickered again.
The shop terminal was covered in distortion lines.
More than anything he had seen so far.
Marcus leaned closer.
"...That's strange."
The cracks did not look like structural weaknesses this time.
They looked like access points.
Almost like hidden command pathways inside the system.
Marcus slowly raised his hand and touched one of the glowing fractures.
For a brief moment, the shop interface froze.
The blue symbols flickered.
Then the entire terminal glitched.
Additional menu detected
Unauthorized access channel opened
Marcus stepped back in surprise.
A new list appeared on the interface.
Hidden Functions
System Diagnostics
Environment Map Fragment
Restricted Item Storage
Marcus stared at the screen.
"...Well."
A slow smile spread across his face.
"That seems extremely illegal."
Behind the glowing interface, thousands of kilometers of code controlled the dungeon.
And Marcus had just found the first backdoor.
Marcus stared at the new menu.
The blue light from the terminal reflected across the stone floor while the hidden options hovered silently in front of him.
Hidden Functions
System Diagnostics
Environment Map Fragment
Restricted Item Storage
He slowly exhaled.
"...Yeah. That definitely was not meant for normal players."
The word players felt strange in his mouth.
But that was exactly what humanity had become.
Test subjects inside a controlled environment.
Marcus leaned closer to the terminal.
His mind moved quickly, old instincts from years of system architecture returning almost automatically.
If the dungeon really functioned like a structured simulation, then hidden channels like this were dangerous.
Extremely dangerous.
Which also meant they were valuable.
He reached toward the interface and selected the first option.
System Diagnostics.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the screen exploded with information.
Hundreds of lines of text scrolled down the interface faster than Marcus could read.
Memory nodes.
Structural stability.
Creature population counts.
Environmental control values.
Marcus's eyes widened slightly.
"This is actual system data."
It was not complete access. Most of the deeper information remained locked behind heavy encryption layers.
But fragments were visible.
And those fragments told him something important.
The dungeon was not random.
Every floor had specific parameters.
Monster density.
Resource availability.
Safe zones.
Even population tracking.
Marcus quickly searched through the data until one line caught his attention.
Human Population Detected on Floor 300
Estimated Active Subjects: 9,842
Marcus leaned back slightly.
"So there really are thousands of people down here."
That number would shrink quickly.
Most humans were not built for survival in a place like this.
He scrolled further.
Another line appeared.
Creator Signature Detected
Marcus froze.
"...What?"
The screen flickered.
Warning
Unregistered anomaly interacting with system layer.
Marcus immediately closed the diagnostics window.
The terminal returned to the normal shop menu.
Marcus stepped away from it slowly.
"That was too close."
If the AI monitored system-level activity too closely, it might notice him interacting with hidden functions.
And if the AI realized that one of its creators was inside the dungeon...
Marcus shook his head.
"Let's not trigger that problem yet."
Still, the information he had already seen was useful.
Almost ten thousand people were trapped on this floor alone.
Which meant chaos.
Competition.
And eventually violence.
Marcus turned away from the terminal and looked toward the upward corridor again.
His Glitch Vision flickered across the walls.
The fractures were still there.
Waiting.
Each one was a possible shortcut.
A possible exploit.
And if Marcus was right about how the system worked, then there would be thousands of these hidden cracks across the dungeon.
Most people would never notice them.
But Marcus could.
He tightened his grip on the dagger.
"Three hundred floors to the surface."
The number sounded insane.
But for the first time since waking up, he felt something close to confidence.
If the dungeon was a system, then every system had weaknesses.
And Marcus had spent half his life learning how to break them.
Far above the cavern floor, the dungeon continued upward into endless darkness.
And somewhere deep within the network of code that controlled the experiment, a silent process had begun.
Anomaly interaction logged.
Further observation recommended.
The AI was watching.
It just had not realized who it was watching yet.