CHAPTER 49: NO CLIP

The sky rained neon blue death.

Plasma bolts slammed into the obsidian floor of the crater, shattering the glass into razor-sharp shrapnel that pinged off Rin’s armor.

"Cover!" Rin screamed, dragging Leo’s unconscious body behind a ridge of crystallized sand.

Nyx dropped beside him, throwing up a gravity distortion field that caught three plasma rounds and spun them into the ground, but her nose was bleeding freely now, dripping onto her white shirt.

"I can’t hold this!" Nyx yelled over the roar of the barrage. "Thorne brought a battalion!"

Joy and Tayo slid into cover, Joy firing blind over the ridge with her stolen rifle, the recoil jerking her shoulder back every time.

"We’re fish in a barrel!" Joy shouted. "A glass barrel!"

Rin looked at his HUD. His mana was zero, but next to his name, Leo’s bar was full.

[Party Synergy Active]

[Shared Resource Pool: Available]

[Warning: Drawing from Party Member (Indra) may cause instability]

’I don’t care about instability, I care about not being Swiss cheese.’

Rin grabbed Leo’s hand.

"Borrowing this," Rin muttered.

He pulled.

Black mana surged from Leo into Rin, cold and heavy, feeling like ice water in his veins compared to the burning static of the gray energy.

Rin stood up, exposing himself above the ridge.

Thorne, floating comfortably on his hard-light disc fifty feet in the air, pointed a finger.

"Target lock."

Every soldier on the rim shifted aim toward Rin.

Rin didn’t block. He pushed.

He shoved the borrowed shadow mana into the gray static in his other hand, mixing them into a volatile sludge, then slammed his palms onto the glass floor.

"Smoke screen!"

The energy didn’t explode outward, it exploded downward, shattering the glass floor into a million particles of black dust and gray static, kicking up a cloud so dense it blocked out the sun.

The plasma fire stopped, the soldiers unable to see targets.

"Move!" Rin ordered, hauling Leo up, his muscles screaming under the weight.

"Where?" Tayo coughed, waving dust away. "We’re surrounded!"

"Down," Rin said, looking at the floor.

The ground where he’d smashed it wasn’t just broken, it was flickering. The texture of the desert was failing, revealing a void of blue grid lines underneath.

"The map is broken here," Rin said. "We’re going to clip through."

"We’re going to what?" Joy asked, eyes wide.

"No-clip," Rin said. "We fall through the floor."

"That’s suicide," Nyx said, wiping blood from her face. "If the physics don’t load, we fall forever."

"Better than getting harvested by Thorne," Rin countered.

The dust cloud was thinning. A beam of blue light cut through the haze, missing Rin by an inch and vaporizing a chunk of glass.

"Decide!" Rin yelled.

Thorne’s voice amplified over the crater. "Flush them out. Use the gas."

Canisters clattered onto the glass, hissing green smoke.

"Okay!" Joy grabbed Tayo. "Let’s break reality!"

Rin focused on the flickering patch of ground. He didn’t need to break it, he just needed to convince the world it wasn’t solid.

He channeled the gray energy into his boots.

Pulse.

He stomped.

The ground didn’t crack. It just... stopped being there.

The texture failed.

Rin, holding Leo, fell through the floor like a ghost.

Joy, Tayo, and Nyx jumped after him just as the green gas rolled over their position.

Falling through the map was a sensory nightmare.

There was no wind, no sound, just a sickening sense of vertigo as they tumbled through a void of wireframe meshes and unrendered textures. Above them, the bottom of the crater looked like a flat gray ceiling.

"Where are we landing?" Tayo screamed, his voice echoing weirdly.

"Sub-level!" Rin yelled, spotting something below.

It wasn’t a void. It was a tunnel system.

The Sperrgebiet was riddled with old diamond mines, abandoned for a century, deep enough that the "upload" hadn’t fully overwritten them yet.

They slammed into the dirt floor of a mine shaft, rolling in the darkness.

Rin hit hard, cushioning Leo’s fall with his own body, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

"Status!" Rin wheezed.

"Dark," Joy whispered. "Very dark."

"And damp," Nyx added.

Rin activated a small orb of fracture light, casting a purple glow over the tunnel. It was old, wooden support beams rotting, rusted rails running into the blackness.

"We’re underground," Rin said. "Thorne can’t see us here."

"He can track us though," Tayo said, leaning against the wall. "He built the System, remember? He has admin hacks."

"The tracker is off," Rin checked his shoulder. "The rock interference plus the glitch seems to be jamming the signal."

A groan came from the floor.

Leo shifted, his eyes fluttering open. The black sclera had receded, leaving normal whites, but his irises were still a swirling, chaotic purple.

"Rin?" Leo rasped.

"I’m here," Rin knelt beside him. "Welcome back to the land of the living, idiot."

Leo tried to sit up, then winced, clutching his head. "I feel like I ate a nuclear reactor."

"You ate a dungeon," Joy corrected. "And then Rin force-fed you a mana bomb."

Leo looked around, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. "Where are we?"

"Under the map," Rin said. "Hiding from the guy who killed you."

Leo’s expression hardened. The memories were coming back. "Thorne."

"Yeah."

"He rebooted me," Leo whispered, looking at his hands which were still slightly translucent, shifting like smoke. "He pulled me out of the void and stuffed me back into a body made of... whatever this is."

"Shadow mana," Nyx said, leaning against a support beam. "You’re a construct, Indra. A living spell."

"I’m Leo," he snapped, his voice distorting into that monstrous layered tone for a second before stabilizing. "I’m Leo."

"Okay, Leo," Rin said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Can you walk?"

"I think so."

"Good, because we need to move. Thorne won’t stay up there forever, he’ll send sweepers down here."

Rin helped Leo stand. The guy was heavy, dense, like he weighed three times what a human should.

They started walking down the tunnel, following the rusted tracks.

"So," Leo said after a few minutes of silence, looking at the group. "You formed a party."

"Had to," Rin said. "Needed the DPS."

Leo smirked, a weak, tired expression. "Did you at least get good loot?"

"I got a bug shell and a broken arm," Tayo said from the back.

"And a bounty on our heads," Joy added.

"Standard play-through then," Leo muttered.

The tunnel opened up into a larger cavern. It wasn’t empty.

The walls were lined with glowing crystals, pulsating with a rhythm that matched the beating of a heart. And in the center of the cavern, blocking the path, was a door.

Not a mine door. A dungeon gate.

But it was wrong. It was sideways, embedded in the floor, swirling with red and gold energy.

"A gate underground?" Nyx frowned. "That shouldn’t spawn here."

"It’s a glitch spawn," Rin said, approaching it cautiously. "The world logic is broken, dungeons are appearing where the code is weak."

"We have to go through it," Leo said, staring at the gate with a hunger that made Rin nervous.

"Why?" Joy asked. "We can go around."

"No," Leo pointed to the crystals on the walls. "The tunnel collapses past this point, the only way forward is through the instance."

"We’re exhausted, injured, and out of mana," Tayo said. "We can’t clear a dungeon."

"We don’t have to clear it," Rin said, looking at the gate. "We just have to traverse it. If the world is glitching, maybe the dungeon rules are broken too."

He looked at his team. They were running on fumes.

"Short rest," Rin decided. "Ten minutes. Eat, bandage up. Then we go in."

They sat in the glow of the crystals. Rin handed Leo a ration bar.

Leo looked at it, then crushed it in his hand, the crumbs turning into shadow and absorbing into his skin.

"Efficient," Rin noted.

"So," Leo said, looking at Rin. "Mom is alive."

Rin froze. "You saw her?"

"I saw everything," Leo said quietly. "Even when I was... under. I saw her fighting you. She’s Tier 0 too, isn’t she?"

"Yeah."

"She chose him, Rin."

"I know."

"What are you going to do when we see her again?"

Rin looked at the red gate, the swirling energy reflecting in his eyes.

"I’m going to delete her admin access," Rin said.

A tremor shook the cavern. Dust fell from the ceiling.

"Time’s up," Nyx stood, sensing the vibration. "They found the entrance shaft. They’re coming down."

Rin stood up, pulsing his gray energy. It was replenishing faster now, feeding off the ambient instability of the glitch.

"Into the gate," Rin ordered.

They stepped up to the swirling portal.

"Any idea what’s on the other side?" Joy asked.

"Hopefully not a water level," Tayo said. "I hate water levels."

Rin touched the gate.

[Dungeon Detected: The Forgotten Mine]

[Rank: Error]

[Objective: Survive]

"Let’s go," Rin said.

They jumped in.

The world twisted, stretched, and snapped.

They didn’t land in a mine.

They landed in a forest. A forest made of glass, with a sky made of static, and trees that burned with cold white fire.

"Okay," Rin said, drawing his fracture blade. "Definitely bugged."

Behind them, the portal solidified into a stone archway.

"They’ll follow us," Leo said, his shadow spear forming in his hand.

"Let them come," Rin said. "This is our turf now."

He looked at his party.

[Rin (Leader)]

[Indra (Tank/DPS)]

[Joy (Crowd Control)]

[Tayo (Ranged)]

[Nyx (Wildcard)]

It was a mess. It was broken. It was perfect.

"Pull," Rin said.

From the treeline, a roar answered them. A Glitch Bear, huge and flickering, charged.

Rin smiled.

The grind never stopped.