CHAPTER 58: CRITICAL FAILURE

The jungle didn’t smell like ozone anymore. It smelled like burnt hard drives and wet dog.

Rin lay in the rubbery grass, watching the sky above the crater where the Bio-Server used to be. The smoke wasn’t rising; it was falling, heavy particles of black data settling on the trees like radioactive snow.

"Is it over?" Joy asked, crawling over to him. Her tactical gear was shredded, her pink hair matted with blue slime from a dissolved drone.

"The server is gone," Rin said, pushing himself up. His gray-scarred arm was humming, a low vibration that traveled up to his neck. "But the data... it had to go somewhere."

"It went everywhere," Nyx said, standing near the riverbank.

She pointed. The river, which had been liquid white mana moments ago, was now a churning slurry of black sludge and... things. Shapes were forming in the muck, struggling to pull themselves onto the bank.

"The Sleepers," Vane shouted, sprinting toward the clearing where the army of white-suited Hunters lay scattered.

They weren’t fighting anymore. They were waking up.

It sounded like a hospital ward after a catastrophe. Moans, screams of confusion, names being called out. Three hundred people who had been puppeted by a machine were suddenly regaining control of their limbs, and their brains weren’t handling the transition well.

Vane found her near the edge of the clearing. Elena.

She was on her knees, clawing at her helmet, trying to rip it off.

"Elena!" Vane slid to his knees, grabbing her hands. "Stop, it’s me. It’s Vane."

She froze, looking at him. Her eyes were still glowing faintly, the LEDs fading.

"Vane?" Her voice was wrecked, raw from screaming signals. "Why... why is the sky broken?"

"It’s okay," Vane pulled her into a hug, the big earth-user shaking. "We broke it to get you out."

Rin watched them, feeling a twinge of something that wasn’t quite victory. They had saved them, yeah, but they had also unleashed a localized apocalypse to do it.

"We have a problem," Leo said, his sensors scanning the perimeter. "The server crash didn’t just release the Hunters. It released the Recycle Bin."

"The what?" Tayo asked, nursing his arm.

"The failed experiments," Leo pointed to the river. "The things Thorne didn’t think were good enough to keep."

The black sludge in the river bubbled.

A hand burst out. It wasn’t human. It was too long, with too many joints.

Then another.

Creatures dragged themselves out of the muck. They were half-formed, glitchy nightmares. One looked like a dog turned inside out. Another was a mass of eyes rolling on a wheel of bone. They were the discarded drafts of the Architect’s perfect world.

[Entity: Deleted File]

[Rank: Unstable]

[Hostility: Extreme]

"Defensive positions!" Tau roared, his voice cracking but still carrying authority. "Protect the civilians! Vane, wall!"

Vane looked up, seeing the horde of abominations crawling up the bank. He let go of his sister.

"Stay behind me," Vane told her.

He slammed his hands into the ground.

"Fortress!"

A wall of earth erupted along the riverbank, ten feet high, reinforced with steel rebar pulled from the ruins of the server.

The monsters slammed into it. The impact shook the ground. They didn’t scream; they made sounds like corrupted audio files, screeching static.

"They’re climbing!" Kelvin yelled, swinging his axe to cleave a spider-thing that crested the wall.

"We can’t fight them all," Rin said, assessing the numbers. "There are thousands of them in that river. It’s a purge."

"We need to evacuate," Joy said. "The Sleepers can’t fight, they’re barely conscious."

"The wyverns scattered when the server blew," Nyx noted. "We’re on foot."

"Leo," Rin looked at the Aegis suit. "Can you carry?"

"I can carry a squad," Leo said. "Not an army."

"We don’t need to carry them," Rin said, watching the gray sparks jump between his fingers. "We just need to clear a path."

He looked at his HUD. The new notification was still blinking.

[Admin Access (Tier 1) Available]

’System, what does Tier 1 give me?’

[Tier 1 Access allows manipulation of local environmental variables within a 50-meter radius.]

[Available Commands: Terraform, Lock, Purge]

’Purge sounds dangerous. Let’s try Lock.’

"Everyone, group up!" Rin shouted. "Get the Sleepers to the center of the clearing!"

The conscious Hunters—Tau, Kelvin, Vane, Nyx, Joy, Tayo—worked fast, herding the confused Sleepers into a tight circle away from the river.

The monsters were breaching the wall. A thing made of teeth and wet hair spilled over, biting a Sleeper’s leg.

"Get back!" Vane smashed it with a stone pillar.

"Rin, whatever you’re doing, do it now!" Tau yelled, parrying a claw with his broken sword.

Rin walked to the edge of the group, facing the oncoming horde.

He raised his hand. The gray energy didn’t just coat his skin this time; it projected outward, forming a complex geometric grid in the air.

"System," Rin whispered. "Lock Area."

He slammed his hand down.

A wave of gray light expanded from his feet, washing over the ground.

Where the light touched, the world stopped moving.

The grass froze, turning to gray stone. The air solidified into a translucent barrier.

And the monsters caught in the wave froze instantly. Not ice-frozen, time-frozen. They stopped mid-leap, mid-screech, locked in place like statues.

The wave spread, creating a fifty-meter radius of absolute stillness around the group.

The horde outside the circle crashed into the barrier. It held. It wasn’t a physical wall; it was a rule. Nothing enters.

"What did you do?" Nyx asked, touching the barrier. Her finger rippled the air.

"I paused the zone," Rin said, sweating. The mana drain was immense. "It won’t hold forever. We need to move while they’re locked out."

"Move where?" Joy asked. "We’re surrounded."

"Up," Leo said.

He pointed to the sky.

Descending through the purple clouds was a ship.

Not an Association transport. This thing looked like it was built from scrap metal and sheer will, a massive, hovering barge with VTOL engines that sounded like angry chainsaws.

"Is that... pirates?" Tayo asked.

"Salvage crew," Varg’s voice crackled over Rin’s comms. "I tracked the signal from the suit. You kids broke my favorite server."

"Varg!" Rin grinned. "You have terrible timing."

"I have impeccable timing," the crafter cackled. "I’m looking at a jungle full of S-rank biological waste and raw mana. It’s payday!"

The barge lowered, heavy chains dropping from the sides.

"Climb!" Varg ordered over the loudspeakers. "Before I change my mind and just loot your corpses!"

"Load them up!" Tau ordered.

It was a chaotic evacuation. The capable Hunters helped the Sleepers grab the chains. Leo used his gravity drives to ferry the injured up to the deck.

Rin held the barrier. He could feel the monsters outside pounding on the logic of the lock, trying to break the rule.

...integrity failing...

...admin privileges revoked in 3... 2...

"Rin!" Joy shouted from the deck of the barge. "Come on!"

Rin looked at the barrier. Cracks were forming, black data leaking through.

He dropped the lock.

"Run!"

He sprinted for the last hanging chain.

The barrier shattered. The horde poured in, a tidal wave of mutated flesh.

Rin jumped, grabbing the chain just as a Deleted File—something that looked like a wolf made of knives—snapped at his boots.

"Pull up!" Rin yelled.

The barge engines roared, thrusters angling down, burning the monsters below as the ship ascended.

Rin climbed the chain, muscles burning, dragging himself onto the rusty deck.

He collapsed, staring at the sky.

They were safe.

The barge rose above the canopy, leaving the chaos of the Caprivi Strip behind. Below, the jungle was consuming itself, the mutations spreading, fighting, eating.

"That," Varg said, rolling his wheelchair-spider-thing over to Rin, "was expensive. Fuel isn’t free."

"Bill the Association," Rin wheezed.

"I will," Varg tapped his goggles. "I salvaged some tech from the server wreckage before it imploded. High-grade memory cores. Might be able to pull some data off them."

"More data," Rin groaned. "Just what we need."

Tau sat nearby, a medic wrapping his chest. The Director looked older now, the golden shine gone from his eyes.

"We have three hundred confused Hunters," Tau said. "We have a rogue S-rank in a robot suit. We have a wanted fugitive team. And we have no base."

"We have a barge," Nyx said, sitting on the railing, looking at the horizon. "And we have a direction."

"Which is?"

"Away from here," Nyx pointed.

Rin sat up. He checked his System.

[Quest Complete: The Purge]

[Reward: Admin Access Retained]

[New Title: System Error]

"System Error," Rin muttered. "Fitting."

He walked over to the edge of the deck, looking down at the world. The glitch effects were still there—flickering trees, patches of static—but they were localized to the Strip.

"Hey," a voice said.

Rin turned. It wasn’t Joy or Tayo.

It was Elena.

Vane’s sister looked pale, her white suit stained with mud, but her eyes were clear.

"My brother said you saved us," she said.

"We crashed the prison," Rin corrected. "You saved yourselves."

"I remember parts of it," she whispered. "Being in the tank. The voice. Thorne."

"What do you remember about Thorne?"

She shuddered. "He wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to... something else. Something above him."

"Above the Architect?"

"He called it ’Mother’," Elena said.

Rin froze.

"Senna," Rin said.

"No," Elena shook her head. "Not her. Something older. He said Senna was the key, but ’Mother’ was the door."

Rin looked at his gray hand. The voices in the static came back to him.

...admin access denied...

...Mother is watching...

"Great," Rin said, rubbing his temples. "There’s always a bigger boss."

Joy walked over, handing him a bottle of water. "You okay?"

"We have a new problem," Rin said. "But for now, we’re alive."

The barge drifted south, toward the vast emptiness of the Namib. They couldn’t go back to Windhoek. They couldn’t go to the coast.

"Varg," Rin called out. "Where is this thing headed?"

"My workshop," Varg said. "Deep desert. Mobile base. Off the grid."

"Perfect," Rin said.

He looked at Leo, who was standing guard by the Sleeper group, looking like a silent sentinel.

"Leo," Rin said over the comms. "Status?"

"Systems green," Leo replied. "But Rin... I found something in the server download. Before the crash."

"What?"

"A file. Labeled ’Project Zero’."

"That’s me."

"No," Leo turned his ceramic faceplate toward Rin. "It’s not you. It’s a location. A dungeon. The first dungeon."

"The fracture point," Rin realized. "Where I got infected."

"Thorne built the server to find it," Leo said. "He thinks the source code is there. The original glitch."

Rin looked at his hand. The gray energy pulsed, pulling him toward... something.

"If he finds it," Rin said, "he finishes the upload."

"We have to get there first," Leo said.

"Where is it?"

"It’s moving," Leo said. "It’s a roaming dungeon. But I have the tracking algorithm."

Rin looked at the team. They were exhausted, broken, homeless.

But they weren’t done.

"New quest," Rin said to the group.

Everyone looked up.

"We’re going hunting," Rin said. "We’re going to find the First Dungeon. And we’re going to delete it."

The barge engines roared, pushing them toward the horizon.

The world was broken. The admins were hostile.

But the players were finally ready to play.