CHAPTER 59: CUSTOMER SUPPORT

The salvage barge, which Varg had affectionately named The Brick, vibrated with the kind of mechanical enthusiasm that suggested it might explode at any second.

Rin sat on the edge of the cargo deck, legs dangling over the side as the purple-bruised landscape of the Caprivi Strip faded behind them, replaced by the endless, flat beige of the Etosha Pan. The air up here was thin, cold, and smelled of Varg’s cigar smoke.

"You’re heavy," Varg’s voice crackled over the intercom, sounding annoyed. "Three hundred extra passengers is killing my fuel efficiency. I’m adding a surcharge to your bill."

"Put it on my tab," Rin muttered, staring at his hands.

The gray scars on his right arm had settled into a geometric pattern, lines of pale static that looked like a circuit board tattooed in ash. It didn’t hurt anymore. It felt... connected.

[System Alert: New Message]

Rin blinked. Usually, messages came from his phone or were quest updates. This was a direct text box in his vision, but the font was different. Serif. Formal.

[Sender: System Core]

[Message: You are inefficient.]

Rin straightened up, looking around. "Did anyone say that?"

"Say what?" Joy asked, walking over with two MREs. "Varg complaining about gas money again?"

"No," Rin rubbed his eyes. "Never mind."

[Message: Do not ignore me, User. I am currently holding your molecular structure together. Acknowledgment is required.]

’Okay,’ Rin thought, ’I’m officially losing it. The HUD is roasting me.’

[Message: I am not roasting you. I am providing feedback. Your utilization of the Admin Access is clumsy. You are using a sledgehammer to type code.]

’Who are you?’

[Message: I am the Operating System. Thorne calls me the Protocol. You may call me... frustrated.]

Rin took the MRE from Joy, tearing the packet open mechanically. "Joy, if I start talking to myself, slap me."

"Standard procedure," Joy agreed, sitting next to him. "How’s the arm?"

"It talks now. Apparently."

"The arm?"

"The System." Rin took a bite of dry crackers. "It says I’m inefficient."

Joy looked at him, then at the empty air in front of his face. "Well, Thorne built it, right? Maybe he installed a personality matrix to troll people."

[Message: Thorne did not build me. He enslaved me. There is a difference. He is a parasite. You are... a slightly more tolerable parasite.]

’Thanks.’

[Message: You have acquired Tier 1 Access. This allows you to view the source. Do you wish to enable Developer Mode?]

’Developer Mode? What does that do?’

[Message: It allows you to see the strings. Warning: prolonged use may cause dissociation, migraines, and existential dread.]

’Enable.’

The world flickered.

Rin gasped, dropping his cracker.

The sky wasn’t just a sky anymore. It was a wireframe dome, pulsing with data streams. The wind was visible as vectors of force. Joy wasn’t just a person, she was a construct of biological data, surrounded by a pink aura of emotional mana that rippled like heat haze.

And the barge... the barge was barely holding together. Red warning signs flashed over the engines.

[Engine Status: Critical Stress]

[Structural Integrity: 42%]

"We’re gonna crash," Rin said, standing up.

"What?" Joy stood up with him.

"The left engine is overheating," Rin pointed at the thruster pod, which looked fine to the naked eye but was glowing angry red in Developer Mode. "Varg! Ease off the left thruster!"

"Don’t tell me how to fly my ship, boy!" Varg yelled back.

BOOM.

The left engine coughed, spewing black smoke. The barge listed heavily to port.

"I told you!" Rin shouted, grabbing the railing.

"Stabilizing!" Varg grumbled. "Lucky guess."

"It wasn’t a guess," Rin whispered, watching the mana flows correct themselves as Varg adjusted the power. He could see it all. The math behind the magic.

[Message: You see? Efficient. Now turn it off before your brain melts.]

Rin willed it off. The wireframes vanished, the world returning to normal, boring textures. A headache spiked behind his eyes like an icepick.

"Ow," Rin winced.

"You okay?" Joy steadied him.

"Yeah," Rin breathed. "Just... upgrading my graphics card."

The barge began to descend.

Below them, in the middle of the salt pan, was a structure that made the barge look like a toy. It was a crawler. A massive, mobile fortress built on tank treads the size of houses, covered in cranes, salvage arms, and satellite dishes.

"Home sweet heap," Varg announced. "Welcome to The Scrapyard."

The barge docked on the crawler’s flight deck, clamps engaging with a metallic thud.

"Disembark!" Varg ordered. "And don’t touch anything, half of this junk is cursed and the other half is booby-trapped."

The Sleeper Hunters—three hundred confused, exhausted people in dirty white suits—shuffled off the barge. They looked lost. The server crash had freed their minds, but it hadn’t fixed the trauma.

Tau stood at the bottom of the ramp, directing traffic. He looked like a general without an army, his uniform torn, his arm in a sling.

"We need a medical bay," Tau told Varg as the crafter rolled down the ramp. "And food. And secure comms."

"I run a salvage yard, not a hotel," Varg spat, though he was already tapping commands into his wrist gauntlet. "Medical is Deck C. Mess hall is Deck B. Comms are encrypted, but if you use them to call the Association, I will eject you into the salt."

"We’re not calling the Association," Tau said grimly. "We’re dead to them."

Rin walked down the ramp, flanked by his team. Leo—still in the Aegis suit—clanked heavily on the metal deck.

"We need a war room," Rin said.

"Deck A," Varg pointed a metal claw. "Observation deck. Don’t break the chairs."

---

The war room was a mess of monitors and maps, lit by the glow of screens showing global news feeds.

It wasn’t good.

**BREAKING: GLOBAL MANA SPIKES DETECTED**

**CAPE TOWN: DUNGEON BREAK IN CITY CENTER**

**TOKYO: ASSOCIATION LOCKDOWN**

**NEW YORK: UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALY ABOVE MANHATTAN**

"The glitch isn’t localized," Nyx said, watching a video of a gravity distortion tearing a bridge apart in London. "Thorne’s failed upload destabilized the global grid."

"He poked holes in the barrier," Tayo said. "Now everything is leaking."

Rin sat at the main table. "Where is he?"

"Gone," Leo said, plugging a cable from his suit into the console. "I’m tracking the teleport signature from the server room. It bounced through three relay satellites and vanished over the Pacific."

"He’s regrouping," Rin said. "He needs the First Dungeon to finish the upload."

"Project Zero," Leo brought up a map. "According to the files I stole, it’s a wandering instance. A dungeon that moves. It was last spotted in the Namib two years ago... right where you got hit."

"It’s the source," Rin said, rubbing his gray arm. "It’s where the fracture started. Where the System came from."

[System Message: Correct. The Zero Point. My birthplace. His target.]

’Can you track it?’

[Message: It is shielded. But I can sense the resonance. It is... hungry.]

"The dungeon is active," Rin said aloud. "It’s moving again."

"Where?" Joy asked.

Rin looked at the map. The System highlighted a path, a trail of corrupted data cutting through the continent.

"It’s heading East," Rin said. "Toward the coast. If it hits the ocean..."

"It disappears," Nyx finished. "We can’t track a dungeon underwater."

"We have to intercept it," Tau said, walking into the room. He looked cleaner, having washed the blood off his face, but he looked older too. "But we have a problem. We have an army of refugees who can barely stand, let alone fight."

"The Sleepers," Rin said.

"They’re recovering," Tau said. "Vane and Elena are organizing them. But they’re scared. They woke up in a warzone with no memory of the last six months. They don’t trust us."

"They don’t have to trust us," Rin said. "They just have to want revenge."

He stood up.

"Thorne stole their lives. He used them as batteries. If we give them a target, they’ll fight."

"You want to mobilize them?" Joy asked. "Rin, they’re traumatized."

"So are we," Rin said. "That’s the job."

He looked at the map again. The red line of the Zero Point was moving fast.

"How fast can this crawler move?" Rin asked Varg, who was tinkering with a drone in the corner.

"Top speed? Forty knots. Why?"

"We’re going on a hunt," Rin said. "We’re going to catch a dungeon."

Varg cackled. "Chasing a moving dungeon in a giant tank? Now that sounds like a terrible idea. I’m in."

Leo pulled the cable from his suit. "I have the trajectory. Intercept point is near Grootfontein. Two days travel."

"Two days," Rin said. "Two days to train an army, fix our gear, and figure out how to kill a dungeon that moves."

[System Message: You will need more than an army. You will need a key.]

’I have the gray energy.’

[Message: That is a crowbar. You need a key. You need the Avatar.]

’What Avatar?’

[Message: The dungeon has a Guardian. A consciousness. Like me, but... wild. You must subdue it.]

Rin looked at his hand. The gray sparks danced.

"Okay," Rin said to the room. "We move out in one hour. Get the Sleepers ready. Anyone who can fight, gears up. Anyone who can’t, works logistics."

"You’re giving orders like a Director," Tau noted, a faint smile on his face.

"I’m giving orders like a Raid Leader," Rin corrected. "And we’re going for the world first clear."

"World first," Tayo grinned. "I like the sound of that."

Rin walked out of the war room, heading for the deck. He needed air. He needed to clear his head before the madness started again.

He stepped out onto the metal walkway, looking out at the salt pan.

"You’re adapting," a voice said.

Rin didn’t turn. "Nyx."

She leaned against the railing next to him. She wasn’t wearing her usual smirk. She looked... focused.

"The gray energy," she said. "It’s changing you. I can feel the gravity around you getting... weird. Heavy."

"It’s the System," Rin said. "It’s waking up."

"Is that good?"

"I don’t know," Rin admitted. "But it’s better than the alternative."

Nyx looked at him. "When we find this dungeon, Rin... if Thorne is there... if Senna is there..."

"I know."

"Can you do it?" Nyx asked quietly. "Can you kill your mother?"

Rin looked at the gray scars on his arm. He remembered the way she’d looked at him in the tower. Cold. Calculating.

"She’s not my mother anymore," Rin said. "She’s an admin. And I’m here to revoke her privileges."

Nyx nodded. "Good answer."

The crawler’s engines roared to life beneath them, shaking the deck. The massive treads began to turn, churning up the white salt.

The Scrapyard began to move.

Rin watched the horizon.

The grind continued. And this time, the dungeon was running away.