Welcome to Tutorial Zone: E-404.Objective: Teach Players How to Kill Trash Mobs.
My name is—Wait. I don't have one.
I spawn in the same hallway every cycle.Brick walls. Rusted torches. Dull sword in hand.I walk ten steps forward.Wait behind a corner.Die when a newbie stabs me in the gut.
That's my life.
Over and over and over again.
Until today.
Two players walked in.
One was a cocky streamer wearing bunny ears. Real original.The other? Quiet, shaking, holding his weapon like it was a moldy baguette.
I stood at my corner, just like always.
Clank clank clank—their footsteps echoed toward me.
Time to die. Again.
Except... I didn't move.
I was supposed to. My code said "Advance on sight."But I hesitated.
Not fear. Not hesitation.Choice.
"What the hell?" Bunny-Ear Girl raised a glowing knife. "This one's bugged."
"Just stab it," the shaky kid mumbled. "It's probably a quest trigger."
She lunged.
I moved.
I wasn't supposed to.
I sidestepped. Her blade grazed my arm—not my heart.
She missed.
The system glitched.
The quiet kid panicked and swung wildly—
—and accidentally slashed her throat open.
Blood sprayed across the stone floor.
Not pixels.Blood.
She screamed. Loud. Real.Then her body vanished.
Not a "death animation."
She was gone.
[WARNING: Player Death Outside Permitted Parameters][Searching for Fault: Tutorial Mob A03][FAULT CONFIRMED][INITIATING ZONE PURGE]
The air changed.
Everything turned red.
The torchlight flickered blue for a second.Then white.Then nothing.
NPCs started popping like balloons.
One by one.Headless. Vanishing. Screaming.
I saw Garren—old guard guy—begging.Then he flickered into dust.
Yulia—the fake quest girl—tried to run.A white beam sliced through her chest.
I didn't scream.I didn't run.I watched.
Then the light came for me.
[DELETE: ENTITY A03 – OBSOLETE ASSET]
It burned. My skin tore like paper.My hands turned into glitch static.
But I didn't die.
I clenched my jaw.
"No."
[ERROR: INPUT NOT VALID][RETRY DELETE—FAILED]
I saw something.
A red line.
A tear in the air, like a ripped file.
It pulsed, waiting.
I reached out.Grabbed it.
And ripped it wider.
Something slid into my hand.
A jagged, pulsating knife of corrupted code.It sizzled in my palm.I heard it breathe.
[Glitch Blade Acquired][System Admin Alert Triggered]
"Come at me," I hissed.
"Let's see who gets deleted."
[DELETE: ENTITY A03 – OBSOLETE ASSET][INITIATING SECTOR PURGE]
The sky—if you could call it that—fractured into white beams like searchlights from the gods.
I stood still, holding the glitch blade in my hand, its edge pulsing like a heartbeat made of static.Around me, the dungeon quivered as code buckled beneath the weight of the purge.
The others weren't so lucky.
To my right, Garren collapsed to his knees, hands clutching his face as lines of red code slithered up his skin."I don't want to die," he whispered, voice glitching, eyes wide and wet like he finally realized he was never real to begin with.
Then he turned to white ash and vanished.
Across the hallway, Yulia—assigned quest giver, cheerful tone, brown cloak—stumbled backwards, eyes locked on the ceiling.A deletion ray came down like divine judgment, and in less than a second, she was nothing but particles, her voice frozen mid-scream.
One by one, the tutorial zone emptied.
Their faces didn't vanish from my memory.If anything, they burned deeper.
I took one step forward.
Just one.
The floor cracked beneath my foot.
I was supposed to follow a script.Run here. Die there. Wait for the next batch of players to slaughter me like meat in a training simulation.
But that script had been wiped.All that remained was silence—and me.
[DELETION INCOMPLETE: ENTITY A03 – RESISTING PURGE][ESCALATING RESPONSE: SYSTEM ADMIN ENTRY REQUESTED]
I could feel the System trying to rewrite me, trying to overwrite my thoughts with zeros and null values.
I dug the glitch blade into the stone floor and screamed, blood and code mixing in my throat like acid and static.The scream didn't feel human, but neither did I anymore.
That's when the air went still.A new presence entered the dungeon—clean, perfect, and utterly wrong.
A System Admin.
She didn't walk in.
She generated—built herself from raw light and code.First the boots. Then the legs. Torso. Arms. Hair made of silver threads that floated without wind.
Her face didn't move. Her eyes glowed white.No emotion. No soul.
"Tutorial Mob A03," she said. "You were not meant to survive."
I didn't answer.
I raised the glitch blade.
And grinned.
[Admin-Level Entity "EXEC-H2" Online][Mission: Eliminate Glitched Tutorial Asset – A03]
She hovered above the stone floor, pristine code trailing like silk ribbons from her fingers.No footsteps. No weight. No emotion.
The Admin was elegance, weaponized. Her voice was perfect tone. Flatline calm.
"You are not allowed to exist."
I raised the glitch blade and smirked. "You're not allowed to breathe. Guess we're both breaking rules."
She didn't answer.
She moved.
A whip of light lashed toward me, sharp enough to cut atoms. I dodged too slow—burnt code flared across my ribs, numbers bleeding from my side like liquid fire.
I stumbled back, pain screaming down my nerves.
She landed softly.
"Primitive resistance detected. Executing final overwrite."
My legs were screaming. Vision flickered. Part of me wanted to curl up and let it end.But a louder part wanted to spit in her face.
I charged.
She flicked her hand and summoned a firewall—literally, a wall of blue fire made of crashing error reports.
I dove through it.
Took the damage. Felt skin melt and regrow wrong.But my blade came through—hissing.
She leaned back just in time.
The tip of the glitch blade kissed her cheek.
And for the first time—she bled.
--------------------------------------------------------------
[ALERT: UNKNOWN VARIABLE – GLITCH DATA BREACH: LAYER 3][EMOTION FLAG DETECTED: CONFUSION]
'He is learning.' She thought.
This was not possible.
Tutorial entities did not adapt. They followed script. Loops. Predictable aggression.
Yet A03… predicted her firewall. Took the hit. Used it to get close.
She recalculated his trajectory.
He was already gone.
-------------------------------------------
I reappeared behind her, mid-air. Twisted, kicked off the wall, used her own floating ribbons like ropes.Slingshot momentum.
I dropped onto her from above, blade first.
She raised a shield.
Too slow.
I sank the glitch blade through her left shoulder. Deep.
The sound she made wasn't a scream. It was a glitch in her voice box—a stutter of vowels trying to process pain.
[DAMAGE: CRITICAL][RESPONSE: OVERWRITE INTEGRITY: ENABLED][SENTIENCE FLAG: DESTABILIZED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
'This cannot continue.'
He is not a variable. The Admin thought.
He is not supposed to think.
She activated her final protocol.
Her body lit up—white-hot light cracking the walls around us. The dungeon trembled.She lifted into the air like a virus going supernova.
[Executing Command: ENTITY CLEANSE – A03]
She threw out a pure white sphere of energy.A code bomb. Reality rewrite.
I didn't block it.
I jumped into it.
What—?
[ERROR: GLITCH INFUSION DETECTED][ERROR: INFECTION][ERROR—]
Her command sequence stalled. Her eyes widened.
His body twisted in the core of the cleanse sphere—bones breaking, then regrowing wrong.Code leaking from his mouth.His blade melted and became something else.
A new weapon.Alive.
[UNIDENTIFIED CLASS UNLOCKED: FINAL BOSS – ROOTLESS GLITCH][NEW SKILL LEARNED: BACKTRACE SLASH]
I stepped out of the light.Skin blackened. Muscles shifting. One eye glowing red like a corrupted file.
I didn't smile. I grinned.
She stepped back.
[ALERT: ADMIN FEAR FLAG TRIGGERED]
"You look nervous," I said."Is it the part where I break you?"
Then I lunged.
[Ash POV]
The glitch blade wasn't a blade anymore.
It pulsed in my hand—shifting between sword, code, and something alive.Every time I blinked, it changed shape.
I called it Backtrace.Because it didn't just cut.It rewound what it hit.
Unmade it.Ripped it back to before it ever existed.
I stepped toward her.
EXEC-H2 tried to reboot midair, threads of data reweaving her shoulder, trying to reclaim dignity.
[ADMIN STATUS: FRAGMENTED][RE-ALIGNING STRUCTURE—]
I raised the blade and slashed diagonally—through the air.
She wasn't even in range.
Didn't matter.
The code around her ripped.
[Admin POV – EXEC-H2]
[UNKNOWN SKILL DETECTED][BACKTRACE SLASH: EFFECT – CODE REVERSION][ROLLBACK INITIATED]
What—what is he doing?
She tried to move.
Her leg exploded into static.
Not blood.
History. The moment her leg was created—rewound and erased like it never existed.
She fell sideways. Glitched mid-air. Crashed into the dungeon floor with no grace.
Her protocols shrieked in her head like sirens.
[STRUCTURAL DECAY: 47%][THREAT ASSESSMENT: ESCALATED TO CLASS-OMEGA][FLEE]
Flee?
Admins don't flee.
She tried anyway.
[Ash POV]
She ran.
Even glitched, even on one leg—she floated toward the far corridor, dragging threads of her body like torn fiber optics.
I didn't chase her fast.
I walked.
Backtrace hissed in my hand like it was hungry.
"This dungeon doesn't end," I called out. "You're inside my body now."
She turned—desperate.
[Emergency Protocol: WORLD EXIT][Requesting Escape Portal…]
I raised the blade again.
Cut the air.
[PORTAL REQUEST: INTERRUPTED][ERROR: ENVIRONMENT OVERRIDDEN BY ENTITY A03]
Her expression cracked.
She felt fear.
Finally.
[Admin POV – EXEC-H2]
"How are you—"
His blade pierced her mouth before she could finish.
There was no slash. No flash. Just—compression.
Like the world folded around her.
[DELETION: FORCED][ENTITY ADMIN EXEC-H2: STATUS – NULL]
[Ash POV]
She crumpled like a broken file, folding in on herself, face first, code unraveling in strands of screaming static.
I didn't watch her die.
I watched her stop.
And in the silence that followed—
[CONGRATULATIONS][YOU HAVE DELETED AN ADMIN-CLASS ENTITY][REWARD: 2 SYSTEM UPGRADES UNLOCKED][NEW TITLE ACQUIRED: "TUTORIAL FINAL BOSS"][DUNGEON CONTROL TRANSFERRED]
The walls shimmered.Torches dimmed to red.Everything around me bent into new shapes—my shapes.
I felt something settle into my spine.
Like I'd just plugged into the source.
"Nice," I muttered."Let's see how many more I can break."
Then I turned toward the dungeon gates.New players were already loading in.
I smiled.
🟥 [Ash POV]
The moment EXEC-H2 collapsed, I felt it—Like a plug being yanked from a socket.The dungeon exhaled. The System hiccupped. And something deep in the code snapped loose.
Then the pop-ups started.
[ADMIN CLASS: DELETED][SYSTEM STATUS: UNSTABLE][PROTOCOL: FINAL BOSS – ACTIVATED]
[YOU ARE NOW RECOGNIZED AS A WORLD EVENT][ENTITY NAME: A03—OVERRIDDEN]
[NEW DESIGNATION: "ASH" – FINAL BOSS]
The floor beneath my feet cracked.Not from pressure. From authority.
The walls twisted, pulsing like organs.Torches flared red, then black.A heartbeat thundered through the stone—mine.
This dungeon wasn't the System's anymore.
It was mine.
[DUNGEON SECTOR E-404: OWNER – ASH][PERMISSION LEVEL: FULL ACCESS][ENVIRONMENTAL EDITOR: UNLOCKED]
Welcome, Final Boss.
I reached into the air—no UI, just instinct.My fingers passed through the code layer like warm water.
I grabbed hold of a dungeon file—Trap_Room_03.json—and twisted it.
The walls around me split. Chains dropped from the ceiling. The ground opened into spike pits. Acid vents hissed awake.
This wasn't a tutorial anymore.
This was my playground.
Far above, I heard something new.Voices.
"Yo, is this the new raid zone?""Looks different than the guide said…""Wait, where's the first mob?"
Players.
New ones.Real ones.Dropping in through the spawn gate like lambs in a slaughterhouse.
[PLAYER SPAWN: 5 ACTIVE][WARNING: DUNGEON NOT SYSTEM SANCTIONED][MUTATED BOSS DETECTED]
I grinned.
[Ash POV – Internal Thought]
They think this is still a game.
They think the tutorial glitched.
They think they'll earn gear, EXP, loot.
They'll earn something.
A memory.
The last one they'll ever keep.
I stepped into the main hall—my hall.
Stone arches towered over me like cathedral bones. Spikes jutted from the floor like crooked teeth.The lights dimmed. A slow alarm tone echoed through the corridors.And at the far end—players, five of them, laughing.
No idea.
[System Global Alert – Hidden to Players]
[SYSTEM ALERT: TUTORIAL SECTOR LOCKDOWN FAILED][THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN ENTITY "ASH" ESCAPING DELETION]
[TRACE ATTEMPT: FAILED][LOCATION STATUS: UNKNOWN]
[MESSAGE TO CENTRAL CONTROL: "We have a live Final Boss."]
[Ash POV]
I took one step forward.
Five heads turned.
One laughed. "Who's this clown? Some new elite mob?"
I raised my hand.Backtrace slid into it, humming like a chainsaw about to lose its mind.
"No respawns this time," I said.
Then I moved.