The teleport jump felt wrong.
Not in a way Raka could explain — but in that deep, crawling sense in the back of his neck. Like something inside the system had blinked while he was mid-load.
They landed hard.
The Hollow Market stretched before them — a once-thriving hub now twisted into a ghost town of code and chaos. What used to be brightly colored kiosks offering costumes, scrolls, and gacha spins were now rusted booths with glitching signs.
One flickered constantly:
> "CASH ITEM EXPIRED – PLEASE RELOAD YOUR MEMORIES"
Iqiww scanned the area. "This place was the heart of the pay-to-win system," he muttered. "People used to spend real money here for power-ups."
"Doesn't look like it's selling much now," Raka replied, stepping carefully past a bugged-out Gachapon machine that kept spitting blank tickets.
The silence was thick.
Every so often, they passed by frozen NPCs — shopkeepers from the old system — standing stiff, heads twitching in loops. Their mouths moved, but the audio was corrupted.
> "W…el…come—b̶a̶c̶k̶…C̸u̸s̷t̸o̵m̴e̷r̶…"
---
As they pushed deeper, the market shifted.
The map wasn't just glitchy — it was alive. Walls folded, aisles restructured. Aisles changed shape like a maze rebuilding itself.
"Map's unstable," Iqiww said, pulling up the mini-map. It kept redrawing itself. "It's reacting to us again."
Then a loud, metallic creak echoed from behind a closed auction vault.
Raka stepped forward.
The door exploded open.
From inside crawled a monstrous figure — humanoid, draped in gold-trimmed cash shop armor, its face replaced with a giant coupon tag blinking ERROR 404.
> [LOST CUSTOMER – RARITY ABERRANT]
"I JUST WANTED TO BE STRONG…"
The creature rushed at them — a corrupted avatar made of premium skins and upgrade buffs. It moved in unpredictable patterns — using glitch versions of hero combos, spamming skills it shouldn't have.
Raka dodged a strike that exploded the ground beneath him.
Iqiww flanked, trying to disable its movement.
"Its buffs aren't real," he called out. "They're mimicked from old player logs — unstable, overpowered, and randomly looped!"
"Great," Raka shouted, rolling behind a broken loot box crate. "So it's basically a hacker boss."
The fight was chaotic.
The monster summoned visual clutter — giant discount banners rained from the sky, blinding them. It spawned clone versions of Raka's own character skin — each shouting old chat logs:
> "Lawan gua? Kalah dong."
"Raka tuh main curang."
"Bocil hoki doang!"
They weren't just fighting the boss. They were fighting echoes of player toxicity.
"Focus on the real one!" Iqiww yelled, dashing through the clones.
Raka clenched his jaw, pushing forward. "I've heard worse before."
He closed in — eyes sharp.
Parried the glitch skill.
Blocked a fake buffed hit.
Then — using Data Sync, he saw a flicker in the monster's routine. One frame too slow.
He moved fast — sword under, upward slash — piercing the glitch core embedded in its chest.
The monster screamed — its voice morphing through thousands of old usernames — before bursting into rainbow static.
> [Aberrant Defeated]
[New Data Fragment Acquired: FRAG_ID_05]
---
After the fight, they rested in a broken food court, surrounded by frozen avatars stuck mid-emote, like mannequins from an abandoned party.
Raka pulled up the new fragment.
> FRAG_ID_05 – "Customer King"
Passive: Temporary immunity to status effects caused by corrupted data.
Risk: May attract attention from entities linked to purchase logs.
"More protection," Raka muttered, "but more danger."
Iqiww chuckled. "Sounds like every microtransaction I ever made."
Raka didn't laugh.
He stared at the map — still glitching — but now, a new route opened. A subway gate near the back of the market pulsed with a green light.
"Where to next?" Iqiww asked.
Raka stood, gripping his sword tighter.
"Down. Always deeper."
---
To Be Continued…