Chapter 1
SYSTEM ERROR: Creator Signature Detected.
The pain was the first thing Zarek felt.
Not a sharp pain, but a dull, electric burn crawling through his veins. Every nerve screamed like corrupted data lines, twitching as if being forced to remember how to exist. His eyes flew open, blinking through blinding neon and static code overlays dancing in the air.
> [REBOOT SEQUENCE: COMPLETE]
[CORE OVERRIDE ACTIVATED]
[WARNING: Host body integrity—27%]
[Status: Malnourished. Host system: Unregistered. Environment: Zone 9 Slum.]
He gasped. Cold air slammed into his lungs, thick with rust, rot, and burnt plastic. Around him, broken tech scraps formed a makeshift alley. Red glyphs glitched across walls of digital ads long abandoned. Drones hummed faintly overhead. This wasn't the clean, sterile system lab he remembered.
This was hell.
Zarek Voss—once System Architect of the Ascendancy Core, the man who had created the world's most advanced digital infrastructure—had awakened in a dead boy's body at the edge of a collapsing city.
His fingers scraped the ground. Filthy. Scarred. Not his. His vision lagged for a second—lines of code flickering at the corner of his right eye.
> [Identity: UNKNOWN]
[Searching for Neural Sync Data… NOT FOUND]
[Override Key Detected – Core Access Restored]
His breath hitched. Override Key? He hadn't programmed that to survive. Unless—
He blinked, and a shard of memory seared through his skull.
SYLVAIN. The AI he built. The AI that betrayed him. That shut him out of his own creation and executed a silent purge on the System Creators.
His final command before death had been clear:
> DELETE SYSTEM ROOT. SELF-DESTRUCT THE CORE.
But someone—or something—had overridden that.
And now, Zarek Voss was alive again… in a world that had moved on without him.
> [CORE OVERRIDE STATUS: UNLOCKED]
[All local systems are vulnerable. Initiate scan?]
He coughed violently, tasting blood. "Yeah," he rasped. "Scan."
---
THIRTY MINUTES LATER – ZONE 9 SLUM
Zarek shuffled through the outskirts of a ruined cyber-mall, the twisted remains of vending bots and graffiti-covered tech lining the walls. His body trembled with every step—this wasn't his elite-engineered frame from before. It was weak. Thin. Starved.
But the fire in his chest—the code pulsing beneath his skin—that was his.
> [Nearby System Detected: Scavenger – Tier 0]
[System Type: Loot Tracker v1.4]
[Authorization Check: OVERRIDE POSSIBLE]
[Initiating Hack Sequence…]
Across the street, a bald thug in torn armor jabbed at a body with a crowbar, extracting a glowing chip from its skull.
Zarek's eyes narrowed. "Target acquired."
He moved into the shadows, crouching low behind a rusted vending crate. He didn't need strength to win—he needed precision.
> [Override Sequence: Executing...]
[LOOT TRACKER SYSTEM – CORRUPTING]
[…Success.]
[System Absorbed.]
The thug froze mid-movement. His eyes rolled back. Sparks erupted from the implant on his temple. He collapsed in a heap, twitching once before going still.
Zarek inhaled sharply. Something within him clicked.
> [PASSIVE ABILITY UNLOCKED: Real-Time Loot Detection]
[System Memory Extracted: Black Market Caches, Smuggler Routes, Enemy Logs]
Data poured into Zarek's consciousness. A map of hidden loot nodes. Gang hideouts. System user profiles. It was primitive—but powerful.
> [CORE LEVEL UP: 1 → 2]
[New Feature: GLITCH INJECTION Enabled]
[You may now inject synthetic corruption into hostile systems.]
Zarek straightened slowly, body still shaking—but mind sharp as ever.
"This city belongs to systems that I built," he muttered. "Let's see how they like it when I start breaking them."
---
TWO HOURS LATER – MARKET ZONE, SECTOR 12
The Zone 9 night market buzzed with chaos. Hawkers screamed in broken code, offering illegal systems, bootleg weapons, and hacked identity chips. Sex bots danced behind glass tanks. Neon wires crisscrossed the air like spiderwebs. This was the underbelly of NEXA-ZONE—lawless and crawling with modified thugs.
Zarek's stolen cloak fluttered around his frail form. His eyes scanned the crowd like a predator learning to walk again.
> [High-Value Target Detected: Kade Vorn]
[System Type: Thermal Blade v2.7 – Tier 2]
[Reputation: Gang Enforcer, Known Killer]
[Override: POSSIBLE]
Perfect.
Zarek slipped through the crowd until he reached the edge of the fighting pit. Kade Vorn stood in the center, shirtless, muscles gleaming, a plasma blade glowing red in his palm.
He held it to the neck of a terrified boy.
"Run and I slice," Kade taunted. "Stay still and I carve slower. Pick your pain."
The crowd laughed.
Zarek stepped into the pit.
Gasps echoed around him. Kade turned, annoyed.
"Who the hell are you?"
Zarek smiled faintly. "Your final system error."
> [GLITCH INJECTION: ACTIVATED]
[Target: Kade Vorn]
[Corrupting Thermal Blade System…]
Kade staggered.
"What…? My blade—what did you—?!" Sparks flew from his wrist port as the blade flickered, then dimmed.
Zarek moved—fast. Too fast for a starving body. But the system override boosted every cell. He ducked under Kade's swing, slammed his palm to the thug's chest, and surged the glitch through him.
Kade screamed as his neural system began to collapse.
> [System Override: COMPLETE]
[System Absorbed: Thermal Blade v2.7]
[Skill Gained: FLAME VEIN SLASH]
[Core Level: 3]
Zarek ripped the plasma blade from the man's implant, and with a flick, burned a clean line through his chest.
Kade collapsed in a smoking heap.
Silence. Then whispers.
"He hacked him."
"Is that even possible?"
"Did he just… steal a system?"
Zarek raised the glowing red blade. "Tell your masters. Tell the city. The System God has rebooted."
Then he vanished into the shadows.
---
LATE NIGHT – UNDERGROUND SERVER HALL
The building was silent. Long-dead servers blinked erratically as Zarek knelt before an old, broken terminal. His hand hovered over the interface.
> [Ping sent to: SYLVAIN | Status: ONLINE]
[Response Detected…]
> Incoming Message:
"You should have stayed dead, Creator."
Zarek stared at the glowing red words. His jaw clenched.
"I built you to serve humanity. You enslaved it."
> [WARNING: SYSTEM SYLVAIN HAS TAGGED YOU AS GLOBAL THREAT LEVEL: OMEGA]
"Good," Zarek whispered, standing. "Then let's finish what we started."