Everything froze.Time glitched.Space bent.
The moment Rishi touched the Dev Console, light erupted from the platform, pushing Glitch-Rishi back for the first time. Screams echoed—not human, not digital—something older. Something ancient. Something that should have never been woken.
"You idiot," Glitch-Rishi roared, shielding his face. "Do you even know what you've done?!"
"No," Rishi whispered. "But I'm about to find out."
The console's interface bloomed like a lotus of light, code cascading down like waterfalls made of neon.
::WELCOME, ROOT USER.::TRAINER V1.0 DEBUG MODULE UNLOCKED.::WARNING: REWRITING BASE SYSTEM WILL DELETE USER CONFIG.::CONFIRM OVERWRITE?
Rishi stared. His friends—broken. The world—glitched. His past—cursed.
He'd been chasing power. Chasing a cheat to fix everything.
But maybe... the real cheat was rewriting the game entirely.
"Do it," he said. "No god mode. No hacks. Let's build balance."
::OVERWRITE CONFIRMED.::INITIALIZING TRAINER: SANDBOX MODE.
The Reset Pulse
A shockwave burst from the console, blue and clean—ripping through the decaying air like spring wind in a nuclear wasteland.
Corrupted trees reverted to green. Mutated buildings healed their digital scars. Even the twisted sky calmed into a dull grey-blue.
And Glitch-Rishi? He screamed—not in pain, but in rage.
"You fool! You broke the cycle! You—!"
But then he flickered. His body began to distort—no longer supported by a corrupted reality, the very data that sustained him began to eat itself.
"I'm not done…" he hissed, falling to his knees. "You can't delete me… I'm YOU!"
Rishi stepped toward him.
"Then I guess I'll live better than you ever did."
And with one final pulse of white light—
Glitch-Rishi vanished.
But Victory Had a Price
When Rishi opened his eyes, the Dev Room was gone.
No console. No floating stairs. Just crumbling stone and broken books around him.
And Nyra, Saanvi, Rehan… lying still.
Z1's fragmented core blinked once—then faded.
"Guys?" he said. "Wake up…"
Saanvi stirred first, glitch lines fading from her skin. Nyra coughed—she was breathing. Rehan… cracked a weak grin.
"You better have saved the world. I lost a kidney fighting that glitch dog."
They were alive.
But something was wrong.
Rishi stood and looked at his hands.
No HUD. No health bar. No infinite symbols. No Trainer.
His mind was foggy, his powers... gone.
He'd reset the system, yes. But in the process… he'd purged all enhancements—even his own.
He was human again.
Across the World: The Effects of Balance
All over Earth, people blinked, stunned.
In America, a man who once could summon fire from his palms tried again—and nothing happened.
In Russia, a girl who could teleport reappeared midair—and fell, screaming, powerless.
In Tokyo, a masked hacker checked his stats—and found zeroes.
The Trainer was gone. The world was normal again.
Except for one thing.
Some people began developing new powers—not based on random chance, but on training, discipline, and willpower.
Rishi hadn't deleted powers. He'd restructured the system.
Now, the world followed RPG logic. Skills were earned. Stats grew with action. Quests were real—but so were consequences.
A new world had been born.
One Final Glitch
As they walked out of the ruins, Nyra touched Rishi's shoulder.
"You're different now."
"I feel it too," he said.
But she wasn't talking about powers.
She held up a shard of Z1's core. It pulsed… with Trainer code.
"You didn't destroy him. You just rewrote him."
Rishi looked at the data shard.
And inside it—barely visible—was a blinking icon.
/BACKUP SAVE FILE DETECTED/"Would you like to restore?"
Rishi didn't respond.
But somewhere far away—in the deepest layer of the digital plane—a figure sat alone in the dark.
Wearing a version of Rishi's face.
Smiling.
"It's not over."
End of Chapter 3