The first thing Erevan Arclight noticed wasn't light.
It wasn't smell.
It was sound.
Not birds.
Not the whisper of wind.
Not even the faint hum of electricity that usually meant civilization was somewhere nearby.
No—this was deeper. Stranger.
A low vibration that thrummed inside his bones, like someone had jammed a tuning fork straight into his marrow. Every nerve seemed to shiver with it, as if the entire world was running on a frequency only he could hear.
Erevan's eyes snapped open. His body lurched upright before his brain even caught up.
For a moment, he just sat there, gasping—heart hammering, fingers digging into the ground that felt too real and too fake at the same time.
He was in a field.
Or… at least something pretending to be a field.
Half of it looked too real—each blade of grass sharp enough to cut his eyes if he stared too long. The other half? Flat polygons smeared with cheap green paint, like an ancient game trying to remember how graphics worked.
He blinked.
Rubbed his eyes.
Opened them again.
Still broken.
"Okay," he rasped, voice hoarse and unsteady. "This is… new."
The sky flickered.
One moment it was a perfect blue dome, the next—gone.
In its place, a black grid of shifting code, symbols and text scrolling too fast to read. Words. Errors. Static lines like someone had cracked reality and left the pieces half-floating.
His stomach twisted. It felt like falling into a loading screen that forgot how to end.
Erevan swallowed hard. "Oh, hell no."
And then—
(System Notice: Welcome, User #00001)
The voice didn't echo inside his mind. It rang in the air, metallic and artificial, like a cheap text-to-speech program trying—and failing—to sound divine.
A glowing message hovered in front of him, translucent yet bright enough to block the flickering sky.
Erevan squinted. "User number what now?"
He waved a hand through it. The hologram jittered, stuttered—then split into six overlapping copies.
(Error: Duplicate Notification)
(Error: Duplicate Notification)
(Error: Duplicate Notification)
The screens piled over one another until they formed a blinding wall of light.
"Yeah, fantastic start," Erevan muttered.
He tried to stand. The ground disagreed.
The earth wobbled under him, like a trampoline pretending to be solid. Every step sent ripples of distortion through the grass—textures lagging behind his movements.
He steadied himself, breathing hard, eyes darting toward the horizon. A forest loomed there—but even that looked wrong.
The trees breathed.
Their trunks pulsed in and out of shape. Branches bent, pixels tore, leaves flickered like bad video compression.
For a second, panic clawed at his throat.
Then something in him—the old gamer reflexes, the muscle memory of too many hours in glitchy VRMMOs—clicked into place.
This had a pattern.
This… was a tutorial zone.
Broken or not, it felt like one.
And somehow, despite the nausea, despite the sheer absurdity, Erevan found himself grinning.
"Alright," he whispered, voice shaking but alive. "Let's see what this bastard game throws at me."
The system pulsed again.
(System Notice: Initializing Character Sheet)
New lines shimmered into view, crisp and glowing like the game had finally decided to start behaving.
Name: Erevan Arclight
Class: ???
Level: 1
HP: 100 / 100
MP: 50 / 50
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Intelligence: 10
Luck: ??? (Error: Value Not Found)
Erevan tilted his head, squinting at the floating stats. "Not bad for a tutorial, I guess… except—what's with the question marks? And my Luck stat? Seriously? 'Value not found'? Did the devs just rage-quit halfway through coding this thing?"
The system, as if personally offended, shot back more glowing text.
(Error: System Database Corrupted)
(Temporary Class Assigned: Anomaly)
He blinked. Then snorted. Then just laughed.
"Anomaly? My class is literally a bug?" He ran a hand down his face. "Perfect. Forget being a hero. I'm just a walking patch note."
His laughter came out sharper than he meant. Half nerves, half disbelief.
And then—the world shuddered.
The ground rippled beneath his feet like corrupted water. Grass pixelated, dissolving into floating fragments that drifted upward like shattered code.
Something was rising from the distortion.
At first, Erevan thought it was an animal. A wolf, maybe. But then the shape twisted, tore, and reformed like a nightmare that couldn't decide what to be.
Its snout stretched too long. Its fur flickered between hyper-real detail and blocky cartoon shading. Joints snapped in and out of place, each movement jerky, unnatural—like a puppet controlled by lagging hands.
Its growl was wrong. Half organic, half static—like a corrupted audio file dragging nails down his nerves.
(System Notice: Hostile Entity Detected – Glitch-Wolf Lv.1)
Erevan's mouth went dry.
"Oh, great," he muttered. "Tutorial boss fight already? Love that for me."
The wolf lunged.
Instinct screamed. Erevan moved.
He threw himself sideways, rolling through a patch of flickering grass that blinked between existing and not. His shoulder slammed into the fake ground, the texture glitching beneath his touch, but his throat was still intact—so he'd call that a win.
The wolf's jaws snapped shut on empty air, making a noise like tearing metal.
Erevan scrambled upright, legs trembling. The ground pulsed beneath him again, the fake-earth trampoline effect throwing him off balance.
"Okay, no sword, no magic, no—whatever. What the hell am I supposed to do here?"
The system beeped cheerfully.
(Generating Starter Weapon)
Erevan's heart lifted. "Finally, some help!"
(Error: Asset Not Found)
(Error: Asset Not Found)
(Fallback Generated: Exploding Sheep Summon)
He froze.
"…Wait. What?"
A low, woolly bleat cut through the glitching air.
Erevan turned—and found himself staring at a sheep.
A fat, fluffy sheep.
With glowing red eyes.
And a countdown ticking over its head.
3… 2… 1…
His face went pale. "Oh, you've got to be—"
The sheep exploded.
The blast cracked the air like thunder, shattering the world into blinding light and static. Erevan was hurled backward, ears ringing, vision spinning, every inch of him covered in what smelled unmistakably like roasted wool.
He groaned, half-laughing, half-dying. "I hate everything."
The wolf hadn't fared much better.
Caught mid-leap, the beast tore apart mid-air—its body fragmenting into shards of corrupted code, limbs twisting, then disintegrating into nothing.
(System Notice: Enemy Defeated)
EXP +120
Bronze Coins +5
New Item Acquired: Wolf Fang (Glitched)
Erevan just lay there in the smoking crater, staring at the sky that couldn't decide what color it wanted to be.
His chest heaved. His head buzzed. His hair smelled like burnt farm animal.
Slowly, he lifted one trembling hand to his face and muttered, "What the actual hell just happened."
The system's tone was offensively cheerful.
(New Skill Acquired: Exploding Sheep Summon Lv.1)
Erevan sat up so fast he nearly passed out. "No. No no no no. That's not—You're kidding me, right? That's my skill?!"
The glowing words floated smugly in front of him. Unbothered. Permanent.
He dropped his head into his hands, laughing helplessly. "I wanted a sword. Or a spell. Something dramatic. Not… exploding livestock!"
His laughter turned breathless. He was alive. Singed and confused, but alive.
Somewhere beyond the glitching field, a deep rumble rolled across the landscape—low and guttural enough to shake the ground beneath him. The sound crawled up his spine like a warning.
Erevan's grin faded. "Oh. Fantastic. There's more."
The wind shifted.
If it could even be called wind here.
The air buzzed faintly, like static electricity crawling over his skin. Every breath tasted of ozone and smoke—digital and burnt, the ghost of the sheep still clinging to him.
Erevan groaned and sat up, clutching his ribs. His muscles trembled like half-rendered code, his vision blurring in and out of focus.
For a second, he almost laughed again.
Almost.
Because how could this not be a joke?
He'd been in the world for what—five minutes?
Already exploded once.
Already fought a boss made of lag.
And his first "legendary skill" was a goddamn sheep bomb.
"Right," he muttered to himself, voice thin but stubborn. "Okay. Step one—don't die. Step two—figure out how to make exploding farm animals useful. Step three—cry later."
He pushed himself up, brushing away flakes of burnt grass that weren't even real. They dissolved into static the moment his hand touched them.
The field around him was eerily quiet.
The flickering horizon had stopped spasming for now, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Erevan flexed his hands, trying to steady the tremor in his fingers. "Alright, System. You win. I'll play along. Just—throw me a damn sword next time, okay?"
(Error: Voice Command Recognition Malfunction)
(Tip: Try yelling louder)
Erevan froze mid-breath, then let out a strangled laugh. "You're serious? That's your fix?!"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh, I hate you already."
Somewhere in the distance, the faint hum of static deepened.
Then came the sound.
A low, rumbling growl—no, not a growl.
A laugh.
The air rippled. The glitching forest at the edge of the field began to shimmer, the trees stretching, warping, breathing wrong again.
Erevan's heart gave a sharp, nervous kick. His hands dropped to his sides, fingers curling into fists.
"...No," he whispered. "Nope. I'm not doing round two. Tutorial's over. I'm done."
The forest disagreed.
Branches tore apart like paper as something massive stepped through the distortion.
It looked like a wolf—but not the same kind.
This one was bigger. Meaner. The air around it bent, reality flickering like bad reception. Its body kept shifting—one moment raw polygons, the next disturbingly lifelike, the next… an unfinished sketch crawling with digital veins.
Each step it took made the world stutter.
Its eyes glowed bright red, the same countdown-light as the sheep. Only this time, there was no timer. Just that pulse. That slow, mocking blink.
Erevan's voice came out in a whisper. "You've got to be kidding me."
The system's voice boomed again, sweet and merciless.
(System Notice: Elite Variant Detected – Laughing Beast Lv.3)
The creature's jaw unhinged slightly, distorting with static.
And then—
It laughed.
A sound that wasn't quite animal, wasn't quite human.
It was distorted and wrong, like someone had stitched together a dozen broken laughs and played them backwards.
Erevan's entire body went still. His pulse thundered in his ears.
He stared at the beast, breath caught somewhere between awe and terror, and muttered, almost to himself,
"…Okay. Guess the real tutorial starts now."
The Laughing Beast tilted its head, still grinning.
Reality flickered.
And the sound of corrupted laughter filled the sky.