# Glitchbound Sovereign
## Chapter 4: Exodus Protocol & Skill Forge
9:12
9:11
9:10
The countdown bled across the sky like an open wound.
Null Haven was coming apart at the seams. Houses folded into themselves with the soft pop of deleted assets. The fountain of Windows errors glitched into a single frozen BSOD that shattered into blue glass. Players sprinted past Jax in every direction: some toward the gates, some toward personal teleport crystals already flaring with escape light, a few just stood frozen, staring at the sky as if politeness might make the Admins change their mind.
Lyra didn't wait for consensus.
She yanked Jax sideways into a narrow alley between two collapsing taverns. The walls were already translucent, showing the raw code beneath: endless scrolling lines of assembly that hurt to look at directly.
"Safe-zone shields are dropping in layers," she said, voice calm despite the chaos. "Outer wall goes first, then the aggression lock, then gravity, then existence. We have maybe seven minutes before this entire grid is overwritten."
Jax's heart hammered. "So we run?"
"We exploit." She slammed her palm against the alley wall. Violet runes spider-webbed from the point of contact, racing along the code lines like malware. "Every safe-zone has back doors the Admins use for maintenance. I just piggy-backed one."
A section of wall liquefied into a spinning portal the color of television tuned to a dead channel.
Lyra grabbed his wrist. "Threshold's unstable. If we're not through in four seconds it snaps shut and dices anything still inside. On three."
"Wait—"
"One."
She bolted, dragging him with her.
"Two—"
They dove.
The portal swallowed them whole.
For a disorienting second Jax was nowhere and everywhere: stretched across a billion server racks, compressed into a single corrupted bit, screaming in binary. Then gravity reasserted itself and he landed hard on cold metal grating.
[Location: Sub-Level Transit Node Δ-9]
[Safe-Zone Buff Removed]
[Code Integrity Regeneration halted]
He rolled to his knees, gagging. Lyra was already up, coat flaring like living shadow as she scanned their new surroundings.
They stood inside a vast cylindrical shaft that stretched up and down into darkness. Conveyor belts of glowing data packets zipped past on magnetic rails, ferrying information between unseen realms. Every few seconds a maintenance drone shaped like a chrome jellyfish drifted by, scanning for errors.
Lyra flicked her wrist; the portal behind them collapsed into a single black pixel that winked out.
"Welcome to the veins of Glitchbound," she said. "Admins rarely patrol here. Too boring for them, too useful for people like us."
Jax pushed to his feet. His legs felt like overclocked processors: hot, shaky, but buzzing with potential. The fight-or-flight rush from Null Haven hadn't worn off yet.
"So what now? We hide in the plumbing until the heat dies down?"
Lyra snorted. "Heat never dies down when you're tagged Unique. But we can get ahead of it."
She started walking along the narrow catwalk that ringed the shaft. Jax hurried to keep pace her.
"Lesson two," she continued. "The System isn't your friend, but it's also not your enemy. It's a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies run on rules. Rules can be bent, delayed, or redirected. Your Glitch Affinity is basically a rootkit. Most players get a class and a pat on the head. You got a skeleton key to the operating system itself."
They reached a junction where three conveyor streams merged. Lyra leapt onto the middle belt without hesitation. Jax followed, landing awkwardly among floating packets that felt like warm soap bubbles against his skin.
The belt accelerated, carrying them upward at dizzying speed.
"Where are we going?" he shouted over the rushing wind.
"Cache City," she called back. "Black-market hub built inside an abandoned memory sector. Admins can't delete it without wiping half the progression database. Perfect place to lie low, gear up, and find out exactly how deep your rabbit hole goes."
Jax glanced at his updated interface. The near-death experience had nudged him again:
Level 3 → Level 4
New Skill Slot Unlocked
Title Gained: "Unpatched" → "Fugitive Class-0" (+15% evasion against Admin constructs)
He was about to ask what Class-0 meant when the conveyor belt suddenly dumped them onto a platform overlooking an impossible sight.
Cache City sprawled inside a cavernous void the size of a small moon. Entire city districts floated on fragments of discarded terrain: neon Tokyoesque streets stitched to medieval castles, desert dunes pouring into arctic tundras, gravity optional. Bridges of pure light connected the chunks. Airships shaped like pirate galleons with rocket boosters drifted between them. A massive holographic dragon coiled around the central spire, advertising "0% interest soul loans!"
And everywhere: players with orange, red, and even black name tags. Outlaws. Glitchers. Revolutionaries. The people the System had already tried and failed to delete.
Lyra landed lightly beside him. "Home sweet anarchy."
A new notification pinged, private this time, glowing violet to match her runes:
[Lyra.VX has sent you a Party Invite]
[Accept? Y/N]
Jax met her eyes. For the first time since dying, he felt something close to control.
He hit Yes.
The moment the party formed, a second, hidden message unfurled in his vision, text only the two of them could see:
[Hidden Quest Activated: "Root Access"
Objective: Escort the Glitch Witch to the Core Vault
Reward: Class Evolution + Administrator Backdoor Key
Failure: Permanent Corruption (100%) → Transformation into Warden]
Lyra's smile was sharp enough to cut glass.
"Welcome to the real game, Jax Harlan. Try not to die before we break the world."
Far below, something enormous stirred in the dark between city fragments, red eyes opening one by one.
The Warden had followed the scent.
And the Skill Skill Forge.
The moment Jax accepted Lyra's party invite, the System did something it had never done before.
It stuttered.
For one frozen heartbeat the entire world lagged: conveyor belts froze mid-spin, distant airships hung motionless, even the wind in Cache City's void stopped blowing. Then everything snapped back into motion, but a new panel had forced its way into Jax's vision, burning white-hot at the edges.
[UNIQUE EVOLUTION PATH DETECTED]
[New Skill Slot Available – Type: Adaptive (Glitch-Bound)]
[This slot does not accept standard skills. It may only hold a single "Root Skill" born directly from your Glitch Affinity. Root Skills grow with you, mutate with corruption, and cannot be removed or replaced once chosen.]
Three cards materialized in front of him, floating like tarot made of liquid code. Each one pulsed with his own heartbeat.
Lyra stepped back, eyes wide. "Holy shit. I've never seen the System hand out a Root Slot this early. Choose carefully. Whatever you pick will define your build for the next thousand levels."
Jax reached out. The cards turned to face him.
Card 1 – [Code Reaver]
Type: Active / Melee
Description: Every strike with a bladed weapon injects raw corruption directly into the target's source code. Stacks increase exponentially. At 10 stacks the victim suffers a "Kernel Panic" – instant death regardless of remaining health (bosses included).
Drawback: Each stack you apply also rebounds 3% of the victim's max health as true damage to your own Code Integrity.
Flavor: "Some doors are meant to stay locked. You kick them until the hinges scream."
Card 2 – [Null Shell]
Type: Passive / Defense
Description: When your Code Integrity falls below 30%, you may voluntarily crash your avatar, entering a 7-second invulnerability state during which you are intangible and untargetable. Upon re-manifesting you steal 15% of the max health/mana of every enemy that attacked you while you were "deleted."
Drawback: While Null, you cannot act or be healed. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
Flavor: "If the world insists on deleting you, delete yourself first, on your terms."
Card 3 – [Ghost in the Machine]
Type: Active / Utility
Description: For 30 seconds you may "possess" any mechanical, digital, or system-controlled entity within 100 m (drones, golems, turrets, even other players' summoned pets). You gain full control and may trigger one self-destruct sequence or forced action before ejection.
Drawback: Each possession permanently burns 5 maximum Code Integrity (non-recoverable).
Flavor: "There is no spoon.exe, but there is definitely a Jax.exe now."
Jax's hand hovered. Each card felt alive, tugging at different parts of who he was:
the angry kid who'd always chosen violence over surrender,
the survivor who'd learned to disappear when the corps came knocking,
the hacker who lived for slipping inside something that was never meant to let him in.
Lyra watched silently, arms folded. She didn't offer advice; this was his soul on the line.
He thought about the Warden's red eyes opening in the dark below Cache City. About the countdown that had erased Null Haven. About the way the Admins had looked at him like a virus that needed scrubbing.
Jax exhaled once, steady.
His fingers closed around the third card.
[Root Skill Acquired: Ghost in the Machine]
[Maximum Code Integrity permanently reduced by 5 → 95/95]
[New Passive Unlocked: Residual Haunting – Defeated or possessed constructs have a 15% chance to leave behind a "Ghost Echo" that fights for you for 60 seconds.]
The card dissolved into black fire that crawled up his arm and sank into his chest like a brand. For a moment his shadow on the platform flickered with dozens of overlapping silhouettes: a Viral Hound, a Patch Hunter, even the silhouette of the server tower he'd dropped on the Enforcer.
When the fire faded, Jax flexed his hand. The air around his fingers rippled with faint static ghosts.
Lyra let out a low whistle. "Possession build. Ballsy. You just painted the biggest target imaginable on your back, but damn if it isn't going to be fun watching you use it."
Jax met her gaze, feeling the new weight settle behind his eyes like a second operating system booting up.
"Let them come," he said quietly. "Next time a Warden opens its eyes, I'm going to be staring back from the inside."
Far below, something vast shifted in the dark, and for the first time its heartbeat skipped a beat.
To Be Continued...