The Tesla-Stalker hit max speed and started rubber-banding—model snapping forward like the server couldn't keep up.
If his lockdown landed, I was done—deleted on the spot.
Gone before my ragdoll even hit the floor.
I held it for the last possible frame—right before impact.
NOW.
[PHASE]
I blinked to a new spot instantly.
A heavy thud. Metal shrieked.
I reappeared a step left—robes still smoking from the blink.
The Stalker flew past my last spot, attack swiping nothing—classic ult whiff.
He slammed into the blast doors and the platform bucked like the physics engine just bugged out.
`[HIT CONFIRMED: 400 DAMAGE (STRUCTURE)]`
He didn't stay down. He was already scrambling up, claws gouging deep grooves into the steel floor.
His health bar stayed full. Mine was flashing red.
This was a stat check I couldn't win.
I flicked my camera around. The crate I was hiding behind earlier had shattered during the scuffle.
Inside the foam sat a raw Core-Tech crystal, pulsing blue like it would pop from one more hit.
Asset: Raw Core-Tech Crystal.
The Tesla-Stalker turned. His eyes locked onto me.
The tesla-static along his spine hissed, flooding him with neon-blue energy.
He prepared to attack again. If he committed to the leap, the gap would close instantly.
If that skill connected, I wasn't getting out.
I looked at the crystal. Then at my own glitching hands.
My mana was basically empty: 20 MP.
Not enough for a real cast—enough to force a link.
I grabbed the crystal. It burned like I was taking pure damage through my gloves.
"Let's see you play through a crash," I growled.
I didn't drain it. I pushed.
[Source Drain] (Inverted).
Instead of draining it, I shoved my corrupted data into the clean Core-Tech crystal.
[-20 MP]
The blue light flipped to corrupted violet. The crystal rattled. Hairline cracks webbed under the glow.
The Tesla-Stalker lunged.
I didn't run. I stepped into his hitbox on purpose.
As his jaws opened, I ducked under on the last pixel—barely inside the safe spot—and climbed onto his back.
I grabbed the exposed pipes on his tesla-coil.
"Stalker," I whispered—his name popping in my UI. "Time for your medicine."
I jammed the corrupted crystal into the intake on his Tesla-Coil engine.
[-20 HP]
It reacted instantly—Core-Tech and electrics collided and the engine went nuts.
`[CRITICAL ERROR]`
`[ERROR: DESYNC]`
The Tesla-Stalker hard-stopped mid-move, like his animation got stuck.
He T-posed for a split second, roar sound looping. Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr.
A harsh blue error-glow flashed from his eyes, lighting the shaft.
The stun didn't end. The CC bugged—overlapping effects perma-locked him.
The elevator lurched as we passed a support beam.
The jolt knocked the frozen model off balance. He tipped backward, toward the open edge of the rising platform.
I scrambled off his back, my fingers hooking into the metal casing of his engine mount.
"Give me that," I grunted.
I pulled. The metal groaned.
The Stalker tipped over the edge. He dropped.
SNAP.
I fell backward onto the steel floor, clutching a jagged chunk of machinery.
He dropped into The Dregs, still frozen in the same pose—sound gone mid-fall.
`[TARGET LOST]`
I stayed down, breathing hard, waiting for the kill banner.
It didn't come. He wasn't dead. Just OOB—stuck in the void.
Then, the notification chimed.
[+250 XP]
I sat up, staring at the prize in my hands.
It was a chunk of the engine that fed his regen.
> Item: [Tox-Tech Engine Fragment]
> Stats: Component. Heavily damaged. Contains residual regenerative tox-fluid.
> Quantity: 1
> Note: Compatible with [Core-Tech Capacitor] for hybrid crafting.
I shoved the fragment into my inventory.
The grind wasn't over. Not even close.
Then, the floor shuddered.
It wasn't the normal lift hum.
It was a nasty jolt—something below was clipping through the floor.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
The explosion hadn't just purged The Tesla-Stalker.
The overloaded crystal's blast fried the elevator's mag-lev coils.
Leftover tox-fire was chewing through the brakes.
CRACK.
It sounded like the world just dropped a frame and snapped.
The main guide rail overheated from the Core-Tech blast and warped.
The emergency clamps screamed—sound glitching high—then snapped.
"Stability check," I muttered, watching sparks rain down.
[SYSTEM ALERT: MAG-LEV COILS DESTROYED]
[SUPPORT INTEGRITY: 0%]
For a split second, I went weightless—like gravity got toggled off.
The lift cut out and everything froze for a beat—worldwide lag spike.
"Oh, come on," I groaned. "What was that—some cursed physics patch?"
Gravity reasserted itself.
The platform didn't just slide down; it dropped like a stone.
My HUD lit up red with warnings.
My fall speed spiked from fast to stupid-fast in a heartbeat.
The elevator platform was gone.
I wasn't falling—I was dropping past the render limit, stuck in a broken gravity loop.
The wind turned into raw static—like the same sound glitch blasting on repeat.
I forced my eyes open.
The shaft walls whipped past, smeared by a motion-blur glitch.
Textures weren't loading—everything was muddy, low-res placeholder skins.
Below me, a massive hazmat container tumbled in the dark, falling a little slower because it caught more air.
I didn't have a parachute. I didn't have a dash.
I had a bug.
Bug #4920: Infinite Shove.
If you clip two hitboxes into each other, physics bugs out and yeets them apart.
I used to call it "won't fix." Now it was my only way out.
I lined up my fall with the crate and popped open the console.
"Execute," I rasped.
I toggled collision off.
`Collision: OFF`.
The world flickered.
I phased through the crate lid and saw the inside wireframe—textures flipped wrong, like the model was inside-out.
`Collision: ON`.
The universe shuddered. My HUD froze for three frames.
The game caught the illegal overlap—me clipped into the crate lid.
It freaked out—everything spiked like the physics engine couldn't decide what's solid.
An invisible shove smacked me and launched me into the container's hollow.
[-8 HP]
My HP bar almost emptied in one chunk.
[Current HP: 30 / 1250]
I slammed into the floor of the crate, limbs tangling in my robe.
The container clipped a beam and tumbled. Metal shrieked.
Then, silence, save for the heavy thud of debris raining on the lid.
I lay in the dark, low-HP red vignette pulsing at the edge of my screen.
The crate jerked. A hydraulic whine pierced the hull.
The roof got ripped off by huge automated claws.
Blinding white light flooded the container. Bloom went nuts and white-out hit my whole screen.
I scrambled out onto a floor so polished I could see my own model shaking in it.
I wasn't in The Dregs anymore.
This was an ultra-settings zone—Zenith's Clean Room. Smooth FPS. No grime.
Every surface was chrome, white marble, or glass.
The lighting was ultra—reflections razor-sharp, shadows heavy. The place felt hostile, like it was tracking me.
I pressed my filthy back against a stack of refined core ingots.
A security drone hovered by the conveyor—ceramic armor, one blue camera-eye.
It bobbed with a tiny jitter—like its idle animation was bugged.
"Stealth mode," I rasped.
HP: 30
One hit and I'd get deleted.
I checked my resources.
Gold: 732.
I pulled an old trick the last patch killed: the `Gilded Heart` trick.
If I couldn't pass the security scan, I'd bribe the system.
I stepped out. The drone swiveled. Its eye flared red.
----
I checked my inventory. I still had it. The [Gilded Core]. A premium-tier exploit from an old patch, beating like a heavy, expensive metronome in my palm. If I couldn't pass the security scan, I'd bribe my way through.
I stepped out. The drone swiveled. Its eye flared red.
Target Acquired.
I squeezed the Heart.
It activated, broadcasting a VIP-token spoof, draining my gold reserves to overwrite the drone's threat assessment.
[-15 GOLD]
The red scan washed over me, stuttered, and choked on the premium data.
Processing...
The eye turned green. The drone chirped, flagged me as a low-priority asset, and rotated away.
"Pay-to-win," I rasped.
I moved down the aisle. Every step pulled another scan. Every scan triggered the Heart.
[-25 GOLD]
[-50 GOLD]
My balance plummeted. 607... 532.
Then the temperature in the aisle dropped. A massive Enforcer unit drifted out from behind a pillar—an [Asset Auditor] drone.
Its armor textures stretched and warped like a busted skin, heavy and oppressive.
It didn't just scan for heat or movement. It ran a deep-packet inspection.
The heavy blue beam hit me and immediately locked onto the pulse in my hand.
The drone didn't raise a weapon. It didn't flag me as hostile.
Instead, a new prompt slammed into my HUD.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED PREMIUM ASSET DETECTED]
I tried to pull back, but my joints locked up under a targeted suppression ping.
The Auditor lunged. A containment claw snapped out, precise and brutal, ripping the [Gilded Core] right out.
[CIVIL FORFEITURE INITIATED]
[ITEM CONFISCATED: Gilded Core]
The heavy drone dropped my lifeline into its secure chassis locker.
It spun its optical sensor, tagged me as a pacified, broke civilian, and drifted on down the hall.
"You gotta be kidding me," I muttered, staring at my empty hand. Bribed the system, robbed by the system.
GOLD 532
I slumped against the railing of the massive central conveyor belt, barely holding my 30 HP together.
The belt rumbled, carrying heaps of "raw material" toward a blinding blue furnace at the end of the hall.
The Garbage Collector.
I looked closer at the junk on the belt. It wasn't scrap.
It was cut content—stuff the game deleted and never meant to ship. A jagged, low-poly arm. A shopkeeper's table.
A helmet rolled by—"Sentry's Helm"—half-melted, purple texture glitches peeling off it.
Player tag: xX_ProScrub_Xx [BANNED]
My eyes widened.
On a parallel sorting tray, sliding toward the deletion field, sat a sphere of unstable blue plasma.
Item: Pristine Mana-Core.
It was a full restore—pure refill juice.
[HP: 12 / 1250]
The deletion field was right there.
The heat wasn't normal—the deletion field was chewing through my stats. My hitbox started to jitter.
"Worth it," I muttered.
I didn't run away. I lunged onto the belt.
Warning: Integrity Risk.
I leveled my [Core-Mutagen Cannon] at the piston that moved the sorting arm over the Mana-Core.
"Eat lead, you bugged-out trash."
I pulled the trigger.
The shot bent the piston. The arm bugged and clipped straight through the belt.
Textures flickered—metal flashing between grey and rust like the game couldn't decide what to render.
Physics bugged out hard. The belt screeched and hard-stopped.
I scrambled forward with the deletion field on my heels, chewing at my stats.
I grabbed the Core.
I crushed it.
Power hit like a full refill. The "Data Leak" icon vanished.
My health bar filled instantly, snapping from red to a solid, vibrant green.
[+1250 HP]
[+400 MP]
[+200 XP]
A gold pulse blasted off me.
It felt like I just got upgraded mid-fight.
I felt juiced—stats surging, my model updating on the fly.
My hitbox got bigger; shoulder plating thickened and locked into place.
> Level: 5 -> 6
> HP: 1250 -> 1400
> Mana: 220 -> 550
> AD: 96 -> 106
> AP: 34 -> 42
> AR: +10
The game couldn't smooth the spike—everything jolted for a beat.
The jammed arm didn't just loosen—it got shoved past its limit.
Physics bugged and kicked everything backward in one huge recoil.
I rode the kickback and got launched onto the maintenance catwalk.
I hit the catwalk in a roll—full health, mana capped, still alive.
"Calculated."
Suddenly, the lights in the facility shifted from clinical white to emergency red.
A siren kicked on—low, distorted, rattling the floor plates.
ALERT. PHYSICS VIOLATION DETECTED. SECTOR LOCKDOWN.
Generated by GlitchWriter.
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