main story arc(2) chapter 4 and extrabytes*

Glitchworld Chronicles – Arc 2, Chapter 4

"A Tsundere, A Troll, and One Very Unfortunate Protagonist"

Scene: The Aftermath of the "Cursed Debugging Incident"

Kaydee is still face-down in the dirt, contemplating every decision that led him here. Lyra, barely holding in her laughter, looks like she’s won the lottery, while Selene is standing stiffly, arms crossed, blushing furiously.

Selene: "I am NOT into him!"

System Notification: [Denial Level: MAXIMUM]

Kaydee (muffled from the ground): "I don’t get paid enough for this."

Lyra (wiping away tears): "Oh, man. This is the best day of my life."

Selene (aggressively fixing her robe): "And YOU! Stop saying weird things! I am NOT competing for anything!"

Lyra: "Ohhh, so it IS a competition now?"

Selene realizes too late that she has once again played herself.

Selene: "I—WAIT. NO. THAT'S NOT—UGH!"

Meanwhile, Kaydee finally picks himself up, sighing heavily.

Kaydee: "Okay, can we PLEASE focus? We still don’t know what’s causing these glitches."

Selene: "Tch. Fine. But this conversation isn’t over."

Kaydee: "Oh wow, can’t wait."

Lyra (cheerfully slapping his back): "That’s the spirit, Kaydee! Suffer for our entertainment!"

Kaydee: "I hate this timeline."

Scene: The Glitch Investigation

The trio begins analyzing their surroundings, searching for any lingering traces of corruption. But because the game’s RNG is coded by an agent of chaos, the system decides it’s time for another disaster.

A new system notification pops up:

!!! WARNING !!!

A RANDOM "GLITCHWORLD EVENT" HAS BEEN ACTIVATED.

Kaydee: "…That can’t be good."

Lyra (grinning): "Oh, it’s absolutely not."

Selene (suspicious): "Define 'not'."

As if on cue, the air around them distorts—and suddenly, Kaydee’s clothes disappear.

Kaydee: "…WHAT."

System Notification: [Glitch Detected: Equipment Rendering Error]

Kaydee, now standing in nothing but his underwear, enters full panic mode.

Lyra and Selene freeze.

There is a long, painful silence.

Lyra: "PFFFT—AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Selene (turning BRIGHT red): "W-WHAT THE HELL?!"

Kaydee (voice cracking): "WHY DOES THIS GAME HATE ME?!"

Lyra, now on the ground wheezing, is dying from laughter.

Selene, meanwhile, looks like her entire system is crashing.

Selene (covering her eyes but peeking through her fingers): "F-FIX IT! FIX IT NOW!"

Kaydee frantically pulls up his debug menu with shaking hands.

Kaydee: "I’M TRYING! OH GOD, WHY IS IT LAGGING?!"

The system takes its sweet time loading.

Meanwhile, Lyra has completely lost it.

Lyra (rolling on the ground, gasping): "I CAN’T BREATHE—"

Kaydee: "SHUT UP AND HELP ME!"

Lyra: "Nah, this is karma. I’m enjoying this."

Selene (still burning red): "D-DON’T JUST STAND THERE—FIX YOUR STUPID GLITCH!"

Finally, after what feels like an eternity of suffering, the debug menu responds, and Kaydee successfully reloads his outfit.

Kaydee (collapsing to his knees): "Oh thank god."

Selene (still flustered, aggressively looking away): "That never happened. We’re never talking about this. Ever."

System Notification: [Screenshot Saved to Gallery]

Lyra: "Ohhh, this is getting framed."

Kaydee: "DELETE IT."

Scene: The Rivalry Escalates

After Kaydee recovers from emotional damage, Selene turns to Lyra, glaring.

Selene: "And YOU. Why were you enjoying that way too much?!"

Lyra (grinning): "Oh, you poor thing. You really don’t get it, do you?"

Selene (suspicious): "Get what?"

Lyra leans in, smirking.

Lyra: "You're totally into him now."

Selene short-circuits.

Selene: "WH—WHAT?! NO! NEVER! IMPOSSIBLE!"

System Notification: [Tsundere Mode Activated]

Kaydee: "Oh no. Not again."

Thus, the legendary Lyra vs. Selene rivalry officially begins.

Scene: Glitch Gremlins Incoming

Just as Kaydee opens his mouth to beg for some sanity, the air around them ripples unnaturally. Glowing cracks slither through the environment.

Kaydee (noticing the glitch spike): "Uh… guys? Something’s wrong."

Before anyone can respond, a small, twitching creature emerges from a pixelated fissure—its form warps between a ragged gremlin and corrupted polygons.

System Notification:

[Error Detected: **"Glitch Gremlin Swarm" Initiated]

Lyra (drawing her dual pistols): "Finally! Something I can shoot!"

Kaydee (horrified): "Wait—don’t—"

Too late. Lyra opens fire, blasting three quick rounds at the gremlin. The bullets pass right through it, leaving the creature unharmed as it flickers in and out of reality.

Selene (raising an eyebrow): "Wow, marksman. Amazing work."

Lyra: "Oh, bite me."

The glitch gremlins multiply, their numbers swelling as they screech and leap from every corner.

Kaydee (yelling): "They’re using no-clip errors—normal attacks won’t register!"

A gremlin lunges toward Selene, who swiftly flicks her wrist and blasts it mid-air with a Code Breaker Spell. The creature glitches, but it’s still moving.

Selene: "Tch. Annoying little things…"

Kaydee, meanwhile, is furiously working through his debug menu.

Kaydee: "I need time to stabilize their hitboxes! Don’t let them touch you—they might cause irreversible corruption!"

Lyra (grinning): "Time to put my new ammo to the test."

She ejects a cartridge, loading data-piercing rounds into her pistols. With a flash-step, she dashes between the gremlins, dual-wielding fury as her bullets finally make contact.

Lyra (smirking): "Bingo."

Selene scowls, hands glowing with energy as she prepares a stronger spell.

Selene: "Tch. Try not to break a nail, princess."

Kaydee groans as the two girls ramp up their rivalry—again—while glitch gremlins crawl all around them.

Kaydee: "I swear, this world is going to kill me."

TO BE CONTINUED…

Extra Bytes:

Selene's Code Breaker Spell is a powerful, high-level ability designed to counter digital or corrupted entities within the Glitchworld. It targets the underlying code structure of the glitch creatures, causing them to destabilize and unravel. Here's a more detailed description of how it works:

Code Breaker Spell – Description:

Effect: The spell fractures the targeted object or entity’s code, causing them to glitch and lose their ability to maintain their form. It temporarily disintegrates the corrupted data that gives them their physical properties, leaving them vulnerable to other attacks.

Visual: When Selene casts it, the air around her hand shimmers with a translucent, digital-like glow. Lines of code, symbols, and binary digits spiral around her fingers, crackling with static energy as she focuses her power.

Range: Medium. It works best on objects or creatures within a certain range of Selene but can be amplified with her focus.

Duration: The effect lasts for a short time, causing the target to flicker and glitch. While weakened, the target is much easier to damage or temporarily rendered immobile.

Limitations: The Code Breaker Spell requires a significant amount of energy, especially against higher-tier glitches, and can only affect targets that have a digital or corrupted essence. It’s ineffective on natural or living beings not affected by glitches.

How Selene Uses It:

When a Glitch Gremlin approaches her, Selene calmly raises her hand. She whispers a code phrase, and as the lines of corrupted code light up, she channels the energy from her hand directly into the gremlin's form. The creature immediately begins to distort and glitch wildly, flickering in and out of reality before temporarily freezing.

Selene’s control over the spell is quite precise, allowing her to disable the gremlin’s movement and attack pattern, even though it doesn’t fully dissipate. This is crucial for Kaydee and Lyra, as it gives them time to recover or strategize.

Glitch Gremlins – Description:

Appearance:

The Glitch Gremlins are digital anomalies that exist in the space between corrupted code and reality. They have a distorted, chaotic form that constantly flickers in and out of visibility, as if they are struggling to hold onto their own existence. Their bodies are a grotesque mixture of jagged polygons, pixelated smears, and glitch effects, making them seem like twisted versions of traditional gremlins. They have sharp, jagged teeth and glowing red or purple eyes, which seem to pulse with an inner, unstable energy. The gremlins' hands and feet are clawed, and their movements are erratic, as if they can’t fully grasp the concept of solid form.

Their bodies seem to fragment at the edges, rippling with static and flashing like broken images on a screen. Sometimes, portions of their bodies glitch out entirely, becoming transparent or turning into a series of moving squares and bytes. At times, their features blur together, as if the gremlins exist in multiple states at once. As they move, they make a faint, digital buzzing noise, like an old modem struggling to stay connected.

Behavior:

Glitch Gremlins are chaotic and unpredictable. They move quickly and erratically, flickering across the environment as they feed on the corruption in the Glitchworld. They have no coherent sense of self-preservation and will attack anything in their path with wild abandon. These creatures thrive in environments where the code is unstable, such as where errors or glitches are prevalent. Their presence often signals a major fault or disturbance in the system, and they are usually drawn to areas of corruption to "feed" or to expand their presence.

Their behavior is mostly non-intelligent, driven by the instinct to spread and multiply, but they have a primal, almost mischievous tendency to harass or frustrate any intruder or player, especially when they encounter a vulnerability in the system.

Abilities:

No-Clip Movement: Glitch Gremlins have the ability to phase in and out of reality, making them immune to conventional attacks. This no-clip behavior lets them move through walls, terrain, and even other creatures. Their random movements make them difficult to target with physical attacks, as they flicker in and out of existence.

Corruptive Touch: When they make physical contact, Glitch Gremlins can cause temporary corruption to their targets. This can result in minor glitches in the affected player or environment, such as visual distortions, slower reaction times, or the temporary disabling of certain abilities or functions. In extreme cases, their touch can trigger permanent corruption if the glitch goes unaddressed.

Swarm Dynamics: When threatened, Glitch Gremlins have the ability to multiply rapidly. One gremlin can split into several smaller versions of itself in a matter of seconds, creating overwhelming numbers. This makes dealing with them in large groups particularly difficult. Each new gremlin carries with it a fragment of the original corruption.

Weaknesses:

While the Glitch Gremlins are powerful in their native corrupted form, they are vulnerable to abilities that can stabilize or "fix" corrupted code. Spells or items that target code, such as Selene’s Code Breaker Spell, are highly effective in disrupting the gremlins and rendering them temporarily inert. Additionally, attacks that rely on pure force or digital piercing damage, like Lyra’s data-piercing rounds, can also have an effect when they make contact.

However, if left unchecked, the gremlins will continue to grow and spread, causing further system errors and leading to even more dangerous glitches.

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