Glitched Awakening

Noah stumbled through the flickering landscape, his breath sharp and uneven. The very world around him was glitching, breaking apart at random—one moment, the grass beneath him was soft and real, and the next, it was jagged lines of red code spiraling into nothingness.

ERROR: UNIDENTIFIED ENTITY DETECTED.

WARNING: SYSTEM PURGE INITIATED.

The cold, mechanical voice echoed in his head, but he barely had time to process it. His body felt wrong, like his very existence was being pulled in different directions. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

Then, a deep growl rumbled behind him.

Noah turned, and his breath caught.

A twisted, malformed creature stood at the edge of the glitching terrain. Its body was unstable, constantly shifting—one moment sleek and wolf-like, the next, a tangled mess of jagged limbs and hollow, glowing eyes.

It wasn’t just corrupted. It was wrong.

And it was hunting him.

The creature’s red eye locked onto him, pulsing with unreadable symbols. The world trembled around it, as if reality itself was recoiling from its presence. Then, in a flickering blur—

It lunged.

Breaking the Rules

Noah barely reacted in time. He threw himself to the side as the beast’s clawed appendage slashed through the air, cutting through space itself. The place he had stood a second ago collapsed into raw code, breaking apart into a void of nothingness.

His heart pounded. One hit would erase him.

The creature let out a distorted snarl, its body flickering out of existence for half a second—then reappearing inches from him.

Too fast!

Noah’s instincts screamed at him to move, but the attack was already coming—

OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.

Suddenly, the world blurred, and Noah found himself several meters away, standing completely still.

The creature’s attack slashed through empty air, missing him by a fraction of a second.

He gasped. What just happened?

His body felt weightless, like he had skipped through time itself. He had moved without moving. His mind struggled to process it, but then—

The creature turned.

It didn’t care about how he had dodged. It was still hunting him.

It lunged again.

Noah didn’t hesitate. If the world was breaking, then he’d break it first.

He stepped forward, this time punching at the air between them.

ERROR: INVALID HITBOX DETECTED.

OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.

His fist phased through reality, bypassing normal physics—and suddenly, it landed directly on the creature’s core.

The beast froze. Its entire form glitched violently, its body twisting into unreadable data—

Then—

CRACK!

It shattered.

Noah stood there, panting, as fragmented code rained down around him.

He had broken something that shouldn’t have been breakable.

And for the first time since arriving in this world—he wasn’t the one being erased.

The System’s Enforcers

His victory lasted only seconds.

A new notification flashed violently across his vision.

WARNING: SYSTEM PURGE INTENSIFIED.

DEPLOYING SYSTEM GUARDIANS.

Noah’s stomach dropped.

From above, the sky ripped open—a golden rift tearing through the glitching horizon. From within, figures descended, tall and humanoid, their bodies made of pure golden light. Their faces were blank, their movements eerily precise.

Noah instinctively knew what they were.

System Guardians.

The enforcers of reality.

He took a step back. He had fought one unstable creature and barely survived. But these? These were designed to erase anomalies like him.

One of the Guardians raised its hand.

A pulse of golden light flared—

And a blinding spear of energy shot toward him.

Noah barely had time to react before it slammed into the ground at his feet. The impact disintegrated everything around it, leaving only raw void in its wake. If he had been a second slower, he would have been erased.

His chest heaved. He had to run.

The Guardians moved in unison, stepping toward him with an eerie grace, their golden auras humming with power. They weren’t just fast—they were precise. Their movements felt calculated, inescapable.

PURGE SEQUENCE INITIATED.

ALL GLITCHES MUST BE REMOVED.

Noah gritted his teeth.

A glitch—that’s what they saw him as.

And maybe he was.

But if they wanted to erase him…

He wasn’t going to make it easy.

Glitching Out

Noah ran.

The world around him distorted, the sky glitching between deep purple and an empty void. The terrain shifted unpredictably—sometimes solid, sometimes just an illusion, forcing him to rely on instinct rather than sight.

OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.

His body flickered—jumping forward through space, skipping entire distances in the blink of an eye.

He could move like before—but now, he was starting to understand it.

This wasn’t teleportation. It was an error.

He wasn’t moving faster. The System simply wasn’t registering his movement correctly. He was breaking the logic of space itself.

But even with this advantage, the Guardians were gaining.

One appeared directly in front of him, materializing out of golden light.

CALCULATING COUNTERMEASURE.

Its hand closed around his throat.

Noah choked, struggling against the crushing force. His body flickered unstably, his vision flashing with errors—

WARNING: ENTITY STABILITY AT 25%

He was losing cohesion. If they held him long enough—he’d break apart.

No.

Not like this.

Noah forced his mind to calm. He had broken a creature before—could he do the same now?

He focused—reaching into the glitch that made him different.

OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.

The Guardian’s grip faltered—and Noah’s body dissolved into fragmented code.

For a fraction of a second, he felt like nothing—just a scattered mess of data.

Then—

He reassembled behind the Guardian.

The entity hesitated—just for a moment.

Noah took his chance.

He clenched his fist and punched forward.

ERROR: IMPOSSIBLE HIT DETECTED.

His fist phased past the Guardian’s defenses, bypassing its protections—

And landed directly in its core.

BOOM!

A golden explosion erupted as the Guardian glitched out of existence, its form breaking into particles of light.

Noah didn’t wait.

He turned, sprinting toward the only thing he could see in the distance—

A massive, crumbling structure, hidden within the flickering storm.

As he approached, a single word appeared in front of him, written in glitched-out text.

SANCTUARY OF ERRORS.

His breath hitched.

He didn’t know what it was. But if it was outside the System’s control…

It might be his only chance at survival.

With the remaining Guardians closing in, Noah leapt forward—

And disappeared into the Sanctuary’s collapsing gates.

End of Chapter 2

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