CHAPTER 50: STATIC

The Glitch Bear didn’t roar, it emitted a sound like a blown subwoofer, a deep, vibrating bass that rattled Rin’s ribcage.

It was twelve feet of wireframe muscle and textures that wouldn’t load properly, shifting from fur to glass to pure code as it charged through the burning white trees.

"Tank!" Rin shouted.

Leo moved. He didn’t run, he flowed, his body dissolving into a streak of shadow that intercepted the bear mid-charge. He slammed his shoulder into the creature, the impact sounding like a car crash, stopping the massive beast dead in its tracks.

"Aggro secured," Leo grunted, his feet sliding backward through the glass soil as the bear swiped at him with claws that left trails of dead pixels in the air.

"Hit it!" Nyx yelled, dropping a gravity anchor on the bear’s hind legs to pin it.

Tayo unleashed a sonic lance, a focused beam of sound that shattered the glass armor on the bear’s flank, exposing the glowing red wireframe beneath. Joy followed up with a spike of confusion, making the bear snap its jaws at empty air.

"Finish it," Leo yelled, ducking under a bite that would have taken his head off.

Rin stepped in.

He summoned the gray energy. It felt heavy today, sluggish and sharp, like trying to push broken glass through his veins. The purple void was easy, natural, but this gray mix—the result of stealing his mother’s power—was fighting him.

’Burst.’

Rin lunged, driving his fist toward the exposed wireframe on the bear’s flank.

Pulse.

He didn’t just release the energy, he tried to shape it, to force the chaotic static into a blade.

The energy rebelled.

Instead of a clean cut, the gray light exploded, a jagged, uncontrolled blast that vaporized the bear’s entire midsection instantly.

The creature didn’t die, it crashed. One second it was a roaring monster, the next it was a pile of scattering polygons dissolving into the wind.

But the recoil hit Rin like a sledgehammer.

"Argh!" Rin shouted, clutching his right arm.

The gray lightning hadn’t stopped at his hand. It was crawling up his forearm, eating his sleeve, burning lines of white-hot static into his skin. It wasn’t a burn, it was corruption. His skin looked... pixelated, phasing in and out of existence.

"Rin!" Joy ran over, skidding to a halt. "Your arm!"

"I’m fine," Rin lied through clenched teeth, gripping his wrist to stop the shaking.

"You’re glitching," Nyx said, walking over and inspecting the wound. "You mixed two opposing energy types, Rin. Void deletes, White creates. You have a paradox in your veins."

"Can we fix it?" Tayo asked, looking nervous.

"We need to stabilize it," Rin said, forcing the energy down, locking it away in the depths of his mana pool. The pixelation stopped, leaving behind angry red scars that looked like circuit boards. "But right now, we need to loot and move."

He looked at where the bear had been. There was no corpse, just a floating item.

[Loot: Corrupted Data Core]

[Rarity: Glitch]

[Use: Unknown]

Rin grabbed it. It felt cold and vibrated in his hand.

"Let’s go," Rin said. "Before the noise comes back."

They moved through the Glass Forest. It was a surreal nightmare. The trees were transparent silica, burning with that cold white fire that gave off no heat. The sky was a wall of gray static, occasionally flashing with images of the real world—a flicker of the desert, a flash of the Association tower—like a TV struggling to find a signal.

"This isn’t a normal dungeon," Leo said, his shadow armor retracting to reveal his pale skin. He looked better after the fight, the combat seemingly feeding him. "It feels like... the backstage."

"It’s the code between worlds," Rin said. "Thorne broke the boundaries. We’re walking in the cracks."

"How do we get out?" Joy asked, stepping over a stream of liquid mercury.

"We find the boss," Rin said. "Every dungeon has a core logic. We break the boss, we break the instance, we get ejected back to reality."

"Hopefully not into a volcano," Tayo muttered.

As they walked, the static in Rin’s arm got worse. It wasn’t just pain anymore. It was noise. A high-pitched whine in his ears that drowned out his footsteps.

And voices.

...subject status...

...upload failure...

...Rin...

"Did you hear that?" Rin asked, stopping.

"Hear what?" Nyx asked. "The screaming silence of the void?"

"Voices," Rin rubbed his temple. "In the static."

"I don’t hear anything," Leo said, his eyes narrowing. "And my hearing is S-rank."

Rin shook his head. "Must be the exhaustion."

But it wasn’t. The gray energy wasn’t just power. It was data. He had absorbed Senna’s energy, Thorne’s energy. He was carrying a piece of the network inside him.

They reached a clearing. In the center stood a structure that looked out of place even here.

It was a house.

Not a glass house or a monster lair. A normal, suburban house. Two stories, white siding, a porch swing moving gently in the non-existent wind.

"Okay," Joy said, stepping back. "That is officially the creepiest thing I have ever seen."

"It looks familiar," Rin whispered.

It was his house. Not Leo’s mansion. His childhood house. The one he lived in before the fracture event, before the coma, before everything.

"This is a memory trap," Nyx warned. "Don’t engage."

"It’s the boss room," Rin said, walking toward it. "I can feel the mana density."

"Rin, wait," Leo grabbed his shoulder. "This is... this is where we met."

Rin looked at the mailbox. Matsuda.

"It’s generating the environment based on my psyche," Rin realized. "Because I’m the one carrying the Glitch."

The front door opened.

No monster stepped out. No demon.

Just a man sitting on the porch steps, reading a newspaper. He looked up. He had Rin’s face, but older, tired, wearing a lab coat stained with oil and blood.

"You’re late for dinner," the man said.

[Boss Identified: The Regret]

[Rank: Personal]

"Dad?" Rin whispered.

"He’s dead," Joy hissed. "Rin, your dad died in the first fracture."

"I know," Rin said, his hand trembling as he reached for his blade. "That’s not him. That’s an error."

The entity stood up. It didn’t move like a human. It moved like a stop-motion puppet, jerking and snapping into place.

"You broke the world, Rin," the entity said, its voice distorting into a chorus of screams. "You tried to be the hero and you broke the save file."

The house behind him exploded.

Not with fire, but with data. The wood and siding turned into tentacles of black and white code, lashing out like hydra heads. The entity dissolved into the mass, becoming the heart of a writhing digital abomination.

"Kill it," Rin ordered, his voice cold.

Leo moved first, launching a shadow spear that pierced the main mass, but the code simply flowed around it, absorbing the attack.

"It’s immune to physical damage!" Leo yelled.

"It’s data!" Rin shouted. "Nyx, crush the house! Force a reboot!"

Nyx slammed her hands together, creating a gravity well directly over the structure. The house groaned, the pixelated wood splintering, but it held, reinforced by the dungeon’s logic.

"Tayo, shatter the windows!"

Tayo blasted the windows with a high-frequency scream. The glass shattered, exposing the glowing red core inside the living room.

"Joy, hit the core!"

Joy raised the plasma rifle, hesitating. "I can’t get a clear shot!"

Rin stepped forward. The tentacles lashed out, grabbing him.

He didn’t dodge. He let them grab him.

The code wrapped around his arms, his legs, burning with cold fire.

"Rin!" Leo screamed, charging forward.

"Stay back!" Rin yelled.

He looked at the core inside the house. It was pulsing with the same gray light that was eating his arm.

He understood.

This wasn’t a monster. It was a mirror. It was the unstable energy inside him, projected outward by the dungeon.

"You want to be part of me?" Rin asked the monster.

He stopped fighting the tentacles. He pulsed the gray energy in his veins, syncing his frequency with the monster’s.

[Synchronization: 100%]

[Absorbing External Data]

Rin screamed as the energy flooded back into him. The house, the tentacles, the entity—it all rushed into his body like water down a drain.

It hurt more than anything he’d ever felt. It felt like his soul was being overwritten.

The voices in the static screamed louder.

...admin access denied...

...Senna protocol active...

...Rin, run...

Then, silence.

Rin fell to his knees in the empty clearing. The house was gone. The forest was fading, the glass trees turning into mist.

[Dungeon Cleared]

[Reward: Static Mastery (Level 1)]

[Status: Unstable]

Leo was at his side instantly, catching him before he hit the ground.

"Rin? Hey, stay with me."

Rin looked at his arm. The pixelated scars were glowing softly. He flexed his fingers. Sparks of gray static jumped between them, controlled, quiet.

"I’m okay," Rin rasped. "I think I figured out the controls."

The world dissolved into white light.

---

They woke up on a cold concrete floor.

Rin sat up, gasping. They were back in the mine shaft, the rusted rails stretching into the dark. The weird sideways gate was gone.

"We’re back," Joy said, checking her limbs. "In one piece."

"Mostly," Tayo winced, rubbing his splinted arm.

Rin stood up. He felt... different. The gray energy wasn’t fighting him anymore. It was sitting in his mana pool, heavy and dense, waiting for a command.

"We need to move," Rin said. "Thorne’s sweepers will be looking for us."

"Where do we go?" Nyx asked. "We can’t go back to the city."

Rin looked at the darkness of the tunnel.

"We need a teacher," Rin said. "Someone who understands broken things."

"Who?" Leo asked.

"Echo," Rin said. "The blind S-rank. He saw the raid coming before anyone else. He senses vibrations, energy shifts. If anyone can teach me how to control the static, it’s him."

"He’s Association," Joy pointed out.

"He was," Rin corrected. "But after what happened at the tower? I bet he’s looking for answers too."

Rin led the way down the tunnel, the gray sparks in his hand lighting the dark.

The grind had changed. He wasn’t just leveling up anymore.

He was debugging the world.