Chapter 29 – Shadow Protocol
Chapter 29 – Shadow Protocol
Guild Tournament Arc: Unraveling the Forbidden Layers
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Enigma Online PH – Systemwide Notice:
> "Attention: Anomalous behavior detected during Sector 3's preliminary Guild Tournament match. System integrity currently at 93.7%. Investigation pending."
The message spread like wildfire across the entire server. In livestream chats, player forums, and GM dashboards, speculation ignited. Yet behind the public curtain, panic brewed.
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Elsewhere: GM Command Chamber – Admin Sector, Enigma HQ
GM Kaizen stood before the multi-layered data screens, hands folded behind his back. His usually calm demeanor was strained as he reviewed the breach logs from Sector 3.
"Confirmed… He used a dormant backend path tied to the pre-patch vault protocols. Vault XII was only the beginning."
GM Aero, frowning, paced beside him. "And the CHAOS_CORE_V2…? That shouldn't even exist. We nuked it during the Crimson Order rollback years ago."
"No," Kaizen replied grimly. "We nuked Version One. Rowan's been scavenging dead code across shadow partitions and deprecated server branches. He's building something new."
"And Fallen Halo?" Aero asked. "Zaphro and the others?"
Kaizen brought up the battle footage—Zaphro, Accel, and their team facing off against Black Pantheon. The match that had spiraled into an unauthorized admin-level anomaly.
"They're the center of it now," he said. "Chosen or not… they've already touched the chaos fragments. We can't recall them now."
"Should we contact them?"
"No." Kaizen shook his head. "We watch. And if Rowan shows himself again… we intervene."
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Within the Game – Back at Fallen Halo HQ
The guild regrouped in their skybase: Astraeus Spire, their personal guild hall overlooking Sector 3's vast floating continent. Despite the Sector victory, the mood was anything but celebratory.
The air was thick with tension.
"No word from the system since Rowan's breach," Jin said, leaning on the table. "The next match should've been posted already."
"It was hijacked," Ayana muttered. "He made a rift inside a dev-secure room. That's not just hacking—that's rewriting the rules."
Zaphro remained silent, standing near the crystal window, wings half-visible through his cloak. "He's not after points. He's after activation."
"Of what?" Shion asked. "The tournament arc is built on structured scripts and tiers."
Accel raised a hand, eyes locked on a swirling glyph projected from his interface. "This."
A new prompt had quietly appeared on their consoles:
> [Shadow Protocol – Invitation Granted (Guild: Fallen Halo)]
You have witnessed the CHAOS_CORE_V2.
Your actions echo beyond sanctioned play.
Phase One begins in 24:00:00.
[Survive. Discover. Prevent Collapse.]
AR002 blinked. "That's… not standard quest formatting."
"It's not a quest," said Verillion. "It's a challenge… from whatever version of the game Rowan is playing."
Erenir flared his hand with a small blaze. "Then we play better."
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Elsewhere: Deep Code Zone – Location Unknown
Rowan floated amidst shards of twisted data and corrupted entity codes. Fragments of old vault rooms, deleted boss AI, and bugged beta models drifted through the broken space like haunted echoes.
The CHAOS_CORE_V2 pulsed in his palm, now fused with his corrupted GM badge. The system protested his existence with warnings, red lines, and fatal errors—but none of them reached him anymore.
"They sent angels to contain corruption," he whispered to no one. "But angels fall."
He swiped the air, crafting new executable data from glitched particles. Old fragments from Nox_Ark. Cracked files from the Vault XII project. Even lingering memories from the Crimson Order.
Then his eyes glowed.
"Let's see how they handle the next wave."
He activated a new command.
> [EXECUTE: SHADOW PROTOCOL – DEPLOY PHASE ONE]
[SELECT REGION: VILLAGE OF LIGHT– Tournament Grounds]
[UNLEASH: CORE PHANTOMS – Class: CHAOS WARDEN]
[TARGET: Fallen Halo – Priority: Zaphro, Accel]
Rowan smiled as shadows crawled through his veins.
"Your arena just became a battlefield."
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Back at the Arena Grounds – 23 Hours Later
As Fallen Halo returned for the second phase of the Guild Tournament, something was wrong.
The map wasn't just a battlefield anymore.
It was… infected.
Structures flickered with corrupted textures. Enemy teams hadn't arrived yet, but the sky glitched every few seconds. GM's might have forced logout all the other players except for them. Shadows crawled across the edges of the arena like living code.
Then it began.
A rift opened mid-field.
A skeletal knight-like entity, wrapped in living data chains and bearing Rowan's twisted insignia on its helm, emerged.
> [New Faction Introduced – CHAOS PHANTOMS]
[Unit Class: CHAOS WARDEN – Field Level: 280+]
[WARNING: Unauthorized Instance Overriding Tournament Arena]
"Impossible," Aryus growled. "That's a raid boss class. He's spawning raid bosses in a PvP bracket?!"
"They're targeting us," Zaphro said grimly, sword materializing again.
Accel summoned his wings, black fire rippling through them. "Then we fight."