Chapter 31: Core Requiem
Chapter 31: Core Requiem
Tournament Arc: Twilight Directive — Phase II
The battlefield remained eerily silent. Not even the crowd's digital echoes or system UI could pierce the tension that lingered like phantom fog.
Zaphro stood at the edge of the arena platform, wings furled behind his back, dark armor shimmering faintly with blue-black energy. His breathing had normalized, but his thoughts were anything but calm.
Below the fractured marble of the Victory Hall's data layer, fragments of corrupted code still writhed—remnants of Rowan's escape through the breach he carved in the simulation's firewall. The rogue GM had vanished, but not before leaving behind a dire truth.
> "You hold Version One… but I carry the Second. And unlike yours… mine evolves."
Zaphro clenched his fist. "So it's true. The thing inside us—it's the original."
Accel walked up beside him, shuffling his spell cards clean before dismissing it.
"Version one of the Chaos Core. That's what we triggered back in Vault XII," he muttered. "But ours kuya… it's different now. It's stable."
Ayana stepped into their circle, eyes sharp beneath her Summoner's veil. "Stable or not, Rowan just weaponized a variant. If that thing spreads—"
"Then we're looking at another Crimson Order incident," Verillion cut in grimly.
Aryus nodded. "Maybe worse. That wasn't just a player mod. That was system-level corruption."
The guild had gathered again in the post-match war room, re-materialized from the staging platform after the battle. But there were no cheers this time. No fanfare. Just the haunting image of a corrupted Game Master escaping through a rift that shouldn't exist.
Zaphro pulled up the system logs. The chaos signature still pulsed faintly in the memory traces.
> [CHAOS_CORE_V1] – Status: Stabilized. Synced with: [Zaphro], [Accel]
[CHAOS_CORE_V2] – Status: Unstable / Unknown Evolution Tree
Source: [GM_ROWAN.EXE] – Corrupted Protocol Chain Detected
ALERT: Unregistered Directive – [NoX_Ark_Shard_β] has been forcibly awakened.
He read the last line twice.
"Nox_Ark…" Zaphro muttered.
"That name again." Shion_rio stepped forward, his armor's plates folding away to reveal hid civilian avatar. "Didn't the Crimson Order mention that too?"
Accel nodded. "And the Architect. It's tied to the first wave of deleted AIs."
Erenir leaned forward, fingers typing rapidly through his augmented UI. "I'm cross-referencing NoX_Ark_Shard_β now. I think it's an experimental shard of the original Enigma world engine."
"Wait—so not just an item or a fragment… it's a piece of the engine that built this game?" Erik said.
"Or tried to rebuild it," AR0012 cut in. "Which means Rowan's version of the core isn't just unstable—it's growing."
Ayana muttered, "Like a virus."
A long silence followed. Then Xavier, the elf-hybrid tactician, tapped a new holo-projection onto the center of the table.
"I did a scan during the final seconds before the firewall collapsed. This is the afterimage of Rowan's escape point."
The projection showed a warped corridor—digital shadows weaving like smoke through a twisting rift. But at the center, glowing red and black, was the shape of a fragmented sigil. It didn't resemble any known class, guild, or monster tag.
"This isn't a dungeon," Great_Kai said, eyes narrowing. "It's a pocket world. Built from residual data. It's near sector Null A.K.A Vault XII."
Zaphro frowned. "His own world…"
Verillion tilted his head. "Then he's hiding there?"
"Maybe not hiding," Accel corrected. "Preparing."
Just then, another system message arrived. This time, not from the tournament servers—but from the global GM channel.
> [SYSTEM ALERT: ALL SECTORS – URGENT PATCH OVERRIDE]
Due to a corrupted instance breach during the Sector Preliminaries,
the Tournament Arc has been temporarily paused in Village of Light.
Directive Protocol Active:
> Investigate Source: Vault Residual 8x
Secure: Chaos Node Fragment(s)
Optional: Eliminate Rogue Entity [ROWAN]
"Optional, my ass," Slicer muttered. "We're going after him."
Zaphro didn't respond immediately. His hand hovered above the corrupted log, still staring at the stable pulse of the [CHAOS_CORE_V1] embedded within his player data.
This core—this thing inside him and Accel—it had triggered everything. But unlike Rowan's version, it hadn't tried to consume them. It had evolved with them.
"We were exposed first," he finally said. "Vault XII didn't break us. It chose us."
Accel gave a faint smile. "So what now?"
Zaphro turned to the team. "We finish what we started. This isn't just about a tournament anymore. Rowan's version of the core could infect the game, even beyond Meldivar Map. Heck, he's hiding at the second realm Helliopolis."
Ayana flicked open her summoning grimoire. "Then let's shut him down before that happens."
"Vault Residual 8x it is," Shion said, stepping forward.
The guild gathered once more, their warping sigils preparing to transfer them outside the arena framework. This time, there would be no spectators. No brackets. No prizes.
Only answers—and war.
---
LOCATION: Vault Residual 8x – Outer Grid
Dark, frozen data pillars stretched toward the horizon like a graveyard of ancient servers. The air buzzed with fragmented audio files, ghost pings, and shredded code. This was not part of the official game map. It was something older. And wrong.
They arrived at the gate, a broken firewall twisted into a malformed throne of jagged crystal and rusted data nodes.
"He's already begun rewriting the vault's structure," Aryus warned.
Suddenly, the corrupted emblem from before flickered to life above them.
A distorted voice echoed through the black mist:
> "You stabilized your curse. How noble."
"But evolution doesn't require balance."
"It demands chaos."
Rowan's voice, now layered with AI distortion, cut through the silence like a scalpel.
"I am the shadow they deleted. The directive they denied. And now… I rewrite the game."
The crystal gate shattered.
Inside, the dungeon of Vault Residual 8x opened like a bleeding wound—beckoning the guild forward.
Zaphro raised his sword. "Let's rewrite it back."