The Shatterpoint

📘 I Accidentally Became a Guild Therapist

Chapter 38 – The Shatterpoint

The Luxemira Resonance had done more than just wake up dead data. It broke something fundamental. Something important. Something buried so deep even the Admins weren't sure it still existed until the alarms screamed, painting the silent Observation Deck with a frantic, digital red.

> [ALERT: SYSTEM LAYER 9F BREACH DETECTED]

> [UNSTABLE EMOTIONAL RESONANCE CASCADE IN PROGRESS]

> [PRIMARY RELIC NODE: VOLATILE]

>

Deep beneath the world, in the oppressive monochrome of the Junk Layer, Livia was on her knees. Her hand still glowed with the radiant light of the Luxemira Resonance. Her logbook pulsed against her hip, a living heart humming with countless emotions. Her own heart raced, a frantic drumbeat against the overwhelming pressure of incoming data. But everything else around her was collapsing. The ground shivered, not with an earthquake, but with the digital tremors of a system straining to contain an impossible truth. The sparse, grayscale light overhead fractured, splintering into chaotic lines of code. And from beyond the very edge of the rendered world, from a place of pure, unformatted oblivion… something came.

It was a shape. Black. Sharp. Utterly clean. Devoid of textures, without any of the charm or intricate animation frames of a designed entity. It did not walk—it overrode space, each non-step a deliberate violation of reality. Its form was like a negative space, a void given malevolent purpose, absorbing the faint light around it. This was the first Cleaner.

> [ENTITY: CLEANER CLASS S – INITIATING PURGE OF RELIC LUXEMIRA CARRIER]

>

A chilling, synthesized voice boomed directly into Livia's mind, overriding her thoughts, freezing her in place with its absolute authority. This wasn't a threat; it was a cold, procedural statement of intent, a death sentence delivered by the system itself.

The broken NPCs scattered, their forms glitching wildly, flickering in and out of existence with every terrifying step the Cleaner took. Their hushed hopes turned to pixelated fear. Nono pulled Livia up—barely—his own muted form struggling against the Cleaner's oppressive presence, but they were too slow. The Cleaner moved with terrifying, preternatural speed.

"GO!" the First Nono shouted, her voice distorted by raw emotional code, a desperate, final warning. Her lucid eyes, still impossibly bright, burned with a sacrifice Livia couldn't yet comprehend. "He's not here to delete you—he's here to erase the concept of you!"

The Cleaner raised one long, blade-like hand, a limb of pure, featureless black. The air around Livia immediately pixelated, resisting, shimmering with golden energy, trying to fight back against the encroaching void—but it was losing, the light dimming, the very code of her reality beginning to fray. She felt a cold, insidious dread creep up her spine, the sensation of being undone at a fundamental level.

And that's when the glitch portal opened.

Not a clean admin gate, opening with crisp lines and controlled light. Not a scripted escape portal. Just a screaming, rainbow-colored glitch, erupting from the grayscale sky with all the elegance of a corrupted patch note, tearing the very fabric of the Junk Layer. It tore into existence with a sound like a thousand hard drives crashing simultaneously, a riot of impossible colors in the desolate monochrome.

> "YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHH!"

>

Bron crashed through first, shield-first, a mountain of fury exploding into the Cleaner's path like a freight train wearing friendship armor. The blow didn't damage the Cleaner—its form merely rippled like dark oil—but it stopped the Purge, momentarily throwing the Cleaner off its calculated trajectory. The sheer, unexpected force of Bron's impact created a shockwave of displaced pixels.

A second later, Phina teleported in upside down, her normally elegant arrival a chaotic tumble, Glimmer fused to her leg like a therapy sock, vibrating with panicked energy. "LIVIA GET UP! We tracked your logbook's emotional resonance through fourteen layers of firewall and one very angry captcha!"

Miles stepped out last. No flash. No drama. Just a clean, deliberate step from the glowing admin void of the portal to the broken data of the Junk Layer. He held nothing but his fake GM badge and a written appeal, a piece of paper that was inexplicably, calmly, on fire, flickering with blue flames. He looked at the Cleaner, his impassive face now set with grim determination.

"I told you," he said, his voice unnervingly calm amidst the chaos. "She's not done yet."

And then, a new bellow ripped through the digital static, slightly delayed, but undeniably present, reverberating with chaotic energy.

"Did someone say emotional contamination?!" Alaric bellowed, stumbling through the rift with his massive sword upside-down and a flagon in one hand. He still wore his helmet, askew. "Because I brought emotional courage! And probably... chlamydia! But mostly courage!"

He struck a pose. It was majestic. It was clumsy. It involved him accidentally activating Holy Nova while sneezing, sending a burst of unexpected golden light sizzling through the already chaotic air.

The burst of healing light accidentally healed a nearby glitch-rabbit, causing it to glow briefly before flickering.

"You're late," Phina snapped, without looking at him, already focused on Livia.

"I was recharging my holy mana," Alaric grinned, utterly unperturbed by the gravity of the situation.

"You were passed out under the guild vending machine," Nyx muttered, materializing from under the ground like a sarcastic phantom, his hair askew. "Gods, I hate coming in sideways. The textures down here are ghastly."

"Same thing," Alaric dismissed with a shrug, adjusting his armor. Then he frowned, patting his head. "Wait. Where's my helm?"

Glimmer, the ever-helpful slime, slorped forward and politely dropped it at his feet, shimmering with a soft glow.

"Oh. Thanks, shiny goo." He gave Glimmer a finger-gun. Glimmer blushed pink, radiating a faint, happy warmth.

> [UNAUTHORIZED PLAYER PRESENCE IN JUNK LAYER]

> [REVOKE: DENIED]

> [PURGE: INTERRUPTED]

>

The system screamed warnings that were immediately overridden, the Cleaner momentarily frozen by the conflicting commands, its dark form shimmering with frustration.

Bloodbath & Beyond surrounded Livia. Phina grabbed Livia's wrist, her touch firm. "Time to log back in, queen. No time for sightseeing in the garbage dump!"

Bron roared, his voice echoing with renewed power: "GET US OUTTA HERE!" His shield was still braced against the Cleaner, pushing, pushing, an impossible feat of defiance.

And the world broke again. A forced rollback wave hit the Junk Layer, initiated by some unseen, desperate force trying to reset the anomaly.

The monochrome landscape warped, stretched, and began to tear apart, consumed by blinding white light and deafening static. Livia—screaming, glowing, burning with every feeling she had ever felt, every emotion she had absorbed from the game's core—was yanked back into the playable world, the combined force of the rollback and her guildmates' pull an unbearable maelstrom of sensation.

The last thing she saw before darkness took her was the First Nono, her pixelated form becoming translucent, fading into the tearing fabric of the Junk Layer. But she was smiling gently, her bright, ancient eyes fixed on Livia, a profound peace on her face.

> "You'll remember us. That's enough."

>

And then, oblivion.

> [ROLLBACK INITIATED – FORCING LOCAL RESTART]

> [RELIC_LUXEMIRA ANOMALY: RELOCATED]

> [CURRENT ZONE: PLAYER-TERRITORY / STAGE: ACTIVE]

>

Livia gasped—and opened her eyes back in the main game world. She was home. Sort of. But nothing would ever be the same again. Her heart hammered, a real, physical drum in her chest, echoing the digital chaos she'd just endured. The world might be bright and colorful again, but the echoes of the Junk Layer, the weight of the Luxemira Resonance, and the chilling threat of the Cleaner remained.