The silence stretched around Miles like a noose. The corpse, no... The player lay at his feet, his armor still smoldering from whatever transformation had turned him into that... Thing.
The eerie fog curled around the body as if reluctant to let it go, whispering secrets in a language Miles couldn’t understand.
His breath ca shallow. That could’ve been him.
No system notification. No experience, no reward. No acknowledgnt from the ga that he had just fought and killed sothing. Or rather, soone.
His fingers curled around his scythe’s handle, knuckles turning white.
"What the fuck is this place...?" He muttered under his breath, glancing toward the distant ruins.
More figures moved in the mist. Stumbling, twitching, groaning, but they hadn’t noticed him yet. That would not last long, though. He had to move.
Still, he hesitated.
Miles knelt beside the corpse, his fingers hovering over the armor’s insignia. A guild crest, even though he did not know which guild it was from. It was barely visible beneath the gri and corrosion, it was unmistakably a guild crest.
But there were no other guilds, other than Union and Sakura, right? Unless...
The words that The Archivist had said to Mara echoed in his mind like an on.
"The world is a larger, vaster place than you might currently think, child."
Miles always knew the truth about the world – his world. But it always felt like the world was either too small or too focused on what he was going through. However...
’There are other players, from other parts of the world, playing The Glitch along with everyone else...’ Miles thought, the weight of the inherent realization that he had carried in his mind from the very beginning – from the very first ti he had faced a [Tutorial Spawn] – pressing on his shoulders like a mountain.
There were other players.
And one of them – if not so – had ended up here, wherever here was, and beca sothing else.
Not a monster in the Glitch’s hierarchy of power, not a regular enemy.
Sothing else...
A sharp clang echoed from the distance. tal scraping against tal.
Miles tensed, instinctively raising his scythe. The movent felt natural, like breathing, his grip adjusting without thought.
’Stay calm, stay hidden.’ He exhaled softly, lowering his posture as he moved between the jagged remains of rusted machinery, keeping low to the ground and moving as stealthily as he could.
The fog was thick, but there were shapes moving, and they were larger than the last creature.
Miles positioned himself behind a collapsed chunk of tal, peering through the cracks.
The figures that erged from the mist were different from the one he had just fought. Their bodies were bulkier, their forms less human. Their plating was thicker, more integrated into their flesh – less like armor and more like growths.
Their eyes – wherever they were – remained hidden beneath layers of reinforced steel. They didn’t shuffle like mindless husks, although they were eerily familiar to Miles.
They were moving like they were looking for sothing or soone.
’They’re searching.’
That thought sent a chill down his spine. It was obvious that they had heard his fight, but they could think – if they were able of any kind of rational thought at all – that it was so of their own, hunting or whatever, right?
Because if not, he had to get out of here.
With slow, deliberate movents, Miles turned, stepping lightly over the debris. His boots made no sound as he wove through the wreckage, using the fog as cover.
But then, the fog moved.
A sudden shift, like a pulse rippling outward. Miles felt it like sothing brushing against his skin. Like an unseen hand sweeping through the landscape, searching.
The air humd.
A deep, guttural click echoed through the ruins, and the creatures stopped.
Then they turned.
Directly toward him.
"Shit!" Miles bolted.
The mont his foot hit the ground, they roared.
tal scraped against the ground as they lunged, their movents far too fast for their size. The first crashed through the wreckage where Miles had been hiding just monts before, its claws leaving deep gouges in the tal. The second did not hesitate.
It swung its massive, jagged arm like a club, aiming to crush him.
Miles barely managed to twist his body mid-air, the attack missing him by re inches as he rolled across the debris. Sparks flew where their claws t rusted steel, and the ground trembled beneath their sheer force.
Too strong, too fast. If one of them landed a hit, he was dead.
No lowering HP, no nothing. Just a straight-gone corpse.
Miles skidded to a stop, his breath ragged. He did not have ti to analyze their weaknesses. He had to move.
He pivoted and ran, the ruins blurring past him as he sprinted, dodging jagged pieces of wreckage and skeletal remains of machines too large to comprehend. The howls behind him grew louder and closer.
His lungs burned, and his legs ached, but he could not stop for the love of life.
The colossal structure he had spotted earlier lood in the distance. It was his only shot.
If he could reach it, maybe – just maybe – he could find shelter.
The ground trembled beneath his feet, and then, the fog exploded.
A black mass shot toward him from the mist, moving faster than anything else he had seen in this forsaken place.
Miles barely had ti to react as he threw himself sideways, rolling across the rubble, sothing massive crashing down where he had just been standing.
The impact sent a shockwave through the wasteland, sending dust and debris flying everywhere, blinding him for a split second. He coughed, struggling to get his bearings. His vision cleared just in ti to see it.
A new figure looming over him.
Taller, broader, more refined than the others. Its plating was smoother, its limbs perfectly balanced between machine and flesh. Unlike the others, it didn’t have a single glowing eye. It had two.
And its voice was different.
"... Anomaly detected, must destroy."
Miles’ grip tightened around the scythe, and the thing tilted its head, studying him.
Then, it smiled.
Not a human smile, not an expression of warmth or emotion. It was a shift in the plating of its face, stretching unnaturally, revealing rows of jagged, tallic teeth. And then it moved.
Fast.
Miles barely had ti to react before its claws ca down, slicing through the ground as he dodged backward. Sparks erupted where the impact t stone, the sheer force sending shockwaves rippling outward.
Miles felt pain spreading through his soles and, when he looked down, he saw blood.
"Shit!"
He had fought fast enemies before, but this thing was not just fast. It was precise.
It raised its clawed hand to strike one more ti and Miles tried to move, but he could not. His foot was too hurt for him to put any weight on it.
The thing lowered its hand like a hamr, and Miles thought of Diego, Mara...
Even Sarissa, of how he had told her to mark her own words.
"Not even this once...?" Miles sighed in defeat.
But then, he did not give up.
He rolled sideways as fast as he could, feeling the weight of the monstrous tallic hand smashing his own, a sharp scream leaving Miles’ throat, but he swung his scythe with every ounce of strength he had, and the tallic hand exploded backward as if struck by an unseen force.
But Miles had not even moved.
His scythe was still mid-swing, but the blow hadn’t co from him.
Then, a voice – a human voice – echoed from behind him.
"Do you mind if I crash your party?"
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