Post-Credits: Bug Report

Chapter 28: Post-Credits: Bug Report

The first sensation wasn’t pain. It was… nothingness. A profound, unsettling absence of sensation that stretched out like an infinite void. Then came the cold. Not the sharp bite of winter, but the clinical, sterile cold of a meticulously controlled environment. The air smelled faintly of ozone and something acrid, almost metallic. Like burnt circuits.

My eyes snapped open, but they wouldn’t stay open. It felt like trying to hold a kite string in a hurricane. A sluggish, delayed response. Error: Input device (Lungs) not responding. Check connection. That thought, unbidden and disturbingly coherent, echoed in my… somewhere. My head? My mind? It was difficult to tell.

I tried to breathe. Or rather, I intended to breathe. My chest expanded, but it felt… simulated. Like watching someone else inhale, a disconnect between the command and the execution. The air felt thick, resisting my will. A delayed-response actuator, I thought, mentally cataloging the inefficiency. This wasn’t right. Not even for a simulated environment.

My vision swam, resolving slowly, painfully. I was lying on a metallic slab, cold and unyielding against… whatever passed for my skin. The room was a study in stark, sterile minimalism. Walls of a material that appeared to be polished marble, but the uniformity was unsettling, wrong. A low, constant hum vibrated through the room, the sound of a massive cooling system working overtime. There were no windows, no visible seams, no indication of where I was, or what I was.

I tried to lift a hand. A simple action, a basic motor function. The effort felt… laborious. And then, as my hand moved, I saw it. A phantom echo, a shimmering trail of motion blurring behind my limb, lingering for a fraction of a second too long. It was like a bad animation, a cheap special effect. My stomach lurched. This wasn’t the lag of a slow connection. This was… something else.

Panic started to bubble up, a frantic, desperate algorithm trying to override my baseline logical assessment. I tried to suppress it. System override not authorized. Processing… The system, whatever it was, was clearly layered. It was attempting to manage my responses, to contain the panic.

Suddenly, a text box flickered into existence in the corner of my vision. It wasn't projected onto anything tangible. It simply was, a ghostly overlay on reality.

`[Warning: Frame rate dropping. Optimization required.]`

Optimization. The word felt… familiar. Like a debugging log entry from a late-night crisis at Apex Innovations. Frame rate dropping? Was this… a game? A simulation? A meticulously crafted hallucination? My mind spun, trying to reconcile the impossible. I, Subject 01, was experiencing a rendering error.

I attempted to speak, to vocalize the escalating absurdity of my situation. The sound that emerged was a choked gasp, distorted and faint. It felt like the audio output was routed through a faulty codec. The disconnect between my intention and the result was jarring.

Then came the sound. A high-pitched, ear-splitting screech, like a modem desperately trying to connect through a faulty line, escalating into a digital scream. It resonated through the room, vibrating through the metallic slab, rattling my teeth. It ended abruptly, leaving a ringing silence in its wake.

As the ringing faded, a new interface appeared. Not the flickering warning message from before, but something more structured, more… imposing. A translucent HUD, familiar in a way that defied logic. It wasn’t just a visual overlay; it was an integral part of my perception.

`System Interface v3.7.2 – Initializing.`

I stared at the text, my mind reeling. A System Interface? Like… like in the novels Kai Chen used to read? The ones he obsessed over, analyzing the cultivation mechanics with the same detached precision he used to apply to distributed databases?

My stats scrolled across the bottom of the HUD:

`Name: Subject 01` `Level: 1` `Qi Capacity: 0/100` `Spiritual Root: Undetermined` `Potential: High` `Current Status: Offline. Re-integrating.`

Offline? Re-integrating? What was happening to me?

Suddenly, a notification popped up, stark and impersonal.

`[SYSTEM]: Welcome, Subject 01. Environment: Primary Research Cluster 7. Purpose: Assessment and Calibration.`

Assessment? Calibration? The implications of those words struck me with the force of a physical blow. I was a test subject. A lab rat.

I tried to move again, to sit up, to do something. The motion blur was still there, a constant, irritating reminder of the underlying flaws in this… reality. I concentrated, focusing my will, forcing the system to respond. The HUD flickered, displaying a cascade of data points.

`[SYSTEM]: Movement speed reduced due to computational load. Processing…`

Processing what? My despair? My defiance?

A new entry appeared on the HUD, a quest log.

`[QUEST]: Escape Protocol. Objective: Breach Containment. Reward: Unspecified.`

Escape? The word tasted like a desperate hope in a sterile world. I focused on the quest, visualizing the path to freedom. It was a gamble, a reckless deviation from whatever protocols were in place. But the thought of passively accepting this… existence was unbearable.

I focused on my limbs, pushing past the lag, overriding the system’s imposed limitations. It was like trying to force a corrupted process to execute. The frame rate dropped further, the HUD flashing a warning:

`[ERROR: Core Functionality Compromised. System Instability Detected.]`

I ignored it. I had to.

With a surge of effort, I managed to sit up. The world swam, the marble walls z-fighting violently, the digital static almost overwhelming my senses. I looked down at my hands, flexing my fingers, ignoring the persistent motion blur.

Then, I noticed something else. A new entry in the quest log, appearing after I’d attempted to move. It wasn’t part of the "Escape Protocol." This was… different.

`[HIDDEN QUEST]: Debugging the System. Objective: Identify and Report Anomaly. Reward: Unknown. Priority: Critical.`

Below the quest description, a single line of text, displayed in a crimson font:

`[SYSTEM]: Subject 01 detected deviation from established parameters. Initiating counter-measures.`

I'm starting to think my new job is going to be a lot more complicated than I initially anticipated. Now, I need to figure out what 'counter-measures' entails, and how to avoid becoming a permanent fixture in this digital purgatory. And that anomalous debugging quest... it feels less like an opportunity and more like a trap. I really hope I didn't just trigger something I can't handle. Because if this System is glitching, it's probably got bigger problems than just a dropped frame rate.