The world trembled.
Not visibly. Not audibly.
But somewhere deep—beneath stone, beneath flesh, beneath logic itself—something flickered.
A tremor in the system. A pulse in the code.
[Booting Core Protocols...]
[Initializing Class Grid...]
[Error: Soulcode Missing.]
[Fallback Protocol Engaged.]
[Searching for Compatible Host...]
Kael didn't feel the glitch, the vibration, or the shift.
What he felt was pain—raw, relentless, pulsing through every inch of his broken body.
The fall should have killed him.
It had killed better men.
He lay crumpled at the base of the North Wall, just beyond the outer rim of the city-state of Vaelmark.
They had thrown him off like garbage.
No Soulcode. No Class. No value.
Just another Null.
But death never came.
Instead, he awoke to a sky of flickering stars and a haze of cold data bleeding through the night air.
"Still... alive?" he croaked, voice shredded by blood and dust.
His eyes fluttered open—and then widened.
Glowing lines hovered in front of his vision.
Not real. Not physical.
System overlays.
[New Host Identified.]
[Glitched Soulcode Accepted.]
[Rewriting Permissions...]
[Welcome, Nullwalker.]
[You Have Awakened.]
Kael's mind burned with static.
Words. Icons. Stats. Windows.
[Status Interface - Root Access]
Name: Kael
Level: 1
Class: Undefined
Soulcode: Corrupted - Nullwalker
HP: 11 / 40
MP: 3 / 20
STR: 2
DEX: 3
INT: 6
VIT: 2
LUCK: ?
ACCESS LEVEL: Root (Tier 0x)
He stared at the interface.
This couldn't be real.
He'd never had a Soulcode. Never received his Awakening. Never seen so much as a [Basic Skill: Punch Lv.1] like every other child by age seven.
He was born broken.
Now the system—the System—called him something else.
Nullwalker.
The landscape around him crackled with dead energy.
Ash covered the ground. Black trees twisted up into a sky scarred by data fractures—small glowing tears that pulsed with unstable light.
And floating through the air were Fragments—shards of corrupted code, like moths made of light.
"Where... am I?" he muttered.
[Initializing Location...]
[You are in: No-Zone // Classless Ruins // Layer-0x]
[Warning: This zone is deprecated and unstable.]
[System cleanup scheduled: 6 days 13 hours.]
His body trembled. A cleanup?
That meant deletion.
He had six days before the system would erase this entire region. And everything in it.
[Quest Generated: Escape Before Cleanup]
Type: Timed
Objective: Leave the No-Zone
Time Remaining: 6d 13h 04m
Reward: Unknown
Failure: Permanent Erasure
A second line appeared beneath it.
[Note: You are not supposed to exist.]
Kael staggered to his feet, ribs cracking.
His knees buckled, but he forced himself upright. His body was weak, but his mind was racing.
No-Code Kael.
Now... Root-Level Access Kael?
He glanced at the system window still hovering beside him. Lines of broken code flickered across its surface—permissions, flags, entries in strange symbols he'd never seen before.
But somehow... he understood them.
Like the knowledge was being written directly into his brain.
[Skill Unlocked: System Scan Lv.1]
Type: Passive
Effect: Detect nearby Code Fragments, Glitches, and Exploitable Objects.
Source: Root Access - Nullwalker Tier
Something flickered in his peripheral vision.
A shimmer in the air.
Kael turned—and there it was.
A glowing rift. Small. Barely visible. But pulsing with raw power.
[Exploit Found: Fragmented Memory Node]
Condition: Unlocked via Nullwalker Protocol
Do you wish to absorb it?
[Y/N]
His fingers trembled as he reached out.
Yes.
The world split for a moment.
No—that wasn't right.
He split.
Visions flooded him.
Not memories—echoes.
Faint voices. System logs. Death screens. Warnings. Error stacks.
[—Initiating Override—]
[User_37A: "You were never meant to be born."]
[Patch 3.1.7.2: Nullwalker Class - ABANDONED]
[Warning: Class is unstable and untested.]
[Warning: May cause Host Desynchronization.]
[Proceeding anyway.]
Kael screamed.
For a moment, he forgot who he was.
For a moment, he was everything—and nothing.
A mistake in the code.
A soul without a shape.
A class without a function.
Then, the flood stopped.
And something new appeared.
[Skill Acquired: Echo Step Lv.1]
Type: Movement // Glitched
Effect: Teleport 3 meters in any direction, leaving behind a temporary afterimage.
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Note: Skill is unstable. May cause side effects.
[Unlocked via: Class Corruption - Nullwalker]
A shadow moved across the horizon.
Kael turned—eyes wide.
Something was coming.
It walked on four legs, its body stitched from corrupted textures and broken code. Limbs flickered in and out of existence. A sound followed it—not a growl, but a data screech, like a file being force-deleted in real time.
[ERROR ENTITY DETECTED: Dreadbeast Lv.5]
Type: Rogue Process
Behavior: Aggressive
Threat Level: High
**Warning: You are not authorized to engage.`
"Too late," Kael whispered, heart pounding.
The beast charged.
Kael didn't think—he activated the only skill he had.
[Echo Step Activated]
His body vanished in a flash of glitch-light.
He reappeared three meters away, stumbling, nearly falling.
The beast's claws tore through the space where he had just stood.
Side effect hit.
His vision blurred. Head split with pain. Blood leaked from his nose.
But he was still alive.
Level 1. No weapons. One glitch-skill.
And yet—for the first time in his life—Kael had options.
He ran.
Not out of cowardice, but because the system had finally opened its gates to him.
He didn't understand it yet, but he could feel it.
He wasn't supposed to exist.
And that meant he could do things no one else could.
Exploit code. Absorb fragments. Rewrite rules.
No longer a broken outcast.
No longer Null.
He was Kael the Nullwalker.
And he was going to rewrite the world.
But even as Kael ran, the truth settled in his bones like ice.
He didn't know what he was doing.
Not really.
Every step pounded into brittle ground, kicking up flakes of black ash. The trees bent in unnatural ways—roots curling above the earth, bark splintered into jagged patterns. Every so often, the air shimmered with static, as if invisible lines of code were being rewritten all around him.
The sky cracked again.
Another System Fracture—a jagged tear of white-gold light, high above. This one didn't close. It flickered like a dying heartbeat.
Something was wrong with the world.
It wasn't just Kael.
It was everything.
He stumbled into the shell of what had once been a building—crumbling stone walls etched with worn-out glyphs, symbols that looked like system tags. Inside, it was dark, but the walls glowed faintly with Residual Light—energy left behind from deleted NPCs, maybe. Or lost players. Or worse.
[Location Discovered: Broken Outpost - Code 03-A]
[System Note: Decommissioned. No AI presence.]
[Loot Probability: 17%]
"Loot probability?" Kael muttered, scanning the room.
His new System Scan triggered.
A faint ping behind a collapsed shelf. He pulled the debris aside, coughing on the dust—and found a Data Capsule, its surface cracked but intact.
[Item Acquired: Glitched Memory Capsule x1]
Description: A sealed fragment of lost data. Requires access level to decrypt.
Warning: May contain corrupted information or hostile subroutines.
His heart pounded. The capsule vibrated faintly in his hand, reacting to his presence.
[Decrypt? Y/N]
"…Screw it."
Yes.
The world flickered.
Kael's breath caught as a voice echoed in his head—not spoken, but injected, like data being force-fed into his mind.
"They knew we were broken. They left us here anyway. Deleted the logs. Burned the backups. But we still remember. We remember what we were supposed to become."
An image flashed.
A massive tower—black stone rising into a sky that was perfect, flawless, untouched by glitches. Figures stood on its steps, armored in light and code, each with a different symbol burning above their heads.
Classes.
Real ones.
[You have glimpsed a Lost Class: Architect of Fractures]
[Class entry denied - insufficient Soulcore stability]
Kael's hands trembled.
"Then I'll build one myself," he whispered. "From the pieces they threw away."
He pocketed the capsule. Outside, the wind howled. But it wasn't wind.
It was static.
Something else moved in the ruins.
Kael froze.
Not the Dreadbeast. Something more subtle.
Thin. Crawling. A shape along the ceiling—like dripping shadows that had learned how to think. It whispered in a dozen broken tongues.
[New Entity Detected: Shadelink (Lv.2)]
Behavior: Passive-Aggressive
Status: Fragmented Code - Lacks Stable AI Core
Threat: Moderate
[Warning: Weak to Light-based code / system echo skills]
Kael looked down at his only skill.
[Echo Step Lv.1]
It wasn't enough to kill. But maybe…
He triggered it—not to escape, but to bait.
He vanished, reappearing across the room with a crash. The shadow shrieked, diving for where he had stood.
But it hit the afterimage.
[Echo Detonation Triggered]
Unstable feedback pulse. Minor damage applied.
Entity staggered. Vulnerable for 2.5 seconds.
Without thinking, Kael grabbed a chunk of metal from the floor—rusted, jagged—and lunged. He drove it into the entity's core, where its body flickered and trembled like corrupted data.
The Shadelink screamed—then burst into shards of broken symbols.
[Enemy Defeated: Shadelink Lv.2]
[EXP Gained: 18]
[Level Up: Lv.2]
[+1 Stat Point earned]
[Skill Tree: Fragmented Nullwalker - Unlocked]
A new window opened.
[Skill Tree - Fragmented Nullwalker]
Echo Step (Upgradable)
Static Veil: Blur your form, increasing dodge rate.
Patch Drain: Drain energy from corrupted enemies.
Recompile: Restore broken skill fragments.
[Locked branches detected...]
Kael stared.
He'd fought, survived, leveled up—and now had potential.
He wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was evolving.
He spent the point—into Patch Drain. A passive that restored fragments of HP when near dying enemies.
Good for scavengers. Or survivors.
Like him.
The wind outside shifted again.
But this time... it wasn't the Dreadbeast or a Shadelink.
It was a pulse. A wave of energy that swept across the land like a ripple in glass.
Kael felt it pass through his bones, and the System responded instantly.
[System Sync Attempt Detected...]
[WARNING: System AI has noticed your presence.]
[Root Access: Masking...]
[Mask Successful - For Now.]
He exhaled sharply.
They knew.
Not who he was. Not yet.
But something inside the dead code had twitched.
And the System—whatever remnants of godlike AI still governed this world—was waking up.
And looking for him.
Kael stepped out of the outpost and looked toward the distant ruins of the old cities—places long overwritten by system wipes and ancient wars between Class-bound guilds.
Once, he would have avoided them.
Now, he saw opportunity.
The system had abandoned him.
And now he was going to learn how to exploit it, piece by broken piece.
[Quest Updated: Escape Before Cleanup]
Time Remaining: 6d 12h 29m
Secondary Objective Unlocked:
Unlock a Stable Soulcode Core
Survive 3 Rogue Entity Encounters
Locate a Beacon Tower (Status: Offline)
He clenched his fists.
For the first time in his life, Kael had purpose.
And he wasn't going to waste it.