The alarm's first pulse felt like a knife sliding between my ribs. Not physical pain—something worse. A systemic breach.

I spun in my design chair, holographic schematics flickering around me. The Nexus dungeon's threat metrics were spiking red, cascading through probability matrices faster than I could track.

"Show me," I muttered through clenched teeth. 

The central display pulled up a live feed: Player 7492—a level 43 rogue with a reputation for exploit hunting—was systematically dismantling my carefully constructed defence algorithms. Three trap sequences neutralized. Two guardian constructs rendered inert

. And he wasn't even breaking a digital sweat.

"That's not possible," I whispered as the blood drained from my face. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

My lead engineer, Marcos, materialized beside me. There was a frown on his face.

"He's using something we've never seen. Some kind of meta-exploit that's reading the underlying code."

I knew what that meant. If he continued, the entire dungeon's structural integrity would collapse. And with it, my existence.

"I'm going in," My jaw tightened as adrenaline pumped through my veins

Marcos grabbed my arm—or would have if he were more than light and projection.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Anais, you can't. Direct intervention is a system violation."

My hands clenched into fists as I let out a breath I suddenly realised I had been holding for a while.

"Watch me!"

The last time an NPC designer had directly entered their construct, they'd been permanently erased.

Deleted.

However, the alternative was a total system failure.

I initiated the immersion sequence, feeling my consciousness compress and reformat, transforming from designer to player character. My avatar materialized: leather armour, a set of precision engineering tools disguised as lockpicks, and a neural override chip hidden in a pendant.

Player 7492 wouldn't know what hit him.

***

The dungeon's interior was nothing like my design schematics. Where I'd meticulously plotted every stone, every shadow, the reality was cruder. Rougher. Living.

My boots scraped against obsidian-flecked stone, each step generating micro-calculations. Somewhere ahead, Player 7492 was unravelling systems I'd spent decades constructing. But he wouldn't know I was hunting him.

The first corridor branched into three paths. Most players would see a simple navigation challenge. I saw probability vectors, potential exploit routes, and system vulnerabilities.

A mechanical skittering echoed from the left passage. One of my guardian constructs—or what remained of it. Something had reprogrammed its core directive, turning a precision defence mechanism into something... unpredictable.

I clicked my neural pendant.

Passive scan mode.

System diagnostics flickered across my vision.

Threat level: Critical. Player interaction: Anomalous.

My own heartbeat—simulated, but feeling devastatingly real—thundered in my ears.

"Come on!" I muttered, not bothering to stifle my impatience. "Show yourself."

The construct's remaining limbs dragged against stone.

Not moving towards me.

Not moving away.

Just... existing in a state of broken instruction.

Something was very wrong.

This wasn't just an exploit. This was a systemic invasion.