The desert stretched out in front of us, hot as hell, with nothing but sand and rock as far as the eye could see. I could feel the heat through the shuttle’s plating—it was the kind of relentless, bone-drying heat that made you wish you were anywhere else. We were supposed to be heading back to Sefia, but as usual, something caught my eye.
A shimmer on the horizon, faint but there.
“You see that?” I asked, squinting.
Iggy, sitting next to me with his arms crossed, didn’t even bother to look up. “See what?”
“Over there. Something flickered.” I gestured toward the distance.
He finally glanced up, shrugged, then looked back at the controls. “Probably heat waves, Pipsqueak. You know, like what happens when you fly through a damn desert?”
I shook my head, ignoring the nickname. “No, it’s different.”
With a sigh that sounded like I was pulling him into another one of my hare-brained schemes, Iggy slowed the shuttle and hovered just above the dunes. We both stepped out, the dry air hitting like a punch in the face. I squinted toward the shimmer, still there barely visible.
Iggy finally looked and frowned. “Okay... I see it now. But it’s not showing up on any scans. No heat signatures, no map markers. It’s like it doesn’t exist. It might be a glitch in harmony, although extremely rare they are reports”
“That’s why we need to check it out,” I said, starting to walk toward it.
“Of course we do,” Iggy muttered, following. “Why wouldn’t we? It’s not like I had any plans involving staying alive today.”
The closer we got, the more the shimmer came into focus. It wasn’t just a mirage, or glitch; it was an entrance—a narrow crack in the ground leading into the earth. A gold sand dusted metallic ramp heading… well heading somewhere. Dark, foreboding, and definitely not on any of the maps I had.
“This place isn’t marked,” I said, crouching down to peer into the darkness. “The system doesn’t even register it.”
“Which is exactly why we should leave it alone, Pipsqueak” Iggy shot back. “You’re looking at a death trap.”
Before I could respond, Dave interrupted. “I hate to admit it, but Iggy makes a valid point, Gaines. This place is off the grid—and let me remind you, now that the administrator buff is gone, you can very much die.”
I groaned internally. “Thanks for the reminder, Dave. Really helpful.”
“Just looking out for your best interests, old boy,” Dave replied smoothly. “And might I suggest something important? Like a Rebirth Stone, perhaps. If you die here, you’re not getting back up.”
I clenched my jaw. “And where exactly do you expect me to find a Rebirth Stone in the middle of a desert?”
Old Wrig had a rebirth stone, I pilfered and gave it to Iggy. Which was good because he was killed not long after. But I hadn’t been unable to find anywhere to buy one, or in fact anyone that knew where to get one.
Dave’s tone remained irritatingly calm. “Details, Gaines. But rushing headfirst into an unmarked black abyss with no safety net... let’s just say it’s not your smartest move.”
I rolled my eyes, though Iggy took it as irritation toward him. “What? You getting cold feet?”
“Nah,” I muttered. “Just talking to Dave.”
Iggy raised an eyebrow. “Great. Because the last time you were having a conversation with that AI, we nearly got ourselves blown up. What’s he saying now?”
I smirked. “He’s suggesting that you may be right and reminding me that I can die now. Says we should think about getting a Rebirth Stone.”
Iggy’s face went pale. “I am right. Wait. You can die now? Like, for real?”
“Yep. Buff’s gone. It’s all me from here on out.”
Iggy let out a long sigh, rubbing his temples. “Of course. So let me get this straight—we’re about to walk into some dark foreboding hole in the ground that the system doesn’t even recognize, and now you can actually die?”
“When you say it like that it sounds bad,” I said, grinning. “All we are going to do is have a little look, nothing else.”
He groaned, running a hand through his hair. “Fantastic. Well, lead the way, Pipsqueak. If we’re gonna die, we might as well get it over with.”
Ignoring his sarcasm, I stepped closer to the entrance. The air blowing from the tunnel was cold, way too cold for the desert. New things were always showing up on this planet now, Old Wrig and Petal were gone, surely some have to be good.
Dave piped up again. “Gaines, a word of caution. This place is uncharted for a reason. We should consider preparing a little better before diving in.”
“Noted,” I muttered, my curiosity pushing me forward despite Dave’s warnings.
Iggy, still grumbling under his breath, pulled out his pulse blaster. “Let’s just make this quick, alright?”
With a final glance at the desert behind us, we stepped toward the dark opening, the shadows swallowing us whole.
The slit in the desert led us down into a dark tunnel that slanted sharply. The surface beneath our feet was unnervingly smooth, like metal. The air grew colder with every step, and the light from outside disappeared almost as soon as we were a few feet in. I activated Create Spark at level 9, holding a flame in my hand. It could last for over an hour at my current level. Once I hit level 10, I'd unlock Flamethrower, though it wasn’t the fireball I’d hoped for, I could at least unleash the flame in my hand like a small flamethrower. Sweet.
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The light illuminated a 5-meter sphere around us, revealing the massive structure we'd entered. The corridor slanted downward, and every surface was made from some kind of gold-colored metal. Black lines were carved deep into the walls, crisscrossing at intervals and running along the floor and ceiling.
“What the hell is this place, Pipsqueak?” Iggy said, his voice echoing faintly in the narrow corridor. “It’s not showing up on the system map, not even as unexplored territory.”
I glanced at my UI. The interface was flickering, something I’d never seen before. The mini-map blinked in and out, replaced by static where our location should have been.
“That’s... not good,” I muttered, frowning. “You seeing this?”
“Yeah, this place is either messing with our systems, or Harmony’s having a bad day,” Iggy replied, his voice uneasy. “Never seen interference like this.”
Dave’s voice cut in, more concerned than usual. “Gaines, this isn’t just a glitch. There’s something deeper going on. The architecture of this place... it’s not part of the current system.”
“You mean we’re outside of Harmony? How does that even work? How can this place not be part of Harmony?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around it.
Iggy stopped walking and turned to me, his face serious. “What’s the AI saying, Pipsqueak? I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Look, this is gonna get old fast if I have to repeat everything Dave says,” I said, activating the two-way communication between Iggy and me. Dave could now communicate directly with Iggy, though it felt unnecessary when we were standing right next to each other. Still, it brought all three of us into the conversation.
“Dave,” Iggy said immediately as the connection clicked in. “Have we left Harmony or what?”
“Good afternoon, Iggy,” Dave began, his tone overly polite. “A pleasure as always. It’s such a relief to converse with someone other than Lord Pip...”
“Cut it, Dave. Just answer the question,” I snapped. It’s one thing having Iggy berate me I wasn’t having both of them.
“Very well,” Dave replied, feigning hurt. “Not exactly out of Harmony. We’re more in... a different version of Harmony. This place is old. Very old. I’d best describe it as a beta version of Harmony—isolated from the main program and never updated.”
“Never updated from when?” Iggy asked, a little too interested for my liking.
“Well,” Dave continued, “from the very beginning. This is the first-ever edition of Harmony software, untouched for... well, billions of years. We’re currently in a liminal space between the two programs. The current Harmony we know is attempting to update the original, but there’s some kind of firewall or block stopping it. If we proceed much further into this labyrinth, we’ll likely start running on the original source code. There’s no telling what might happen.”
“Just great,” Iggy muttered. “Here I was thinking you might just get me killed today, but no, you go and break the whole goddamn system instead, Pipsqueak.”
I could hear the attempt at humor in his voice, but there was no mistaking the edge of fear.
“Okay, I agree this might be slightly risky,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt, “but if we proceed slowly and have Dave keep monitoring the system for any changes, we should be fine. I mean, who knows what’s down here?”
I didn’t really believe half of what I was saying, but if this place was running the original Harmony code, maybe it held some answers. Maybe this was the true Harmony, the galactic hub of knowledge that was supposed to unite species, not the kill-or-be-killed levelling system we were trapped in now. And who knows? Maybe there was something here about Earth.
“Gaines, I don’t think you—”
Dave, it’s fine,” I interrupted, cutting him off. “Just keep an eye on the system for any changes. If you notice the original code becoming more dominant, let us know. We’ll take it slow.”
Without waiting for more protests, I started walking deeper into the labyrinth, my nerves buzzing with every step.
“Fantastic,” Iggy muttered, pulling his pulse blaster out. “This was a terrible idea.”
The further we went, the more my unease grew. The flickering in my UI wasn’t just a bug—it felt like the system was struggling to comprehend this place, like it was trying to fit the labyrinth into a framework it didn’t recognize.
As we rounded another corner, the static on my UI shifted into something else—a message. A system notification flashed in the corner of my vision, but it wasn’t one I’d ever seen before.
Warning: Unknown Territory. Proceed with Caution. System Incompatibility Detected.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did you see that?”
Iggy was right behind me, his expression hard to read. “Yeah. I don’t like it.”
Dave’s voice crackled in my ear, sharp and more serious than usual. “Gaines, this isn’t just interference. This place—it’s rejecting the current system. You shouldn’t be here.”
Before I could respond, a wave of nausea hit me, sudden and overwhelming. The world tilted, and I swayed on my feet. Iggy grabbed onto the wall, looking just as off-balance as I felt. A second later, the feeling passed, but my head spun with disorientation.
“Dave... what was that?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
There was no response.
“Dave?!” I called out again, more forcefully this time. Still nothing.
Iggy’s voice broke the silence. “Pipsqueak, have you checked your UI lately?”
I hesitated, then brought up my UI. My heart sank. Everything was... wrong. My stats had been drastically simplified, whole skills had error messages beside them, and my mini-map It was working showing the maze network of the labyrinth.
STATUS - GAINES
Level: 72
HP: 8900/???
Defense: ???
Strength: ???
Agility: ???
Specialization: Unknown
SKILLS:
* Climbing: Error
* Unarmed Combat: Error
* Single-handed Melee Weapon: ???
* Create Spark: Level 9
* Hardened Skin: Error
* Ambient Regen: Error
* Invigorate Self: ???
ABILITIES:
* Ree Gathering: ???
* Programming: Error
* Engineer: ???
CURRENT QUESTS
* Unavailable
“What the hell,” I muttered.
Iggy’s voice was grim. “I think we’ve slipped into the old system, Pipsqueak. And I think Dave might be gone.”