AN : Another Unserious chapter i hope you guys like it i laugh so hard while making this, maybe my humour is cooked lol
As Zaboru continued enjoying the event, he ended up spending almost three hours since he arrived inside the building without even realizing it.
By the time Zaboru finally checked the clock, he realized he had already stayed too long. He still needed to prepare for his upcoming trip to the USA, and although the event was fun, he could not afford to spend the entire day acting like a suspicious foreigner in a hoodie and fake mustache while casually catch the X-Gun disc Bullet. He was just about to leave when the entrance suddenly became noisy.
Someone rushed toward the organizer's desk, breathing heavily as he shouted, "EGORI! EGORI! There are representatives from ZAGE outside! They brought some thugs!"
The atmosphere changed instantly. People who had been laughing a second ago suddenly froze. Several participants instinctively covered their modded consoles with cloth, while others shoved suspicious cartridges into their bags with the speed of criminals hiding evidence during a police raid. One man panicked so badly that he tried to hide an entire CRT monitor under his jacket, which obviously failed because the thing was almost half his body size.
EGORI, the middle-aged organizer of the event, widened his eyes in disbelief. "What!? Why would ZAGE bring thugs here!?" His voice cracked halfway through the sentence, and for a moment, he looked like a man whose entire life had flashed before his eyes, including every illegally modified console he had ever touched.
Then the door opened with a harsh creak.
A man in a clean suit entered first. He walked with far too much confidence, chewing on a cigar that had not even been properly lit yet, as if he had watched too many gangster movies and misunderstood all of them. Around his neck hung what looked like a ZAGE employee ID card, and behind him were six thugs carrying metal baseball bats. They spread out behind him like cheap background enemies from a beat 'em up game, all trying to look intimidating while clearly not knowing where to stand.
The man in the suit grinned and finally lit his cigar, though he coughed a little after inhaling too hard. Then he pointed toward the crowd and shouted, "Hey, you criminals!"
Several people flinched. Someone quietly whispered, "Is this part of the event?" while another replied, "If it is, the acting is terrible."
The suited man continued, "How dare you do something illegal here!? Do you know that ZAGE hates this stuff!? PIRACY IS ALWAYS BAD!" he shout but it's funny because his voice crack
The participants immediately became defensive. Some protected their consoles, others stepped backward, and a few were already mentally calculating how fast they could run while carrying a modified ZEPS 2, two cartridges, and a toolbox. EGORI stepped forward, trying to keep his voice firm even though his face was pale. "What!? There is no way you are from ZAGE! You must be a fraud!"
The suited man grinned even wider and grabbed the ID card hanging from his neck. "HEY, BASTARD! DON'T YOU SEE THIS ID CARD!?"
Everyone stared at it.
The card looked real.
It had the ZAGE logo, employee layout, department formatting, even the little holographic strip on the side. The name written on it was Sugiyama Kawaki, and below that was TEAM IZAN Developer. The details were good enough that the entire room became uneasy. Some people began whispering nervously. If this guy really was from ZAGE, then things could become very bad very quickly.
Meanwhile, Zaboru stood near the side of the room, completely flabbergasted behind his disguise. 'Sugiyama Kawaki? Team IZAN Developer? ZAGE employee?' he thought, blinking slowly. 'There is no such guy in Team IZAN. Actually, there is no such guy in ZAGE at all. But that ID card looks real enough. Weird.' With his Deep Memory abilities Zaboru remembers all of his employee names.
For a brief moment, Zaboru was not even angry. He was amused. Someone had created a fake ZAGE employee ID so convincing that it actually made the homebrew crowd panic. In a different context, he might have respected the craftsmanship.
Then someone from the crowd suddenly shouted, "Wait! It's Kawaki! He's a fraudster! That ID card is fake!" Another person immediately yelled, "WHAT!? SO IT'S ZAGE HOMEBREW!"
The entire mood flipped instantly. For a second, everyone was silent. Then the room exploded with laughter.
"Fake ZAGE employee!" someone shouted, while another immediately added, "Bro made homebrew ID card!" A third voice yelled, "Maybe he works for WAGE, not ZAGE!" and someone near the back shouted, "Team IZAN? More like Team IZAN'T!"
Even some of the thugs behind Kawaki looked like they were trying very hard not to laugh. One of them coughed into his fist and turned away, but his shoulders were shaking. Kawaki's face turned red with humiliation. He had entered like a villain, but within thirty seconds, the room had converted him into a meme. When someone pointed at his card and asked whether the fake ID could run homebrew too, another person immediately followed by asking if it supported save states.
That was when Kawaki suddenly reached into his jacket and pulled out a wakizashi.
The entire room immediately became silent. The jokes died in everyone's throat. Even the people who had been laughing the loudest stepped backward. The metal blade gleamed under the indoor lights, and the six thugs behind Kawaki straightened up again, gripping their baseball bats and trying to recover their lost intimidation.
Kawaki grinned with ugly satisfaction. "You better give all your money here, or we're going to wreck this place."
The thugs began flexing their bats, slapping them into their palms and moving forward. The crowd became frightened. These were hobbyists, modders, students, programmers, and strange hardware enthusiasts. Most of them could probably disassemble a console blindfolded, but fighting seven armed men was a completely different matter. One man whispered, "I can overclock a ZGBA, but I cannot overclock my bones," and no one even laughed because he sounded too serious.
Zaboru sighed quietly. 'You had to ruin it, ZAGE homebrew,' he thought. Then he pulled his hoodie lower over his face and walked forward.
This time, people noticed him immediately.
It was not because he looked heroic. With his fake blonde hair, fake mustache, glasses, and bulky hoodie, he still looked like a suspicious foreign hobbyist who had wandered into the wrong side quest. But everyone remembered him. This was CODEX Reloaded, the man who had caught the stray X-Guns CD bullet between two fingers earlier. So when he stepped forward, the room did not simply feel confused. It became nervous, excited, and slightly stupid.
Someone whispered, "Wait... Disc Bullet guy is moving." Another muttered, "Oh no. Is he going to parry crime too?" Duvan, who had seen the catch up close, grabbed Rantisu's sleeve and whispered, "Bro, this is him. This is the guy. The one who caught the flying disc." Rantisu adjusted his glasses with trembling hands and said, "Statistically speaking, if he can catch a disc bullet, a baseball bat may already be obsolete technology."
Even EGORI, who had been panicking moments earlier, stared at CODEX Reloaded like a drowning man seeing a suspiciously muscular lifeguard. He did not know whether this mysterious forum member could actually fight, but at this point, anyone calm enough to walk toward armed thugs after catching a flying CD deserved at least a little faith.
One of the thugs noticed him first and barked, "Hey! Sit down if you don't want to get hurt!"
CODEX Reloaded kept walking.
That alone made the crowd's excitement grow worse. Someone whispered, "He didn't stop," and another replied, "Bro, he's doing the slow walk. Only bosses slow walk." A third person near the back hissed, "Someone record this! He already caught the X-Guns bullet. Maybe this is phase two!"
The thug clicked his tongue, clearly annoyed by the fact that a man in a fake mustache was somehow stealing his intimidation value. He swung his metal bat at CODEX Reloaded's shoulder, probably expecting the tall man to flinch, block awkwardly, or collapse immediately.
To everyone else, the bat looked fast.
To Zaboru, it looked painfully slow.
He shifted his body slightly, letting the bat cut through empty air. The movement was so small and smooth that it almost looked lazy, like he had simply decided not to be there anymore. The thug's eyes widened, but before he could recover, CODEX stepped inside his guard and drove a left uppercut into his chin. The impact was sharp, clean, and controlled, but still powerful enough to lift the man's feet slightly from the floor before he collapsed like a disconnected controller.
The room went silent. Then someone whispered, "Did CODEX just buffer-cancel that man?" Another person immediately added, "No, no, that was a perfect counter." Duvan pointed with both hands and shouted, "I TOLD YOU! DISC BULLET GUY IS NOT NORMAL!" Rantisu slowly nodded and said, "Confirmed. Baseball bat is obsolete technology."
Kawaki shouted, "What!? How dare you!"
The second thug rushed forward from the side, raising his bat overhead. CODEX moved before the swing could descend. He took one quick step, closed the distance, and launched a high knee straight into the man's face. The impact made a brutal cracking sound—not bone breaking, but enough to make everyone in the room collectively hiss. The thug's body went backward, his bat flying from his hand and spinning across the floor until it bumped into a modified ZEPS 1 setup.
The owner of the console shouted, "HEY! WATCH THE HARDWARE!"
Even during a fight, the homebrew people had priorities.
The third thug tried to attack from the other side, swinging horizontally at CODEX's ribs. CODEX ducked under it with a smooth weave, almost casual, then planted his feet and delivered a tight liver shot. It was not flashy. It did not need to be. His fist sank into the man's side with terrifying precision, and the thug's entire body folded instantly. He dropped to his knees, gasping like his soul had just been unplugged.
Someone in the crowd muttered, "That man just got factory reset." Another replied, "No, that was a hard shutdown." A third added, "His operating system is gone."
The remaining three thugs hesitated. For the first time, they seemed to realize that the tall guy in the hoodie was not a normal participant. One of them tried to circle behind CODEX while another charged from the front. Zaboru noticed both without even turning his head.
The front attacker swung low. CODEX stepped back just enough for the bat to miss, then pivoted beautifully. His body turned like a coiled spring, and he unleashed a roundhouse kick that struck the man in the side of the head. The kick was controlled, but the visual looked devastating. The thug spun once and dropped flat on the floor.
The crowd erupted. People were no longer just scared now. They were watching a live-action fighting game unfold in front of them. Someone yelled, "CODEX USED SPECIAL MOVE!" while another screamed, "THAT WAS NOT HOMEBREW, THAT WAS OFFICIAL DLC!"
The thug behind him tried to take advantage of the moment, but CODEX already knew he was there. Without looking fully back, he slipped to the side, letting the bat pass near his shoulder. Then he snapped a jab into the man's face, followed by a sharp uppercut that ended the fight immediately. The thug collapsed backward onto a pile of empty cardboard boxes, which exploded around him like a cheap action movie effect.
The final thug stared at CODEX.
CODEX stared back.
The thug slowly lowered his bat. Then he turned and tried to run.
Unfortunately, he slipped on a rolling CD that had fallen from one of the showcase tables earlier. His legs flew upward, his bat clanged against the floor, and he landed on his back with a defeated groan. The room stared for a second before someone raised one finger and said, "Technically, CODEX defeated him with homebrew equipment." Another nodded seriously. "Unlock community assist."
Kawaki was sweating now. His entire fake raid had collapsed in less than a minute. His six thugs had been beaten, folded, kicked, punched, or defeated by environmental hazards. But he still had the wakizashi, and fear made him reckless.
"You bastard!" Kawaki shouted before lunging forward with the blade.
The crowd screamed and scattered backward.
CODEX Reloaded's expression became calm.
The thrust came straight toward him. CODEX stepped back first, letting the tip of the blade miss his torso by a narrow margin. Then he sidestepped to the right, rotating his body smoothly as Kawaki overcommitted. In that same motion, Zaboru lifted his leg and snapped a spinning roundhouse kick toward Kawaki's wrist.
The strike landed with terrifying accuracy.
Kawaki's hand opened from the shock, and the wakizashi flew from his grip. The blade spun once in the air before clattering harmlessly across the floor. Before Kawaki could even understand what had happened, CODEX was already moving again.
He stepped forward, pushed off the ground, and delivered a superman punch straight into Kawaki's face.
The punch looked cinematic. For the crowd, it was almost unreal. CODEX's hoodie fluttered, his disguised hair shifted, and the impact sent Kawaki backward in a dramatic collapse. He hit the floor and did not move again, completely unconscious. Of course, Zaboru had controlled his strength carefully. If he had not, Kawaki would not simply be unconscious. He would become a police report, a medical case, and possibly a legal meeting with Ayumi scolding him for three hours.
But the fight was over.
For three seconds, nobody moved. Then the room exploded so loudly it almost shook the windows. People shouted "CODEX!" again and again while others screamed that he had parried a sword, patched crime out of the building, and unlocked the secret boss route of the gathering. Duvan looked like he had seen religion, while Rantisu was already trying to calculate whether CODEX Reloaded's reaction speed violated normal human limits.
Zaboru exhaled slowly, then reached up to adjust his wig.
Unfortunately, the fight had already messed up his disguise. His fake blonde hair had shifted badly, his mustache was hanging slightly crooked, and the hoodie no longer hid his face properly. When he fixed one side, the other side slipped. When he pulled the wig down, the mustache peeled away further.
The crowd gradually stopped cheering.
Someone blinked. Another person leaned forward. EGORI's eyes widened. A voice from the back whispered, "Wait..." Another voice trembled, "No way..."
Zaboru froze.
His disguise finally gave up completely. The wig tilted sideways, the mustache fell off, and the face beneath became unmistakable.
The room became silent again.
Then someone said in a tiny voice, "I... it's Zaboru?"
For a moment, nobody breathed.
Then the entire event went absolutely insane.
"ZABORU!?" someone screamed. "BOSS OF ZAGE!?" another shouted. "CODEX RELOADED IS ZABORU!?" Duvan grabbed his own head like his brain was overheating and shouted, "I TOLD HIM ABOUT MY CRACKED ZEPS 2 LOADER!" while Rantisu whispered in horror, "I asked him how to bypass checksum validation... and he answered."
One man immediately grabbed his modified ZEPS 3 and hugged it like a child. Another fell to his knees and whispered, "Forgive me, Father of ZEPS." Someone else pointed at his own showcase table and shouted, "THAT ONE IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES!" while the man beside him screamed, "DON'T LIE, IT RUNS PIRATED PUZZLE GAMES!"
EGORI looked like his soul had left his body and was now requesting a refund.
Zaboru sighed deeply. Then he raised one hand and said, "Nobody talks about me being here, or I'm going to come back with the real ZAGE, okay?"
Everyone instantly shut up.
The silence was so intense that even the unconscious thugs seemed respectful.
Then, one by one, everyone nodded. Very quickly. Too quickly. One participant even saluted. Zaboru stared at him. The participant slowly lowered his hand.
Zaboru chuckled, his mood lightening again. "Relax. I'm not here to destroy your event. EGORI, continue the gathering. I'll take care of this... ZAGE homebrew."
The phrase made several people almost laugh, but nobody dared to laugh too loudly yet. EGORI nodded repeatedly, still pale. "Y-yes! Thank you, Zaboru-san! I mean, CODEX-san! I mean—sir! I mean—please don't sue us!"
Zaboru waved casually. "Don't make things worse for yourself."
EGORI immediately shut his mouth.
Zaboru then looked at the unconscious Kawaki and the defeated thugs. He shook his head with a faint smile. 'Someone impersonated a ZAGE employee? Really? People are getting creative these days.'
He made a quick call, arranging for security and police handling through proper channels. Of course, he made sure no one from the actual ZAGE legal department came charging into the homebrew event like an apocalypse. That would defeat the point. This was a criminal impersonation issue, not a chance to crush hobbyists.
After that, Zaboru quietly prepared to leave. As he walked toward the exit, the crowd parted for him like he was some legendary hidden boss leaving after a secret encounter. Nobody said anything too loudly, but the whispers were everywhere. Some whispered that CODEX was Zaboru, others panicked because he had seen their cartridge adapters, and one person quietly wondered if Zaboru had liked his modded controller. Another person replied that Zaboru had beaten seven guys, so maybe he liked violence more.
At the entrance, Zaboru paused for a second and looked back. "Keep creating," he said simply. "But don't cross the line too much."
Nobody knew exactly what "too much" meant, but coming from Zaboru, it somehow sounded like both a warning and encouragement.
Then he left.
Outside, Zaboru finally allowed himself to laugh quietly. "Sigh... ZAGE homebrew, huh? That one is actually funny."
He headed back toward his office, still needing to prepare for his trip to the USA. The day had become far more chaotic than expected, but in a strange way, it had also been valuable. He had seen talent, madness, stupidity, creativity, and now even fake ZAGE criminals. If nothing else, Unlock was definitely not boring.
What Zaboru did not know was that someone had recorded the entire fight with a Handycam.
The footage was shaky. The angle was terrible. At one point, the camera accidentally focused on the floor for five seconds because the person recording panicked. But the important parts were there.
The fake ZAGE employee.
The thugs.
CODEX Reloaded stepping forward.
The fight.
The wig falling.
And Zaboru's face being revealed.
The person holding the Handycam stared at the screen with trembling hands. Then he whispered, "This is going to be legendary."
To be continued.
Please give me your power stone and if you want to support me and get minimum 50+ advance chapter and additional 1 chapter a week for 4$ considering subscribe to my patreon patreon.com/Zaborn_1997
Or buymecoffee https://buymeacoffee.com/Zaborn_1997 which same with patreon
current Patreon/buymecoffe chap 1246
Also Join my discord if you want https://discord.gg/jB8x6TUByc