The System Graveyard was just a name he had given the place, but it felt right. Everything around him looked like the remains of something that had once mattered—important, powerful, maybe even beautiful—but now it was nothing more than rust and silence. It was as if the world itself had stopped breathing. If there was one place that could hold the answers to the questions that had always haunted him, this was it.
In all his time playing the game, Reever had noticed something strange. Bots rarely lasted more than a match or two. They spawned, fought, and then disappeared. He used to think it was just part of the system's design, that they were recycled or overwritten after every round. But standing here now, he understood why. This was where they ended up. This was where everything that had outlived its purpose was sent to die.
It wasn't just the bots. The maps too—those countless battlefields he had fought on, places torn apart by war yet spotless and whole again in the next match. He had always assumed the system reset them, wiping the data clean for another round. But here, surrounded by broken pieces of worlds he recognized, he saw the truth. The system didn't erase the chaos. It threw it all here. Every destroyed city, every corrupted line of code, every shattered memory—dumped into this endless wasteland.
A cold thought crept into his mind as he studied the wreckage. Some of the weapons scattered around weren't from his time. He saw rifles and armor sets that hadn't even existed in his version of the game, and others that belonged to maps long deleted before his creation. That meant this place wasn't bound by time at all. Everything the system had ever discarded—past, present, and even the future—was drawn here.
Maybe, just maybe, this graveyard held the key to his survival. Maybe it could even show him a way home.
As he walked among the debris, the auxiliary device sealed to his hand began to flicker. Its circular seal glowed faintly, light bleeding through like something trapped inside was breathing. Reever stopped, watching as the glow pulsed with a strange rhythm. It was still locked, but the light felt almost aware. Curious. As if it had sensed something nearby and wanted to move toward it.
"Come on, open already," Reever muttered, tilting it toward the faint light around him. For a second, the glow brightened, then faded out again, sinking back into silence. The seal dimmed and the device went still.
He sighed and pushed the thought aside. The deeper he went into the graveyard, the heavier the air felt. It wasn't just the weight of metal and ruin—it was the weight of things forgotten. Broken limbs of bots jutted out of the ground, arms frozen mid-reach, fingers curled as if trying to claw their way back to life. Headless bodies lay half-buried in the dirt, their chests flickering faintly with the last sparks of power. Some heads still blinked with weak red light, a dying echo of what they once were.
If bots could scream, this place would have been deafening. But they couldn't. They didn't feel pain or despair. Maybe that was mercy, or maybe it was worse.
Reever paused near a weapon half-buried in the soil. Its edge still glowed faintly, like it remembered being alive. He wanted to reach for it, but something in him whispered no. Instinct, or maybe something deeper, told him that everything here came with a cost. He decided not to test that theory.
Then it happened. A sound he hadn't heard in what felt like forever—a tone, sharp and mechanical, echoing in his mind. The System's voice. His circuits froze as the message unfolded.
[ Warning!
Bot advised to move with caution.
Mission: Something you need to survive is here, but at the same time, it can kill you. Find it before it finds you.
Reward: Survival. If the bot locates the object, it becomes the reward.
Timeline: Until death or completion. ]
The message ended, leaving only silence. Reever stood there, staring into the fog that curled around the wreckage.
So that was it. The System had spoken again—not to command him, but to give him a choice. Survival or death.
He didn't even know what he was supposed to find. All he knew was that something inside this graveyard was alive, and it was already looking for him.
He didn't feel fear. Not even a little. If anything, he felt a spark of excitement stir inside him. Something to hunt, something to challenge him—it was almost refreshing.
"Finally, some fun," he muttered, a smirk tugging at his mouth. "I was starting to get bored being alone. This should keep me busy until the two months are up and I go back home… or at least, back to my lobby."
He cocked his gun, the click echoing faintly through the graveyard, and started moving again. Around him, the ground shifted under his steps, hands of broken bots reaching up from beneath the dirt as if dragging him toward the depths. He stepped over them, ignoring the faint hums of energy that tried to draw his attention. This place was full of traps—temptations that could make any player fall. He almost laughed, thinking that even the game's creators would've been tempted to turn this into a special event. The treasures here could drive anyone mad.
As he ran, his thoughts drifted back to the auxiliary device. It had reacted to this place before. Maybe it could guide him—or draw out whatever he was supposed to find. He summoned it again, hoping it would act like a compass.
"Come on, thing. Light up and show me where the treasures are," he said, tapping it against his palm. The seal flickered for a moment, teasing him with a quick flash before it went dark again and vanished back into storage.
"Damn it. I swear this thing's alive and just messing with me," he muttered, trying once more to summon it, but nothing happened. He sighed. "Fine. Guess it's back to the old ways. Sniffing out the enemy like a dog."
His eyes scanned the graveyard ahead, taking in every movement, every flicker of light. Somewhere out there, something was moving too—and whether it was his reward or his death, he was going to find it first.