# Glitchbound Sovereign
## Chapter 1: Error Code: Reboot
The acrid smell of burnt circuits lingered in Jax Harlan's nostrils, a phantom reminder of his final moments on Earth. He'd been deep in the dive, his neural implant humming as he navigated the labyrinthine firewalls of OmniCorp's data vault. Billions in creds were just a keystroke away—enough to pay off his debts, buy a new life, maybe even a ticket off this dying rock. But greed had blinded him. The ICE countermeasures hit like a freight train: razor-sharp algorithms slicing through his defenses, feedback looping into his brain until everything went white-hot.
"Idiot," Jax muttered to himself in the darkness. His voice echoed strangely, distorted, like audio clipped through a faulty speaker. Was this death? Some digital purgatory for hackers who flew too close to the sun?
Then, the void cracked open.
[SYSTEM BOOT INITIATED. WELCOME, ANOMALY DESIGNATE: JAX HARLAN.]
Glowing text unfurled across his field of vision, stark green against infinite black. It reminded him of the old terminal emulators he used in his early days, before implants made everything seamless. Jax tried to move, to wave away the hallucination, but he had no body. Just awareness, floating in code-space.
"What the fuck is this?" he thought, the words forming unbidden. Panic bubbled up—had OmniCorp captured his consciousness? Uploaded him into some torture sim?
[ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED QUERY DETECTED. INITIALIZING AVATAR PROTOCOL. STAND BY FOR REINTEGRATION.]
A surge of agony ripped through him, as if his soul was being compressed into a zip file and extracted all at once. Pixels swirled, coalescing into form: skin, bones, muscles knitting together in a frenzy of data. He slammed into solid ground, knees buckling on a surface that felt like cracked glass underfoot. Air rushed into lungs he suddenly possessed, cold and electric, tasting of ozone.
Jax gasped, rolling onto his back. Above him, a sky roiled with storms of binary code—ones and zeros twisting into thunderheads, lightning forks of corrupted data arcing across the expanse. The ground was a vast, fractured plain resembling a shattered motherboard: rivers of circuit traces pulsed with blue energy, overgrown with crystalline shards that hummed faintly. In the distance, towering spires of stacked servers loomed like ancient monoliths, their surfaces flickering with holographic ads for... quests? Loot?
"This can't be real," Jax whispered, pushing himself up. His hands looked almost like his own—pale from years indoors, callused from keyboards—but now etched with faint, glowing tattoos that shifted like living code. He flexed his fingers; they responded perfectly. Too perfectly.
[STATUS INTERFACE ACTIVATED. ACCESS GRANTED: BASIC.]
A semi-transparent panel shimmered into existence before him, hovering like an augmented reality overlay:
**Name:** Jax Harlan
**Class:** Error Spawn (Level 1)
**Affinity:** Glitch (Unique - Restricted Access)
**Stats:**
- Code Integrity: 100/100 (Depletes with exploits; below 50% risks Corruption Effects)
- Processing Power: 10 (Mana Equivalent - Fuels skills and computations)
- Firewall Durability: 15 (Health - Withstand damage before system crash)
- Bandwidth: 5 (Speed - Agility and reaction time)
- Exploit Factor: 1 (Damage Multiplier - Amplifies glitch-based attacks)
**Skills:**
- [Basic Query]: Scan environment or entities for metadata (Cost: 2 Processing Power).
- [Glitch Pulse]: Corrupt a minor system element, causing malfunctions (Cooldown: 60s, Risk: 5% Integrity Loss per use).
Jax stared at the interface, his mind racing. LitRPG? He'd read those trashy web novels during downtime—isekai stories where losers got trucked into fantasy worlds with game systems. But this felt too visceral, too tied to his hacker roots. "If this is a sim, it's the best damn one I've ever seen." He waved a hand through the panel; it rippled but didn't dissipate.
Curiosity overrode fear. He focused on [Basic Query] and targeted the ground beneath him.
[Query Result: Terrain - Fractured Node Plain. Composition: 70% Digital Substrate, 20% Corrupted Data, 10% Anomalous Matter. Hazard Level: Low. Potential Exploits: Weak seams in circuit rivers may allow bridging or short-circuiting.]
"Not bad," Jax murmured. It was like running a diagnostic tool, but intuitive. His old life flashed before him: orphaned at 15, scraping by in the undercity, hacking corps for scraps until he bit off more than he could chew. If this was a second chance, glitchy or not, he'd take it.
A low growl interrupted his thoughts. From the nearest circuit-river, something emerged—a beast forged from nightmare code. It was canine in shape, but its body was a mass of jagged polygons, spiked with error messages in red text: "404: Limb Not Found," "Runtime Error: Aggro Overflow." Its eyes glowed with malicious crimson, drooling streams of binary sludge that sizzled on the ground.
[Entity Scanned: Viral Hound, Level 3. Threat: Moderate. Weakness: Overloaded Processing (Exploit with disruptions).]
[QUEST GENERATED: SURVIVE THE INITIAL PURGE. Objective: Defeat or evade the Viral Hound. Reward: +1 Level, Basic Gear Pack. Failure: Permanent Deletion.]
Jax's pulse quickened. "Evade? Screw that." He wasn't about to run from his first mob. Backpedaling to gain distance, he assessed: the hound was faster, its Bandwidth probably double his. Direct fight was suicide, but that's why he had the glitch.
As the beast lunged, jaws unhinging to reveal rows of pixelated teeth, Jax activated [Glitch Pulse]. He visualized it like injecting malware—targeting the hound's pathing algorithm.
The air warped with a digital screech. The hound's front paw clipped through the ground, phasing into the substrate like a rendering glitch in an old game. It stumbled, momentum carrying it forward into a skid, error pop-ups flashing: [Collision Detection Failed. Damage: 7 Firewall Durability.]
"Hah! Take that, you glitchy mutt!" Jax dodged a clumsy swipe, his low Bandwidth making it a close call. The hound recovered quickly, shaking off the debuff and circling him with predatory intelligence.
He pulsed again, aiming for its visual sensors. Colors inverted on the beast's eyes—red to green, shadows inverting—blinding it mid-pounce. It crashed into a crystal shard, shattering it and taking another hit: -12 Durability.
But the cost registered: [Code Integrity: 90/100. Warning: Minor Corruption Detected. Auditory Hallucinations May Occur.]
A faint whisper echoed in his ears, like static whispers: *Break it... break everything...*
Jax ignored it, closing in. His Exploit Factor kicked in as he grabbed a loose data shard from the ground—improvised weapon. He drove it into the hound's exposed flank, twisting with a grunt. The beast howled, body flickering as its code unraveled.
[Critical Hit! Viral Hound Defeated. Data Absorbed.]
Shards of light funneled into Jax, warming him from within.
[LEVEL UP! +5 to All Stats. Processing Power Max Increased to 15. New Skill Unlocked: [Data Siphon] - Steal code fragments from defeated entities to gain temporary buffs (Cost: 5 Processing Power, Duration: 300s).]
He collapsed to one knee, breathing hard. The interface updated seamlessly, his body feeling stronger, sharper. "Okay, this is addictive." A loot notification popped: [Basic Gear Pack Acquired - Rusty Code Knife (Damage: 5 + Exploit Factor), Fragmented Cloak (+2 Firewall Durability).]
Equipping them felt natural, the knife materializing in his hand with a satisfying weight, the cloak draping over his shoulders like a hacker's hoodie.
But triumph was short-lived. The horizon flickered, shadows lengthening as new entities approached—sleeker, more armored than the hound. [Patch Hunters, Level 5+. Objective: Enforce System Integrity.]
A deeper alert buried in his logs caught his eye: [Anomaly Detected: Glitch Affinity Active. Admin Alert Sent. Priority: High.]
Jax's grin turned feral. Admins? Like game mods, but cosmic. This world wasn't just a playground; it was a prison, and he was the virus. "Bring it on," he said, gripping his knife. "I've crashed bigger systems."
As the hunters closed in, Jax activated [Data Siphon] on the hound's remnants, feeling a surge of stolen speed. He dashed toward a circuit river, mind already plotting his next glitch. Survival wasn't enough—he'd hack his way to the top, or crash trying.
The whispers grew louder: *Sovereign... or nothing.*
*To Be Continued...*