# Glitchbound Sovereign
## Chapter 2: Patch Hunters
Jax didn't wait for the welcoming committee.
Three silhouettes crested the nearest ridge of shattered silicon, their outlines flickering between solid and wireframe like bad holograms. The middle one was tallest: seven feet of matte-black armor plated with scrolling red warnings. The other two flanked it, shorter but bulkier, moving with the synchronized precision of drones. All three carried weapons that looked suspiciously like oversized delete keys.
[Entity Scan Complete]
Patch Hunter – Enforcer Unit (Level 7) ×1
Patch Hunter – Tracker Unit (Level 6) ×2
Threat Assessment: Lethal. Recommended Action: Flee.
"Yeah, no shit," Jax muttered. His new cloak fluttered in a wind that tasted like static. The Rusty Code Knife in his right hand felt like a plastic toy against what was coming.
He sprinted for the nearest circuit river. The glowing blue current hissed and popped, throwing sparks that smelled of burnt copper. Behind him, the Enforcer raised its arm. A thin red laser painted his back.
[Incoming Skill: Integrity Lock – Forces target Code Integrity to 100% (nullifies Glitch Affinity for 30 seconds).]
"Oh, hell no."
Jax dove sideways as the beam carved a smoking trench where he'd been standing. The moment his cloak caught the edge; threads unraveled into floating zeroes and ones.
[Code Integrity: 87/100 → 82/100. Minor corruption sustained.]
The whispers in his head grew louder, almost conversational now.
*Let us help. We can tear their firewalls apart from the inside.*
"Not yet," he growled Jax. He didn't trust voices that sounded like dial-up screeching.
He hit the riverbank sliding. The liquid code was ankle-deep and ice-cold. It soaked through his boots, sending status warnings crawling up his vision:
[Debuff: Conductive Medium – Bandwidth –30% while in contact.]
Perfect. They'd slowed him exactly where they wanted him.
The two Tracker units split wide, trying to box him against the river bend. The Enforcer simply walked straight in, the current parting around its legs like it was royalty. Its voice boomed out, flat and synthetic:
"Anomaly JX-88-HRLN. Glitch Affinity detected. Surrender for immediate sanitization."
Jax barked a laugh. "Come sanitize this."
He triggered [Glitch Pulse] twice in rapid succession, aiming at the river itself.
The surface rippled. Then it bucked.
A geyser of corrupted data erupted between Jax and the hunters, forming a twisting serpent of raw code thirty feet high. Its body was nothing but cascading error messages—NULL REFERENCE, STACK OVERFLOW, DIVIDE BY ZERO—whipping around like tentacles.
[Environmental Exploit Success: Code Serpent (Temporary Summon). Duration: 18 seconds.]
The serpent lunged. One Tracker unit tried to sidestep; a tentacle punched straight through its chest and came out dragging glowing innards of light. The unit dropped, already dissolving.
[Code Serpent dealt 89 damage. Tracker Unit neutralized.]
The Enforcer didn't even flinch. It raised its delete-key spear and simply stepped through the serpent like it was smoke. The construct shattered into harmless pixels.
Jax was already moving. He used the distraction to [Data Siphon] the fallen Tracker's corpse, gulping down stolen stats like an energy drink.
[Temporary Buff: Bandwidth +8 (235 seconds remaining)]
His legs blurred. He shot along the riverbank, boots skimming the surface without sinking. The remaining Tracker tried to keep pace, but Jax was suddenly, beautifully faster.
He spun mid-stride and hurled his Rusty Code Knife. It wasn't balanced for throwing—damage would be trash—but that wasn't the point.
[Glitch Pulse] on the knife itself.
The blade multiplied mid-flight, splitting into a swarm of glitching duplicates that spun like shuriken. Most winked out harmlessly, but three struck true. One embedded in the Tracker's knee joint and promptly corrupted its movement script. The hunter face-planted into the river with a spectacular splash.
Jax didn't stop to admire his work. The Enforcer was still coming, relentless, red laser painting him again.
He needed distance. He needed height.
Ahead, a half-collapsed server tower leaned over the river like a broken finger. Jax angled toward it, leapt, and caught a dangling bundle of fiber-optic cables. Hand over hand he climbed, the cables slicing his palms.
[Firewall Durability: 18/28 → 14/28. Bleeding debuff applied.]
The Enforcer reached the base of the tower and looked up. Its helmet visor reflected Jax perfectly, a tiny, desperate figure clinging twenty meters up.
"Target acquired. Preparing forced logout."
A charging hum filled the air.
Jax grinned through the pain. "Hey, big guy. Ever hear of stack smashing?"
He slammed one last [Glitch Pulse] into the tower's structural code.
The entire thing groaned. Support beams flickered from solid to ghost and back again. Then, with a sound like the world's largest hard drive failing, the tower imploded inward—directly on top of the Enforcer.
A mushroom cloud of dust and spinning data fragments billowed upward. When it cleared, the Enforcer was half-buried under tons of twisted metal and circuitry, one arm still twitching.
[Massive Environmental Damage: 312 (Crushing) + 178 (Corruption Over Time). Enforcer Unit disabled.]
Jax dropped to the ground beside the wreckage, panting. Loot notifications flooded his vision, but one line glowed brighter than the rest:
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: First Admin Kill. Reward: Title – "Unpatched" (+10% resistance to Integrity Lock effects). Bonus: Skill Evolution Available.]
[Glitch Pulse → Fragment Pulse (Now splits into 3 weaker pulses with independent targeting).]
He allowed himself exactly three seconds of smug satisfaction.
Then the sky tore open.
A single line of text, blood-red and massive, carved itself across the storm clouds:
[ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: ANOMALY ESCALATION. DEPLOYING WARDEN PROTOCOL.]
Far away, something enormous began to wake up. The ground trembled in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat made of dial tones.
Jax swallowed. His Code Integrity sat at a shaky 67/100, and the whispers were no longer whispering.
*Run, little sovereign. Run fast. The Warden does not glitch.*
He ran.
But as his boots pounded across the fractured plain, a crooked smile tugged at his lips.
They'd just put the wrong hacker in their perfect little prison.
And Jax Harlan had never met a system he couldn't root.
To Be Continued...