The ventilation shaft was less of a tunnel and more of a throat. It was ribbed with ancient, rusted cooling coils that hadn't spun in a thousand years, and the air inside tasted like battery acid and dry rot.
Kieran crawled on his elbows and knees, the jagged Glitched Fang clenched between his teeth to keep from biting his tongue. The space was tight—barely wide enough for his shoulders. Every time he dragged himself forward, a bolt or a loose screw tore at his already ruined uniform.
"You are moving with the grace of a tectonic plate," Spam buzzed from behind him. The little robot was floating effortlessly, his single blue eye illuminating Kieran's sweaty, dirty ass. "My navigation subroutines are literally dying of boredom. Calculate: If we continue at this velocity, we will reach the Mana Battery in approximately three fiscal years."
Kieran spat the dagger into his hand and glared over his shoulder. "I'm crawling through jagged metal with 21% health. You want to lead? Be my guest."
"I would love to," Spam chirped, floating closer to Kieran's face. "But unlike you, I do not have a meat-shield to absorb impact. My chassis is delicate alloy. You are expendable biomass. Now, mush."
Kieran suppressed the urge to stab the robot. "You're lucky I need a map."
"I'm lucky the System has low standards for 'Chosen Ones'. Seriously, a janitor? The algorithm must have been drunk."
Kieran grunted and dragged himself forward again. He hated the robot. But he hated the silence of the Abyss more. The constant banter kept the existential dread at bay.
They crawled for another fifty meters. The air grew hotter. The smell changed from dry rot to something sharper—ozone and burning sugar.
"Stop," Spam whispered. The sarcasm vanished, replaced by a cold, mechanical warning. "Kill your momentum."
Kieran froze. "What?"
"Light off."
The blue beam from Spam's eye cut out. The tunnel plunged into absolute darkness.
"Listen."
Kieran held his breath. At first, he heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears. Then, he heard it.
Click. Click. Scrape.
It sounded like a thousand wet knuckles cracking at once.
"Bit-Roaches," Spam hissed in the dark. "Code parasites. They feed on leaked mana. They infest these vents like malware."
"Can we go around?"
"No. This is the only intake shaft. And Kieran? You're glowing like a disco ball."
Kieran looked down at his chest. The violet veins under his skin were pulsing faintly. In the pitch black, he was a beacon of premium, corrupted data.
SCREEE!
The sound erupted from the darkness ahead. A high-pitched, digital shriek that vibrated Kieran's teeth.
Then came the rushing sound. Like water flooding a pipe, but it was the clicking of legs.
"They smell you!" Spam yelled, retreating behind Kieran's head. "Combat mode engaged! Suggestion: Don't die!"
"Thanks for the tip!"
Kieran raised the Glitched Fang. A wave of orange light rounded the bend in the shaft ahead.
They were hideous. Each one was the size of a dinner plate, shaped like a cockroach but made of translucent, orange glass. Their insides were filled with glowing, scrolling binary numbers. Their mandibles were jagged static, twitching with hunger.
[Entity: Bit-Roach (v.1.0)] [Status: Swarm.] [Description: They don't want to eat you. They want to unzip your files.]
The first roach leaped.
It didn't attack like an animal. It launched itself like a projectile. Kieran swung the dagger, aiming for its head.
[System Alert: High Latency Detected (450ms).]
His brain sent the command: Slash. His arm responded: Loading...
His swing was too slow. The roach sailed right under his blade and slammed into his chest.
The impact knocked the wind out of him. The roach's mandibles—sharp, pixelated static—bit into his shoulder.
"ARGH!"
It wasn't a bite. It was a deletion. Kieran felt a chunk of his flesh simply cease to exist, replaced by burning numbness.
[Damage: 2.] [Integrity: 19%.]
"Get off!" Kieran roared, smashing the hilt of his dagger onto the roach's shell.
CRACK.
The shell didn't break. It felt like hitting armored glass. The roach hissed and bit deeper, its glowing abdomen pulsing brighter as it sucked his data.
Two more roaches slammed into his legs. Another latched onto his left arm.
"They're swarming!" Spam shrieked. "Don't let them burrow! If they hit your core, you'll crash!"
Kieran thrashed in the tight space, slamming his elbows against the metal walls. He couldn't swing his weapon properly. There was no room.
He dropped the dagger.
He grabbed the roach on his chest with both hands. His fingers slipped on the smooth, glass-like carapace. The creature was incredibly strong, its legs digging into his ribs, anchoring itself.
"Let... go!"
Kieran head-butted it.
He slammed his forehead into the creature's hard shell. Pain exploded in his skull, blinding him for a second.
[Damage: 1 (Self-Inflicted).] [Observation: That was stupid.]
But the impact stunned the bug. Its mandibles loosened for a fraction of a second.
Kieran ripped it off his chest. A chunk of his shirt and skin came with it.
He didn't throw it. He slammed it against the wall of the shaft. Once. Twice.
SPLAT.
The orange shell shattered. But instead of guts, a hiss of pressurized gas escaped.
"Duck!" Spam warned.
POP.
The dead roach exploded. It wasn't a fiery explosion; it was a burst of concussive force and static discharge. Kieran was thrown backward, his head cracking against the floor.
[Target Deleted.] [XP: 0.]
"Zero XP?" Kieran coughed, kicking another roach off his shin. "I'm fighting for my life for zero XP?"
"They're vermin!" Spam yelled. "You don't get a medal for taking out the trash! Look out!"
The tunnel ahead was a sea of orange. Hundreds of them. They were climbing over each other, a wall of clicking glass and hunger, rushing toward him.
Kieran scrambled backward, searching for his dropped dagger in the dark. His hand closed around the hilt just as the swarm hit him.
It was a massacre. They buried him.
Kieran screamed as dozens of mandibles bit into his legs, his arms, his neck. His Integrity bar started ticking down like a countdown timer.
[18%... 16%... 14%...]
He couldn't fight them one by one. There were too many. He needed a bomb.
"Use the environment!" Spam's voice was barely audible over the screeching. "The cooling coils! Rupture the coolant line!"
Kieran looked up. Above his head, obscured by the swarm, was a rusted pipe labeled [Hazard: Liquid Nitrogen].
But his arms were pinned. A heavy roach—an Alpha—had clamped onto his right forearm, weighing it down.
Kieran snarled. He didn't try to pull his arm free. He pulled the Alpha closer.
He opened his mouth and bit the roach.
His teeth clamped down on the glass leg of the monster. He tasted copper and electricity. He bit down hard, cracking the limb.
The Alpha squealed and reared back, releasing his arm.
Kieran freed his hand. He thrust the Glitched Fang upward, blindly stabbing at the ceiling.
"Break!"
The dagger hit the rusted pipe.
HISS.
A jet of white, freezing gas erupted from the pipe.
It hit the swarm instantly. The roaches in the front row froze solid mid-jump, turning into statues of ice and code. The ones behind them smashed into the frozen wall, shattering their brethren.
The cold was agonizing. The gas grazed Kieran's cheek, burning it with frostbite.
[Damage: 3 (Cold).] [Integrity: 11%.]
But the roaches stopped. They hated the cold. Their systems slowed down. Their glowing numbers turned sluggish.
"Now!" Kieran gasped, shivering violently.
He activated [Scavenger's Eye].
The frozen roaches lit up in wireframe. He saw the [Detonate] code inside their bellies.
He grabbed the nearest frozen roach—a statue of ice—and hurled it into the mass of living roaches behind the gas cloud.
CRASH.
The frozen roach shattered. The unstable data inside it reacted with the others.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
A chain reaction. The first explosion triggered the second, which triggered the third. The tunnel turned into a cannon barrel of orange fire and blue data.
Kieran curled into a ball, covering his head, as the shockwave washed over him. Roach parts, ice shards, and raw entropy pelted his back like shrapnel.
The noise was deafening. And then, silence.
Smoke filled the shaft.
Kieran lay face down in the grime. He couldn't feel his legs.
[Combat Encounter Survived.] [Style: Ugly.] [Integrity: 11%.]
"Kieran?" Spam's voice was soft. "You alive, meat-bag?"
Kieran coughed, spitting out black phlegm. He rolled over.
The tunnel was painted with glowing blue slime—the remains of the swarm.
"Did I..." Kieran wheezed. "Did I win?"
"Technically," Spam floated down, scanning him. "Though you look like you lost a fight with a lawnmower. You need to heal. Now."
Kieran looked at the blue slime. It was fading, the data evaporating back into the system.
He dragged himself forward. He scooped up a handful of the glowing goop. It was disgusting—viscous and warm.
[Object: Raw Bug Data.] [Contains: Trace amounts of Mana.] [Consumable.]
He didn't hesitate. He shoved the slime into his mouth and swallowed.
It tasted like blueberry syrup mixed with pennies.
A jolt of energy shot through him. The frostbite on his cheek knitted together. The missing chunk of flesh on his shoulder re-materialized, pixel by pixel.
[Absorbing...] [Integrity: 11% -> 25%.]
He ate more. Handful after handful, scavenging like a rat.
[Integrity: 35%.]
[System Alert: Data Threshold Reached.] [15 Bytes of Free Memory Available.]
Kieran slumped against the wall, wiping his mouth. He felt better. Not good, but better.
"Spam," he panted. "The upgrade. Do it."
"About time," Spam beeped. "Your latency was embarrassing back there. I saw a tectonic plate move faster than your left hook."
"Just fix it."
Kieran opened his menu. He dumped every byte of the roach data into his [Latency] drive.
He felt his nervous system burn. It felt like someone was pulling a wire tight inside his spine. His vision sharpened. The lag between thought and action vanished.
[Upgrade Complete.] [Latency: 450ms -> 300ms.]
Kieran flexed his fingers. Snap. He clenched a fist. Snap. It was instant. He felt lighter.
He looked down the tunnel. The explosion had cleared the path. The grate at the end was twisted and broken, hanging by a hinge.
Kieran crawled the rest of the way. He reached the grate and peered down.
Below him lay the Hangar Bay.
It was vast, a cathedral of rust. In the center, suspended by failing gravity chains, was the wreckage of a Starship Engine. And stuck in its side was the Void-Drive Core, pulsing with that deep, violet light.
But Kieran didn't look at the Core. He looked at the floor.
Standing guard around the engine were three figures in tattered robes. They held staffs made of twisted motherboards. Their faces were blank screens.
[Entity: Cultist of the Deleted.] [Class: Mage (Corrupted).]
Kieran watched them. He saw the way they moved—arrogant, floating slightly above the filth, their magic crackling around them.
He remembered the "Heroes" on Earth. The ones who looked down on him while he cleaned their boots. The Mages who claimed their power made them gods.
Kieran gripped his dagger tighter. The metal bit into his palm.
"Mages," he said, a cold smile touching his cracked, bloody lips. "I hate Mages."
"They have ranged attacks," Spam warned. "And you have a knife."
"I know," Kieran whispered, kicking the grate open. "I'm counting on it."