[Skill Fusion Detected: GRAVITY SIREN]
[Initiating Prototype EXP Tracking…]
EXP: 000012/100000
CRAFTING SLOT: Locked (Requires 100,000 EXP)
Of course. Nothing’s ever free.
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious, but the world around me had shifted. I’d crash-landed alone. But I woke up… surrounded.
Faces. Dozens of them. Watching from the tree line, from the broken ruins nearby. Normal people—kind of. Clothes looked stitched from digital lint and vines. Their faces carried awe… and fear.
One kid dropped their basket when I stirred. Another old man whispered, “The Singularity walks…”
“Hi,” I croaked. “Can someone explain what the hell is going on?”
Then the Gravity Siren hummed.
It was a low ripple from my chest, like a chorus of collapsing stars. A harmless vibration… or so I thought.
A radius of twenty meters buckled. The trees trembled. The air thickened like soup. Two birds flying above just… froze. Hovered mid-air like paused footage.
And the stone under my feet? It shattered. Quietly. Elegantly. Like it gave in.
I hadn’t even meant to use it.
[EXP GAINED: +1200]
[Gravity-Based Reaction Triggered | Local NPCs Witnessed Event]
[REPUTATION IN REGION: +25 | Title Unlocked: Glitchbringer]
Wait. I get EXP from reactions?
One of the villagers dropped to his knees.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“The Siren speaks again.”
And then they all followed. A synchronized kneeling like some cult.
Great.
That night, I was dragged—politely—into the village square. Fires burned in clay bowls. A crude statue had been carved in record time. It kinda looked like me, except buffer and with wings. I was given fruit that tasted like RAM and soup that healed my bruises with a tooltip pop-up.
They wanted a blessing. Of course they did.
“I don’t do blessings,” I said.
But when I raised my hand to refuse, Gravity Siren pulsed—again.
WUUUMMMM
Half the crops nearby grew three inches in seconds. Water condensed from the air. The air itself sang.
Oops.
[EXP GAINED: +3400]
[World Impact: Environmental Resonance - Logged]
Okay. This thing was absurd.
But it wasn’t just the skill. It was the world. Everything reacted to me. Glitched around me. Like I was walking through a dream that hadn’t finished rendering.
Later, while pretending to sleep in the hut they gave me (on a bed made of literal stack overflow errors), I opened the crafting tab that had flickered into view.
[SKILL CRAFTING INTERFACE: LOCKED]
EXP: 004600/100000
Next Slot Unlocks at: 100,000 EXP
Crafting was coming. But I’d have to earn it.
Still… I had 4 Skill Seeds. Stored somewhere in my core. Waiting.
- Echo Fire (Fire Type)
- Null Thread (Dark Type)
- Infinite Mass (Earth Type)
- Destructive Beam (Destruction Type)
Only two were fused into Gravity Siren.
Which meant… potential.
Future fusions. Hybrid skills. Entire branches of power.
My heart raced.
But something else raced faster.
Around midnight, the villagers started chanting.
The sky dimmed.
A red streak fell from the clouds.
[DATA STORM APPROACHING]
[WARNING: CODE WRATH EVENT - REGION OVERWRITE IMMINENT]
I rushed outside. Fragment. exe’s voice echoed in my mind, broken and glitching.
“They see you again. You are not hiding. You are not supposed to be here…”
The sky opened like a tear.
Something fell through it.
A creature made of error messages and teeth. Towering. Crawling sideways through reality like it was climbing its own death.
And I? I felt my core vibrate.
My fingers burned. Gravity Siren pulsed like a war siren.
No choice. No hesitation.
I launched toward the beast. Not because I was brave.
But because the System was watching.
And I was one EXP closer to becoming a god.
END OF CHAPTER 2