The boss chamber was a meat locker.

Not metaphorically. The basement of the QuikStop — whatever it had been before the System reformatted reality — was now a freezing, blood-red cavern with slabs of something that might have been meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling. The hooks were bone. The chains were sinew. The air tasted like iron and frost.

`[BOSS CHAMBER: GULLET]` `[Tier 1 Boss — HP: 450]` `[Special: Grab Attack, Devour (Instant Kill below 20% HP)]` `[Weak Point: ████]`

"The weak point is redacted?" Jin stared at his scan readout. "That's... new. The regular mobs showed weak points."

Marcus frowned. In *Echoes of Ruin*, boss weak points were hidden until the player discovered them through combat or lore items. The System was following the game's design rules — even for information display.

"I know where it is," he said. "Behind the left ear. Same family as Rot Hounds."

"You *know* where it is." Ava's voice was flat. Not a question anymore. A statement of increasingly strained patience.

Before Marcus could respond, the meat slabs began to move.

Not the slabs themselves — something *behind* them. Massive. Shifting in the red-lit dark. The hooks rattled. The chains swayed. And from between two hanging carcasses, a head emerged.

Gullet.

It was a Rot Hound — but wrong. Scaled up by a factor of three, its body was the size of a delivery van. Six amber eyes, each as large as a fist, arranged in that familiar two-by-three pattern. Its jaw — *the* jaw, the defining feature Marcus had spent two weeks animating — hung open at an impossible angle, revealing rows of teeth that spiraled inward like a garbage disposal.

In the game, Gullet's design document read: *"Mid-tier Rot Hound variant. Oversized jaw capable of swallowing small enemies whole. Fun factor: players must avoid the grab attack or face instant death."*

Fun factor. Marcus wanted to go back in time and punch his past self.

"That thing is huge," Jin whispered.

"Phase one," Marcus spoke fast, brain switching into combat-designer mode. "It charges like a Rot Hound but slower. Same three-hit combo — lunge, snap, tail — but the tail has a wider arc. After the combo, three-second window instead of two. It's bigger, so it's slower."

"And the grab attack?" Ava asked, knife out — no, she had the Rot Hound fang now, held in a reverse grip.

"Phase two. Below fifty percent HP, it starts using Devour. It opens its jaw wide — you'll see yellow particles around its mouth. If it grabs you, it swallows you. Instant kill if you're below twenty percent HP."

"And if you're above twenty percent?"

"You take massive damage and get spat out. Still bad. Don't get grabbed."

Gullet stepped fully into the light. Its paws — each the size of a manhole cover — cracked the concrete floor. It lowered its massive head, all six eyes locking onto Ava.

It had chosen its target.

"Go," Ava said.

---

The fight was chaos.

Gullet charged — and Marcus's combat notes were right about the speed. Slower than the regular Hounds, but the sheer mass made up for it. When it lunged, the ground shook. Ava dodged left — barely — and the beast's shoulder clipped a meat hook, sending it spinning.

"Snap incoming!" Marcus called.

The jaw came down — not at Ava. At *Jin*, who had circled to scan from the side. The teeth closed on empty air as Jin threw himself backward, glasses flying off his face.

"THE AGGRO TABLE IS WRONG!" Jin screamed, scrambling for his glasses. "It switched targets mid-combo!"

Marcus's stomach dropped. In the game, Gullet's aggro was locked for the duration of a combo. But this was glitched. The aggro was *random* — switching between targets mid-attack.

*Bug,* he thought. *The aggro table is corrupted. It's rolling a new target for each hit in the combo instead of locking at the start.*

"The aggro is bugged!" he shouted. "It can switch targets mid-combo! Everyone stay mobile — don't assume it's targeting someone else!"

The tail swept — wide, brutal. Marcus dove behind a meat slab. The tail hit the slab, ripped it off the hook, sent sixty pounds of frozen mystery meat slamming into the wall.

Three-second window. Ava was already moving — she closed the distance, drove the fang into Gullet's flank. The beast howled. Black blood sprayed.

`[Gullet — HP: 412/450]`

"Thirty-eight damage?" Jin wailed. "We need to hit the weak spot!"

Marcus circled, looking for the opening. Behind the left ear — the same spot as the regular Hounds. But Gullet was huge, and the ear was ten feet off the ground. They couldn't reach it from the floor.

*Think. Think like a designer.* Marcus scanned the chamber. Meat hooks. Chains. Hanging carcasses. Above Gullet, a thick sinew chain dangled from the ceiling — directly over the beast's left side.

"Ava! The chains! Climb and drop on it!"

She looked up. Looked at the chain. Looked at Gullet. "You want me to *ride* the thing?"

"I want you to drop onto its back and stab behind its left ear while it's in recovery!"

"You're insane."

"I'm a game designer. We're all insane."

---

It took two more combos. Marcus and Jin played bait — dodging, rolling, drawing aggro while Ava climbed. The bugged aggro table actually helped — Gullet couldn't decide who to target, so its lunges were indecisive, missing wide.

Ava reached the ceiling chain. She swung — once, twice, building momentum — and dropped.

The fang drove into the soft spot behind Gullet's left ear. Deep. To the hilt.

`[CRITICAL HIT! Gullet — HP: 288/450]`

The beast screamed — a sound that shook dust from the ceiling. It thrashed, trying to throw Ava off. She held on, driving the fang deeper, twisting.

`[Gullet — HP: 244/450]`

Phase two.

Gullet's jaw unhinged — wider than physically possible, the spiral teeth glowing with a sickly amber light. Yellow particles gathered around its mouth like fireflies.

`[WARNING: Devour charging — avoid frontal area]`

"GET AWAY FROM ITS FRONT!" Marcus screamed.

Ava pulled the fang free and leaped off the beast's back. Gullet snapped its jaw shut — on nothing. The shockwave blew Jin off his feet.

Then the glitch hit.

Gullet convulsed. Its body flickered — like a video with dropped frames. For a split second, Marcus saw *through* the monster. Not through it physically — through its *code*. Lines of data, fragments of the game's enemy AI script, scrolling across the beast's skin like projected text.

And in the corner of his vision:

`[Hidden Class: DEBUGGER — Activated]` `[Bug Detected: Gullet — Phase 2 aggro table missing null check]` `[Exploit Available: Force aggro lock on non-player entity]`

Marcus stared. He could *see* the bug. The same bug his team had flagged in the alpha build but never fixed — the phase 2 aggro table didn't check for null targets. If Marcus could create a "target" that wasn't a player — a decoy — Gullet would lock onto it permanently.

A meat slab. Still hanging from a hook. Still warm.

"Jin!" Marcus grabbed a chunk of the fallen meat slab. "Throw this at its face. Now!"

"WHAT?"

"JUST DO IT!"

Jin caught the meat chunk and hurled it — a wild, two-handed throw that arced perfectly into Gullet's open jaw. The beast bit down reflexively.

Marcus focused. The Debugger skill — whatever it was — pulsed. He *willed* Gullet's aggro to lock onto the meat. He didn't know how. He just... knew. Like reading code. Like seeing the error and knowing the fix.

`[Bug Exploit applied: Aggro locked on non-player entity]` `[Duration: 8 seconds]`

Gullet froze. Its six eyes went blank — not dead, but processing. Confused. Its aggro was locked onto a chunk of meat it had already eaten. For eight seconds, it would do nothing.

"HIT IT!" Marcus roared. "EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT!"

Ava and Jin didn't need to be told twice. Eight seconds. Ava went for the weak spot — stabbing, twisting. Jin slammed his shelf bracket into the beast's jaw hinges, trying to break the mechanism.

`[Gullet — HP: 144/450]` `[Gullet — HP: 98/450]` `[Gullet — HP: 41/450]`

The eight seconds ended. Gullet snapped back to reality. It roared — the sound cracking the concrete — and lunged.

Not at Ava. Not at Jin.

At Marcus.

He dodged — barely. Quick Step fired, the skill boosting his speed just enough. Gullet's jaw snapped shut centimeters from his hip. He rolled, came up, and—

Ava was already there. Behind the ear. One final strike.

`[CRITICAL HIT! Gullet — HP: 0/450]` `[BOSS DEFEATED]`

Gullet collapsed. It dissolved — not into mist like the regular mobs, but into *pixels*. Thousands of glowing amber squares that floated upward, fading into nothing.

The chamber went silent.

`[Dungeon Complete: Provision Dungeon]` `[Rewards: Food Supplies (30 days), Healing Gel x10, Crafting Material: Beast Core x1]` `[Bonus: First Clear — additional 200 XP]` `[Marcus Chen — Level 3! Jin Park — Level 3! Ava Reyes — Level 3!]`

Crates materialized in the center of the chamber — actual wooden crates, full of canned food, fresh water, dried meat. Enough to feed Pioneer Plaza for a month.

Marcus sat on the cold floor, breathing hard. His hands were shaking. Not from the fight — from what he'd just done.

The Debugger class. He'd used it. He'd *seen the code*. He'd exploited a bug he'd identified three years ago in an unreleased game — and it had worked. In reality.

Jin sat beside him, glasses cracked but still on his face. "Dude. What the hell was that? That thing you did. The meat. The aggro lock."

"I... exploited a bug."

"A bug. In reality."

"In the System."

Jin stared at him for a long, long moment. Then he grinned — wide, wild, unhinged. "That is the most broken game mechanic I have ever seen. And I've played release-day Cyberpunk."

Ava stood over both of them, fang dripping black blood. She wasn't smiling.

"When we get back to the plaza," she said, "you're going to tell me everything. No more 'pattern recognition.' No more dodging. Everything."

Marcus met her eyes. She was right. The secret was getting too big to carry alone.

"Everything," he agreed.

Outside, through the dungeon exit that materialized in the chamber wall, the purple sky of San Adaro waited. Darker now. The threat level had increased.

And in Marcus's HUD, the Debugger class notification updated:

`[Hidden Class: DEBUGGER — Stage 1 Unlocked]` `[New Ability: Code Sight (Active) — See system errors in entities within 10m radius]` `[Warning: Excessive use may flag user as anomaly.]` `[The System is watching.]`