The digital clock on Arthur Vance's office desk blinked softly.

*11:59:58 AM.*

Most people in the high-rise analytics firm were out for lunch, leaving the fluorescent-lit 42nd floor mostly empty save for the hum of servers and the distant wailing of traffic from integrating downtown Seattle. Arthur, however, sat perfectly still, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at the gray, overcast sky. His posture was rigid, his breath shallow. His fingers hovered over the mechanical keyboard of his master terminal, resting on keys that felt far too mundane for what was about to happen.

He was waiting for the end of the world. Again.

*11:59:59 AM.*

Arthur didn't blink. He knew the exact sequence of events down to the millisecond. In exactly one second, the sky would fracture like a pane of bulletproof glass struck by a sledgehammer. The underlying code of the universe would be forcefully overwritten by an entity known only as the 'Eternity Engine'—a god-like system that treated organic life as poorly optimized data arrays.

In his previous life—the "Original Timeline"—Arthur had survived the descent. He had crawled his way from a terrified data analyst hiding under a desk to a Level 99 [Apex Chronomancer], leading the last bastion of humanity against the System's final extermination protocol. And he had lost. Humanity had been wiped out. The planet had been reformatted.

But right before his avatar had been deleted, Arthur had found it. A hidden string of code. A loophole in the Eternity Engine's garbage collection routine.

*12:00:00 PM.*

**K-K-KRRAAAACK!**

The sound was not physical; it vibrated through the marrow of his bones and the synapses of his brain. The overcast clouds outside the window abruptly halted their drift. A flock of pigeons froze mid-air. The world lost its color, draining into a stark, monochromatic grid of wireframes and floating hex codes.

Time had stopped. The Integration had begun.

Right then, a translucent blue screen materialized in front of Arthur's face, floating in the sterile air of his office.

`[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]` `[INITIALIZING PLANETARY INTEGRATION: EARTH_01]` `[MAPPING ORGANIC ENTITIES... PLEASE WAIT]`

Most people at this exact moment were frozen, their consciousness suspended while the System analyzed their generic potential and assigned them the standard "Level 1" starting package. But Arthur wasn't most people. Because of the lingering chronomancy magic bound to his very soul from the previous timeline, he was awake during the pause.

His fingers hammered the keyboard. He wasn't typing on his computer; he was projecting a localized mana-pulse into the terminal to interface directly with the System's raw input feed.

"Override command: Vance-Alpha-77," Arthur muttered, his voice echoing unnaturally in the frozen chronosphere. "Target: Self. Execute memory retention package. Bypass class assignment. Restore previous save state: Apex_Chronomancer."

Strings of golden code flowed from his fingertips, wrapping around the blue System window and attempting to dissolve its rigid borders. This was the exploit he had died to learn. If he could force the System to recognize his Level 99 status right at the start of the Apocalypse, he could shatter the Tutorial Dungeon, save billions of lives, and assassinate the System Administrators before they even finished building the monster spawn points.

`[PROCESSING OVERRIDE COMMAND...]`

The blue screen flickered, turning a vibrant, hopeful gold.

`[IDENTITY RECOGNIZED: ARTHUR VANCE]` `[PREVIOUS SAVE STATE LOCATED: APEX_CHROMOMANCER, LEVEL 99]` `[ATTEMPTING RESTORATION...]`

A surge of unimaginable power rushed through Arthur's veins. He felt the familiar weight of temporal magic settling into his bones. His eyesight sharpened; he could see the individual code strings making up the glass window, the desk, the frozen air itself. He smiled—a cold, calculating grimace. It was working. He was going to cheat the apocalypse.

Then, the golden screen froze.

A sharp, ear-piercing screech made of pure digital static blasted through Arthur's mind. He gripped his head, collapsing to his knees as the temporal magic was violently ripped out of his body. The golden screen turned a harsh, blaring red.

`[CRITICAL ERROR]` `[ILLEGAL DATA INJECTION DETECTED]` `[SECURITY PROTOCOL: OMEGA ACTIVATED]`

"No," Arthur gasped, spitting blood onto the generic carpet of the office. "No, the garbage collector was supposed to be offline during initialization! The exploit..."

`[ANALYZING ANOMALY: ARTHUR VANCE]` `[RESULT: UNAUTHORIZED TIME-AXIS MANIPULATION]` `[PENALTY: IMMEDIATE ACCOUNT DELETION]`

The red screen pulsed. A wave of agonizing heat washed over Arthur. The System was trying to erase him. It was treating him not as a player, but as a malicious virus that needed to be quarantined and deleted.

Arthur's mind raced. He had less than a microsecond before his soul was fragmented into meaningless binary. He couldn't force the Level 99 save state—the System security was too tight. He had to abandon it. He had to hide.

"Cancel restoration!" Arthur screamed, throwing his hands up as if to physically push the red screen away. "Command: Abort! Change target designation! Discard Player status! Reclassify as... as background entity! Reclassify as NPC!"

The red screen shuddered.

`[PROCESSING EMERGENCY RECLASSIFICATION...]` `[DISCARDING ALL PLAYER PRIVILEGES...]` `[PURGING MAGIC CIRCUITS...]` `[PURGING SKILL TREES...]` `[ERROR 404: PLAYER 'ARTHUR VANCE' NOT FOUND]`

The agonizing heat stopped instantly. Arthur collapsed completely against the floor, gasping for breath, his clothes soaked in cold sweat. He lay there, staring at the ceiling tiles as a new, glitching gray screen appeared in his vision.

`[RECLASSIFICATION COMPLETE]` `[ENTITY ASSIGNED: LEVEL 0 GLITCHED NPC]` `[WARNING: THIS DESIGNATION DOES NOT EXIST IN SYSTEM PARAMETERS.]` `[WARNING: YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE EXPERIENCE POINTS.]` `[WARNING: YOU CANNOT ACCEPT QUESTS NORMALLY.]` `[WARNING: AUTOMATED SECURITY SENTINELS MAY FLAG YOU AS A HOSTILE BUG.]`

Arthur let out a dry, raspy laugh. It was a pathetic, broken sound that echoed in the silent office.

He was alive. He had kept his memories. But the cost was catastrophic. He wasn't a Level 99 god. He wasn't even a Level 1 novice. He was a Level 0 NPC—a glitched line of code that the System technically didn't recognize as a participant in the planetary game. He had no stats, no skills, and absolutely no way to level up properly.

If a monster killed him, he wouldn't respawn at a designated shrine. He would just be permanently deleted.

Before he could process the full terror of his new reality, the gray wireframe of the world suddenly snapped back into full color. Time resumed with a sickening lurch. The distant wail of traffic outside the window transformed instantly into a chorus of horrific screams, the crunch of tearing metal, and the explosive roar of magic.

The Integration was complete. The Tutorial had begun.

"Hey, Arthur?"

Arthur snapped his head toward the door. Standing there, holding a half-eaten sandwich and looking bewildered, was Greg, the junior accountant from down the hall.

"Did you... did you just see a blue box pop up in your eyes?" Greg asked, his voice trembling. Above Greg's head floated a pristine, pale blue nameplate: `[Greg Peterson - Level 1 Novice]`.

"Greg," Arthur said, slowly pushing himself off the floor. His entire body ached from the System's purge, but his mind was razor-sharp. He didn't have stats, but he had ten years of brutal, bloody experience running the very dungeons the System was about to spawn. "Get away from the air conditioning vent."

"What? Why?" Greg frowned, taking a step forward. "Man, are you okay? You're bleeding from your nose. And what's this box...? It says 'Tutorial Quest: Survive the First Wave'..."

*KRASH!*

The metal grating of the massive ceiling AC vent directly above where Greg had been standing violently exploded downward. A creature dropped from the darkness, landing on an unoccupied desk with the heavy thud of dense muscle.

It was a Goblin Scout. But not the comical, green little men from fantasy novels. This was a twisted, emaciated monstrosity with grayish skin, milky dead eyes, and a mouth filled with razor-sharp, needle-like teeth. It wielded a rusted, bloodstained cleaver that dripped with a foul-smelling acidic mucus.

`[Goblin Scout - Level 2]` read the red text hovering above its bald, misshapen head.

"Jesus Christ!" Greg shrieked, dropping his sandwich and scrambling backward, tripping over his own feet.

The Goblin hissed, a sound like tearing metal, and locked its milky eyes onto Greg. The system logic dictated that monsters would automatically aggro onto the nearest 'Player' or the entity that generated the highest 'Threat'.

Arthur stood perfectly still, ten feet away. He didn't breathe. He didn't flinch.

The Goblin's gaze swept over the room, completely bypassing Arthur. It looked straight *through* him, as if Arthur was nothing more than a potted plant or a filing cabinet.

Arthur’s eyes widened slightly in realization. The gray `[Glitch]` screen in his peripheral vision blinked.

*I'm not a Player,* Arthur thought, his analytical mind instantly deconstructing the situation. *To the basic monster AI, an NPC without a designated interaction script is virtually invisible unless attacked first.*

The Goblin shrieked and lunged at Greg, raising the rusted cleaver high.

"Help!" Greg screamed, throwing his hands over his face.

Arthur didn't hesitate. He might be weak, he might be broken, but he was a survivor. He grabbed the heavy, metal-based stapler from his desk, judged the distance, calculated the Goblin's leap trajectory based on its primitive attack animation, and threw it with all his might.

The stapler smashed into the side of the Goblin's head mid-air. It wasn't a magic spell, it wasn't a sword strike, but physics still applied in the new reality. The heavy metal object knocked the creature off balance, sending it crashing into a cubicle wall instead of cleaving Greg's skull.

Instantly, the Goblin's head snapped toward Arthur. The creature's AI had updated. An unscripted object had dealt damage. The invisibility was broken.

Above the monster's head, a jagged red line appeared, snapping securely onto Arthur's chest.

`[AGGRO SECURED: TARGET AQUIRED]`

Arthur cracked his knuckles, picking up a heavy steel letter opener from the floor. He had zero stats. One hit from that cleaver would end his life permanently.

"Alright, System," Arthur whispered, a cold, unyielding spark igniting in his eyes. "Let's see how many bugs I can exploit before you patch me."