Chapter 29: The Observer
"???"
The system clock ticked steadily—05:49 AM, real-world time.
Inside the obsidian-black chamber beyond the player interface, where no typical admin logs in and no human ever peeks, a figure stood with his arms crossed, staring at the dozens of translucent panels floating before him. Each one displayed a different perspective: party formations, character stats, health graphs, mana flow, cooldown timings, elemental resonance data.
And at the center of it all—Zaphro.
"Interesting…"
His voice echoed softly in the sterile dark, a breath that hardly disturbed the silence.
He pinched his fingers, zooming in on a tactical replay of the canyon ambush: frame-by-frame breakdowns of Zaphro's reaction time, his deviation from standard class behavior, the way his aura had twisted—corrupted—when forced to use his so-called Dark Angel powers.
The GM narrowed his eyes.
That wasn't scripted.
That… wasn't part of the original design.
"Accel's stats surged after only three days of gameplay. Now Zaphro's tapping into something I didn't authorize. Their synchronization patterns… their energy signatures…"
His finger hovered over Zaphro's current soulbind—Gwydox—a soul-class entity created during a pre-release dev test and intentionally sealed. It wasn't supposed to spawn outside of the final expansion. And yet here it was, chirping sassily in a system still months away from that content being unlocked.
A single word hovered over Gwydox's status:
ANOMALY.
Just like the others.
"I'm seeing too many variables," he muttered, pulling up another file—one marked "E-Class BETA_Genesis/Files/Legacy_Behaviors".
Seven legacy logs appeared. One in particular blinked red: Baal_ExecutionLog_01204.
It was dated over a year ago—before the game's official launch.
A slow smile crept onto his face.
"So that monster still exists in the wild code," he whispered. "Forgotten, but not gone."
---
Amaymon appeared beside him, emerging from thin air with a puff of black mist. The demon's body was glitching slightly, his scythe flickering between forms as if undecided on which version of his own data to render.
"You let them live," Amaymon growled.
"I didn't let them live," the GM said evenly. "You failed."
The demon glared, eyes glowing crimson. "You gave me faulty restrictions. I could've—"
"I gave you boundaries," the GM interrupted, voice sharp enough to silence even an infernal being. "You exist because I allow it. You are a test, nothing more."
Amaymon's lips curled back. "Then stop holding me back. Let me kill the Demon Class. Let me tear his friends apart—"
"No."
The GM turned, finally facing him.
"I want to see how far they go."
"You're obsessed with them," Amaymon hissed.
The GM chuckled.
"No… I'm fascinated by what they are becoming."
He swept a hand across the floating screens. They expanded, showing algorithmic trajectories—player behavior curves, predicted responses, synchronization odds between parties, and a constantly evolving "Threat Index." Zaphro's name was at the top. Above everyone else. Even above Project Nox_Ark.
"The system recognizes him," the GM murmured. "The game is adapting to him. Just like it did with the first Alpha…"
His voice trailed off.
Amaymon frowned. "You're losing control."
The GM turned his gaze back to the map—specifically the eastern ridgeline where Baal had awakened, where party members had already died.
"Control is an illusion," he said softly. "The best way to understand the code… is to let it evolve."
---
The air inside the black room buzzed as an alert chimed. One of the panels zoomed in automatically—it showed Zaphro mid-air, facing the grotesque, half-visible form of Baal. The screen shimmered, distorting like it was being affected by the boss's aura itself.
The GM didn't blink. Instead, he tapped a hidden console, bringing up a waveform readout of Zaphro's aura.
Then he frowned.
The waveform was unstable… corrupted, yet not destructive. Something new. Something that resisted deletion.
"What are you hiding, Zaphro?"
A new window opened behind him—system logs flagged with dozens of error messages tied to one root code: DARK_SIGIL_02.
"Second Sigil awakened already?" he whispered, eyes widening slightly. "He shouldn't even have the key fragments…"
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, lost in calculation.
Then, an idea.
---
The GM turned toward the void at the corner of the chamber and issued a voice command:
"Run Shadow Trace Protocol. Tag: SAMAEL."
A pause.
The system responded in a voice devoid of emotion:
> "Initiating trace… Running triple-veil cloak… Proxy location embedded. Awaiting manual override authorization."
"Override accepted," the GM said. "Begin silent infiltration. I want eyes on him—non-invasive tether only."
Another confirmation chime.
A shadow flickered across the chamber—an invisible presence now dispatched to shadow Zaphro. Not to attack. Not to interfere.
Just to watch.
"Let's see what kind of anomaly you really are," the GM said.
---
For a moment, silence returned.
Then another alert sounded—this time from a buried folder marked "Blacklist/Unresolved/Deceased_Accounts".
The GM's brow furrowed. He opened it cautiously. The screen flickered.
> "WARNING: Deleted Player ID Detected Within Active Memory Pool."
"What?" he whispered.
The player tag was garbled. Corrupted. But part of it was still legible: ...sh4d0w_aRk…
His expression changed.
"That shouldn't be possible."
He pulled the memory log manually—lines of distorted code scrolled faster than the eye could follow. Glitches, echoes of data from a ghosted player account that had supposedly been wiped in Alpha testing.
He ran a trace on its current location.
The map zoomed in on the eastern cliffs, where Baal had spawned. A faint signature remained—too faint for any normal admin to detect. But not him.
"Someone else was watching," he realized. "Someone… outside the loop."
---
He turned his back to the data panels and stared at the swirling void wall that made up one side of the chamber.
"You're still in here, aren't you?"
He wasn't talking to the system anymore. Not even to Amaymon.
No, this message was for someone—or something—else.
"I thought I buried you with the others. But you always did have a talent for hiding…"
The room pulsed once, a flicker of purple glitch-light cracking through the floor tiles for a moment before fading.
The GM's smirk returned.
"Let's see who breaks first—me, or the game itself."
He stepped into the swirling void and vanished.