The opening bell rang out like the Grim Reaper's death knell.
My "Wrench" plunged headfirst into the virtual arena known as "Maze City."
I was instantly swallowed up by a towering steel jungle. Countless passageways, skybridges, and pipes twisted together like entangled metal pythons—a complexity so dense it was suffocating.
"Vix seems to be lost!" The commentator's voice dripped with malicious glee. "She's going in circles! 'Maze Hunter' specializes in this kind of terrain. He moves like a ghost, while Vix... she's like a rat that's wandered into a mousetrap!"
In my comms channel, Jinx's voice carried a hint of panic. "Mad Dog, what the hell are you doing? You've already triggered three traps!"
"Quiet," I replied coldly.
Of course I knew I had triggered the traps.
The first trap was an energy net disguised as a wall, which instantly drained the power from my right arm's weapon interface.
The second trap was a cluster of magnetic sticky mines dropping from above, clamping tight to my legs and making the "Wrench" move as sluggishly as if it were wading through mud.
The third trap, which I had just stepped into, was a localized sensor jammer that filled my radar screen with static.
To everyone watching, I looked pathetic—running around like a headless chicken while my opponent toyed with me.
"Maze Hunter" hadn't even shown his face. He was acting like a master hunter, laying traps and patiently watching as I marched step by step toward my death.
"It's just pitiful!" The commentator's voice rang out with exaggerated flair. "Vix has been forced into a dead end! We can see 'Maze Hunter's' mechs closing in from four different directions! He's about to execute a textbook encirclement!"
On the screen, four red dots representing the enemy were rapidly closing in on my pitiful green dot from all four sides—up, down, left, and right.
The stands erupted with earth-shaking cheers and whistles.
The betting odds were fluctuating wildly, taking wagers on how many more seconds I could last.
"It's over!" Jinx's voice cracked with strain. "You're boxed in! Find a way to break out, fast!"
"No need."
I calmly shut down all non-essential systems on the mech, including the engine.
The "Wrench" fell silent, standing like a colossal steel statue at the end of the blind alley, waiting for the arrival of death.
In the virtual world, there was dead silence.
But in the real world—on the filthy, chaotic soil of Planet 7, scoured by acid rain—the real show was just beginning.
I, myself, wasn't even inside my shabby shipping container.
I was standing outside a massive, humming building, draped in a filthy, scavenged poncho, looking like the most inconspicuous of scavengers.Here are the coordinates Jinx gave me—the dedicated data center for the knockout stage of the "Royal Interstellar League."
A server cluster responsible for rendering the virtual arena known as "Maze City."
I looked up at the drab concrete beast before me. On its exterior walls, rows of massive cooling fans were spinning madly, emitting a deafening roar as they vented the terrifying heat generated by the servers into the air.
My "Engineer's Eye" penetrated the thick walls, revealing the rows of server blades within the machine room, their indicator lights blinking.
I saw the massive streams of data surging through them, constructing the virtual world that drove countless people wild.
I also saw... its weakness.
"Maze Hunter's" psychological report said he has mild claustrophobia.
So, he would never choose narrow underground tunnels as an ambush point. His most likely position would be on those open, commanding rooftops.
Based on the four directions from which he was surrounding me, and the coordinates of the dead end I had been forced into...
My brain completed the calculation in an instant.
The units responsible for rendering the area where his mech was located, along with the surrounding environment, were server blades 7 through 12 in Zone B.
And the external cooling fan corresponding to those specific blades was right in front of me... top left, third row, the fifth from the right.
That's the one.
From beneath my poncho, I pulled out something I had prepared long ago.
It was a small industrial wrench. Compared to the behemoth on my mech, it looked like a toy.
But onto the head of this wrench, I had used heavy-duty tape to securely fasten a small, inconspicuous black cube.
A miniature EMP device.
A treasure scavenged from the junkyard, modified from an old microwave magnetron and a few high-energy batteries. Its effective range was no more than three meters, but its power was just enough to fry a motherboard.
I still have to thank my damn old man.
If I hadn't found a cracking algorithm in the encrypted data terminal he left behind—one capable of temporarily bypassing the data center's perimeter firewall—I wouldn't even have had the chance to throw this little gadget inside.
I took a deep breath, gauging the wind direction and speed.
Calculating the trajectory, the deviation caused by wind resistance, and the number of rotations the wrench would make.
Then, I swung my arm back and, with all my strength, hurled the wrench forward!
The small wrench traced a precise, cold arc through the air like a black dart, striking the high-speed cooling fan dead center!
"Clang!"
A faint sound, almost drowned out by the roar of the fans.
The wrench was instantly shredded by the blades and sucked inside!
The EMP device strapped to it released its brief, lethal pulse the moment it was sucked into the cooling duct!
Bingo.
Inside the virtual arena, "Maze Hunter" was enjoying the thrill of the cat-and-mouse game."It's over, scavenger." He opened the public channel, his voice dripping with the arrogance of a victor. "Your luck has run out. Now, pay for your arrogance!"
His four mech projections emerged simultaneously from behind cover, their cannons aimed at my motionless "Wrench."
He was just about to order them to fire.
But in the very next second, the entire world before his eyes collapsed without warning!
The mech he took such pride in, the rooftop beneath his feet, the steel skyscrapers surrounding him, the rusty "Wrench" in his crosshairs... everything instantly turned into an incomprehensible mess of frantically flickering pixelation and garbled code.
Colors glitched, models tore apart, and the entire world looked like a photograph being burned through, revealing the void of black code underneath.
"What?! What's happening?!"
He let out a terrified shriek, but even his voice dissolved into intermittent, meaningless electronic noise.
"Zzzt... my... zzzt... system... aaaaaah..."
His mech's image flickered a few times like a deleted file and vanished completely into the collapsing world.
Immediately after, a cold, emotionless system notification echoed through the arena.
[Connection lost for player 'Maze Hunter'.]
[Player 'Vex' declared the winner.]
A deathly silence fell over the arena.
Everyone was stunned.
The commentator stood with his mouth agape like a gasping fish, unable to say a word.
The audience stared blankly at the large screen—at the bizarre image filled with pixelation and garbled code, and at the solitary, unscathed victory notification in the center.
What happened?
Won?
Just like that... she won?
A few seconds later, an official emergency announcement popped up.
[Due to an unexpected hardware failure in the B7 server cluster, the match has ended abnormally. According to league regulations, if a player is unable to continue due to force majeure, the opposing player is declared the winner. This match result is valid.]
Unexpected hardware failure?
No one believed that explanation. It was too coincidental! So coincidental it was chilling.
Why did the server fail exactly when "Maze Hunter" was about to launch his final assault? Why was it specifically the server for his area that failed?
This incomprehensible victory hung over everyone's hearts like a massive question mark.
"Unexpected hardware failure?"
Deep within the Imperial Palace, Crown Prince Leon Valerius looked at the report his assistant had presented, the corner of his mouth curling into a cold smile.
Attached to the report was another document: a security surveillance record from the perimeter of the Planet 7 data center.
The record showed that mere seconds before the server failure occurred, a scavenger wearing a poncho, their face obscured, had thrown an object at the data center.
The location, timing, and result matched perfectly.
The assistant kept his head down, not daring to speak.Leon's fingers tapped lightly against the desk. There was no anger in his golden eyes; instead, they gleamed with a strange new light—a complex mix of admiration and wariness.
He murmured under his breath, sounding like he was talking to me and himself at the same time.
"Attacking an opponent in the virtual world, yet winning by breaking the rules of the real world..."
"Vex... you lunatic, just how many more surprises do you have for me?"
Meanwhile, in the emergency meeting room of the League Organizing Committee, the atmosphere was so heavy it was stifling.
"Look into this! I want a full investigation!" a grey-haired official barked, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't believe for a second that this was an accident! Form a special task force and get to the bottom of this!"
A sharp-eyed, taciturn middle-aged man sitting in the corner nodded silently and wrote my name on his datapad.
Vex.
By then, I'd already ditched the poncho and vanished into the maze of junk heaps in the Rust Belt.
A message from Jinx had just popped up on my data terminal.
It was only two words.
"Lunatic."
A second message followed immediately after.
"Money's in. Seventy percent, down to the last cent."
I stared at the long string of digits, the smile on my lips growing colder.
A physical hack?
No.
This is just the beginning.