Chapter 1: Five Stars and a Coming Apocalypse

Chapter 1: Five Stars and a Coming Apocalypse

The air in the OmniCore server farm hummed with a power that was half electricity, half magic. It tasted of ozone and chilled, recycled air. Rows upon rows of obsidian-black server racks stood like monolithic tombstones in the gloom, their indicator lights blinking in a silent, rhythmic pulse. For Kaelen ‘Kae’ Vance, it was just another Tuesday, and rent was due tomorrow.

Her worn combat boots made no sound on the polished concrete floor. Above, the city’s perpetual neon twilight filtered weakly through the high, armored windows, casting long shadows that danced with the pulsating lights of the servers. Rain slicked the glass, blurring the vibrant chaos of Neo-Kyoto outside into a watercolor painting of reds, blues, and purples.

“Alright, you little bastards,” Kae muttered, her breath misting in the cold. “Let’s get this over with.”

She raised her phone. The screen’s glow illuminated her face, highlighting the sharp lines of her jaw and the exhaustion in her eyes. The electric blue of her undercut hairstyle seemed to fight against the sterile darkness of the room. On the screen, the BaneHunt app displayed her current gig:

[ GIG ACCEPTED ] TYPE: Pest Extermination (Minor) TARGET: Data-Gremlins (Infestation) LOCATION: OmniCore Sub-Station 7 PAYOUT: 150 Credits CLIENT RATING: ★★★★★ (Projected)

Projected. The app always dangled that perfect five-star rating like a carrot, knowing full well hunters like her would kill for it. A good rating meant better gigs. Better gigs meant maybe eating something other than instant noodles for a week.

A flicker of movement in her peripheral vision. A skittering sound, like nails on glass mixed with the screech of a dial-up modem. There. Huddled behind a coolant pipe, a creature of warped data and malicious code chewed on a thick bundle of fiber-optic cables. It was vaguely reptilian, its skin a shimmering, pixelated green, its eyes burning with the light of corrupted data packets. A Data-Gremlin.

Kae sighed. It was almost cute, in a ‘destroying-critical-infrastructure’ kind of way.

She slid her phone back into a pocket on her tactical vest and drew her longsword. The weapon was her only real treasure, a relic of a past she tried not to think about. The steel was dull and scarred, but as her fingers tightened around the worn leather grip, faint cyan lines began to trace their way across the blade. Runes. Her runes.

This was her edge, the one thing the System couldn't quantify. The BaneHunt app classified her as a ‘Spellsword,’ a common enough class. It had no category for ‘Rune-Slasher,’ no algorithm that could comprehend her ability to carve glowing sigils into the very fabric of reality. It was a lost art, incompatible with the neat, corporate-defined magic of the modern world. A glitch in their system. Her glitch.

The Gremlin hissed, spitting a glob of corrosive data that sizzled against the server rack, leaving behind a trail of flickering 1s and 0s. More of them began to emerge, crawling from ventilation shafts and phasing through solid-state drives, their chittering filling the cavernous room. An infestation, indeed.

Kae didn’t rush. She moved with an economy of motion born from years of practice and aching muscles. Her sword became an extension of her will. She didn’t just swing; she painted.

Swoosh. A horizontal slash through the air left a hanging, cyan line of light. It was the rune for ‘Sever’. The Data-Gremlin that leaped at her passed through the glowing line and simply fell apart, its two halves dissolving into harmless static before they even hit the ground.

Another two scurried up a server rack. Kae flicked her wrist, her blade tracing a complex, sharp-angled sigil. The rune for ‘Bind’. Glowing chains of pure energy erupted from the symbol, wrapping around the Gremlins and crushing them into glittering dust.

She moved through the server farm like a phantom, a whirlwind of blue hair and cyan light. Each swing of her sword was a word, each combination a sentence in a language of devastating power. A jab etched the rune for ‘Pierce’ into the air, sending a bolt of energy lancing through three Gremlins at once. A downward arc carved ‘Purge,’ and a wave of cleansing light washed over a cluster of them, wiping them from existence like a system restore.

It was over in less than ten minutes. The humming of the servers returned to its steady, monotonous rhythm, the only evidence of the fight the lingering scent of ozone and the faint, fading glow of her last rune.

She sheathed her sword, the light within it dying. Pulling out her phone, she tapped ‘Complete Gig’. A moment of processing, then the notification she’d been waiting for.

Gig Complete. Payment of 150 Credits has been transferred to your account. Client has rated your performance: ★★★★★ Your Hunter Rating is now 4.8 Stars. Keep up the great work, Hunter!

“Great work,” Kae scoffed, looking at her new balance. 225 credits. Rent was 500. It was a drop in an ocean of debt. An ocean that began when she’d been forced to drop out of the prestigious Aetherium Academy, its exorbitant tuition fees a boot on the throat of anyone not born with a silver spoon.

Back in her shoebox apartment, the glamour of her glowing sword felt a million miles away. The room was a mess of noodle cups, discarded gear parts, and textbooks she couldn't bring herself to sell. It smelled of stale air and regret. She tossed her patched-up vest onto the only chair and kicked a pile of laundry out of the way, heading for the kitchenette.

Her celebration dinner was, as always, a cup of ‘Spicy Shrimp’ flavor instant noodles. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she scrolled through the BaneHunt app, looking for another quick gig. Nothing. A few high-level bounties she wasn't qualified for, and a handful of zero-credit ‘community service’ gigs clearing slime mold from sewers. The system at its finest: asking the desperate to work for free for the privilege of staying on the platform.

The kettle shrieked. She poured the boiling water over the brick of dried noodles, the savory steam a small comfort. It wasn’t much, but it was hot. It was hers. She sat on the edge of her mattress, the cup warming her hands, and stared out her window at the rain-lashed neon skyline. Five stars. 150 credits. It felt like winning a battle and still losing the war.

She was just about to take her first bite when her phone screamed.

It wasn't a ringtone or a notification chime. It was a piercing, gut-wrenching emergency broadcast tone that blared from the phone’s speakers at maximum volume. A Priority Zero alert. Kae had never even heard one before. They were theoretical, reserved for city-ending events.

Her noodles forgotten, she snatched the phone. The screen was blood red, displaying a message that was being pushed to every BaneHunt user, every networked device in the city.

[!!! SYSTEM-WIDE PRIORITY ZERO ALERT !!!]

CONTAINMENT BREACH DETECTED AT OMNICORE SUB-STATION 7.

Kae’s blood ran cold. Sub-Station 7. Her gig.

ENTITY CLASS: APOCALYPSE. DESIGNATION: UNKNOWN. STATUS: UNBOUND.

NATURE OF ENTITY: DIGITAL. CHAOTIC. HOSTILE. ALL HUNTERS ARE TO AVOID ENGAGEMENT. THIS IS NOT A BOUNTY. THIS IS A WARNING.

Her hands started to shake. Apocalypse Class? That was impossible. It was a nest of Gremlins. Annoying, but harmless. A glitch, a typo in the system, it had to be.

Then, a second message appeared, this one addressed only to her. It was a system update from the BaneHunt app.

Liability Clause 7 has been invoked.

Her screen flickered. She frantically navigated to her profile page, her heart hammering against her ribs. The page loaded, but it was wrong. Horrifyingly wrong.

Her name, Kaelen Vance, was still there. But her 4.8-star rating was gone. In its place was a single, massive icon, glowing a malevolent, bloody red: a skull.

Below it, her credit balance was no longer 225. It was a string of numbers that barely fit on the screen, a number so vast it seemed impossible. And it was negative.

BALANCE: -9,784,550,000 Credits.

STATUS: PRIMARY LIABILITY.

The app wasn't blaming some unknown entity. It wasn't calling it a tragic accident. It was a simple, cold, corporate calculation. She was the last hunter on site. The system had registered her flawless, five-star gig. And then, moments later, an apocalypse-class entity had been unleashed from the exact same location.

Correlation equaled causation.

In the sterile, unforgiving logic of the BaneHunt app, she hadn't cleared a Gremlin infestation. She had caused a containment breach. She hadn't earned five stars.

She had just been billed for the end of the world.