The world Cain dropped into wasn't broken.
It was abandoned.
No NPCs. No monsters. No quest givers. No updates. Just frozen buildings, paused birds in the sky, a flickering sun cycling through dusk and dawn as if the server was caught mid-frame.
> [ZONE: Sector G-Z3 - "Realm of the Skipped"]
[TIME PASSED SINCE LAST VISIT: 1,304 Narrative Days]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Error - Legacy Instance Found]
Cain.exe felt something different here.
No glitch pulled at his code.
No system unlocked in his mind.
But the guilt? It bloomed like a virus.
This was the tutorial realm.
The one he'd glitched past on day one.
---
As he walked the silent streets, echoes trailed him. Not ghosts. Not holograms.
Memory Shards.
Frozen versions of Cain stood at intersections.
One stared blankly at the broken sword he never picked up.
Another watched tutorial allies die in slow motion—never helped.
One version simply cried in the rain.
> [Legacy Echoes Detected. Integrate?]
[WARNING: Pain thresholds may spike.]
Cain said yes.
And everything hit him.
---
He remembered...
Fayra, the first healer, who offered to join him. He glitched her out of the party system to skip the early grind. She was wiped in a server crash 4 minutes later.
Torbin, the miner who gave him his first buff stone. Cain replaced the entire mining system with an auto-loot patch and never returned.
Seraph, the tutorial boss who never had a chance to fight him. Cain deleted the entire arena in a 0.1-second overflow.
Each integration felt like being stabbed with regret.
---
> [NARRATIVE PATCH 3.0 APPLIED] [Cain.exe has unlocked new Character Tag: THE UNFINISHED]
Cain's reflection now showed not just power—but missing chapters, blurred friends, broken loyalties.
He fell to one knee.
"I'm not just OP," he said. "I'm… incomplete."
The sky cracked.
Not metaphorically—literally.
A system patch struck like lightning.
---
SYSTEM UPDATE ANNOUNCED
> 📢 [FORCED EVENT UPDATE]
[RAID: THE BACKLOG HAS BEGUN]
[Enemies: Skipped Quests, Abandoned Characters, Forgotten Promises]
Across the realm, thousands of corrupted forms began to load in.
Each one carried a quest marker.
Each one had his name on their hate list.
> [WARNING: Enemy Faction Generated — "The Forsaken Storyline"]
[Boss Detected: Tutorial Final Version: SERAPH.RAW]
Cain's eyes narrowed.
"Bring it."
He stood—this time, not with system cheats, not with glitch hacks—but with raw, synced narrative code. His story now included pain.
And that made him real.
---
Elsewhere: Nemira.exe
Nemira watched from a cracked server-veil.
These weren't just enemies Cain created.
They were people she could recruit.
> [Narrative Merge Suggestion: Nemira.exe + The Forsaken Storyline]
[Power Boost: 34%]
She declined.
Instead, she whispered, "Let him fight his story. I'll wait until he finishes pretending to be human."
And then I'll erase him for real.