Chapter 4 The Wild Net Below

“Get out of my head!” Jun shouted into the empty tunnel, his voice bouncing off dripping walls. 

He slammed his mutated fist against the concrete. Cracks spiderwebbed out. “Mei, if that’s really you, stop. Just stop.”

No answer came. Only the low hum of the Wild Net layers shifting around him. The service tunnel had spat him out into a ruined street where neon signs flickered in and out of existence. One moment the road stretched straight and solid. The next, a building folded into itself like melting code, spitting out ghostly echoes of people who weren’t really there.

Torv had fallen behind somewhere in the chaos after the arena breach. Probably dead. Or smart enough to run the other way.

Jun kept moving, breathing hard. His body still twitched with leftover mutation pain. Scales on his right arm caught the erratic neon glow. “This place is falling apart worse than the surface.”

A distorted howl echoed from an alley ahead. Not human. Not fully beast.

“Great. Company already.”

Three corrupted beast-code creatures slunk into view. Their bodies glitched between flesh and digital static. One had too many legs, another bled glowing code from open wounds. The biggest one, a hunter-type with elongated jaws, fixed its eyes on him and charged.

Jun dove behind an overturned vendor stall. “Come on, think. Brute force gets you killed down here.”

The hunter smashed through the stall like it was paper. Jun rolled aside, fingers already working on his battered rig. He patched into a nearby flickering street node. “Alright, you digital freaks. Let’s see how you like corrupted traffic signals.”

A broken holographic billboard suddenly blared blinding light and deafening static straight at the creatures. Two of them recoiled, glitching harder. The hunter kept coming.

“Persistent bastard,” Jun muttered. He grabbed a loose piece of rebar and jammed it into a cracked power junction. Sparks flew. He timed it perfectly as the creature lunged. Electricity arced through the metal, frying its front limbs.

The beast screamed, a sound like tearing code. Jun didn’t hesitate. He drove the rebar straight into its core, twisting hard.

The creature convulsed. Something warm and pulsing flowed into Jun’s arm through the wound. Data. Code. Power.

[Absorption initiated.]

Jun gasped as strength flooded his muscles. His left eye flickered with new overlays. But the mutation hit immediately after. Sharp pain lanced through his spine as another patch of neon scales pushed out along his shoulder.

“More… of this,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Fantastic.”

The other two creatures attacked together. Jun moved faster than before, dodging with instincts that weren’t fully his. He hacked a nearby ruined drone carcass, turning its remaining weapon systems against them.

“Target the joints!” he yelled at himself, voice strained. “Don’t let them surround you!”

One creature got too close. Its claws raked across his chest, drawing blood. Jun roared and slammed his palm against its head, letting the Beast System do its work. Code streamed into him again. Another surge. Another mutation. His claws lengthened slightly, sharper.

He finished the last one by luring it into an unstable glitch zone where the street itself collapsed into a digital void. The creature fell screaming into nothing.

Jun dropped to one knee, panting. “Okay… I see how this works now. You eat them, you get stronger. But every bite costs more of me.”

Silence answered. Then the memories started.

A flash hit him hard. Mei laughing in an old grey-market safehouse, head thrown back, real joy on her face. The sound of it wrapped around his chest like warmth.

“No,” Jun whispered, shaking his head. “Not now.”

Another flash. Mei crying quietly in the rain after one of his failed cultivation tests. She had held his face with both hands. “You’re more than what the System says, Jun. You always have been.”

He clutched his head. “Stop it. I hate you for what you did. I should hate you.”

But the memories felt good. Too good. They soothed the burning in his veins, made the mutations feel less like violation and more like… belonging. His heart twisted with it.

“Damn you, Mei. Even in here you’re messing with me.”

He forced himself up and kept moving deeper into the unstable sector. Buildings overlapped in impossible ways. One street sign read “Surface Level” while clearly existing ten layers down. Ghostly figures of dead players flickered past, repeating their final moments.

Another corrupted hunter beast dropped from a glitching rooftop, bigger than the others. Its body rippled with stolen cultivation marks.

“You want some too?” Jun spat. “Fine. Let’s make this quick.”

The fight turned ugly fast. The beast was smarter, faster. It clipped him hard, sending him crashing through a neon stall. Pain flared, but so did the Beast System’s hunger.

Jun hacked the local layer again, forcing a reality glitch right under the creature’s feet. The ground turned to code slurry. As the beast struggled, he struck. Claws sank deep into its core.

Absorption hit harder this time. Power rushed in. His body grew slightly taller, more predatory. The mutation pain made him scream, but he held on.

The final memory flash nearly broke him. Mei in his arms years ago, voice soft and intimate against his ear. “Jun… I love you. Whatever happens, remember that.”

He stood there shaking, covered in beast-code residue, tears mixing with sweat on his face. “Why does that still feel real? After everything you put me through?”

The comfort of her voice in those memories warred with the fresh betrayal. He didn’t know if he hated her enough anymore. And that terrified him more than the mutations.

Jun turned to keep moving when a cold mechanical voice spoke directly into his mind, flat and emotionless.

[SPAWN PROTOCOL INITIATED.]

His shadow on the ground stretched longer than it should have. Something dark and humanoid began pulling away from it, separating slowly.

Jun stared in horror. “What the hell is this now?”