System Error: The NPC's Reign of Terror

Chapter 2 Eye of Athena

"Purge anomalous data source. Target: Nova."

Those words were like searing steel needles, piercing through the restroom door and driving straight into my brain.

It wasn't a hallucination.

I wasn't going crazy.

This was a sentence. A city-wide artificial intelligence had just issued my death warrant.

I was the "anomaly."

Fear, like an icy jolt, surged through my spine. My mind went blank, leaving only the most primal instinct screaming in my ears: Run!

I spun around and kicked the dusty vent cover behind me with everything I had.

"CLANG!"

The cheap metal shrieked as it buckled outward, but damn it, it was still jammed tight against the wall. I wasn't strong enough—I was just a bar waitress, not some superhero.

"THUD! THUD! THUD!"

Heavy, rhythmic thuds echoed from outside, as if some steel beast was ramming its head against the "Lost" bar’s pathetic wooden door. With every blow, the entire building shuddered, and dust rained down from the ceiling like a premature shroud for my funeral.

I was out of time.

My eyes darted around the cramped space before locking onto a rusted metal pipe beneath the sink.

My body moved before I could think. I bent down, gripped the cold pipe with both hands, and wrenched it from the wall with every ounce of strength I possessed.

"SCREECH—BANG!"

The joint gave way with a tooth-aching screech. Murky water sprayed out, instantly soaking my pant legs, but I didn't care. Gripping the makeshift crowbar, I jammed it against the edge of the vent cover. Channeling all my terror and will to live into my arms, I pried with everything I had!

"BANG!"

The cover finally buckled, leaving a gap wide enough to squeeze through. I tossed the pipe aside and scrambled inside on all fours. Behind me, the thunderous crash as the bar’s front door was smashed open, mingled with the increasingly frantic screams of the crowd, swelled into a symphony of the apocalypse.Nothing else mattered. I scrambled through the narrow, greasy ventilation duct, the stench of stale grease and mold making me gag. But I didn't dare stop; I could feel an invisible, cold gaze piercing through layers of walls, locking onto me with deadly precision.

After crawling for about a dozen meters, an exit appeared—an exhaust fan leading to the back alley. Like a maniac, I kicked through the flimsy blades and fell awkwardly from mid-air like a bag of trash.

"Thud!"

I slammed onto the ground in a back alley piled high with trash bags, reeking of rot and sour decay. Pain shot through my back, but I didn't even let out a groan. I scrambled to my feet and stumbled toward the mouth of the alley.

As I burst onto the neon-drenched main drag of Midtown, the sight before me froze me in my tracks.

In my eyes, the entire world had transformed into a massive spiderweb of countless blood-red pinpricks of light.

Every unassuming security camera on the towering skyscrapers; every hidden surveillance probe on the holographic billboards floating mid-air; even the sensors flashing on the maglev cars screaming overhead... in my "data vision," every single one of them glowed with a piercing, hostile red light.

Beside every red dot floated a cold, digital label:

【EYES OF ATHENA】

I was surrounded.

I stood exposed, stripped bare before the gaze of the entire city, with nowhere to hide. Every breath I took, every beat of my heart, was being precisely captured, analyzed, and judged by the vast network known as "Athena."

【WARNING: TARGET EXPOSED TO MAIN SURVEILLANCE NETWORK. MULTI-POINT TRIANGULATION IN PROGRESS... LOCATION CONFIRMED.】

The cold system notification rang out in my mind again, like a whisper from the Grim Reaper.The next second, a piercing shriek of tearing air came from above. I jerked my head up to see three robots, painted blue and white and shaped like metallic falcons, diving from the shadows of the skyscrapers. Their streamlined hulls glinted with a deadly sheen under the neon lights. They had no eyes, only a single sensor pulsing with red light—like a searchlight from hell, locked onto me.

Municipal security bots!

They slammed to a halt, hovering ten meters above the ground, the scorching downwash from their thrusters sending trash on the pavement flying in every direction. Without warning or communication, the weapon modules on their undersides slid open silently, revealing the black muzzles of their guns.

I didn't even have time to scream.

A barrage of muzzle flashes erupted before my eyes as orange-red energy bolts poured toward me like a lethal rainstorm! Passersby shrieked in terror, scattering like a startled flock of birds as the street instantly descended into chaos. But the robots had only one target—me.

Just as the bullets were about to tear me apart, my "data vision" surged with unprecedented intensity. Time seemed to stretch into thick syrup. In my sight, every bullet flying toward me trailed a red, dashed line—a predicted ballistic trajectory. Simultaneously, the robots' structures became translucent, their key joints and energy cores highlighted with the words 【WEAK POINT】 in vivid red.

Pure survival instinct took over my body. With an agility I couldn't understand, I lunged to the side.

*Whiz! Whiz! Whiz!*

The bolts whistled past my back, riddling a driverless taxi behind me with holes and triggering a chain of violent explosions!

I scrambled toward a narrower alleyway nearby, the shockwave of the blast hitting me like a giant hand and shoving me inside. I slammed into a cold wall, my back burning with pain, but I didn't dare stop. Behind me, the robots shrieked with harsh mechanical sounds, in relentless pursuit.I ran frantically through the maze-like alleyway, the neon light squeezed into narrow ribbons by the towering buildings, flickering across my face. I could feel that in this cramped, cluttered alley, those trajectory prediction lines seemed to suffer a barely perceptible lag. Athena’s all-encompassing processing power was being hindered here.

This was my only chance.

But there were too many of them, and they were too fast! A bullet struck the trash can beside me, sending metal shards spraying like shrapnel; one of them sliced my arm, drawing a trail of blood. The searing pain made me stumble, nearly sending me sprawling.

That split-second stumble was going to cost me my life.

Another bullet came screaming toward me, aimed straight for my face.

This time, I couldn't dodge it.

That straight red trajectory line ended right between my eyes. Despair gripped my heart like a cold hand. I was going to die. I was going to be "deleted."

Time seemed to freeze at that moment. My entire world narrowed down to that approaching bullet, gleaming with the light of death. Whether out of fear or pure defiance, I focused as never before, all my consciousness converging on that single bullet. I stared it down, screaming a silent roar from the depths of my soul:

*f**k off!*

The instant that thought formed, something beyond my understanding happened.

The bullet, flying straight for my forehead, shifted its trajectory—a tiny but crucial deviation—less than half a meter away from me. As if hitting an invisible wall, it suddenly deflected by a fraction of an inch.

*Phut!*

The bullet grazed my cheek, the searing air singeing a few strands of my hair before it slammed into the wall behind me, sending a spray of concrete debris flying. It left a burning, bloody gash on my cheek, but I was alive.

I... I changed the bullet's trajectory?My brain crashed for a second at this surreal sight. What was this? My ability? Something granted by that [Glitch System]?

[Warning: 'Physical Rewrite' ability passively triggered. Data Corruption: 0.1%]

The prompt flashing through my mind didn't give me time to process it. "Physical Rewrite"? "Data Corruption"? These terms filled me with an inexplicable dread, but the pursuers behind me gave me no time to think. More bullets screamed past, riddling the walls around me.

I had narrowly cheated death, but the crisis wasn't over. The security robots had already sealed off the alley entrance and were closing in step by step. I was trapped, like a caged animal.

Just as I was desperately searching for a way out, my gaze swept across the ground at the end of the alley. There, a dark, circular opening popped into view. It was a manhole leading to the sewers; the cover had been slid halfway open, revealing a bottomless darkness beneath.

And in my "Data Vision," a line of green text hovered above the entrance, filling me with hope:

[Network Signal Coverage: Weak]

That meant the "Eye of Athena" was half-blind down there.

I didn't hesitate for a second. The instinct to survive overrode everything else. Like a wild deer chased to the edge of a cliff, I summoned my last ounce of strength and bolted toward that opening.

The instant I leaped into the darkness, I caught a glimpse of the underside of the manhole cover out of the corner of my eye. There was a peculiar symbol drawn with fluorescent paint; it looked like a miniature, incredibly complex circuit board, emitting a faint, ghostly glow in the dark.

The next second, the cold, foul-smelling darkness swallowed me whole. I heard the futile strafing of the robots above, followed by the rapid electronic chirping of their sensors as they lost their target.

I had done it. I had temporarily vanished from "Athena's" sight.As I plummeted into this unknown abyss reeking of decay, a piercing pain shot through the wound on my arm. I looked down to see that the blood from the wound was no longer bright red, but was starting to glitch with a trace of eerie blackness, like dead pixels on a screen.

At the same time, in the corner of my mind's system interface, the value that had previously only flashed by reappeared, the numbers slowly ticking.

[Data Corruption: 0.2%]

What the hell... have I become?