He pictured the drone's rotors as an extension of his own will. He felt the nanites respond with a quiet, elegant precision. They wove the graphene lattices, coated them in a flawless diamond-carbon sheen, and formed the perfect, microscopic bearings without a single conscious command from him.

And then, in the silence of the empty room, a soft, almost inaudible whir began.

Ray opened his eyes. He was still in his human form, but his right arm, from the elbow down, had transformed. It was the sleek, matte-black housing of the Hunter drone's primary rotor. And inside it, the blades were spinning. Slowly at first, then faster, until they were a silent, perfect, stable blur.

A grim, triumphant smile touched his lips.

Ray decided he needed more information about the mysterious tournament and there was only one group he trusted for real insight into the digital underworld: the Zoo Squad.

He entered their sector using the access key Kodiak had given him.

The virtual "den" unfolded around him, all cracked server tiles, patchwork code, and flickering neon signs shaped like animal silhouettes. He watched them work for a moment, untangling corrupted data threads left by the Static King. These were his… allies now, but it was still a long way to go until he could truly trust them.

He added to his ever-growing list of tasks to investigate who the Zoo Squad members in real life were and if they were truly trustworthy.

As his simple stickman avatar materialized, a few of the squad members looked up.

Leo's digital bear ears perked up instantly. "Glitchy! My man! Good to see you, dude!" he said, his avatar bouncing with excitement.

Anya's small rabbit avatar flinched at the sudden noise, offering Ray a small, shy, almost imperceptible wave before quickly looking back at her screen.

Reina, however, just glanced over, her fox-like eyes narrowing with a cold, analytical curiosity before she dismissed him and returned to her work without a word.

Ray cut through the busy chatter and got straight to the point. "What do you all know about the tournament that's happening tomorrow?"

Leo groaned theatrically, clutching his pixelated head. "Fuuuuuuck! And here I was, thinking I had a shot at that deck..."

The rest of the squad burst out in comical protest and good-natured grumbling. Even as they hyped up Ray's skills, it was clear their complaints were more pride than resentment.

Kodiak, pulled up a rough, hand-drawn looking map of the tournament's digital entry point. "The tournament runs every five years. Nobody really knows who organizes it, or even if it's a person. All I know is, the prizes are always insane. Top-shelf programs, bleeding-edge decks, rare mods, sometimes even unique training data you can't find anywhere else."

Kitsune leaned in, her fox-like eyes glinting. "It's like a myth among old-school netstriders. If you win, you get respect, cred, and whatever prize is on offer. But it's not advertised. And get this—the whole thing runs on a kind of honor code: anyone can buy a killer deck, but only the best can work miracles with scraps."

Kodiak continued, "To make it fair, your own hardware is limited when you enter the server. Everyone gets the same thing. Bare-bones specs, tiny memory, open-source tools only. You win by thinking fast, scavenging, and improvising. Every year, the tournament tests something new. Last time they had to steal a digital artifact from a virtual replica of the Kaizen mainframe, complete with its legendary Reaper Code. Most of the contestants got deleted in the first ten minutes."

Goro grunted. "I heard the year before that, the final stage was a logic maze run by a captured, high-level corporate AI that had been driven insane and it tried to talk you into deleting yourself."

"Guess that means none of us really know what to expect," Ray mused.

Kodiak nodded. "The only rule is: expect the unexpected."

Ray offered his thanks for the information. "See you there," he said, and logged off, leaving the squad in their neon-lit den.

Major blinked after the disconnect, then grinned. "Huh. So he can be friendly."

Kitsune snorted, a flicker of grudging respect in her eyes. "Don't get used to it. He's probably just running a social infiltration subroutine on us."

Ray sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, not meditating in the traditional sense, but calibrating. He was quieting the chaotic memories of dead men, finding the calm, logical center of his new, nanite-consciousness. He had already consumed the Micro-Servitor 9 deck, its wireless architecture now a seamless, integrated part of his own systems.

The moment he consumed it, it felt like he had unlocked a new sense. He could feel all wireless digital connections around him, a constant, shimmering ocean of data that he could feel pressing against his consciousness. He could sense the weak, unprotected signal of the neighbor's cheap router from above, the chaotic chatter of a dozen different personal interfaces in the rooms above and below him, even the encrypted military-grade comms of a passing VPD cruiser, but those were different from the rest. They felt like a picture you needed to be perfectly angled to—a picture that looked back at you. It was a dizzying, overwhelming cacophony, a thousand new voices screaming for his attention at once. He focused, using the skills he'd gained from the Static King, and began to build a firewall in his own mind, learning to filter the noise, to focus the sense, to turn the roar into a whisper. He was no longer blind at a distance. He was just learning how to see the unseen.

His interface pinged, a sharp, clean notification that cut through his meditative calm. It was a system message from the server where the tournament was about to start, its text appearing in stark, white letters in his vision.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[THE GAUNTLET IS OPEN. ALL CONTESTANTS, PREPARE FOR DIVE. QUALIFIER BEGINS IN FIVE MINUTES.]

Ray stood. He walked to the simple Net access point on the wall of the apartment.

Perhaps I should have chosen a different location to log in.

He quickly pushed the thought aside.

With the ghost of the Static King inside him, no one would be able to track him, not without paying a steep price.

He glanced at his wrist. Instantly, the nanites stirred beneath the surface of his synthetic skin, rippling like mercury. They swarmed and extended outward in precise synchronization, coalescing into a sleek cable. The strand was matte black with a subtle iridescent sheen, no thicker than a pen's barrel, braided with carbon-thread filaments and micro-reactive coils that pulsed faintly with blue light.

At the tip, the cable's NexPort head formed with mechanical elegance—multi-pronged, with retractable pins and adaptive contact nodes that shimmered with a soft, violet glow. Tiny ridges along its surface adjusted microscopically, preparing to interface with any compatible port. A ring of etched circuitry pulsed gently at the base.

Then he plugged it in. His consciousness dove into the Net with a smooth, seamless transition. The connection was perfect.

He materialized in a vast, decaying digital wasteland. Hundreds of other netstriders appeared around him in a silent, simultaneous flash of light.

Everyone, including Ray, was a generic, grey, crash-test mannequin, their faces smooth and featureless. The only distinguishing mark was a unique number painted in stark, blue digits on their chests.

Ray checked his number, it was 7.

He focused on his integrated deck, and as Kodiak had told him, his system was indeed bottlenecked by the server.

A synthesized, genderless voice echoed through the space, cold and impartial.

[Teaming is prohibited. Every strider for themself.]

Ray took in his surroundings. Towering, silent monoliths of dead server racks stretched into a sky of pure, glitching static. Rivers of corrupted, red-and-black data flowed through deep canyons of forgotten code, their passage emitting a low, hissing sound. Even the digital air was thick with the scent of bit-rot. This was a server graveyard, a forgotten corner of the old Net left to decay.

The voice spoke again.

[The objective is to find the seven fragments of an encrypted data key hidden within this sector. The first sixty contestants to assemble the key and reach the exit portal will qualify for the next round. Good luck.]

As the voice faded, the graveyard came alive. From the shadows of the server monoliths, he spotted them. They were "Scrappers," hunched, wiry constructs that prowled through the digital ruins. Their bodies were a patchwork of glitching steel plates and tangled circuitry, every joint bristling with makeshift tools and snapping claws. Twin yellow optical sensors scanned the data haze, hunting for vulnerabilities. As one moved, its long, metallic tail flicked behind it, dragging in discarded code, while its snout—a disturbing ring of tiny, grinding gears—snapped up broken data fragments, breaking them down for parts. The Scrappers lived to salvage and dismantle, leaving only stripped-bare sectors in their wake.

The tournament had officially begun.

The server graveyard erupted into chaos. Most of the netstriders scattered immediately like disorganized grey swarm,

Ray watched them go, his own avatar remaining perfectly still, and focused.

He extended his synesthetic sense. The world around him became a landscape of flavor and texture. Most of it was noise, the digital equivalent of static—the taste of corrupted files, the bitter, metallic tang of dead code. But then, amidst the cacophony, he sensed something different. A single, clear, resonant note. A fragment of code that felt structured, intentional, and clean. It tasted like pure, cool water in a desert of dust.

He opened his eyes and walked. As he walked, he raised his hand, and a small fly appeared in his palm. The simple program, meant to scout the area around him, flew away as it was initialized. He moved with a calm, deliberate purpose, glancing behind himself from time to time and ignoring the Scrappers that prowled at the edges of his vision.

He glanced ahead.

Three of them emerged from the shadows, their yellow optics locking onto his clean, uncorrupted code. Their bodies coiled, and then they pounced.

Ray quickly manifested a simple military knife, a blade of pure, black code, in his right hand. The first Scrapper lunged, its snapping claws aimed at his throat. Ray dashed to the side and then pivoted, his momentum carrying him behind the smaller of the three daemons. The knife plunged deep into the base of its digital "skull," severing its core connection to the server. The Scrapper flickered violently for a second, its form dissolving into a shower of harmless, inert code, and then it was gone.

Ray focused his will, a silent, forceful command to his own systems: Do not consume. He wasn't sure if there were other eyes on him, other netstriders watching from the shadows, and he couldn't risk revealing his true, monstrous nature.

The remaining two Scrappers, their simple AI not programmed for such a precise, efficient counter-attack, hesitated for a fraction of a second. It was all the time Ray needed. He lunged forward, at the towering wall of corrupted data beside them. He placed his hand on it, and he simply plucked a massive chunk of its raw, chaotic data. He held the unstable code for a single, agonizing moment, then re-formed it.

Two massive, jagged spikes of corrupted, red-and-black code erupted from the ground beneath the two remaining Scrappers, impaling them, their glitching bodies held aloft for a moment before they dissolved into digital dust.

Ray took a moment to assess the encounter.

He could feel the strain on his limited, tournament-mandated system. The last attack had pushed his processors to their limit. A red warning icon flashed in his HUD:

[SYSTEM OVERLOAD. TEMPORARY ABILITY LOCKOUT. COOLDOWN: 1 MINUTE, 12 SECONDS.]

He was vulnerable. He couldn't even manifest a simple blade.

Quickly, he moved towards the massive, towering wall of corrupted data. The clean, pure "taste" of the key fragment he had been following was coming from inside it.

Staying in the deep shadow of an eroded data cube, a figure stirred. It had been watching. Waiting. And now, it made its move.

Thwip.

The sound was almost imperceptible, a soft whisper against the digital wind. An arrow, shimmering with a faint, corrosive green light, embedded itself in Ray's back. He felt a sharp, piercing sting as the malicious code tore through his avatar's defenses. He spun around, his gaze scanning the shadows. Nothing.

The arrow shimmered and evaporated, but the damage had been done. A gaping wound of glitching, corrupted code now flickered on his back. Zeros and ones bled into the air behind him. Another strike in that exact location, and his avatar would destabilize completely.

He would be eliminated.

He dashed behind a small, low-lying data block, his mind racing. He assessed the threat. A stealth build. Ranged attacker. Patient and skilled enough to avoid his program.

He peeked over his cover. Nothing.

He needed to move, to find better cover and to let his system cooldown complete. He spotted a larger, more defensible position a dozen meters away—a dense cluster of dead data chunks. He calculated the path. Two seconds in the open. A lifetime.

He bolted.

Thwip.

Another arrow sliced through the air, missing his head by inches and embedding itself in the chunk he was diving behind.

His HUD flashed again. [COOLDOWN: 48 SECONDS.]

He was trapped. The hunter knew his position now. Ray scanned his limited inventory. A few basic data-scrambling grenades, a low-level shield program he couldn't even activate yet, and his wits.

He heard a faint scrape from above. He looked up. The hunter, another grey mannequin, was perched silently on top of a corrupted 3D model of a truck, its bow drawn, an arrow of green, corrosive light aimed directly at his head.

Ray didn't hesitate. He tossed a data-scramble grenade at his own feet. It detonated in a blinding flash of white static. In that split second of sensory overload, Ray rolled towards his attacker, under the truck and jammed another data-scrambling grenade directly into the truck's corrupted, unstable chassis.

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