Processing speed is marketing.
They sell you the lie that computers think instantly. That code runs in a blink.
But when you're the code? When you're hard-stuck in the `while(true)` loop?
A millisecond stretches until it feels illegal.
A millisecond is enough time to watch a piston-driven fist—watchtower big—go full-screen and make me the UI.
It's enough time to eyeball the polygon count on the Tox Hulk's knuckles—way too high, mesh all busted.
It's enough time to do the math: if it connects, my `hp` hits zero and I get garbage-collected off the map.
I duck.
The air pressure alone trips a collision warning on my HUD.
The fist smashes into the rusted iron pillar beside my head.
Sparks shower down—bloom cranked so high it straight-up deletes my frame rate.
Warning: Structural Integrity compromised.
Data Leak active: -0.5 HP/sec.
I ignore the red text smear-banding across my vision.
Pain is just a debuff with good branding.
I scramble back, my robe snagging on rebar.
"Little glitch!" the Hulk roars.
His voice is distorted, clipping hard on the highs.
He's Level 10. A `[Elite]` mob.
He's got mutagen injectors rimming his forearms, pulsing toxic neon green.
I'm Level 3. I'm a minion. I'm filler code with a health bar.
"Come here!" he screams, charging.
I don't run. I kite.
I raise the Broken Minion Staff.
`Projectile_Basic_Magic` is caveman code: lock target, spawn bolt, yeet it at 650 units/sec.
The bolt kisses his chest. Pathetic. Dink.
He ignores it and cocks back for a heavy slam.
Now.
I step back—exactly 150 units.
The server eats my move command the instant his swing goes live.
His fist comes down on empty air.
Whiff.
The instant he hits recovery—model locked, fist dragging back—I fire again.
Move. Shoot. Move. Shoot.
Players called it orb-walking. We called it frame-perfect cancels.
Back at Axiom, I fixed bugs where scripters abused the input buffer to do this with gross precision.
Now? I'm the script—and the bug report.
I cancel the staff backswing by clicking move the instant the projectile clears the mesh.
It saves me 0.4 seconds per attack cycle.
Sounds like nothing on a patch note.
But in a DPS race against a boss that one-shots you, 0.4 seconds is the difference between flexing and respawn timer silence.
"Stop moving!"
The Hulk lunges, his movement speed ramping up.
Mutagen injection detected. His textures pulse purple.
He's faster than my base move speed. Numbers don't negotiate.
He catches me in 3.2 seconds.
"Come on, you spaghetti-coded monstrosity," I mutter, my voice box rasping with static. "Take the pathing bait."
3.2 seconds.
That's the countdown until his hitbox overlaps mine.
When that happens, the server runs collision, applies his Attack Damage—Mutagen-boosted to about 300% of my max HP—and deletes me.
I don't panic. Panic burns cycles. I clamp down and keep kiting.
I click behind me. My robed feet skitter over rusted grating.
The server registers the movement.
0.4 seconds.
I stop. I turn. I fire.
The bolt pings off his shoulder. His HP bar barely twitches.
It's not about damage. It's about aggro.
I need him mad. I need him tunnel-visioned.
"Die, glitch!" he roars, froth dripping from his cracked respirator.
He buffers Heavy Slam.
A giant red telegraph splats across the floor. Cone AOE.
If I were a player, I'd Blink. But I'm a minion. I don't have a relocation protocol. I've got pathing and a broken staff.
I sidestep. Not a pixel more than I have to.
The red zone eats the space I occupied three frames ago.
His fist slams down, buckling the metal plates.
Miss.
I fire again during his recovery animation.
"Stop moving!"
"Stop missing," I wheeze, the audio output garbled.
My HUD strobes warnings.
`[ALERT] Stamina: CRITICAL`
`[ALERT] Data Leak: Integrity dropping`
I ignore them.
Pathing dumps me in a dead end. A rusted pocket of pipes and dripping sludge.
To anyone watching, I just soft-locked myself.
Good.
The Hulk sees the wall behind me.
He grins, the Mutagen pumping through the tubes in his neck glowing brighter.
He knows he has me. He stops chasing clean and starts swinging—sloppy, wide. Guard down.
He slams his steroid button.
`[ENEMY CAST] Mutagen Overdrive`
`> +50% Movement Speed`
`> +100% Attack Speed`
`> -70% Armor/MR`
Stolen novel; please report.
He's going for the execute. He lunges, closing the gap instantly.
"Gotcha," he growls.
I stand my ground. I don't run.
I check my inventory.
`Slot 3: Heavy Arm (Brawler Prototype)`
I'm not a Golem. I don't have the mana pool or the chassis for a Winch Harpoon.
If I fire this at him, the recoil might spiderweb my mesh.
But code bends. And this sector hasn't seen a hotfix in years.
I raise the oversized, rusted yellow arm grafted to my side.
It's heavier than the rest of my body combined.
Sparks spit from the servos as I rip past the limiters.
Mana regen ticked just enough.
"System," I mutter. "Execute `skill_primary_override`."
The Hulk's mid-air—hard-locked in his jump anim. No dodge.
I fire.
My HP chunks off. My right side feels like my model just split at the seams.
But the harpoon tracks true.
CLANG.
It connects with the Hulk's chest plate.
"Get over here," I snarl.
I don't pull him to me.
I'm too light; physics just yoinks me to him.
Instead, I dig my feet into the grating and let the retraction whip me sideways.
The Hulk's trajectory shifts.
He's yanked out of his lunge, sailing past me, straight toward the innocuous pile of refuse in the corner.
Under a greasy rag, a faint green glow bleeds through, glitchy at the edges.
A `Legacy Asset`.
A Toxic Trap I ripped out of the scrapped code of a long-dead Scout Unit.
The Hulk lands on it.
Squelch.
The sound is sickening.
A wet, muffled thump, followed by a hiss that sounds like a radiator dying.
Then, the bloom.
Green gas erupts violently, mixing with the purple Mutagen leaking from the Hulk's suit.
Purple meets green.
Variables drop to null and take the room with them.
The reaction isn't just chemical. The code starts fighting itself, too.
The particles fight each other. Transparency stacks wrong.
My frame rate eats asphalt.
`[CRITICAL ERROR] Particle System Overload.`
`[CRITICAL ERROR] Physics Desync detected in Sector D.`
The Hulk screams, but the sound cuts out halfway, replaced by a harsh digital screech.
His HP bar peels off the UI like a bad sticker.
The Mutagen, now volatile and exposed to the toxin, detonates.
HP: 0 / 7200
Status: DECEASED
A massive loot window slams into my HUD and whites out the world.
> Item: Mutagen Injector
> Gold: +500g
> XP: +800
The loot window hangs there, jittering.
It's not UI. It's the game flinching.
`[CRITICAL WARNING] Memory Buffer Overflow.`
`[CRITICAL WARNING] Entity 'Glitch' exceeds max polygon count for class 'Minion_Ranged'.`
My vision turns to static. The world turns into a slideshow.
5 FPS. 3 FPS.
I try to move, but my legs clip through the floor.
The XP isn't making me stronger; it's bloating a body— This frame's meant to stay light—
Light enough to die in three hits.
I'm a low-res JPEG trying to haul a 4K render through a straw.
"Garbage collection imminent," I wheeze.
My voice comes out bit-crushed and ugly.
The XP bar fills. It hits the cap. It pushes past.
My robe—the standard-issue Sink-born mesh—starts to tear.
Not physically—digitally.
Black void lines streak across my torso where the textures are failing to render.
"Too much data," I snarl, clutching my chest.
"I need... more RAM. Better chassis."
I look at the smoking crater of the Apex Leviathan.
The `Mutagen Injector` is lying in a pool of iridescent sludge.
It's broken, leaking volatile code, but the hydraulics are intact.
Next to it, the Leviathan's chest plating. Heavy. Industrial.
And my right arm.
The massive, yellow Construct prototype limb I've been dragging around like a ball and chain.
My brain coughs up a fix like a bad driver update.
It's dangerous. It's spaghetti code held together with spite and duct tape.
If I screw this up, I don't just despawn—I crater the whole sector.
"System," I grit out, "Initiate Hardware_Integration. Force override."
I crawl toward what's left of the Apex Leviathan.
My movements are jerky, skipping frames.
I grab the heavy chest plate with my human hand—currently flickering in and out—and slam it against my chest.
The collision engine screams.
[ERROR] Item 'Tox-Plate_Heavy' incompatible with Class 'Minion_Ranged'.
"I'm not asking," I snarl.
I toggle my hitbox state. For a microsecond, I exist inside the metal.
Then I toggle it back.
CRUNCH.
The metal fuses to my ribs.
The game tries to reject the foreign geometry, but the weld holds.
White-hot pain rips through me, and the stability meter crawls up 2%.
"More," I gasp.
I don't want to just hold it anymore. I want to be it.
I jam the Mutagen Injector into the rocket arm's severed socket.
The purple fluid hits the Core-Tech capacitor.
HISS.
Something new hits the mix. Raw voltage, loud enough to taste.
I slam the modified arm into my right shoulder socket, right where my mesh is tearing apart.
"Compiling..." I scream as the connection burns.
The system fights me. Red boxes fill my vision.
[CRITICAL] Entity Mass exceeds Class Limits.
[CRITICAL] Energy Output exceeds Class Limits.
[ACTION] Initiating Deletion of Corrupted Unit...
The deletion cursor hangs over my head.
I can't type my way out of this. I have to logic my way out.
"Run diagnostics!" I yell at the UI. "Check the hardware specs! Re-evaluate Class ID!"
The system pauses.
It scans the heavy plating fused to my chest.
It scans the massive artillery cannon grafted to my shoulder.
It checks my mass, my armor value, my damage output.
The logic gate wavers.
Calculating...
Unit does not match 'Minion_Ranged'.
Searching database for matching hardware profile...
Match Found.
Applying Patch...
The world hard-cuts to white.
Then it snaps back into focus—high def, no mutagen, no smear.
The lag drops to zero.
My POV shifts. I'm higher off the ground.
I look down.
The red robes are gone, replaced by reinforced scrap-metal plating.
My legs are thick, hydraulic pistons stomping on the grate.
And my right arm...
It's a cannon.
A massive, jury-rigged howitzer built from the Construct's fist and the Leviathan's injector, humming a low coil whine.
The barrel pulses with stable violet light.
> Class: Minion_Ranged -> **[Mecha-Augmented Artillery Minion]
> Level: 3 -> 5
> HP: 580 -> 1250 (Armor Plating Integrated)
> Mana: 220 -> 400
> AD: 66 -> 96
> AP: 11 -> 34
> Armor: +35
> New Trait: [Artillery Engine] - Attacks deal bonus damage to Structures.
> New Skill: [Core-Mutagen Cannon] - Fires heavy explosive rounds.
I flex the cannon.
The servos whine—low, heavy.
"Worth," I mutter.
[System Notification]
Entity Update Successful.
Unit Value Increased: 85g -> 140g.
Priority Target Designation: HIGH.
"Yeah, yeah," I scoff, checking my ammo counter.
"Increase my bounty all you want. Just makes me harder to farm."
I'm not just a Minion anymore.
I'm an Artillery Minion.
The one everyone Teleports for. The one the roamer crawls out of cover to Execute.
I'm the carry's caddie.
Then the wall behind me starts to flicker.
It doesn't crumble. It flickers—like the map forgot what it's supposed to be.
One second it's rusted iron, the next it's wireframe, then it's nothing—just grey void.
`[WARNING] Sector Collapse Imminent.`
The floor under my feet turns transparent.
I look down and see... nothing.
No textures. No bottom. Just raw dark.
A hand clamps my ankle.
It's massive. Piston-driven. Leaking oily black smoke.
I look back.
The Hulk is half-deleted—still here.
His legs are gone, replaced by static. His face is a stretched-poly mess.
But his arm—the arm I didn't destroy—is locked onto me.
He has 0 HP. He should've despawned. He doesn't.
Generated by GlitchWriter.
? 225k+ words complete and counting! ?
Magus ex Machina [Cyberpunk-Fantasy LitRPG]
What does a wild robot do with the gift of magic? Go on an adventure!
What to expect:
- Hope in cyberpunk capitalism
- Mix of ADVENTURE and community building
- A mysterious system, based off my own homebrew TTRPG
- Violent scenes are brief, sensitive content is mentioned but not shown