Piko - Where every story finds its reader

Jax didn't believe in fantasy worlds, destiny, or second lives_e believed in cryptocurrency, non-extradition treaties, and never leaving a digital footprint. The job was simple: get in, break the economy, get paid, get out.

His apartment smelled like synthetic coffee and the ozone tang of overclocked processors. Three monitors painted his face blue-white in the darkness, displaying encrypted communications from Nexus Dynamics. 11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes until launch. Fix's final briefing scrolled across the center screen in white text on black:

[MISSION CONFIRMED: Aethelgard Online economic disruption. Backdoor coordinates embedded in character creation sequence. Execute within 72 hours of login. Payment: 2.4M crypto on completion. OmniCorp security actively monitoring_aintain cover. -Fix]

Jax cracked his knuckles. The movement was habitual, unnecessary. He'd done this eighteen times before_ighteen corporate networks, eighteen "impossible" infiltrations, eighteen clean extractions with money in escrow and zero consequences. The full-dive rig in the corner waited like a dentist's chair, black market neural interface modifications concealed beneath factory casing.

This was just another system. And every system had exploits.

He slid into the rig at 11:52, letting the neural interface crown settle against his temples. The foam padding compressed, sensor nodes pressed cold against his skull, and the haptic gel in the chair warmed to body temperature. Professional setup. Expensive. Untraceable to his real identity, routed through seven proxy servers across four countries.

His finger hovered over the activation button.

The escrow notification blinked on his phone: [2.4M USD_EQUIVALENT LOCKED | RELEASE_CONDITIONS: AUCTION_HOUSE_CRASH | TIMELINE: 72HR]

Jax pressed the button.

The world inverted.

His apartment dissolved like sugar in water, replaced by cascading light that assembled into form and meaning. The full-dive sensation hit with pharmaceutical precision_e could feel air moving across skin that didn't exist, could smell pine forests rendered from atmospheric simulation algorithms. The login screen materialized in perfect sensory immersion, floating in a void of digital stars.

WELCOME TO AETHELGARD ONLINE

Character creation bloomed like a flower, options spiraling outward in elegant menus. Race selection: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc... Jax selected Human Male with muscle memory efficiency. Default appearance template. Generic features. The kind of face that disappeared in crowds_hich was exactly the point.

Class selection appeared next: Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Cleric...

This was the moment.

Jax's fingers moved through the air, tracing commands invisible to normal players. His code_he backdoor planted by Nexus six months ago during OmniCorp's contractor hiring push_lipped into the character creation sequence like a key into a lock. Hidden console outputs flickered at the edge of his vision: [PRIVILEGE_ESCALATION: SUCCESS | ADMIN_SHADOW_ACCESS: GRANTED | USER_PERMISSIONS: ELEVATED]

Perfect.

He selected Mage, already planning which auction house exploits would

The interface shattered.

Colors inverted. The selection wheel fragmented into geometric shards that spun away into nowhere. Red text erupted across his vision in jagged letters:

[ANOMALY_DETECTED]

[QUARANTINE_PROTOCOL: INITIATING]

[ARBITER_AI: DEFENSIVE_COUNTERMEASURES_ACTIVE]

Jax's stomach dropped. The AI wasn't supposed to detect anything. The backdoor was invisible, tested, guaranteed

His character sheet loaded, and every field was wrong.

[NAME: ERROR_707]

[CLASS: NULL_CLASS]

[LEVEL: NULL]

[HP: NULL]

[STATS: NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL]

The error messages cascaded like a broken dam. His vision filled with red warnings, system alerts, corruption notifications. The backdoor exploit and the AI's quarantine protocol had collided mid-execution, and his character data was fragmenting in real-time.

Jax tried to abort. Tried to cancel. Tried to force-logout.

Nothing responded.

The void shuddered, and reality assembled itself from broken code. He was standingactually standing_n a village square. Cobblestones beneath his feet. Timber buildings with thatched roofs. An impossibly blue sky. Hundreds of players materializing around him in bursts of light, laughing and shouting and celebrating launch day.

Above his head, where his nameplate should display his character name, floated: [ERROR: 707]

Jax pulled up his character sheet with a mental command. The interface appeared, and he stared at the disaster:

CHARACTER SHEET

Name: [ERROR: 707]
Class: [NULL_CLASS]
Level: [NULL]
HP: [NULL/NULL]
Mana: [NULL/NULL]
Stats: [CORRUPTED_DATA]
Skills: [NULL]
Inventory: [SYSTEM_ERROR]

He tried the logout button.

[LOGOUT_FUNCTION: NULL]

The button was grayed out. Unclickable. Dead.

Jax's professional calm fractured. He tried again. And again. The interface didn't respond. Other players rushed past him toward the village gates, eager to begin their adventures, completely unaware that his entire character was a broken mess of corrupted data.

He was trapped.

A message window bloomed in front of his face, sender tagged as "Merchant_NPC_Gerald"_ix's in-game contact identity.

[Fix whispers]: Day 1. Clock is ticking. Auction house crash parameters attached. Mission timeline unchanged. My boss is watching. Don't disappoint, Cipher.

The message included coordinates, target vulnerabilities, expected economic impact projections. All completely useless to someone who had no stats, no skills, no class, and no way to interact with game systems.

Jax stood motionless in the crowded plaza. A Level 1 Warrior player bumped into him, apologized cheerfully, and ran off toward the forest. Somewhere, a bard NPC began playing a lute. The village's bell tower chimed the hour with programmed precision.

He forced himself to move. One foot. Then another. His legs responded_he full-dive system still worked, at least. He walked toward the village edge, hands shaking in the virtual space, while his mind raced through contingencies that didn't exist.

At the forest boundary, he stopped.

A rabbit hopped past. Level 1. Harmless. The kind of starting enemy every player killed for their first experience points.

But Jax didn't see a rabbit.

His vision flickered, and text overlaid the creature like augmented reality:

He blinked, and the text remained. Turned his head, and every object in his field of view displayed similar data. The tree: [WORLD_OBJECT_TREE_OAK_17 | COLLISION: TRUE | TEXTURE: LOADED]. The fence: [WORLD_BORDER_FENCE_SECTION_04 | HP: NULL | DESTRUCTIBLE: FALSE]. Another player running past: [PLAYER_CHARACTER_LVL2 | CLASS: WARRIOR | HP: 145/145].

The world had become code.

The rabbit hopped twice, oblivious to the fact that Jax could see its code bleeding through reality like a wound in the world.