# Chapter 4: The Price of Visibility
The corrupted wolf followed Jax deeper into the forest, its footsteps silent despite the dense undergrowth. He'd discovered something critical in the past twenty minutes: the Glitched minion phased slightly through terrain, its paws sinking an inch into solid earth before snapping back to the surface. Other animals_abbits, boars, even a territorial bear_gnored it completely, their pathfinding AI refusing to acknowledge an entity that shouldn't exist.
Jax's code-vision overlaid everything now. Trees displayed [WORLD_OBJECT_OAK_47 | COLLISION: TRUE]. Rocks showed durability values. The sky itself had a tag: [SKYBOX_RENDER | TIME_OF_DAY: 0.412]. He was seeing the game's skeleton beneath its skin, and the knowledge made him feel like a god wearing a prisoner's jumpsuit.
His hunger meter pulsed red: [ENTITY_NEEDS: CRITICAL | TIME_TO_STARVATION: 1.7 HOURS]. Right. Still technically alive. Still technically biological, at least by the game's simulation standards.
"Hunt," Jax said aloud, testing verbal commands.
The wolf's head snapped toward a rabbit twenty feet away. No animation transition_ust instant reorientation, like a model being rotated in editing software. It lunged.
The rabbit died before it could flee. No health bar depletion, no damage numbers. Just [ENTITY_RABBIT_04 | HP: FORCED_TO_0], and the small body went limp.
Jax approached the corpse and saw the deletion flag appear: [FLAGGED_FOR_DELETION | TIME_TO_PURGE: 180s]. He focused on the flag, felt that same mental hook, and pulled.
The rabbit's corpse convulsed. Fragmented. Reconstructed.
The result made Jax laugh_ short, disbelieving bark of sound. The rabbit stood on its hind legs, vibrating so rapidly it blurred at the edges. Its texture was inverted, showing the UV map's wireframe beneath non-existent fur. When it moved, it didn't hop_t teleported in stuttering three-inch jumps, leaving afterimages.
[ERROR_RABBIT_04 | OWNER: ERROR_707 | STATUS: CORRUPTED]
Two minions. He had two minions now, and his hunger meter was still critical.
Jax killed the original rabbit corpse before it fully corrupted, managing to butcher [ITEM: RAW_MEAT | QUALITY: DEGRADED] from its remains. He sparked a fire using stolen flint_o interface, just manual crafting that the game's physics engine barely supported. The meat cooked. He ate.
[ENTITY_NEEDS: SATISFIED]
While he ate, his code-vision showed him more. Movement paths of distant players: [PLAYER_LVL4_MAGE | COORDINATES: 247.3, 15.8, 891.2]. Weather systems: [CLOUD_RENDER_DENSITY: 0.34 | RAIN_PROBABILITY: 0.08]. Even the fire's damage potential: [FIRE_DAMAGE_RADIUS: 0.7m | TICK_RATE: 0.5s].
He wasn't just seeing the world. He was seeing the machine that built the world.
Jax tested [Pathfinding_AI.lag] on multiple targets simultaneously. Three rabbits froze mid-hop, their AI stuttering like corrupted video files. The effect lasted 1.3 seconds before they resumed normal behavior. Three targets seemed to be his limit_seful data.
Footsteps.
Jax's head snapped up. Four players crashed through the underbrush into his clearing: a tank in leather armor, a mage in starter robes, a rogue, and a healer. The guild tag above their heads read [Wandering Swords].
The tank saw the Glitched wolf first. His shield came up reflexively. "Holy shit. Holy shit. Is that"
"It's him," the mage breathed. Her name was Sparkle, and her hands were already glowing with a prepared spell. "Record this. Record this right now."
The rogue was already streaming, his interface showing a red [LIVE] indicator. "Chat, you're seeing this, right? The corrupted wolf from global. It's real. And there's_esus, there's a rabbit too."
Sparkle cast [Inspect] on the wolf.
Her game client froze. Just for half a second, but Jax saw it_er avatar locked mid-gesture, her status indicators flickering [CLIENT_ERROR: RECOVERING...].
When her client restored, she stumbled backward. "It's... I can't. The data's corrupted. It says the entity is already deleted, but it's standing right there."
The tank adjusted his grip on his shield. "Okay. We're reporting this. Admin whisper, now"
"Attack them," Jax said.
The Glitched wolf moved. Not ranmoved. It crossed the fifteen feet between itself and the tank in a single frame, its corrupted model snapping from position A to position B without occupying the space between.
Its teeth clamped on the tank's throat.
[PLAYER_IRONHEART_LVL4 | HP: 0/180 | STATUS: DELETED]
The tank's body didn't ragdoll. Didn't fall. It just stopped existing, his equipment clattering to the ground in an empty pile.
The healer screamed. The rogue kept streaming, his voice high and panicked: "Chat, it just_t just deleted Ironheart! No damage numbers, no death animation, he's just gone"
The remaining three players ran.
Jax listened to their voice chat bleed through proximity audio: "Black-hat hacker in Deep Forest, eastern side, has kill-hack pets, run"
He looked at his two minions. The wolf stood motionless, waiting. The rabbit vibrated in place.
His code-vision highlighted something new: a faint data trail leading from his position toward Millhaven, labeled [ADMIN_TRACKING_PROTOCOL: ACTIVE].
They were coming. Of course they were coming. He'd just killed a player with a minion that shouldn't exist, and someone was streaming the whole thing.
Jax checked Fix's mission parameters in his mental overlay. The auction house sabotage required him to enter Millhaven proper_ city packed with thousands of players, all of whom would now recognize his generic face from viral footage.
Visibility wasn't a problem anymore. Visibility was the only problem.
His Glitched wolf's ears perked up. Despite having no proper ear geometry, despite being a corrupted asset that had no business hearing anything, it detected something.
Voices in the distance. Organized. Coordinated. Moving in formation.
"...tracking signal confirmed. Debug_Legion, converge on coordinates. We have a Black-Hat in the forest."
The voice was calm. Authoritative. Righteous.
Jax grabbed his two minions and ran perpendicular to the tracking trail, his code-vision already scanning for terrain exploits. Behind him, the organized voices grew closer. Ahead, the boundary mountains loomed.
And somewhere in the space between hunter and hunted, the game's AI watched with interest that resembled nothing human at all.
**