The ticket was still there when I woke up.
I'd closed my eyes expecting it to vanish overnight — a glitch, a hallucination, a side effect of sleep deprivation and poison exposure. But no. It was still floating at the edge of my vision, crisp and legible, waiting for a response.
[SUPPORT TICKET #48291 — URGENT][FROM: ANONYMOUS PROTAGONIST][SUBJECT: MASTER BETRAYED THIS ONE — WHAT TO DO?][BODY: Esteemed senior, this one's master of ten years has stolen this one's cultivation technique and fled to the Demon Sect. This one seeks guidance on appropriate revenge. Please advise.]
I stared at it for a long moment.
Han was already awake, poking at a small fire with a stick. The morning was cold enough that I could see my breath. The skybox was marginally better today — at least the sun was a circle, even if it was the wrong shade of yellow, leaning more toward orange than it should have been.
"Did you answer it?" Han asked.
"Not yet."
"Are you going to?"
"I'm trying to figure out if it's real."
"It looks real."
"It looks like a window in my vision that only I can see. That's not my usual definition of 'real.'"
Han considered this. "What's the problem?"
" 'Esteemed senior, this one's master of ten years has stolen this one's cultivation technique and fled to the Demon Sect. This one seeks guidance on appropriate revenge.' "
"That sounds serious."
"It sounds like the opening chapter of every xianxia novel ever written. Master betrays disciple. Disciple swears revenge. Three hundred chapters of power-ups and face-slapping."
"So you know the genre. Answer it. It's not like you have anything better to do — your system is broken and you can barely walk."
I looked at the ticket. The notification pulsed softly, waiting for input.
"What do I even say?"
"Whatever you'd want someone to tell you if you were that guy."
"That's a terrifying responsibility."
"You've been making fun of this world since you got here. Here's your chance to actually help someone in it."
"Help someone or ruin their entire worldview with practical advice they're not ready to hear?"
"Is there a difference?"
I considered that. Han was right, which was annoying. He was making a habit of that. I pulled up the reply box and typed:
`You've got nothing. No contract. No proof. Your master knew this was a scam setup from day one. Cut your losses. Next time, get everything in writing.`
I hit send. The ticket closed with a soft [STATUS: RESOLVED] notification.
And then, as if the system had been waiting for me to finish my morning chores before showing me what it actually wanted me to see, a new window appeared. Not a ticket. A viewport.
I was seeing through someone else's eyes.
A cave. Damp walls. A single torch flickering. A young man in ragged robes sat against the stone, staring at a glowing text box that hovered in front of his face — my reply. His expression was unreadable.
He read it once.
Read it again.
Opened his mouth.
Closed it.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then, in a voice that carried the weight of a man who had just had his entire life philosophy dismantled in three sentences: "...What."
The viewport snapped shut.
"That was weird," I said. "I could feel his confusion through the connection."
"What was weird?"
"I just saw him. The guy who sent the ticket."
"You saw him?"
"Through the system. He was in a cave. He looked confused."
"What did you tell him?"
"The truth."
Han nodded slowly. He poked the fire one more time, then stood up. "Well. If you're done giving life advice to strangers in caves, we should get moving. The village isn't going to find itself."
He was right. The road wasn't going to walk itself.
The village appeared around midday.
It was a small settlement — maybe fifty buildings clustered around a central square, surrounded by fields of the same generic grain. From a distance, it looked normal. Lived in. Functional.
From a distance.
As we got closer, I started noticing the details. The farmer in the field was frozen mid-motion, hoe raised, not moving. The woman at the well was drawing water — same bucket, same motion, same splash, over and over. The children playing in the street were running the same ten-foot loop, laughing the exact same laugh every time they passed the same spot.
Every single NPC in the village was in a loop.
"Han."
"I see it."
"Are they—"
"Stuck. Yes."
We walked into the central square. A merchant at a stall was holding up a piece of cloth, saying the same words to every person who walked past: "Welcome, honored guest. This humble merchant sells only the finest silks. Please, browse at your leisure."
He didn't look at us. He didn't look at anyone. He just said the line and repeated it.
I opened my system interface. For once, it cooperated. A diagnostic overlay painted itself across my vision, highlighting every NPC with a floating status bar. Their dialogue trees were visible — or rather, dialogue tree. Singular. They all shared the same root script, and it was broken:
[NPC_DIALOGUE_LOOP] while(true) { say("Welcome, honored guest. This humble village welcomes you."); }
There was no exit condition. No branching. No variation. Just an infinite loop that had been running for what looked like years.
"I can fix this," I said.
"You can?"
"There's a missing break; statement. If I insert it, their dialogue should reset to normal."
"That's... not how I expected you to solve a village curse."
"I'm not solving a curse. I'm debugging a script."
I reached into the interface and edited the code. One line. A single break; inserted after the say() command. The script recompiled in real time, and every NPC in the village stopped mid-motion.
Silence.
Then chaos.
The farmer dropped his hoe. "I CAN TALK AGAIN. I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO SAY THE WEATHER IS NICE TODAY FOR THREE YEARS. THREE YEARS."
The woman at the well dropped her bucket. "My name is Li Hua. I have a daughter. She's seven. I haven't been able to tell her I love her in four years because I kept saying 'Welcome, honored guest' every time I saw her."
The children stopped running their loop. One of them sat down in the street and started crying.
It was not a triumphant moment. It was a flood of years of suppressed humanity pouring out at once, and I had just opened the dam.
An elder emerged from the largest building — a white-haired man with a walking stick and tears streaming down his face. He walked straight up to me, grabbed my hands, and said, "Young man. I don't know who you are or where you came from. But you have broken our curse. Our words are our own again. Whatever you need — food, shelter, supplies — it is yours."
"Ah. Well. That's very generous, but I just—"
"The village owes you a debt that cannot be repaid."
"It was really just a—"
"FEAST. TONIGHT. YOU WILL BE HONORED."
The elder turned and shouted at the top of his lungs: "THE CURSE IS BROKEN! THE STRANGER HAS FREED US! PREPARE THE FEAST!"
The village erupted.
By sundown, I had been given three changes of clothes, enough dried meat to last a week, a better quality shovel (Han had insisted), and a hand-drawn map of the surrounding region. The map was charmingly inaccurate — the mountains were in the wrong place and the scale was wildly off — but it was better than nothing.
Han was documenting everything. He'd filled three pages since we arrived.
" Day two " he read aloud as we sat by a bonfire. " We arrived at a village trapped in a time loop. Caelan fixed it by typing one line into the air. The villagers threw a festival in his honor. He now has a better shovel than me. I am taking notes. "
"The shovel was for you."
"I know. But I want my feelings about the shovel inequality documented."
We ate roasted meat and vegetables. The villagers sang songs and danced around the fire. It was the closest thing to a good time I'd had since arriving in this world.
Then my system pinged.
A notification. Single line. Clean.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED DEBUG ACCESS DETECTED. REPORTING TO: SECTOR 9-C ADMINISTRATION.]
It vanished before I could reply.
I stared at the space where it had been.
"Caelan?" Han said.
"Nothing."
"You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The look you get when something's wrong and you're not going to tell me about it."
I looked at the fire. At the dancing villagers. At the badly rendered stars above.
"I'll tell you when I know more," I said.
Han studied me for a moment. Then he opened his logbook and made a note.
"I'm holding you to that."