A Bizarre Case, or a Curse?

I’m a glitch. A walking glitch. What kind of sick joke is this? How did I get screwed up so badly?

I bit my lip and repeated these words in my head, gazing over the aftermath of the explosion. Not even an hour had passed, and I had already ruined the tutorial zone.

I… didn’t mean to. I didn’t know this could happen.

I stared down at my trembling hands and cursed under my breath.

I was broken, and I didn’t have anything to fix myself. What could I even do properly? All I did was swing a sword, and all hell broke loose!

I looked up and stared at the road far ahead, untouched by the explosion. With this crazy glitch, I could forget about trying to fight at all, but how else was I supposed to finish the tutorial?

…Well, the dev team did make one for a reason. This was the perfect place to experiment, so I could try to find some middle ground with this. Surely, I could make it work, somehow?

Every bug was fixable. It was only a matter of when and how I could fix this… glitch thing.

I took a deep breath and raised an arm. “Let’s try this again.”

I balled my fist, the gesture players would do, to resummon the sword.

…But nothing happ—no, wait.

I winced as a sudden tingling, numbing force coursed through me, and the moment I touched the side of my head, I figured out the source.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” I grabbed the handle poking out of my head and began to… pull it… out of my head. I was unsheathing my sword out of my freaking head. How crazy was this glitch?!

“Ugh…” I tightly gripped the handle and, with some hesitation, lightly slashed through the air.

Huh, nothing actually happened. I kept swinging around, and sure enough, the sword continued to act like… a normal sword. I knew better than to get my hopes up so soon, though, especially after repeatedly summoning the sword led to the same head sheathing routine.

With a defeated sigh, I “unsheathed” my sword and continued the trail until a wild boar finally showed up.

During the tutorial, the player would unlock three basic skills: slash, dodge, and block. The earlier waves were meant to learn how to attack, but the third wave was where the player was supposed to learn how to dodge. In that case…

I stared down at the boar, and it did the same. It grunted and kicked the dirt as a warning, but I took a step forward. With a hoarse growl, the boar charged head-on, and I jumped out of the way… only to soar much, much farther from my spot.

“I freaking kneeew iiiit!” I shouted, helplessly zooming straight into the trees. One second, I found myself diving toward a patch of grass, and the next, a large rock. A second later, I somehow crashed into a thick tree branch and fell into a bush.

New information learned: Dodging would randomly teleport me around. Fantastic.

“Ooww, goddamn it…” I groaned and crawled out of the bushes. The boar had already run off when I finally made it back on the road, so I suppose I cleared the third wave. At this rate, I couldn’t imagine what horrors I’d unleash with my block skill.

“It’s fine. It’s the tutorial. There’s no better time to test it,” I said, taking deep breaths.

Once again, I continued following the path until a group of boars arrived, and once again, I unsheathed my sword from my head. With it, I went into a blocking stance and confronted the incoming stampede.

Unlike my first encounter with that slime, I didn’t close my eyes when I shielded myself. I had to see what’d happen this time. How I regretted that so quickly.

To my absolute horror, my “block” launched the poor things over the trees. This wasn’t a block, but a full-on counter skill.

I guess this explained where that first slime went. I practically hurled it away sky-high without realizing it.

…Thus concluded the fourth wave of the tutorial. This was technically the last one before the player could leave and head to the next area, but they could also choose to stay and keep practicing until they were satisfied.

I’d be damned if I left this place unprepared for a real battle out there. There were dragons, monsters, and demon generals waiting for me later on, some of them I even made with my own hands. There were even some battle cutscenes where I’d definitely get my ass kicked hard.

Yeah, I was not leaving this place until I was ready.

With a weary groan, I summoned my blade and continued wandering through the woods.

⮽⮽⮽

The sun descended on the horizon, leaving a golden gleam over the rippling sea. The tides gently lapped over the sand while ship horns echoed through the docks. A stationary guard yawned as he took in the scene, but when footsteps gradually grew closer behind him, he turned around.

“Halt!” he called out. “Who goes—oh good heavens, young lad! What happened to you?!”

“Huh,” I croaked. “That’s a different dialogue.”

“Pardon?”

“...Never mind.” I gotta stick to the script. I cleared my throat, brushed some leaves and twigs off me, and tried straightening my aching back, but all that did was let out a loud, concerning crack. Even the guard flinched at the sound. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” I said. “I’m just a traveler from Springvale Village.”

“Ah, a traveler, you say? You’re certainly dressed as… one…?” He scanned up and down at my horribly disorganized clothes.

That’s also a new dialogue. Can’t blame him. I sighed and shrugged. “I… erm, I got pranked by a mage.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, a-anyway! I got lost in the forest. Can you tell me where I am?”

“You’re at Wellclaw Harbor, young lad.”

Yep, I was definitely in Crownless Saga. This seaport was where players start the main story quest, and it looked amazing in real life!

This was where the player would get several dialogue options to ask about the current situation of the world, but I was way too damn exhausted to hear things I already knew. So, after going through a brief inspection, I made my way through without asking any more questions.

Finally. After hours of trial and error, and totally not nearly dying a few times, I finally made it past the goddamn tutorial and managed to learn a few things.

It seemed like my sword attacks would go crazy only in real encounters. Slashing through air and trees didn’t do anything, but it would go bonkers against slimes and boars alike. Getting myself stabbed by it would also open up that glitchy text screen that worked more like a bomb than anything.

My dodge skill, though, would always randomly teleport me around, real battle or not. I’d try to use it to dodge those screen bombs, but it was this same skill that got me crashing against trees, rocks, or even the boars themselves, ironically leaving me covered with more bruises than the screen bomb.

The only “stable” skill was the block skill that worked more like a counter skill. Even this was still overkill, considering how many poor slimes and boars I’d launched.

…To summarize, I still had no clue how to control these glitches. The only option left was to head to that starter city and find some help, or at least, answers.

With that in mind, I made my way through the dock, sold a concerning amount of boar meat and slime pieces I’d found from the tutorial zone, paid for a caravan ride, and finally gave my sore body a rest. I couldn’t even muster any energy to enjoy the scenery like I originally wanted.

But while the ride carried on, I had this ominous hunch brewing inside me, a hunch that I was forgetting something important. It was at the level of “I’d forgotten my phone at work!” type of hunch, strong enough to prevent me from fully falling asleep.

As my groggy mind slipped in and out of consciousness, a massive shadow draped over the caravan, followed by a strong gust of wind.

With that, the realization hit me fast as lightning. I jolted up, wide-eyed and pale, and screamed, “The dragon ambush—!”

A thunderous crash erupted in front of the caravan, followed by a bellowing roar that shook the trees. I grimaced and covered my ears, and when the noise died down, I frantically turned to face the front.

There, towering before the caravan, was the prologue chapter’s final boss: a massive dragon.