The Unfun Patch

The warning from Althea of the Order of Equilibrium hung over Leo like a cold fog. It wasn't an overt threat, but a chilling recalibration of his understanding. He wasn't just a player in a strange world. He was an unlicensed modder, and the devs had sent a cease-and-desist.

For a week, he was paranoid. He stopped using < Fragment Synthesis>. He avoided Borrowing anything more significant than < Keen Nose (Stuffed-Up)> from a man with allergies to help sort pungent herbs. He stuck to logging Guild quests, the monotony a strange comfort. The world seemed to hold its breath with him.

Elara, perceptive as ever, noticed his restraint. "You're walking like you think the floor will bite you," she said as they tallied wyvern scale shipments.

"The floor might be part of a monitored simulation," he muttered, then shook his head at her confusion. "The grey-robed woman. She represents... the rules. And I keep breaking them."

"Rules that almost let Lyss die?" Elara's tone was sharp. "Rules that sent Brant charging off with a dozen souls to likely die for a knighthood? Your 'breaking' saved a life, Leo. That should be the only rule that matters."

Her simple, moral clarity was a beacon. But Leo feared the system's logic was more algorithmic than moral.

The tension broke not with a bang, but with a bureaucratic edict.

A royal herald arrived in Oakhaven’s square. With Brant and his newly dubbed "Storm Vanguard" departed for the Shattered Peaks, the proclamation was read to a restless crowd.

"By order of the Crown and the System Synod," the herald boomed, "a state of Potential Apocalyptic Conflict is declared. To streamline the defense of the realm and ensure optimal resource allocation for the Hero's chosen forces, the Adventurer Class Consolidation and Streamlining Edict is now in effect!"

It was a mouthful. The consequences were simple and brutal.

"All non-combat, auxiliary, or sub-optimal Class designations are hereby subject to review and potential re-assignment," the herald continued. "Guild members classified as 'Logistics,' 'Herbalists,' 'Junior Scouts,' 'Apprentice Crafters,' and other non-frontline roles are to report for systemic evaluation. Optimal pathways for combat role conversion will be provided."

A stunned silence fell, then erupted into chaotic noise. Leo saw the blood drain from Elara's face. 'Junior Scout' was her official Guild classification.

"This is madness!" roared Guildmaster Borin, a bear of a man with a peg leg earned in a real war. "You can't make a brewer into a berserker!"

"The System, in consultation with the Crown's strategists, indicates a 47% projected increase in frontline casualty replenishment needs," the herald recited blandly. "Compliance is mandatory."

It wasn't an invasion of monsters. It was an invasion of policy. A mandatory patch that was reassigning people's lives, their very aptitudes, to serve the narrative needs of the "main quest." Brant needed cannon fodder, so the system was going to try and turn cooks into knights.

Leo's meta-awareness curdled into cold fury. This was the "stabilization" Althea spoke of. Not pruning him directly, but pruning the environment, forcing everyone into neatly defined, system-approved roles to feed the heroic narrative. It was efficiency at the cost of everything else.

The "evaluations" began the next day in the town hall, now outfitted with a large, pulsating System crystal. One by one, people were made to touch it. The crystal would glow, assessing their innate, often latent potentials, and assign them a new, "optimized" combat Class.

Leo and Elara watched from the back as mild-mannered Finn the Brewer touched the crystal. It flashed a dull brown. [Class Re-Assignment: Brewer -> Earthen Bulwark (Pikeman Variant). Basic polearm proficiency uploaded. Conditioning protocols mandated.] Finn looked at his hands, now subtly thicker, as if they remembered a weight they'd never carried. He wept.

It was fast, impersonal, and horrifying. The system wasn't just giving skills; it was rewriting people's souls to fit.

When Elara's name was called, Leo's hand shot out and gripped her wrist. "Don't," he whispered.

"I have to," she said, her jaw set. "Or they'll mark me as a resister and it'll be worse."

She walked forward, back straight. She placed her hand on the crystal. It hummed, scanning her. Leo watched, his < System of Borrowed Threads> flaring involuntarily. He could see not threads, but a torrent of invasive blue light attempting to pierce Elara's being, seeking a combat-shaped hole to fill.

It found her < Forest Step>, her basic tracking, her keen eyesight. It began to compile. [Class Re-Assignment Processing: Junior Scout -> Sylvan Striker (Skirmisher/Ranger Variant). Skills identified for optimization: , <Track Beas—]

Then it hesitated. The light snagged on something else, something deeper. A resilience, a stubborn loyalty, a capacity for careful observation that had nothing to do with hunting. It was the part of her that had stayed by Leo's side, that questioned Brant's glory, that saw the person behind the oddity.

The crystal flickered. [Error. Contradictory Aptitudes. Non-combat personality core interferes with optimal aggression matrices.] It tried to force it. The light pulsed angrily. Elara gasped, her body stiffening.

Leo didn't think. He couldn't Borrow from the System crystal, it was too vast, too monolithic. But he could Borrow from Elara. He focused on her, on the part of her that was resisting, that stubborn, beautiful core that the system was trying to overwrite. He pulled with all his will.

A thread, not blue like a skill, but a vibrant, defiant gold, shot from her towards him. It was a Fragment of Self: Unyielding Heart.

At the same moment, the System crystal, frustrated, delivered its compromised verdict. [Class Re-Assignment: Junior Scout -> Combat Liaison (Non-Standard).]

The light died. Elara stumbled back, clutching her chest, breathing hard. She looked unchanged, but her status, visible to Leo now, had been altered.

[Elara. Class: Combat Liaison. Skills: , , .]

The officials scowled at the "non-standard" result but recorded it. A "Liaison" was vague, but it had the word 'Combat' in it. They moved on.

Outside, Elara trembled. "What did it do to me? It felt like... it was trying to scrape me out of my own head."

"You fought it off," Leo said, marveling. "And I... I think I stole a piece of what you fought with." He looked at the golden thread now coiled within his system, warm and humming with potential. "This is you. Your defiance. It's not a skill. It's a piece of your soul."

"That sounds dangerous, Leo."

"Everything here is," he said, a plan forming, a dangerous, stupid, utterly necessary plan. "They're turning people into factory farms for combat classes. We need to stop this."

"How? It's the Crown and the System!"

"We don't fight the system," Leo said, his eyes glinting with a new, reckless understanding. "We corrupt the process. We make their 'optimization' spit out useless results. We turn their perfect patch into a bug-fest."

His target wasn't the crystal. It was the people. If the system scanned for latent combat potential, he would give it false positives. He would turn their evaluation into a circus of errors.

He started with Old Man Derwin. Before Derwin's evaluation, Leo Borrowed the tiny, potent < Stolen Vitality Buffer> fragment he'd generated during Lyss's cure. Then, he went to Kevan the blacksmith and Borrowed a new Fragment of Intent: Father's Fury, a raw, protective rage. He synthesized them.

[ + <Fragment of Intent: Father's Fury> = . Duration: 2 minutes.]

The skill created a faint, deceptive aura around Derwin that made him seem like a latent life-draining necromancer, a "combat potential" so vile and unwanted the System crystal stuttered and assigned him a junk Class: [Putrid Wretch (Aberrant - Quarantine Recommended)]. The officials, disgusted, shoved him aside, marking him as unfit for any service.

It worked.

Leo became a ghost in the machine. He used < Thermic Diagnosis> to find people with minor, dormant magical scars and amplified them into seeming like volatile elemental conduits. He borrowed flickers of cowardice and synthesized them into illusions of berserker rage that would inevitably crash. He created a gallery of systemic glitches: a baker classified as a Flame Tsunami (Unstable Core), a shy librarian marked as a Psionic Scream Hazard.

The evaluations slowed to a crawl. The officials grew frustrated and paranoid. The clean, optimized stream of cannon fodder became a clogged pipe of bizarre, useless, or dangerous classifications.

Althea found him two days into his quiet sabotage. He was in the alley, recovering from synthesizing a particularly complex deception.

"You," she stated, her flinty eyes showing a flicker of what might have been respect. "You are not merely an irregularity. You are a virus."

"I'm a bug fix," Leo panted, leaning against the wall. "Your patch was breaking people."

"Our patch ensures the survival of the narrative, and thus the world," Althea said, but her conviction seemed less absolute. "The Demon King's rise is a systemic event. It requires a systemic response. Individuality is a resource we cannot afford."

"And what happens after?" Leo challenged. "When Brant wins his glorious victory, and you have a kingdom full of traumatized brewers with pikeman skills and rewritten personalities? What world are you saving?"

For the first time, Althea looked uncertain. "The System... calculates the optimal path."

"It's a bad algorithm!" Leo snapped. "It sees people as data points! I see the code, Althea, and I'm telling you, it's bad code. It's creating more suffering than it solves."

She studied him for a long moment. "The Order's mandate is stability. Your actions are destabilizing a critical military protocol. My next report will recommend direct intervention. You will be classified as a System Anomaly: Class V (Malignant)." She paused. "There is a... faction within the Order. They believe as you do. That the System's narratives are crude, that they cause... collateral damage. They are not in power. But if you persist, you will force a schism we cannot control."

She vanished, leaving Leo with a stark choice: stop, and let the grinding, soul-crushing "optimization" continue, or keep going, and risk not just her wrath, but potentially triggering a civil war among the very beings who maintained reality.

He thought of Elara's golden thread of defiance, warm in his soul. He thought of Finn the Brewer crying over his changed hands.

He walked back towards the town hall. The line of people waiting for evaluation looked at him, a new, desperate hope in their eyes. They'd heard rumors. The Glitch-Walker.

Leo Tanaka met their gazes. He was no hero. He couldn't charge a castle. But he could read the source code of a tyranny, and he could write a few lines of his own.

He gave the crowd a tired, determined smile. "Next," he said, rolling his metaphorical sleeves up. "Who wants to be a Gourmet Mimic (Digestive Hazard) today?"

The war for the world wasn't just in the Shattered Peaks. It was here, in a dusty square, fought not with swords, but with sarcasm, stolen feelings, and a profound, glitching refusal to be optimized. And for the first time, Leo felt like he was on the right side of the story.