So yeah… things were getting real between Yen and Sun. Both of them had the same goal in mind: reach Level 150 first. It wasn’t just for flex — the gang was planning a massive raid, and only the strongest would lead it. Right now, Sun was slightly ahead at Level 114, and Yen had just hit 110 thanks to sending off a bunch of his Auto EXP Farming Bots to grind in the outer zones.

Yen didn’t have time to waste fighting low-level mobs. He knew the bots would do the job while he focused on more meaningful stuff — dungeons, quests, loot, and those juicy side missions that gave EXP like candy if you played it right.

He grabbed his upgraded gear — a pair of twin plasma daggers called “Crimson Echo”, a new nano-weave chestplate with a glitchy shimmer, and a weird little AI companion named Byte, who looked like a floating USB stick with wings. Cute but deadly.

“Alright Byte,” Yen said, stretching his fingers, “let’s go get dirty.”

He dove into The Reboot Crypts, a creepy, half-corrupted dungeon zone buried deep under Synth City’s abandoned data towers. This place had no real enemies at first — just broken-down NPCs wandering around, mumbling code fragments and crying out in loops. Some were limping, some had parts missing, others just sat in corners whispering stuff like “error… can’t find home…”

Most players ignored these types — they weren’t worth much unless you had the right items. But Yen? He came prepared.

He tossed out PainAway Injectors, Code Bandages, and even rare Emotion Chips he’d been saving. One by one, the NPCs started stabilizing. Their eyes glowed again, their systems rebooted. Some thanked him with half-broken voices, others dropped tiny EXP chips. A few even offered him items, nothing fancy, just weird junk like broken glasses, a rubber duck, or an old holo-photo of a family.

Still… it added up.

EXP started climbing.

110.5
110.9
111.3

Meanwhile, Sun was still farming mobs in the high-level Synth Mountains, leveling fast. But Yen didn’t care. He was doing things his own way. And then — out of nowhere — a new NPC appeared. He was standing in a flickering hallway, wearing a long black coat full of wires, half his face pixelated and buzzing like bad reception.

“You’re… different,” the NPC said in a glitchy voice. “You don’t destroy. You… restore.”

Yen just shrugged. “I guess. What do you want?”

The NPC looked around and then handed Yen a digital scroll that burned like codefire in his hands.

“The Cyber Pirates. They’re attacking the old network veins. They want the Core Code. Stop them. Capture them. Before they crash everything.”

Quest Unlocked: THE PIRATE PROTOCOL
Capture 5 rogue Cyber Pirates hiding in the Abandoned Data Sectors. Reward: EXP + ?? Key Item

Yen’s eyes lit up. Not just EXP. Not just gear. There was something bigger here — the quest gave him a mysterious item labeled only as SYNTHCORE-EX. That sounded way too important to ignore.

He grinned, cracked his knuckles, and summoned his hoverboard.

“Let’s go pirate hunting.”

Meanwhile, Sun messaged him:

🟡 Sun: Bro, I’m at 117 now. You fallin’ behind. 😏
🔵 Yen: Just wait. You’ll be eating my data trail dust  in 10 minutes.

The EXP race was on, and things were about to get wild