Nathan paced back and forth on the platform.

  "Okay, despairing is fun, but I actually do need to get out of here." He groaned. "Except for the fact that there actually is no freaking way to get out because B32 is an idiot who doesn't fix any of his damn levels!"

  Nathan sighed. "Well, I'm not going to be able to get anything done just sitting here, whining. I should go check out my surroundings and see if there's anything I can do."

  Nathan shifted his form into water and flew around the platform in circles. Each time he circled the platform, he went out a good distance farther. He'd just started to lose hope when he spotted a light in the distance.

  He shot off toward it.

  It was a platform—a platform with a chest on it!

  He landed on it and shifted back into his human form. He stomped his feet against the ground. It was the real deal—it wouldn't give out under him or anything like that.

  He leaned down to the chest and slowly opened it up. With any luck, it would be the way out of here—

  It was a large pink and black square.

  "What is this supposed to be?" Nathan said.

  He activated [Basic Inspect].

  [Missing Texture] — LV.000000000 — Grade: E — Grade: Z — Rank 00000

  [Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.]

  Okay, Nathan thought. Yeah, this is clearly a broken item, but maybe I can do something with that. I've done stuff with glitched items before in video games. Maybe this carries over in real life.

  The main thing that Nathan had done with broken items was completely brick and render his saves unplayable, but that still counted as "a thing," so Nathan would count it.

  Optimism, right?

  Nathan rolled the pink and black cube between his hands. It was neither hot, nor cold. Not metallic, or woody, or plastic.

  It just sort of... was.

  Nathan had legitimately never felt any object quite like it—and at the same time, it felt like something that he'd grasped a million times.

  "This thing hurts my brain," he said.

  And he still had no idea what it was for.

  Nathan fiddled with it, then touched the side.

  His body froze. It started to light up blue in that familiar teleportation way that he'd seen a few times before. When he opened his eyes, he was back on the elevator platform.

  "It teleports me!" he shouted.

  Okay, but what can he do with that?

  "First let's see if this thing is consistent."

  He walked over to the edge of the elevator platform and touched the side of the purple and black cube again.

  Once again, he was teleported straight to the center of the platform.

  "Interesting. So the next question would be..."

  How much can I break this thing?

  Nathan didn't speedrun games, but he'd taken advantage of glitches before. And, yeah, again, they usually just resulted in him bricking his save. But the more reliable ones were actually helpful. And the way they worked was by being using items in a manner that the game didn't expect. For example, if an item was only ever meant to be used while you were in a walking state, and then you used it while you were in a standing state—the game would freak out and do unexpected behavior. Usually, this unexpected behavior is extremely bad and just destroys your game. But very rarely, it's actually helpful.

  Nathan was already screwed from what he could tell, so he figured he might as well commit to it and see if he could get unscrewed, or failing that, at least put himself out of his misery.

  He opened up his inventory.

  "Okay, let's try this."

  He touched the side of the cube. He was then warped back over to the center of the platform.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "Didn't expect anything to happen, honestly. But what about this?"

  He took a random sword halfway out of his inventory, then activated the cube at the same time.

  The world lurched and Nathan knew that something had gone terribly wrong instantly. Everything seemed to freeze, including his own body—

  Then he found himself at the center of the platform. The sword was back inside of his inventory, and his hand was stretched out toward his inventory screen.

  "So B32 couldn't be bothered to make sure that all of his shrines worked," Nathan muttered. "But this weird edge case, he made sure to have a fail-safe for. Cool."

  Nathan stroked his chin.

  The world had definitely hiccuped there. The system needed a little bit of time to figure out what was happening.

  So maybe if he just kept on stacking effects and weird edge cases, the system would error out hard enough to make something else happen?

  It was the best Nathan had.

  For the next thing that Nathan tried, he pulled out two weapons from his inventory and touched the cube with his feet. It activated and the swords vanished from his hands and he was back in the center of the platform.

  But the hiccup had been a little bit longer.

  Nathan went to the next logical outcome and pulled out a third weapon using his teeth. Again, the hiccup had been longer... and Nathan's creativity had already completely run out.

  "There's gotta be something else..."

  Nathan rubbed his chin, then an idea struck.

  He gathered up the random swords, held them in his hand, stuck one in his mouth, and got ready to activate the weird teleporter thing.

  Then he jumped into the air with the teleporter.

  Don't ask how this was anatomically possible, Nathan was also unsure.

  The teleporter activated and—

  The world cracked.

  Nathan's vision warped. Colors extended horizontally like TV static lines. Colors of green, purple, and light red flashed intermittently. Everything burned, his skin was both hot and cold at the same time.

  His feet touched down on solid ground.

  He was standing on a different floor. Blue light shone from ahead, a decrepit figure atop a throne.

  Nathan's jaw dropped.

  I can't believe that actually worked.

  He picked up the glitched object off the ground and rolled it around in his hands. Finally, he shrugged and stuffed it into his inventory.

  I'm sure I'll find a use for that. He looked back at the figure.

  System error 4040404, a voice said in his head. Please contact your local system administrator for more info.

  That's not happening.

  [Distributing rewards.]

  A window appeared in front of Nathan.

  [Please insert your primary weapon.]

  Nathan's face twisted into a grimace. He really didn't feel like trusting anything inside of this location, given how much of a glitched disaster it was.

  The window popped up again, almost as if it was insistent.

  [Please insert your primary weapon.]

  There weren't any exits. He was in a closed box of a room.

  There's no getting out of this, is there? He sighed. Well, I guess I could just dump in something that I don't actually care about.

  Nathan wasn't going to put his fishing pole into this thing. That had been a pain in the ass to forge, and he wasn't going to risk it getting destroyed by a vengeful glitched box.

  After some consideration, he pulled out his harpoon.

  He could have gone with one of the many C or D-rank items in his inventory that he'd picked up through fishing, but on the off chance that this actually was a good upgrade, it would probably be a good idea to apply it to something he would actually use.

  Although, he thought, I actually haven't used my harpoon very often as of late.

  Well, maybe this upgrade would change that?

  He pushed the harpoon into the box. Its icon appeared underneath a loading bar.

  The box disappeared.

  Nathan's heart dropped.

  There was a bright flash of light and the harpoon reappeared in midair, tip pointed toward the ceiling.

  A blue shell of energy wrapped around it, shimmering and glittering with iridescent colors.

  Streams of energy went in and out of the shell and the harpoon pulsed. First slow, then faster, then faster—

  An explosion like a planetary nova went off and Nathan was tossed right into the wall. His back hit the stone with a crack and he groaned from the pain.

  Ow. He rubbed his side. What the hell was that?

  The area where the harpoon had been was obscured in smoke. He stumbled to his feet and stepped over. He coughed.

  The smoke dissipated and what was left was—

  The harpoon.

  But it was different.

  That iridescent sheen hadn't disappeared. It had merely lowered in intensity. Waves of purple, green and gold washed over the surface of the metal like waves on the ocean.

  He hesitantly leaned forward and picked it up. A sensation like static electricity trampled up his arm.

  "What the hell?" he muttered.

  He'd been half expecting the harpoon to disappear, not whatever this was.

  He activated [Basic Inspect].

  [Blessed Harpoon of the Shifting Tides] (A-rank)

  Weapon Type: Harpoon

  Rank: A

  Enchantment Slots: 4

  Weight: Light

  Forged from the bones of a deep-sea leviathan and imbued with ancient aquatic magic, this harpoon is the perfect tool for any adventurous soul who doesn’t mind getting a little wet.

  In addition to the above, it's been personally blessed by the goddess of the sea, Thalassa. Pretty sick, yeah?

  Nathan skipped past the top three enchantments and went down to the bottom.

  Homing

  EIUEFUFOWUGFSUYBFEIUHGFILSHEFUGROSIEF

  Uh-oh.

  So it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Nathan had a new harpoon, but it was obviously glitched.

  But if it even partially worked... like, how good was this Homing, exactly?

  Before he could think about this any further, a tingle went up his spine. His hands and weapon turned into blue streams of light.

  Oh yeah, the teleporter thing, he said. Hopefully it works properly—

  A loud buzzing saw blade noise met his ear. The blue streams flashed red.

  That's not good.

  His consciousness faded and he knew no more.

  When he next opened his eyes, he felt his lungs flood with water. Pressure surrounded him and his body seized from the pain.

  A pair of eyes locked with his own under the water.

  You know, that fisherman did say something about a giant killer fish, didn't he? Nathan thought.

  It seemed that the fisherman had neglected to mention that the creature he'd warned Nathan about wasn't a giant fish.

  It was a whale the size of half a skyscraper.