[CURRENT ZONE: THE EUROTUNNEL] [MAIN SCENARIO TIME REMAINING: 6 DAYS, 17 HOURS, 45 MINUTES]

  For the first ten minutes, the only sound in the metal box was the rhythmic hum of the train tracks. Kai leaned his head against the glass and looked at the silver Ford Focus parked just three feet away in the cramped carriage. The driver, a normal middle-aged man, was quietly eating a ham sandwich and listening to the radio.

  Then, the train violently shuddered.

  The fluorescent lights in the carriage flickered, then died completely. The cab was plunged into pitch darkness.

  Before anyone could speak, the emergency backup lights flicked on, bathing the steel carriage in a harsh, pulsing red glow.

  Kai looked out the window at the Ford Focus. The middle-aged man was completely frozen mid-bite. His eyes were blank, and a grey loading wheel spun lazily above his head, accompanied by a floating tag:

  [NON-COMBATANT CACHED: PERCEPTION FILTER ACTIVE]

  "Walter, the other people!" Kai panicked, looking at the other frozen cars in the carriage. "Are they dead?!"

  "They're cached!" Walter shouted, frantically tapping his datapad as the red emergency lights reflected off his glasses. "The System just pulled us into an Instanced Dungeon! To the normal commuters, this is just a bumpy, 30 minute train ride in the dark. They are temporarily unrendered geometry!"

  A massive, dripping, bioluminescent blue notification popped up in the center of the carriage.

  [ZONE TRANSITION COMPLETE] [LOCATION: THE DROWNED CHUNNEL (PREMIUM INSTANCE)]

  "Look outside!" Maya gasped.

  Through the reinforced glass windows of the train doors, Kai expected to see the concrete walls of the physical tunnel. Instead, he saw water. The physical train tunnel had been digitally overwritten. Outside the train carriage was a massive, glowing, bioluminescent underwater abyss.

  Suddenly, a suction cupped tentacle the size of an oak tree slammed against the train’s exterior window, leaving a smear of glowing purple slime before sliding away into the dark water.

  [LEVEL 40: ABYSSAL KRAKEN DETECTED] [TRAIN INTEGRITY: 89%]

  "The Monetizers are tracking us!" Walter realized in horror. "Sterling knew the tunnel was flooded! He turned the Eurotunnel into a Pay-to-Win Raid Boss!"

  At the front of the carriage, a holographic golden turnstile materialized out of thin air, blocking the exit. A cheerful hologram of Sterling popped up, sipping a digital mimosa.

  "Welcome to the Channel Tunnel Premium Experience!" Sterling beamed. "We notice your train is currently under attack by a Level 40 Abyssal Kraken! To deploy defensive countermeasures, simply insert your Premium Platinum Credit Card! Surge-pricing fee: Five Hundred Thousand Shards!"

  "We don't have five hundred thousand shards!" Kai yelled.

  "No funds detected!" Sterling's hologram chirped. "That's okay! We offer a Free-to-Play option. Simply step out of your vehicle and fight the Kraken in melee combat. Good luck!"

  The steel doors at the front of the carriage hissed and slid open, exposing the interior of the train to the flooded abyss outside.

  Freezing seawater immediately blasted into the carriage.

  Kai watched in horror as the rushing water washed straight through the frozen Ford Focus and its driver, passing right through their greyed-out geometry without getting them wet.

  "The billing instance has overridden the train's collision physics!" Walter yelled over the roaring water. "The physical pressure is only rendered for active combatants!"

  "Right," Grom grunted, stepping out of the cab as the freezing water poured over his boots. "Jean Passportout goes to war."

  The Orc reached down to heave his massive minigun off the floor. But the moment his glitching left hand gripped the metal handle, a sickening CRACK echoed through the box. A shower of jagged red code erupted from Grom's bicep. The Warlord let out a roar of agony, dropping the weapon into the water.

  [WARNING: STRENGTH STAT INSUFFICIENT. ITEM DROPPED.]

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Grom, stop!" Maya yelled, splashing forward. "Your muscle mesh is torn! You're benched!"

  A massive, wet THUD shook the carriage. Through the small window of the sealed steel doors at the rear, a giant purple tentacle slapped against the reinforced glass. The thick pane began to spiderweb.

  "Kai!" Walter shrieked. "If that glass breaks, the ocean floods the carriage and the cab is crushed!"

  Kai sprinted toward the glowing golden turnstile. His Sudo tag, finally off cooldown, flared with a brilliant, emerald-green light.

  "Walter, the Kraken is Level 40!" Kai yelled, his hands hovering over the turnstile keypad. "Even with my Admin tag, the file is too big to delete!"

  "Don't attack the monster!" Walter shouted. "Sterling linked the Kraken to a payment gateway! He exposed its root billing layer! It's a Pay-to-Win asset! Attack the monetization code!"

  CRACK. A chunk of the rear door window shattered. A rush of freezing seawater blasted in. The tip of a massive, slimy purple tentacle slid through the broken glass, blindly feeling around the dark carriage.

  "It's tracking our kinetic motion!" Maya realized.

  She looked around frantically. "Terry! open the trunk!"

  Maya splashed to the back of the Black Cab, popping the trunk and grabbing two cans of emergency spray paint neon yellow and matte black. The massive purple tentacle whipped toward her, sensing the splash. Maya ducked, the heavy limb slamming into the metal wall.

  Moving with desperate agility, she sprinted toward the broken glass door at the back of the carriage. With a spray can in each hand, Maya began to frantically paint the glass partition and the surrounding metal walls.

  She didn't paint a picture. She painted a trompe l'?il …a perfect, forced-perspective optical illusion. Using the black paint for deep shadows and the yellow to mimic the flashing emergency lights, she painted an image of an empty, continuing tunnel corridor that perfectly matched the carriage behind them.

  The tentacle reared back to strike her. Maya hit the floor, freezing completely still.

  The Kraken's giant, yellow eye pressed against the broken glass. It stared into the carriage. But because of Maya's brilliant, forced-perspective painting, the Kraken’s primitive targeting AI couldn't register the cab or the people. To the monster, it just looked like an empty train corridor.

  The tentacle slowly, confusedly, retracted.

  [SKILL UNLOCKED: URBAN CAMOUFLAGE (LEGENDARY STEALTH)] [ILLUSION DURATION: 45 SECONDS]

  "Kai!" Maya gasped from the wet floor. "The paint is washing off! You have about 45 seconds!"

  "I'm in!" Kai yelled, slamming his hand onto the turnstile. "If my Sudo-tag hadn't been throttled back at the M25, I would have stripped Sterling's code in seconds. Let's see how he likes it now."

  Because Sterling had tied the boss to a microtransaction, the Admin tag punched straight through the vulnerable billing port. A floating properties menu appeared.

  [ASSET: ABYSSAL_KRAKEN.EXE] [TIER: PREMIUM_RAID_BOSS]

  "Downgrade the subscription!" Walter ordered.

  Kai highlighted the [TIER] dropdown menu and hit the monster with the most humiliating corporate downgrade in existence. He selected: [TIER: FREEMIUM_AD_SUPPORTED_USER].

  Kai slammed the holographic [ENTER] key.

  Outside the window, the massive Level 40 Kraken let out a digitized shriek of horror. Instantly, the beast began to violently buffer. Its glorious, 4K textures completely collapsed.

  [DOWNGRADING TO 144p RESOLUTION...] [APPLYING BANDWIDTH THROTTLE...]

  The Kraken shrank. It went from the size of a five-story building, down to the size of a minivan, down to the size of a dog, and finally... down to the size of a perfectly normal, incredibly low resolution, blocky purple octopus.

  Suddenly, a massive, glowing holographic pop-up window materialized directly in the ocean outside, completely trapping the tiny, pixelated octopus inside a glowing white box. Obnoxious royalty-free ukulele music blasted through the water.

  [ADVERTISEMENT: SYSTEM INSURANCE! PROTECT YOUR LOOT TODAY!] [VIDEO CANNOT BE SKIPPED FOR: 30 SECONDS]

  The tiny, 144p octopus helplessly slapped its pixelated tentacles against the inside of the unskippable car insurance ad.

  The water in the carriage immediately began to recede, draining out through the floor grates as the dungeon instance collapsed. The golden turnstile dissolved into thin air. Sterling's hologram aggressively glitched out before vanishing entirely.

  "It worked," Walter breathed in absolute awe. "You hit a Raid Boss with an unskippable ad."

  Kai slumped against the wall, gasping for breath. The glowing green light on his Sudo-tag violently flickered and dimmed to a dull, exhausted grey.

  "I just burned half my Admin buffer doing that," Kai panted, clutching his wrist. "It only worked because it was a commercialized asset. I can't do that to Purist code."

  Terry leaned out of the driver's window. The tiny, pixelated octopus had somehow washed into the carriage and was flopping weakly on the hood of the Black Cab.

  Terry didn't say a word. He just turned the key in the ignition and flicked the windshield wiper stalk. Squeak. Squeak. The wiper blade smacked the low-res octopus, flicking it off the hood and into a drainage grate.

  Through the broken rear window, the bioluminescent ocean vanished, replaced once again by the dark, concrete walls of the physical Eurotunnel. The grey rendering filters faded from the other cars. The man in the Ford Focus blinked, chewed his sandwich, and turned the page of his newspaper.

  "Right," Terry grunted, putting the cab in gear. "Back in the car, everyone. Let's get to France before…"

  A deafening, synthesized siren shattered the air.

  The normal, harsh fluorescent bulbs of the train carriage instantly turned a dead, clinical grey.

  [WARNING: MASTER OVERRIDE DETECTED] [PURIST DIRECTIVE: HARD-WIPE INITIATED]

  "No," Walter whispered, his blood running cold. "The Monetizers were just the distraction. The Purists waited for us to get stuck."