Most creepypasta stories, be they true or false or some amalgamation of both, end in death, or destruction, or something going missing. My story is the opposite. Whether you believe me or not is up to you, but I'm warning you right now- don't try this for yourself. Please don't try this for yourself.

I've been a Spiral Knights player ever since the official release in April. I left shortly before the Steam release, and returned in April 2012 just in time for the 1-year Anniversary Promo. It was hard for me to believe that so much had changed- new Shadow Lairs, new bosses, and new things like accessories and Shankles. I still had most of my old stuff- a Blitz Needle CTR Low, a Divine Avenger Beast High, an Argent Peacemaker, and a Shivermist Buster, among other things. Those are the only things that matter, and you'll see why in a second.

A few days after my return I came across a modeler called SpiralSpy. I had seen it in Happyapathy's webcomic, Embrace the Darkness, and being a computer science major myself I thought I might as well take a look at it. It was brilliantly constructed, and I could find very few items to tweak. I closed out SpiralSpy and began experimenting with my game. I changed the icons of Knights in Haven into a legion of Jelly Cubes. I turned my brand-new Acheron into a "Banstick". I morphed Strangers into disfigured heaps of .dat files (not that they looked good anyways, geez!) and slapped crappy accessories onto my armor, while visually I saw gleaming wings and halos and auras.

After maybe a month of fooling around, doing runs, and getting myself acquainted with the game again, I began to change up the very schematics of the game itself. My first test was turning Jelly King into a small Mini Green. Talk about hard to see. I enjoyed long hours of play running from a Mini Green that was hundreds of times its size. I shrunk Vanaduke's mace into a Fireburst Brandish (breathe the irony!) and turned Gun Puppies into Love Puppies. I changed Lichens into Slooms, and Zombies into the model.dat of a standard SpiralSpy knight.

There was my first mistake. The standard SS model, for those of you who don't know, is a grey pith helmet on grey proto armor, hands lifted slightly above the knight's side. They moved with rigid precision, and their leaps were grey blurs of poorly-choreographed movement as, occasionally, an arm or leg was left a graphic second behind. I lavished my CE on a new Final Flourish, sometimes imagining that it was Lockdown (which I sucked at), and that I was impaling and freezing and killing these dumb grey Knights.

Then, a week after my experiment, I had the dream. I was in my room on the computer, when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. It was my Spiral Knight character, Minasus. He wore exactly what he wore in-game: a Black Rose Chapeau that I'd been lucky enough to get on the first promo, and Armor of the Fallen. He gestured to me with the standard talking animation, trying to tell me something. "Excuse me," I said, "What are you telling me?"

Then the hand ripped through valuable fabric and bone and flesh, and Minasus dissolved into squares of blue energy as one of the grey knights that I'd substituted for zombies thrust his arm- his freakin' arm- through Minasus' chest and straight at my face. "Holy Snipes!" I hollered, except 'Snipes' was a different word, and even though I NEED the GM's to see this report I don't want to be banned for language; not that it'll do anything.

Minasus' weapons clattered to the ground, as did a shower of blue crystals which turned into fluid crimson, and I sat stupidly in my chair, frozen in time, as the hand reached for my face-

And I woke up, panting, sweating, with a scream lodged in my throat. I stared at my chair- unmoved from the night before. There was a red stain on the carpet, though, that wasn't there before. There was also my teacup- lying on its' side. That explained the clatter and the stain, I thought to myself, never mind that the stain is three feet away from the maximum range of splattering tea. Never mind that there IS no stain under where the tea should have landed. I was trying to placate myself.

I should have stopped there. I powered up the game, Spiral Knights, and logged in. Minasus appeared as normal, except for a small, tiny graphical error in his Armor of the Fallen. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't looked for it, and no one else who inspected me upon my request saw anything wrong. But I noticed the little tear in the fabric, that one-pixel wide shade of grey where red should've been.

I went to FSC as usual to get rid of my 100 mist, and there I made my second mistake. The knights were still there- oh Snipes, I thought, I forgot to fix my files- and their arms were extended in traditional Zombie fashion, instead of pinned loosely to their sides. Then they leapt upon me, and began gnawing- THE HECK?! I began thinking. The previous gnawing animation had only been them shuddering uselessly while I took damage, but GNAWING?!

That did it. I logged off before I even got to Vanaduke. I changed my files back, and went to go make dinner. I even checked on SpiralSpy to make sure the models were alright, both before and after my meal. The only difference that remained were the Grey Knight's eyes- flaming, like a Slag Walker's, and I instantly shut off SpiralSpy. I didn't try to fix it, and again I made a horrible choice.

That night, I had the same dream, except this time it was Minasus' eye. My knight screamed- yes, screamed- and the sound was like the screeching of car tires combined with glass shattering. Red splattered onto my chair and onto my clothes, and behind Minasus was some horrid mixture of a Slag Walker and a Grey Knight, clawed knight-like hand extended while fingertips burned with flame. Then the creature looked at me. I acted this time, flinging my chair at the creature, which fell back upon my bed. The sheets burst into flame as its fingertips brushed the linen. I ran out of my room, into the bathroom, screaming for my parents all the while. I could hear it coming after me with steady, slow steps. I thought I smelled the wooden floor in the hall burning from its' ashen feet. I clambered frantically into the shower, and turned on the water.

The showerhead didn't respond. I ran to the sink- no water. The door to the bathroom, which I had slammed shut in my haste, burst into flame of its own accord, and I felt the heat- the sheer heat- radiating off the creature. The glass door of my shower started to melt, I swear; I don't know how I didn't burn up there and then but the next second the creature was upon me, shoving an ashen hand into my mouth, and I was screaming with flame and panic and pain.

And I woke up again. My throat hurt, and I had a bloody nose; red stained my sheets and the front side of the t-shirt I had worn to bed the night before. My room, the bathroom, and the hall were unscathed. The shower worked, and I took a half an hour under the cold water, shuddering not from its feel, but from the sheer terror of my nightmare.

I went to my friend's house the next day. We'd had an arrangement in the past; he trusted me unquestioningly, and I did the same for him. Thus he asked nothing of me when I showed up at his front doorstep, begging him to let me use his Spiral Knights, which he hadn't updated since he quit around the same time I returned to the game. I installed SpiralSpy and looked up the Grey Knight and zombie files. Normal. No eyes. I sighed and thanked my friend for letting me come over to his place, and I moved to click the 'x' on the SpiralSpy window, and then I saw it. A flicker of light in the Grey Knight model's eyes, and I panicked and threw myself back with a scream. My friend ran in, and I pointed out the Grey Knight's eyes. "I don't see anything different," my friend muttered. "You've gotta stop playing so much if you're seeing things."

That's exactly what I did, but to no avail. Every night it was some part of Minasus that was rent apart, some part of my house that I was chased to and slaughtered at, and something in my room that had explicably changed. But as time went on, the changes started getting more bizarre. My favorite black cap, which I loved as much as Minasus' Chapeau, ripped to shreds. The scent of ashes in my room. My laptop overheating when it wasn't even turned on.

Then, a month after the nightmares began, I logged on to Spiral Knights. Minasus looked like hell. Every part of him was injured or changed in some way, just as I had changed the SpiralSpy files at my whim. The only part of him intact was his head. I logged off, sickened, and knowing what was coming next.

That night, they took his head. Then they took mine.

I woke up the next day, thinking it was finally over. Minasus had no more body parts to destroy, and my laptop was behaving normally. The ashen smell had gone from my room, as had the random stains- my mother had cleaned my room while I was out with my friends, I supposed. That would explain why she was cleaning the living room, until she told me, "You need to stop whatever you're doing. I came home from shopping and found ash everywhere!"

Ash. Ash. Oh, gods.

I ran to my computer and uninstalled Spiral Knights. I went to sleep with the lights on. I had no dream. And I believed it was over.

Then last week, I had the last dream. I woke up, instead of sitting in my chair like always. I was staring face-to-face with a Grey Slag Walker (what I call the mix between the Grey Knight and the Slags), pinned to my ceiling by some unimaginable force. He dropped on me, and he and I became one, and I howled as suddenly I felt what he felt, the ash and burning and unwillingness to go and destroy knights of his own kind.

I woke up again, traumatized, and went to my friend's house. I logged onto Spiral Knights and deleted Minasus without a further word. I left his house, mission accomplished. Or so I believed it to be. When I got home, my laptop was gone. My room was trashed. And in the middle of my room, Minasus, half-Grey Knight and half-Slag Walker. "Congratulations," he rasped. "You've finally set me free."

I slammed the door to my room shut. Minasus was behind me a second later, and I ran downstairs to the kitchen. Predictably, the sink wasn't working; I ran outside to where I had thrown my bicycle and began pedaling as quickly as I could toward my friend's house. My tires gave out in a bang of air and flame, and I saw the Minasus-thing approaching me. My eyes flicked to the garden hose, and then back at my old knight, which inexplicably had made it into the real world. Just then my friend pulled up to my house on his bike, saw the Minasus-thing, and without another word pulled his water bottle from the side of his bike, unscrewed the cap, and tossed it like a grenade. The water showered over the Minasus-thing, and with a scream of agony like the one from the first dream, it dissolved into a pile of ashes.

"Good thing I got here in time," my friend said. "That was close."
"How did you know to come?" I whispered, shaken.
"You sent my phone a mail using your laptop."
"B-but my laptop's gone."
"You sure? Here, I'll show you the message."

My friend flipped his phone open, and the message displayed itself in clear digital text. "Please help me. I'm in trouble, and I need you to rescue me. Only you can do it. -M"

M. The first initial of my name, and of Minasus'. I looked at my friend uneasily. "That wasn't me."
"Then what the hell-"
"No," I choked on my own sentence. "You don't want to know."

To everyone who reads this, AVOID CHANGING THE GAME FILES. There's a reason the GM's wanted us to not edit the files, and now I know why. After this new graphical update, I know some of you have been seeing the armors as white. There's also a fix to it. I have no qualms with the fixed armors, but I beg you, don't experiment with the creature models or with the white .dat files until we know how to fix it.

You know what happened to Minasus. Don't let it happen to you.