It was a towering colossal column of pure blindingly bright blue code. It stretched from the polished floor all the way up into the infinite dark of the ceiling. Millions of lines of raw Ethereal script cascaded down the pillar in a constant waterfall of data.

It hummed with a sound that vibrated deep in Sebastian’s molars. This was the beating heart of the world. This was the Admin Terminal that controlled every single law of physics, every oxygen tax, and every monster spawn on Server 112.

And suspended right in the dead center of the glowing pillar, protected by layers of translucent digital shielding, was a massive perfectly cut sphere of deep azure crystal.

The Regional Core.

"There you are," Sebastian whispered, a dark victorious smile spreading beneath his blank visor.

He slowly walked toward the pillar, and his boots were completely silent against the glass floor. The final stage of the infiltration had begun. He did not just need to steal the core. He needed to rip it out of the server without getting instantly deleted by the planetary firewall.

He stopped five feet away from the humming column of code. He looked at the beautiful pristine utopia surrounding him. He thought about the starving refugees being boiled alive in the acid vats just a few miles below this room.

"You guys really built a nice house," Sebastian muttered. He raised his left hand, and the green runes of his Spoofing Drive glowed brightly. "It is a shame I have to burn it down."

———

The Inner Spire of Server 112 was a disgusting monument to excess. It was the kind of place that made Sebastian want to punch a hole through a wall just to ruin the aesthetic!

There was no dirt here. There was no smog, no rusted iron, and certainly no starving refugees.

The corridors were incredibly wide, lined with pristine white marble that practically glowed under the soft ambient light. Floating crystal chandeliers drifted lazily near the vaulted ceilings, casting a warm golden hue over the indoor gardens.

Rivers of pure condensed blue mana flowed gently through decorative trenches carved into the floor. This served absolutely no purpose other than to show off how much raw power the Vanguard Syndicate had hoarded.

Sebastian was currently wearing the utterly average pudgy face of Trent the Level 42 Gunner. He stood at attention near a set of heavy mahogany doors. He was holding his standard-issue kinetic rifle across his chest, playing the role of the loyal guard dog.

"I really hate rich people," Sebastian muttered to himself, his voice barely a whisper beneath his grey and blue tactical helmet. "They could power an entire lower sector with the mana they use to keep these stupid decorative bushes green."

He shifted his weight, his Demigod-tier muscles protesting the rigid and boring posture. His [Admin Suspicion] meter sat happily at a flat zero percent in the corner of his vision.

The Server Spoofing Drive bolted to his arm was doing its job flawlessly. To the planetary firewall, he was just Trent. Boring, compliant, entirely insignificant Trent.

But Sebastian wasn’t just standing there staring at the wall. He was listening!

With his physical synchronization hovering at thirty percent, his baseline human senses were terrifyingly sharp. He could hear the hum of the power grid. He could hear the heartbeat of the Elite guard stationed fifty yards down the hall.

And more importantly, he could hear the faint encrypted radio frequencies bouncing through the local network.

BZZZT.

A tiny burst of static caught his attention.

Sebastian didn’t move his head, but his eyes tracked the origin of the signal. It wasn’t coming from the Vanguard comms. It was a sloppy and poorly masked frequency bleeding out from the ventilation shafts above the grand concourse.

"Target is in sight," a tense hushed voice crackled over the intercepted frequency. "We are above the Server Pillar room. Delta team, what is your status on the perimeter loop?"

"We looped the camera feeds on Sector 9," a second voice replied, sounding equally panicked. "You have a three-minute window before the automated heavy-borgs cycle back around. You have to crack that diamond door now, or we are dead."

Sebastian suppressed a dry chuckle.

Spies. Smugglers. Rebels from another server trying to pull off a grand heist.

’Amateurs,’ Sebastian thought, staring straight ahead. ’You don’t loop a camera feed for three minutes in a Tier 5 citadel. The system’s sub-routines will flag the static image variation in sixty seconds.’

"Moving in. I have the decryptor chips," the first voice announced.

Sebastian casually tapped the side of his helmet, adjusting his internal comms receiver to fully isolate the rebel frequency. He didn’t want to arrest them. He didn’t care about protecting the Syndicate’s property. He was genuinely curious.

He waited for thirty seconds until the Elite guard down the hall turned the corner to begin his patrol route. The moment the corridor was empty, Sebastian moved!

He didn’t use [Void Walk]. That would spike the Suspicion meter. He just relied on his raw and unadulterated physical agility.

He pushed off the marble floor, his boots making absolutely no sound, and bounded up the side of a decorative pillar. He grabbed the edge of the elevated catwalk running along the upper perimeter of the concourse and vaulted himself over the railing.

He crouched in the shadows, his grey armor blending into the dim lighting of the upper alcove. He looked down through the ornate iron grating.

Directly below him were the massive polished diamond doors that guarded the Server Pillar.

That was the exact room Sebastian needed to access to steal the Regional Core!

Three figures dropped silently from a ventilation grate in the ceiling.

They were clad in mismatched dark leather armor, holding sleek glowing datapads and heavy plasma cutters. They didn’t have the heavy imposing presence of Vanguard soldiers. They moved with the frantic jittery energy of players who knew they were completely out of their depth.

"Hurry up, man!" the smallest of the three hissed, looking frantically over his shoulder.

"If Guild Master Regis catches us down here, he won’t even kill us. He’ll just throw us in the acid vats."

"Shut up and let me work," the leader grunted.

He stepped up to the biometric scanner next to the diamond doors. He pulled out a handful of highly complex glowing red microchips.

Sebastian leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "Oh, those are nice," he murmured.

They were top-tier decryptor chips. The kind of highly illegal hardware that cost millions of silver on the black market! They were designed to forcefully bypass biometric locks by brute-forcing a billion false physical signatures into the scanner until it registered a false positive.