The rebel leader jammed the chips into the side of the glowing blue scanner panel.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

The scanner flashed wildly, cycling through red and blue lights as the chips flooded its logic gates.

"Come on, come on," the leader muttered, sweat dripping down his face. "Just open."

Sebastian shook his head in the shadows.

’You forgot about the secondary physical ward, you idiot.’

The Ethereal Plane’s high-tier defense architecture was ruthless. It didn’t just rely on digital locks. It relied on absolute brutal force to punish anyone who failed a hack!

Down below, the biometric scanner suddenly stopped flashing. It turned a solid glaring red.

[System Alert: Unauthorized Intrusion Detected.]

[Deploying countermeasures.]

"Shit! It locked us out!" the hacker screamed, ripping the decryptor chips from the panel.

"The door is sealed! Run!"

They turned to sprint back toward the ventilation shaft.

They didn’t make it two steps!

The air around the diamond doors violently warped. It didn’t make a sound. There was no flashy portal or booming announcer. Four figures simply tore themselves out of the digital ether and materialized directly in front of the fleeing rebels.

They were Guild Master Regis’s personal Void Wardens.

They were towering ten-foot-tall monstrosities clad in heavy pitch-black armor.

They didn’t have faces, just smooth obsidian helmets. They wielded massive two-handed executioner swords that crackled with dark purple Void energy.

"Oh, this is going to be messy," Sebastian whispered, pulling a generic stale protein bar from his inventory and taking a bite. He chewed slowly, watching the show.

The rebels screamed. The smallest one raised a plasma pistol and fired a desperate panicked shot.

PEW!

The glowing blue plasma bolt hit the chest of the lead Void Warden. It didn’t even leave a scorch mark. The Warden didn’t flinch.

SWISH.

The Warden swung its massive executioner sword in a lazy horizontal arc.

It was a completely unblockable high-tier physical strike! The heavy blade cleaved cleanly through the rebel’s leather armor, through his ribcage, and out his back.

SQUELCH!

The top half of the player’s body slowly slid off his waist, hitting the pristine white marble with a wet heavy thud. Blood sprayed violently across the floor, painting the walls in a gruesome arc of crimson.

"NO!" the leader shrieked, dropping his datapads and raising a small pathetic kinetic shield.

CRUNCH!

A second Void Warden brought its heavy armored boot down directly onto the leader’s knee. The bone snapped backward with a sickening pop. The hacker collapsed, screaming in pure unadulterated agony as the Warden grabbed him by the throat and lifted him entirely off the ground.

"Please! We surrender! We yield!" the third rebel sobbed, dropping to his knees and throwing his hands behind his head.

The Void Wardens operated on absolute merciless logic. They didn’t take prisoners.

They didn’t care about surrender mechanics.

The Warden holding the leader simply squeezed its massive gauntlet.

SNAP.

The leader’s neck shattered like dry twigs.

The body went limp, the health bar deleting instantly. The Warden tossed the corpse aside like a piece of garbage.

The kneeling rebel didn’t even have time to beg again. The third Warden stepped forward and drove its heavy sword directly down through the top of the man’s skull, pinning him entirely to the marble floor.

CRACK!

The skull split open, brain matter and blood splashing across the polished stone. The body twitched violently for a second before going completely still.

It was over in less than ten seconds!

Sebastian finished his protein bar, wiping the crumbs from his gloves. He didn’t feel a single ounce of pity. The Ethereal Plane was a meat grinder. If you walked up to the blades without knowing how to turn off the machine, you deserved to get ground into sausage.

The Void Wardens stood perfectly still for a moment, their internal logic ensuring the threat was neutralized. Then, without a word, their black armor dissolved into a flurry of dark pixels. They vanished back into the server’s defense grid, leaving the three mangled bleeding corpses on the floor.

Sebastian waited exactly thirty seconds to ensure the area was clear.

He hopped over the railing and dropped gracefully to the concourse floor, his boots making a soft tap against the marble.

He walked casually over to the absolute slaughterhouse in front of the diamond doors.

There was a lot of fresh blood on the floor.

"Sucks to be you," Sebastian said deadpan, stepping over the bisected torso of the first rebel.

He didn’t care about their armor or their weapons. He crouched down next to the leader, whose head was twisted at a horrific angle. Clutched tightly in the dead man’s rigid fingers were the glowing red decryptor chips.

Sebastian pried the stiff fingers open and plucked the hardware from the corpse.

[Item Acquired: High-Tier Decryptor Chips x4]

[Grade: Illegal Contraband]

[Effect: Brute-forces biometric and runic security locks.]

A cold and genuinely pleased smile spread across Sebastian’s face behind his visor.

He had the physical strength to rip the doors open, but that would trigger the alarms and summon the Wardens.

He needed to get into the Server Pillar quietly.

And these dead idiots had just hand-delivered the exact keys he needed to pull off the ultimate heist!

"Thanks for the donation, boys," Sebastian murmured, slipping the chips into his bottomless inventory. "I’ll make sure they go to a good cause. Like stealing this entire planet."

He turned his back on the bloody mess and walked away, casually returning to his guard post before Garret could notice he was missing.

—-

Three days later, the Vanguard Syndicate threw a party. And it was exactly as nauseatingly opulent as Sebastian expected!

It was the end of the fiscal quarter, a time for the corporate elites of Server 112 to pat themselves on the back for efficiently starving the lower sectors and converting human misery into a highly profitable energy surplus.

To celebrate their cruelty, they hosted the Masquerade Gala in the grand ballroom of the Inner Spire.

Sebastian stood near the massive reinforced glass windows of the upper balcony, looking down at the absolute circus below.

He was still wearing the boring grey and blue tactical armor of Trent. His kinetic rifle was strapped to his chest. He was assigned to the perimeter guard detail, tasked with keeping the unauthorized trash away from the precious executives.

"I cannot believe these people," Sebastian muttered, his voice barely audible over the swelling obnoxious orchestral music echoing through the ballroom.

The room below was a masterpiece of wasted resources. The floor was made of polished obsidian, laced with glowing veins of liquid gold. Massive fountains didn’t pump water, they pumped expensive pink wine that cascaded down into crystal basins.

The guests were a collection of the highest-level NPCs and aristocratic beta testers on the server. They wore flowing gowns of woven starlight and tailored suits made from the hides of endangered digital beasts.

But the worst part was the masks.

It was a masquerade. Every single elite wore a mask carved from pure crystallized mana!

They were shaped like elegant foxes, roaring lions, and weeping angels. They pulsed with an aura of condensed magical energy that could have easily powered the water filtration systems of the Sector 4 slums for a decade.

Instead, it was being used as a fashion statement.

"Look at them," Rix whispered from his guard post ten feet away. The young soldier was staring down at the dancing couples with wide envious eyes. "Guild Master Regis just walked in. He’s wearing a mask made of a Level 70 Diamond Golem core. Do you know how many credits that’s worth, Trent?"

"Enough to buy you a personality, Rix. Shut up and watch the door," Sebastian deadpanned, not even looking at the kid.

He didn’t care about the fashion. His silver-tinged eyes were entirely focused on the layout of the room. He was running a brutal tactical calculus in his head.

There were four primary targets tonight.

Guild Master Regis, the head of the Vanguard Syndicate. He was currently sipping pink wine near the center fountain, surrounded by fawning sycophants.

Then there were the three lieutenants.

Inquisitor Vance, the psychic interrogator who had tried to scan Sebastian in the holding cell. Commander Sterling, the arrogant noble who had sponsored Sebastian in the Crucible. And General Kael, the man directly responsible for running the Harvest Dens where refugees were boiled into batteries.

They were all gathered in one room. It was the perfect opportunity!

But the security was tight. There were at least fifty heavily armed Vanguard elites patrolling the floor. Magical drones the size of hummingbirds floated near the ceiling, constantly recording the entire event for the Vanguard broadcast network.

Sebastian pulled up his spoofed green and blue UI. The red [Admin Suspicion] meter sat at a comfortable zero.

"Time to slip the leash," Sebastian whispered to himself.

He accessed the internal Vanguard security network through his Elite badge. He didn’t cast a massive Reality Hack. He used his [Code Compiler] to execute a series of microscopic surgical edits to the surveillance grid.

He highlighted the patrol route assigned to Gunner Trent. He pulled the digital line of his route and gently dragged it across the floor plan, perfectly overlapping it with the known blind spots of the hummingbird drones.

[Action Registered: Modify Patrol Parameters.]

[Status: Accepted. Route Updated.]

Next, he targeted the specific camera drone monitoring his current balcony. He didn’t disable it. That would trigger an immediate maintenance alarm.

He just copied the last five seconds of his visual feed. An image of Trent standing perfectly still, staring blankly ahead. He pasted it over the live feed on a continuous loop.

"Enjoy the screen saver, command," Sebastian smirked behind his visor.

He turned away from the railing and walked silently toward a heavy iron maintenance door tucked away in the shadows of the alcove. He slipped his ID badge over the scanner.

CLICK.