"I don’t have time for this," Sebastian grunted.

He had to get to the Server Pillar. He had to pull the Regional Core and completely collapse the localized system before the firewall finished processing his execution order.

The twelve Void Wardens raised their red logic-blades in perfect, terrifying unison. They locked their featureless, mirrored visors onto the Level 42 Gunner standing in the center of the room.

"Execute," the lead Warden commanded.

They lunged forward. They didn’t run; they skipped frames of animation, glitching across the ballroom floor at speeds that broke the sound barrier, entirely ignoring the ruined terrain of the shattered obsidian tiles.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. The laid-back, sarcastic Drifter was gone. The Sovereign of Laws took the wheel.

"Let’s see if you machines can keep up with a real glitch," Sebastian whispered, his muscles coiling tight as he prepared to break every remaining rule on the server.

The twelve Void Wardens moved with apocalyptic speed. They were a synchronized wave of liquid chrome and glowing red deletion code, closing the fifty-yard gap across the ruined ballroom in less than a heartbeat.

Sebastian didn’t attempt to fight them.

Fighting the server’s anti-virus software with physical punches was like trying to punch a tsunami.

He needed to unplug the ocean.

"Move," Sebastian commanded his own body.

His thirty-percent physical synchronization fired on all cylinders. His Demigod-tier biology pushed past the restrictive parameters of his Level 42 disguise.

The marble floor beneath his heavy boots instantly shattered into fine dust as he kicked off, launching himself backward with explosive, terrifying force.

SWISH!

Four red logic-blades violently converged on the exact spatial coordinates where his head had been a microsecond prior. The error code of their weapons clashed, letting out a horrific screech of static that smelled intensely of burning plastic.

Sebastian landed twenty feet away, his boots skidding across the slick, wine-soaked obsidian floor. He didn’t pause to admire his dodge. He immediately spun around and sprinted toward the far end of the grand hall.

Looming in the shadows of the massive, velvet-draped alcove was his absolute objective.

The heavy, polished diamond doors. Behind them rested the Server Pillar and the Regional Core that was currently keeping this entire miserable corporate dystopia online.

"Target evading. Recalibrating intercept vectors," the emotionless, telepathic voice of the lead Warden echoed in his skull.

Sebastian didn’t look back. He could hear the terrifying, stuttering hum of the executioners glitching through the air right behind him.

He reached the center of the room and violently dropped his center of gravity, skidding to a halt right next to the puddle of blood and motor oil where Guild Master Regis lay dead.

The headless, mangled corpse of the Vanguard Syndicate’s ruler was a gruesome sight, but Sebastian wasn’t here to pay his respects. He needed a key.

The diamond doors guarding the Server Pillar weren’t locked with a simple keypad or a magical ward. They were sealed behind the highest tier of biometric security the Ethereal Plane could generate. The scanner required the active, living biological signature of a registered Administrator to open.

Sebastian was an Administrator, but he was flagged as a hostile virus. If he touched that scanner, it would instantly trigger the orbital strike.

He needed an authorized user.

Sebastian reached down and violently grabbed Regis’s corpse by the collar of his ruined, expensive suit.

"Sorry, buddy. You’re coming with me," Sebastian grunted.

He hauled the heavy, dead weight of the Guild Master over his shoulder. Blood and slick, black oil immediately soaked into Sebastian’s grey-and-blue Vanguard uniform. It was disgusting, but entirely necessary.

[ADMIN SUSPICION: 99%...]

The red warning bar in his vision was practically vibrating, the system mere seconds away from fully confirming his Anomaly status and dropping the hammer.

Sebastian sprinted for the alcove, dragging the bleeding corpse of the server’s highest authority figure behind him like a morbid sack of potatoes.

"Do not let the Anomaly reach the terminal," the Wardens broadcasted, their chrome bodies blurring as they altered their trajectory.

Two of the executioners bypassed the floor entirely, running along the walls of the ballroom at a perfect ninety-degree angle, their red blades trailing sparks against the stone. They launched themselves off the pillars, diving straight toward Sebastian’s back.

Sebastian didn’t slow down. He casually reached into his bottomless inventory with his free hand. He pulled out the heavy, concrete-encrusted Earth Sword.

He didn’t swing it. He just held it backward and forcefully expanded the [Concept of Mass] into the blade.

The sword instantly spiked to fifty tons.

CLANG!

The diving Wardens slammed face-first into the impossibly dense slab of rock and iron.

The sheer kinetic rebound of hitting an immovable object traveling at Mach speed completely shattered their chrome visors.

The executioners tumbled backward, their digital forms glitching wildly as they crashed into the marble floor.

"Stay out of my personal space," Sebastian muttered, dismissing the sword back into his inventory to regain his speed.

He reached the alcove.

The massive, flawlessly polished diamond doors towered above him, reflecting the chaotic, strobe-light red of the emergency alarms. To the right of the doors was a sleek, glowing blue biometric scanner panel.

He dropped Regis’s body heavily onto the floor.

Sebastian reached into his pocket and pulled out the handful of glowing red microchips he had looted from the dead rebel hackers earlier.

The Decryptor Chips.

He didn’t have time to gracefully slice the security interface. The Wardens were already recovering, picking themselves up from the floor and raising their blades. He had maybe five seconds before he was skewered.

Sebastian forcefully slammed the high-tier Decryptor Chips directly into the glowing blue panel of the scanner.

BZZZT!

The scanner shrieked, the blue light instantly flashing a violent, warning red as the illegal hardware began violently brute-forcing the lock’s logic gates.

[System Alert: Unauthorized Hardware Detected.]

[Initiating Biometric Verification.]

[Please Present Administrator Credentials.]

Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Regis by the hair, hauling the heavy, dead head up from the floor. The Guild Master’s face was a ruined, bloody mess, his eyes wide and glassy.

"Look at the camera, boss," Sebastian said deadpan.

He violently smashed Regis’s face directly against the glowing glass of the scanner panel.

SQUELCH.

Blood smeared across the pristine surface.

The scanner’s laser aggressively swept over the dead man’s retinas, desperately trying to read the biological data through the gore and the interfering static of the Decryptor Chips.

"Verification failing. Entity deceased," the automated voice of the door chimed coldly.

"Oh, shut up and open the door," Sebastian growled.

He tapped into his own raw, glitched mana.

He channeled a tiny fraction of his [Cellular Necrosis] into Regis’s face, forcefully jump-starting the dead nerve endings and forcing the biological code to temporarily register as active.

It was a horrific, localized necromancy hack.