He was panting heavily, his arms smoking and covered in minor rendering burns, but a dark, triumphant smile was plastered across his face.

He looked around the dead, silent room. The grand corporate dystopia of the Vanguard Syndicate was officially unplugged.

"Consider your subscription canceled," Sebastian whispered into the dark.

He had the core. He had the power. It was time to go home and wake up the Princess.​​​​​​

—-

The zero-gravity environment of the inner sanctum was a terrifying, silent mess.

Sebastian floated gently backward, his heavy boots no longer anchored to the polished obsidian floor. He clutched the massive, glowing azure sphere of the Regional Core tightly to his chest. It was freezing cold and pulsed with the condensed, desperate heartbeat of an entire planetary server.

Around him, the colossal Server Pillar was dying.

The blindingly bright blue waterfall of code that had stretched into the infinite dark ceiling suddenly sputtered. It turned a sickly, dead grey. The glowing runes etched into the glass floor violently shorted out.

l

POP! POP! POP!

l

Showers of sparks erupted like dying fireworks. Shards of the shattered diamond doors drifted aimlessly through the air, catching the fading emergency lights.

Without the Core to process its logic, the Vanguard Syndicate’s absolute authority was nothing but dead weight.

"Well, that was easier than expected," Sebastian muttered, his voice sounding weirdly muffled inside his own head without an atmosphere to carry the sound.

"Guess their IT department really sucked."

He looked down at his green-and-blue hybrid UI. The terrifying red [Admin Suspicion] meter that had been threatening to vaporize him just a minute ago was completely gone.

[System Connection Lost.]

[Server 112 Offline.]

[Catastrophic Physics Failure Detected.]

Sebastian let out a short, breathy laugh.

"Yeah, no shit."

He didn’t just crash a computer.He had literally unplugged a reality.

Outside the sound-dampened glass of the sanctum, the Upper Ring of Server 112 was experiencing the horrifying consequences of a completely unmoderated physics engine.

Through the massive, dark windows, Sebastian watched the ’perfect’ corporate dystopia tear itself apart. It started with the gravity.

The artificial dampeners and anti-gravity platforms that kept the pristine towers of the elites floating above the smog-choked slums simply stopped working.

But they didn’t fall. The code was so broken that the concept of ’down’ ceased to exist.

GROOOAAAN!

The heavy, metallic screech of tearing infrastructure vibrated through the floorboards and into Sebastian’s boots.

A massive, hundred-story corporate skyscraper outside the window slowly ripped away from its foundation. It didn’t crumble. It just floated upward, spinning lazily into the dark, bruising sky like a discarded toy.

Millions of gallons of hyper-oxygenated pink wine from the decorative fountains erupted into the air, forming massive, floating spheres of liquid that drifted through the chaos.

"Looks like a damn snow globe," Sebastian noted, completely unbothered as he watched a chunk of a luxury hover-car drift past the window.

Down in the grand ballroom, the situation was infinitely worse for the Vanguard elites.

The heavy iron blast shields that had locked the nobles inside violently snapped off their hinges, sucked out into the localized vacuum.

The sudden depressurization yanked dozens of high-tier aristocrats out of the room.

Sebastian watched as men and women in starlight-woven gowns were pulled into the sky, screaming silently as the server failed to render an atmosphere for their digital lungs.

They thrashed and kicked at empty space.

They were Level 70s. Level 80s. It didn’t matter. Without the server’s rules to govern their magical defenses, they were just meat caught in a cosmic blender.

"Should have invested in some parachutes instead of diamond masks," Sebastian sighed, shaking his head.

The red, crackling web of the planetary firewall that encompassed the massive Dyson sphere began to violently flicker. It was starving. Without the Regional Core to feed it raw mana, the billion lines of anti-virus code started eating itself.

Huge, jagged gaps tore open in the skybox.

The oppressive, neon-lit red energy grid fractured, revealing the endless, dark purple smog of the Juncture waiting outside.

The planet was bleeding out.

[WARNING: Structural Integrity at 10%.] [Total Deletion Imminent.]

"Alright, time to bounce before this whole place turns into a 404 error," Sebastian grunted.

He didn’t have his [Heavenly Steps] or his [Absolute Flight]. He was still disconnected from the Earth server, and Server 112 was actively dying. But he had the Spoofing Drive bolted to his arm, and he had the most powerful administrative battery in the universe tucked under his arm.

He pressed his right hand flat against the smooth, freezing surface of the Regional Core.

He forcefully jammed his [Code Compiler] into the azure crystal.

"System Command," Sebastian’s voice dropped into a terrifying, metallic hum that vibrated the raw code of the dying room.

"Establish a localized transit tether.

Destination: Server 894. Sanctuary coordinates."

BZZZZT!

The Regional Core violently protested. It was not a teleportation device. It was a foundational anchor. Trying to use it to rip a hole through the Juncture was like trying to start a car with a nuclear warhead. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Red error windows flooded Sebastian’s vision.

[Action Denied. Invalid Transit Protocol.] [Mana Output Exceeds Safety Parameters.]

"I am the Sovereign of Laws, you stupid rock," Sebastian snarled, his silver-tinged eyes flaring with unyielding authority. "I don’t ask for permission. I write the patch notes. Execute!"

He violently shoved his 10,000x Nexus Glitch into the command. He took ten thousand lifetimes of spatial manipulation and aggressively brute-forced the logic gates of the Core.

CRACK!

The air in front of Sebastian didn’t just warp. It shattered like a pane of bulletproof glass.

A jagged, unstable portal tore open in the zero-gravity vacuum. It wasn’t a pristine golden circle or a smooth blue gateway. It was a violent, screaming wound in reality, framed by jagged green and black static. Through the tear, he could smell the faint, comforting scent of wet concrete and old diesel fuel.

Home.

Behind him, the entire Server Pillar finally gave way. The massive glass dome of the inner sanctum collapsed inward, sucked away into the void. The absolute, deafening roar of a dying planet crashing in on itself rushed toward his back.