"I need software. I need to write a brand new conceptual law that explicitly permits her to exist."

"How the hell do you write a law of physics?"

Galleon grunted from the doorway, scratching his soot-stained beard.

Sebastian stopped pacing. He opened his digital UI and navigated to the newly unlocked [Law Synthesis] module he had acquired after hitting Level 60.

The module was greyed out. A padlock icon hovered over it.

[Requirement to synthesize Conceptual Law: 10,000,000 Units of Raw Source Code.]

"Source Code," Sebastian whispered, a dark, terrifying smile slowly spreading across his face.

"What’s Source Code?" Wraith asked, his hand instinctively dropping to his daggers. He recognized that smile. It was the smile Sebastian wore right before an army got turned into paste.

"It’s the raw, unadulterated data that makes up a server’s World Core," Sebastian explained, turning to his lieutenants. His silver eyes burned with a completely unhinged light. "It’s the beating heart of a planet."

Wraith swallowed hard. "Boss... to get ten million units of Source Code... you’d have to harvest..."

"Entire servers," Sebastian finished for him.

He wasn’t just a survivor anymore. He wasn’t just a guy trying to build a safe zone and run a potion monopoly. The System had put a lock on the only person he trusted, and the only key was mass multiversal destruction.

Sebastian casually wiped a smudge of digital blood off his cheek.

"Galleon. Fire up the Sky-Fortress," Sebastian commanded, his voice completely devoid of empathy. "Wraith. Pack your bags.

We’re going to go delete some worlds."

——

The transition back to Outpost Rust was just as miserable as the first time, but at least Sebastian wasn’t actively dying of Void Toxicity.

He stood in the center of Corbin’s heavily reinforced, lead-lined bunker. The rogue code-smith’s underground lab still smelled like burnt ozone, stale coffee, and extreme paranoia.

Sebastian was fully healed, his thirty percent physical synchronization resting comfortably in his bones. He wore a fresh black leather coat he had manifested from his inventory, completely unbothered by the fact that he was about to declare war on the multiverse.

Gwen was leaning against a stack of server racks, cleaning one of her heavy kinetic pistols with an oily rag.

"So," Gwen started, not looking up from the gun barrel. "You walked into Server 112, murdered the top corporate brass, stole their Regional Core, collapsed their entire planetary physics engine, and walked out without a scratch." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"I got a little scratched," Sebastian corrected, tapping the faint, silver runic scars on his neck. "But yeah. Basically."

"And now you’re back," she sighed, snapping the magazine back into the grip with a sharp CLACK. "Let me guess. You want to buy a planet?"

"I don’t buy things anymore, Seattle," Sebastian said flatly. "I harvest them. I need Source Code. A lot of it. I need you to chart me a course through the Juncture to the weakest, most vulnerable servers still on the grid."

Before Gwen could respond, the bunker completely lost its mind.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The emergency sirens didn’t just wail; they shrieked. Every single holographic monitor in Corbin’s lab violently flashed from a calming blue to an aggressive, blinding crimson.

"What the fuck did you do?!" Corbin screamed, dropping a highly sensitive mana-crystal. It shattered on the floor, but the engineer didn’t even care. He scrambled over to the primary console, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

"I’m completely disconnected! The local network is being hijacked by a massive external frequency!"

"It wasn’t me," Sebastian stated, his eyes narrowing as he watched the screens.

"I didn’t touch anything."

"Someone is brute-forcing a broadcast through the Juncture’s ambient static," Gwen said, raising her pistols and aiming them at the reinforced blast doors.

"It takes an ungodly amount of power to push a signal through the void. Who has that kind of juice?"

The static on the massive central monitor cleared.

It wasn’t a text log. It wasn’t an audio message. It was a high-definition, three-dimensional holographic projection that forcefully rendered itself in the middle of the bunker.

Two towering figures appeared.

Sebastian crossed his arms. He recognized the armor style. He recognized the overwhelming, arrogant auras radiating from the projection.

They were Saints. The elite colonizers of the Void.

The figure on the left was massive, clad in heavy, pristine white Paladin armor that glowed with a sickeningly pure holy light. He held a massive warhammer resting on his shoulder. He looked like an avenging angel, if angels were entirely sociopathic.

[Entity Identified: Saint Grigori]

[Class: Warlord of the Heavens] [Level: 95]

The figure on the right was terrifying in a completely different way. He was lean, wearing traditional monk robes that had been heavily spliced with glowing, neon-green cybernetics. A heavy, metal halo of floating data streams rotated slowly behind his shaved head.

[Entity Identified: Saint Jin] [Class: Cyber-Monk] [Level: 92]

"Citizens of the assimilated realms," Grigori’s voice boomed through the bunker’s speakers. It was a rich, charismatic voice, entirely devoid of the static distortion the Apostle had used. It sounded like a politician delivering a victory speech. "Hear the word of the Grand Design."

"A cancer has infected the network," Jin continued, his voice a calm, synthesized hum. "An Anomaly walks among the servers.

A glitch that defies the sacred geometry of the Ethereal Plane. This virus calls itself the Sovereign of Laws. It calls itself the Drifter."

Gwen slowly turned her head and glared at Sebastian. "You made friends fast."

"I’m a very sociable guy," Sebastian shrugged.

"This Anomaly has slaughtered our vanguards," Grigori’s holy aura flared, his voice dropping into a register of righteous fury. "It has disrupted the natural order of assimilation. It stole the Regional Core of Sector 112 and plunged an entire world into the void."

"We declare a Holy Crusade against the Glitch," Jin stated, clasping his cybernetic hands together in a twisted prayer. "The Void Gods demand its deletion. The System demands order."

The hologram shifted, displaying a massive, glowing wanted poster. It featured a surprisingly accurate rendering of Sebastian’s featureless black helmet and dark leather coat.

"To any Warlord, any Guild, any scavenger who brings us the severed digital soul of this Anomaly," Grigori announced, his smile entirely cruel. "The Church of the Void offers a bounty unprecedented in the history of the game."

The text flashed across the screen in bold, golden letters.

[BOUNTY REWARD: Administrative Rights to Three Fully Integrated Planets.]

Corbin choked on his own spit. He fell backward, his chair tipping over, and crashed onto the floor.

"Three... three planets?!"

Gwen lowered her pistols. She stared at the hologram, then looked at Sebastian.