The sheer absurdity of the bounty broke through her hardened smuggler exterior.

"Sebastian," Gwen whispered, her voice completely hollow. "They didn’t put a price on your head. They put a solar system on it. Every single psychotic player with a ship is going to come looking for you."

The broadcast abruptly ended, the screens returning to their normal blue hum.

The silence in the bunker was heavy and terrifying.

Sebastian stood perfectly still. He didn’t look panicked. He didn’t look angry.

He just stared at the empty space where the hologram had been.

He slowly reached up and cracked his neck.

"Three planets," Sebastian mused, his voice a dark, unhinged rasp. "They think my head is only worth three planets? I’m honestly a little insulted."

"Are you insane?!" Corbin shrieked from the floor, scrambling backward until his back hit a server rack. "A Holy Crusade! They’re sending the entire server population after you! We are dead! We are so fucking dead!"

"Relax, stubby," Sebastian said, his silver eyes flashing with a terrifying, predatory light.

"This just solves our logistics problem."

"Solves it?!" Gwen demanded, throwing her hands in the air. "How does being hunted by the entire multiverse solve anything?!"

"I need ten million units of Source Code to synthesize the Law I need to save Valerie," Sebastian explained calmly, as if he were discussing a grocery list.

"I was going to have to fly around the Juncture, manually kicking down the doors of weak servers, and ripping out their cores one by one. It was going to take weeks."

He turned to look at Gwen, a cold, absolute smile spreading across his face.

"But now? Now, the biggest, baddest Warlords in the game are going to pack their World Cores onto their ships and fly them right to my front door."

Sebastian reached into his inventory and pulled out his Rusty Iron Dagger. He casually tossed it into the air and caught it by the hilt.

"Gwen. Corbin. Pack your gear," Sebastian ordered, the authority of the Sovereign filling the room. "We are going back to Sanctuary. If they want to start a Holy Crusade, fine. Let them come. I’ll just harvest them all."

Corbin was an absolute blur of greasy overalls and frantic motion. The rogue code-smith was practically vibrating as he darted between the massive, humming server banks and the heavily modified arcane soldering station. Sparks showered the concrete floor like miniature fireworks. He was currently elbow-deep in the gutted remains of the Vanguard Syndicate’s biometric scanners, splicing the stolen corporate tech with the raw, reality-bending power of the Juncture.

"Hold the damn light steady, Seattle!" Corbin shrieked, his voice cracking. "If I cross the localized mana-conduits with the Anomaly’s base file, we are going to turn this entire room into a radioactive crater!"

Gwen stood next to him, holding a high-powered tactical flashlight. She looked completely exhausted. She rested her other hand on the grip of her kinetic pistol, her eyes darting nervously toward the reinforced blast doors.

"I am holding it steady, you twitchy little freak," Gwen snapped back. "Just hurry up.

We have a three-planet bounty on our heads.

Every Warlord with a spaceship and half a brain is currently mapping coordinates to this sector. We need to leave."

Sebastian sat on the ruined leather couch in the center of the room. He looked like the physical embodiment of a bad Monday morning. His black leather coat was scorched and torn, and he was currently rubbing the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a massive migraine.

"They aren’t going to breach the doors," Sebastian muttered, his voice carrying that strange, metallic resonance. "I inverted the gravity in the hallway outside. If anyone tries to walk down here, they’re going to fall up into a ceiling of rusted iron spikes. We have time.

Do it right, Corbin."

"I am doing it right! I am doing it perfectly!"

Corbin yelled, violently slamming a glowing green crystal into a heavy iron bracer.

BZZZT!

A blinding flash of emerald light illuminated the bunker. The heavy servers whined, the cooling fans kicking into maximum overdrive as they processed the sheer, ungodly amount of data Corbin had just forced into a single piece of hardware.

"Done!" Corbin gasped, collapsing backward onto the concrete floor. He wiped a thick smear of black grease across his forehead and pointed a shaking finger at the table. "The integration is complete. I synced the Ethereal Plane UI with the raw administrative bypass."

Sebastian stood up. His heavy boots thudded against the floor. He walked over to the workbench and looked down at his left arm.

The metallic bracer was now fused directly to the green runes of his [Code Compiler].

"Let’s see what we unlocked," Sebastian whispered.

He mentally accessed his administrative interface.

BING!

The system didn’t fight him this time. The glowing green and blue hybrid UI expanded in his vision, clear, crisp, and completely free of Void Toxicity errors.

[System Administrator Status: CONFIRMED.]

[Updating Localized UI...]

[New Modules Unlocked.]

Sebastian scrolled past his physical stats. He didn’t care about his Level 60 cap right now.

He didn’t care about his ridiculous strength or his [Concept of Mass]. His silver-tinged eyes immediately locked onto the very bottom of the menu.

There it was. The tool he needed to save Valerie.

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

Sebastian stared at the glowing text. He read the numbers again, making sure his heavily optimized brain wasn’t misinterpreting the zeroes.

"Ten million," Sebastian said, his voice entirely flat. "It wants ten million units."

Wraith materialized from the deep shadows in the corner of the room. The Level 25 Assassin had been standing guard in complete silence. He stepped forward, his dark mask betraying absolutely no emotion, though his posture was tense.

"Boss," Wraith rasped softly. "Ten million units of Source Code... that isn’t something you can just farm from Void Crawlers. Source Code is the foundational data of a world. It’s the beating heart of a server."

"I know," Sebastian replied coldly.

"What does it mean?" Gwen asked, lowering the flashlight. She looked between the Assassin and the Demigod. "What is a Law Synthesis?"

Sebastian leaned against the workbench. He crossed his arms, his pitch-black coat shifting around his dense, biological steel muscles.

"Valerie is in a coma back on Earth," Sebastian explained, his tone devoid of any warm emotion. "The System put a death-lock on her soul because she absorbed a catastrophic hit to save the base. Standard healing magic won’t work. Resurrection Altars won’t work. The game physically coded a rule that says she has to stay dead."

He tapped the glowing green interface hovering in the air.