"To fix her, I have to overwrite that rule. I have to synthesize a brand new Conceptual Law that explicitly permits her to exist. But creating a new law of physics from scratch requires fuel. It requires raw, unadulterated Source Code."

Corbin slowly pushed himself up from the floor, his eyes wide with absolute, unhinged horror. "Boss... to get ten million units of Source Code, you can’t just mine it. You have to extract it from the World Cores of fully integrated planets."

"Exactly," Sebastian said.

"You’re talking about deleting servers," Gwen breathed, taking a step back. "You’re talking about pulling the plug on entire realities.

Sebastian, there are millions of people living on those servers! Refugees, players, NPCs... if you take their World Core, the Void will instantly digest them."

The silence in the bunker was suffocating.

Sebastian looked at the smuggler. He didn’t blink. He didn’t offer a dramatic sigh of moral conflict. He didn’t grapple with the weight of the decision. The man who had desperately tried to play the role of the quiet, defensive survivor was dead. The Sovereign of Laws had taken over.

"I know," Sebastian said simply.

"You can’t be serious," Gwen hissed, her hand gripping her pistol. "I’ve done terrible things to survive in this shithole. But mass planetary extinction? For one girl? You are going to murder billions of people to wake up your princess?"

"Yes."

The answer was so immediate, so perfectly devoid of hesitation, that Gwen actually flinched.

"Listen to me, Seattle," Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a dark, metallic hum that vibrated the loose tools on the workbench.

"The System is a meat grinder. The Void Gods are currently eating their way through the multiverse. Earth is barely holding on because I put a fancy dome over a warehouse. I tried playing nice. I tried setting up an economy. I tried to follow the rules."

He took a slow, heavy step toward her. The sheer, terrifying pressure of his presence made the air in the room feel incredibly dense.

"But the System doesn’t care. It took her anyway. So, I am done playing nice. I am going to carve my way through the Juncture. I am going to rip the beating hearts out of every weak, corrupted server I can find, and I am going to burn them as fuel to get what I want."

Sebastian turned away, looking at the

holographic map of the multiverse floating above the central console. Thousands of tiny, glowing orbs dotted the dark void.

"I am the Anomaly," Sebastian whispered, his silver eyes reflecting the digital map. "They put a three-planet bounty on my head? Fine.

I’ll take thirty."

Wraith didn’t argue. The Assassin simply bowed his head. "Awaiting orders, Boss. Where do we start?"

Sebastian reached out and tapped a small, violently flickering orange orb on the outer edge of the holographic projection. It was located in a sector of the Juncture that was heavily saturated with purple Void smog.

"Server 404," Sebastian read the data tags.

"It’s a low-population zone. Barely integrated.

The System uses it as a dumping ground for corrupted files and failed players. It’s weak.

It’s unstable. And it has a World Core just sitting there waiting to be harvested."

"I’m staying here," Gwen stated firmly. She crossed her arms, her jaw set. "I’m not helping you blow up a planet."

"I didn’t ask you to," Sebastian deadpanned, turning his back on her. "You and Corbin stay here. Keep the bunker locked down. Wraith, you’re with me. We’re going to go pull some weeds."

Sebastian tapped his newly upgraded interface. He bypassed the standard Ethereal Plane travel mechanics and directly accessed the raw routing protocols of the Spoofing Drive.

"Initiate transit," Sebastian commanded.

"Destination: Server 404."

VWOOSH!

The air inside the bunker violently warped. A jagged, static-filled tear in reality ripped open in the center of the room. It didn’t look like a magical portal. It looked like a violently bleeding glitch in the fabric of the universe.

Sebastian didn’t look back. He adjusted the collar of his black leather coat and stepped straight into the screaming void.

—-

The transition to Server 404 was not a seamless glide through digital space. It felt like being forcefully shoved through a high-speed industrial fan made of pure mathematics.

"Guh!"

Sebastian materialized with a heavy, concussive thud, his boots slamming into the ground. He stumbled forward, his thirty-percent physical synchronization easily catching his massive weight before he could face-plant.

He stood up straight and immediately regretted taking a breath.

"Fuck me," Sebastian coughed, waving a black-gloved hand in front of his face. The air was absolutely lethal. It didn’t smell like sulfur or the metallic tang of blood. It smelled like burning hair and superheated bleach. Every inhale felt like dragging sandpaper down his trachea.

BING! BING!

His UI instantly flared with aggressive, blinking red warnings.

[System Alert: Entering Server 404 - The Ash Wastes.]

[Environmental Hazard: Extreme Heat Detected.]

[Warning: Ambient Temperature exceeds 150 Degrees Celsius.]

[Debuff Applied: Searing Lungs. -100 HP/sec.]

Sebastian didn’t panic. He just rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother casting a cooling spell.

He didn’t reach for a water potion.

His [Thermal Immunity] passive law, perfectly evolved through the 10,000x Nexus Glitch, instantly recognized the hostile environment.

The conceptual law of absolute thermal rejection wrapped around his avatar like an invisible, soothing second skin. The terrifying heat simply ceased to interact with his biology.

"Nice try, server," Sebastian muttered, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness.

He looked around. The landscape was a breathtaking, horrifying monument to digital despair.

There was no sky. Instead, two massive, bloated, sickly-orange suns hung suspended in a violently swirling canopy of dark purple smog. The light they cast was harsh, casting long, unnatural shadows across the endless dunes.

But it wasn’t sand beneath his boots.

Sebastian crouched down and scooped up a handful of the white, powdery substance that made up the desert. He let it sift through his fingers.

CRUNCH.

It was bone. Millions upon millions of pulverized, completely shattered human and monster bones, mixed with the raw, grey wireframe data of deleted assets.

"A literal graveyard," Sebastian whispered, standing back up.

Server 404 wasn’t a standard game world. In the lore of the Ethereal Plane, when a player’s data became too corrupted, or when a lower-tier server finally succumbed to the Void, the System didn’t just cleanly delete the files. It dumped the garbage here. It was the cosmic trash bin of the multiverse.

The wind howled, whipping the bone-dust into blinding, abrasive tornadoes that scoured the jagged, rusted metal spires jutting out of the dunes.

Sebastian was alone. Wraith hadn’t loaded in yet, likely delayed by the heavy encryption protocols of the transit.

Sebastian didn’t wait. He didn’t have time to hold hands. He opened his administrative map. The UI projected a massive, glowing holographic grid over his vision.

He wasn’t looking for towns or refugee camps. He was looking for the largest concentration of localized mana on the server. He was looking for the World Core.

"There," Sebastian said softly.

About ten miles to the north, a massive, violently pulsing red blip illuminated his radar

It was sitting at the bottom of a colossal geological depression.

He started walking.

He didn’t use his [Heavenly Steps] to teleport.

The ambient magical interference from the twin suns was incredibly dense, and forcefully bending space right now would just drain his physical stamina unnecessarily. He simply engaged his Demigod-tier muscles and marched through the oppressive, lethal wasteland.

With every step, the bone-sand crunched loudly beneath his boots. The sheer scale of the desolation was staggering. He passed the half-buried, rusted husks of massive Vanguard siege mechs. He walked over the colossal, fossilized ribcages of Void Titans that had long since rotted away.

"The System really doesn’t care about recycling," Sebastian noted, kicking a skull out of his path. It shattered into grey pixels upon impact. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

As he walked, his mind drifted back to Sanctuary.

He thought about the cold, pristine slab of the Resurrection Altar. He thought about Valerie lying there, her avatar completely frozen, her digital soul held hostage by a line of code. A dark, heavy anger settled in his chest.

It wasn’t the fiery, explosive rage of a berserker. It was the cold, terrifying certainty of an executioner.