[WARNING: REMOVAL OF CORE WILL RESULT IN CATASTROPHIC SERVER COLLAPSE.]

[CEASE IMMEDIATELY.]

"I decline your terms of service," Sebastian snarled.

He torqued his back and violently ripped the orb off the pedestal.

SNAP!

A sound like a planetary guitar string snapping echoed through the liquid.

The white light of the Core instantly shifted to a deep, dark azure in his hands. He had disconnected it.

The reaction was immediate and apocalyptic.

The thick red fluid of the Blood Lake instantly lost its cohesion. Without the Core to govern the physics of the server, the liquid literally stopped being liquid. It shattered into millions of red polygons that floated aimlessly upward.

Sebastian kicked off the pedestal, swimming rapidly toward the surface through the dissolving data.

He broke the surface and landed heavily on the rocky shoreline.

The world was ending.

The two sickly orange suns in the sky flickered, froze, and simply popped out of existence. The skybox tore open, revealing the absolute, pitch-black void of the Juncture outside.

The physics engine was in total freefall.

Gravity shut off.

"W-what’s happening?!" a refugee screamed from the cages.

The rusted iron cages lifted off the ground, floating lazily into the air. The rocks, the ash, the melted armor of Kenji’s guards....everything began to drift upward toward the shattered sky.

Sebastian stood firmly on the ground, his own [Gravity Domain] keeping his boots anchored to the bedrock. He held the massive, heavy World Core under his arm like a football.

He watched the cages float higher. The NPCs inside were screaming in pure terror, clawing at the bars as they drifted up toward the jagged black tears in reality.

If they passed through the skybox into the Juncture, their base code would instantly violently un-render. They would be erased.

Sebastian didn’t reach out. He didn’t use a spell to pull them back down.

He just watched them go with absolute, deadpan apathy.

They weren’t real. They were just data. And he needed the data in his hands more than he needed to pretend to be a hero.

He tapped his green Admin UI. He pulled up the routing protocol for Corbin’s Spoofing Drive.

"Initiate transit," Sebastian commanded coldly. "Destination: Outpost Rust." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

A jagged, static-filled portal tore open directly in front of him.

He didn’t look back at the screaming refugees as they were sucked into the void. He didn’t look at the canyon dissolving into grey wireframes.

Sebastian stepped through the portal, leaving Server 404 to be entirely digested by the apocalypse.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The transition out of Server 404 was like being spat out of a cosmic garbage disposal.

Sebastian materialized in the absolute, dark zero-gravity of the Juncture, his heavy boots finding purchase on a floating slab of concrete. He didn’t stumble. His thirty-percent synchronized biological muscles easily absorbed the kinetic shock.

He stood in the void, completely surrounded by the swirling purple smog of the Ethereal Plane’s dead zone. Tucked firmly under his right arm was the glowing, brilliantly white sphere of the World Core he had just violently forcefully evicted from the Blood Lake.

"One down," Sebastian wheezed, his breath pluming in the freezing vacuum. "Three to go."

He pulled up his glowing green and blue hybrid UI.

[Item Acquired: World Core (Server 404)] [Raw Source Code Extracted: 2,500,000 Units]

[Law Synthesis Requirement: 2,500,000 /10,000,000]

He needed ten million units of raw, foundational data to synthesize a brand new law of physics. He needed to write a line of code that would explicitly tell the Ethereal Plane to un-fuck Valerie’s comatose soul.

A single planet’s core gave him a quarter of what he needed. The math was brutally simple. He had to delete three more realities.

"I really hate doing chores on a tight schedule," Sebastian muttered, wiping a streak of black, pixelated blood off his chin.

He didn’t return to Outpost Rust. He didn’t take a nap. He opened his administrative map, projecting the glowing, three dimensional holographic globe of the multiverse into the dark space in front of him.

Thousands of tiny, flickering orbs dotted the projection.

He wasn’t looking for high-tier, heavily defended worlds like Server 112. He didn’t have the time to infiltrate corporate dystopias or fight massive, organized armies. He needed fast, easy targets. He needed the dying, corrupted servers that the System had essentially abandoned to the Void.

He tapped a sickly green orb on the edge of the map.

[Target: Server 519 - The Rotting Swamp]

"Initiate transit," Sebastian commanded.

FWOOSH!

The Juncture tore open, swallowing him whole.

He landed knee-deep in thick, bubbling green muck. The smell hit him instantly..,a foul, suffocating mixture of sulfur, decaying plant matter, and raw sewage. Server 519 was a sprawling, endless swamp of twisted, dead trees and thick fog.

It was a Level 30 zone, completely overrun by corrupted Lizardmen who had formed a fanatical, blood-thirsty slaver guild.

About fifty yards away, sitting atop a massive, ruined ziggurat of moss-covered stone, was their Guild Master. He was a towering, scaled behemoth wielding a jagged bone spear, currently in the middle of executing a line of terrified, low-level human players to feed his own stats.

Sebastian didn’t sneak. He didn’t care about stealth. He just walked out of the thick brush, his black leather coat dragging through the mud.

"Hey, Godzilla!" Sebastian yelled, his magically amplified voice cutting through the croaking of the swamp. "Health inspector. You guys are operating without a permit!"

The Lizardman Warlord whipped his head around, his yellow slit eyes narrowing at the lone, ragged human.

"Kill the meat!" the Warlord hissed.

Dozens of heavily armored reptilian guards surged down the steps of the ziggurat, raising rusted swords and crude crossbows.

"You guys really need a new script," Sebastian sighed.

He just raised his right hand, his silver-tinged eyes glowing with the cold, absolute authority of the Sovereign of Laws.

[Conceptual Law Activated: Gravity Domain]

He didn’t target the ground. He targeted the exact spatial coordinates of the entire ziggurat.