He dismissed the windows with a lazy flick of his eyes. He didn’t care about the numbers.

He cared about the results.

The sky was empty. The threat was neutralized. The massive, bleeding tear in the Juncture where the armada had emerged from was slowly, quietly beginning to stitch itself back together.

"Cleanup is going to be a nightmare," Sebastian grumbled, turning his back on the void. "Gwen is going to owe me a new coat.

And a lot of coffee."

He took a step toward the ramp leading back down into the depths of the leviathan skull, fully intending to head back to Corbin’s lab, grab his team, and finally go home.

But the Ethereal Plane never made things that easy.

A sharp, piercing hum suddenly cut through the quiet drifting of the ash. It wasn’t the sound of heavy, rusting metal. It was the high-pitched, frantic whine of an overloaded cybernetic engine pushing itself to the absolute breaking point.

Sebastian stopped. He didn’t turn around immediately. He just closed his eyes and let out a deeply annoyed groan.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sebastian whispered. "There is always one guy who doesn’t know when to quit."

He slowly turned his head, his silver eyes cutting through the thick, gray snowfall of human dust.

Darting out from the massive, swirling cloud of ash, moving with a jagged, erratic speed that defied the heavy gravity of the domain, was a single, glowing streak of neon green.

Someone had survived the meat grinder. And they were heading straight for him.

The swirling cloud of gray ash and bone dust parted violently.

Shooting out of the haze, looking like an angry, neon-green hornet buzzing through a snowstorm, was Saint Jin. The Cyber-Monk had somehow survived the absolute, catastrophic deletion of the entire Holy Crusade.

Sebastian stood on the rusted metal decking, his hands still in his pockets. He tilted his head slightly, genuinely curious as to how the guy had pulled it off.

Through his highly optimized [True Sight], Sebastian quickly parsed the math.

Jin wasn’t wearing his heavy, traditional monk robes anymore. He wasn’t wearing the thick, cybernetically enhanced armor plating that usually covered his chest and arms. In fact, Jin was practically naked, stripped down to a pair of lightweight, synthetic trousers.

The Cyber-Monk had realized the trap the exact moment the flagship’s hull began to rust. He had understood the brutal logic of the Law of Rotting Gravity: the heavier the object, the faster it decayed.

So, Jin had done the only logical thing. He had instantly ripped off every single piece of heavy gear he owned. He had unequipped his armor, dropped his massive, metal halo, and hurled his heavy weapons into the void before the chronological rot could transfer into his biological code.

He had reduced his physical mass to the absolute bare minimum, slowing the aging effect down to a crawl.

But gravity was still pulling him down. To survive the fall, Jin had deployed a highly illegal, wildly expensive artifact.

Wrapping around his lean, cybernetically scarred torso was a glowing, ethereal ribbon of pure, white energy. It was a ’Feather of the Saint,’ a localized, weightless flight artifact that completely ignored atmospheric conditions.

[Entity Identified: Saint Jin] [Class: Cyber-Monk] [Status: Critical. Extreme Hostility Detected.]

Jin wasn’t running away. He wasn’t trying to escape back through the closing warp portal.

The Warlord had just watched his entire fleet, his brother Grigori, and ten thousand of his loyal followers turn into a fine gray powder in the span of thirty seconds.

His cybernetic eyes were glowing with a frantic, unhinged crimson light. Thick, pulsing green data streams visibly bulged under the pale skin of his neck and arms. He was completely out of his mind with rage.

"ANOMALYYYYY!" Jin screamed.

His synthesized voice didn’t boom with charismatic authority anymore. It sounded like a jagged saw blade cutting through thick glass. It was raw, desperate, and completely broken.

Jin aimed his body directly at the rusted docking bay. He bypassed the falling debris, weaving through massive chunks of rusting steel with the terrifying, automated precision of his internal combat processors. He was using the glowing white ribbon to propel himself straight at Sebastian like a human missile.

"You killed them!" Jin shrieked, his face twisting into a mask of pure hatred. "You killed the Grand Design! You deleted the holy fleet! I will tear your base code apart with my bare hands!"

Sebastian watched the glowing monk barrel toward him. The distance was closing rapidly.

A thousand feet. Five hundred feet.

Sebastian didn’t step back. He didn’t drop into his Southpaw boxing stance. He just let out a long, tired sigh that fogged the inside of his cracked silver visor.

"You figured out the trick. Good for you," Sebastian muttered, his voice entirely deadpan. "You took off your heavy clothes.

Here’s a gold star. But did you really think that was going to save you?"

Jin didn’t care about the sarcasm. The Cyber-Monk raised his right arm. The sleek, silver cybernetics replacing his forearm snapped open, revealing a hidden, high-frequency plasma blade. The weapon ignited with a terrifying, hissing snap, glowing with enough heat to instantly cauterize whatever it cut.

"I am a Level 92 executioner!" Jin roared, the wind whipping his frantic words across the dock. "My agility stats are maxed! My processors are overclocked! You are just standing there! You are entirely vulnerable, you arrogant glitch!"

"Vulnerable," Sebastian repeated the word slowly, tasting it. He found it completely hilarious.

These high-level players were so utterly blinded by their own stat sheets. They thought the Ethereal Plane was just a game of numbers. Whoever had the highest level, the fastest speed, and the sharpest sword always won. They couldn’t comprehend that they were fighting a man who had the developer console open.

"I’m not standing here because I’m vulnerable, Jin," Sebastian said calmly. "I’m standing here because I’m bored."

Jin crossed the final hundred feet. He pulled his plasma blade back, targeting Sebastian’s neck for a clean, instant decapitation. The monk moved so fast that the game’s rendering engine literally struggled to draw him, leaving a blurry, neon-green afterimage in his wake.