Chapter 89: [89]: Return to Earth, The Saints of the Outer Void
He had everything he needed. He had broken the level cap. He had the administrative authority to rewrite the rules of Earth. He had the power to protect Sanctuary.
He turned his back on the empty pedestal. He needed to get home. He needed to check on Valerie, Wraith, and his crazy dwarven engineer.
He mentally selected the fast-travel waypoint anchored to the True City Core in his warehouse.
"Take me back to Sanctuary," he commanded the system.
The space around him instantly folded inward. There was no flashy portal or spinning runic circles. He was simply copy-pasted from the Spire directly back to Earth.
VWOOSH.
The transition was instantaneous but the moment Sebastian materialized he knew something was catastrophically wrong.
He expected to spawn in the cool dimly lit command room of Sanctuary. He expected to see Valerie tapping furiously on her holographic logistics tablets and Wraith standing silently in the corner shadows. He expected the comforting low hum of the massive diesel generators and the polished obsidian floors of his Tier 2 Citadel.
Instead he spawned into an absolute nightmare.
"What the fuck," Sebastian breathed as his silver eyes widened behind his new metallic visor.
He was standing on the teleportation dais in the grand hall but the hall was ruined. The beautiful vaulted glass ceilings were completely shattered and left the room exposed to a bruised purple sky.
The massive obsidian war table was cracked in half. The plush banners were torn to shreds and burning with a foul green fire. The air was thick and heavy and smelled strongly of stale blood and the unmistakable suffocating stench of Void corruption.
He stepped off the dais.
CRUNCH.
His boot came down on a pile of shattered glass and dried blackened blood.
The silence in the Citadel was heavy and wrong. There was no hum of the water purifiers. There was no clanking of the Scrap Golems patrolling the courtyards.
Sebastian’s heart hammered against his ribs. He immediately pulled up his golden UI and checked the server time.
His eyes locked onto the date.
"August 1st," Sebastian whispered and his voice was completely hollow.
He had entered the Spire on May 4th. To him, the trials of the Timekeeper and the ascension had taken maybe three hours.
The time dilation of the trans-dimensional dungeon had robbed him. While he was fighting Eldric in space, three agonizing brutal months had passed on Server 894.
"Valerie! Wraith!" Sebastian roared as his voice echoed off the broken walls.
There was no answer.
He didn’t walk. He activated his [Heavenly Steps]. He folded space and instantly teleported from the ruined grand hall directly to the high basalt ramparts of the outer wall.
He materialized on the edge of the parapet and looked down.
The five-kilometer safe zone of Sanctuary was a slaughterhouse.
The sprawling refugee camps that had housed ten thousand survivors were gone. The tents were burned to ash. The makeshift clinics were flattened.
The golden translucent dome of the defense grid was still there but it was barely functioning. It flickered weakly and the bright holy light was reduced to a sickly dying yellow pulse.
And outside the flickering barrier, the world had truly ended.
The ruined industrial district of 2077 was completely gone. In its place was a sprawling apocalyptic wasteland of jagged purple crystal and pulsing fleshy Void biomass.
But it wasn’t the Void Crawlers or the mindless Infected that made Sebastian’s blood run cold.
Hovering in the air and forming a massive glittering blockade around the dying Sanctuary were thousands of players.
But they weren’t from Earth.
They wore impossibly ornate glowing armor that radiated blinding oppressive auras. They wielded weapons forged from pure sunlight and condensed gravity. They hovered on elegant feathered wings or platforms of shimmering crystal.
They were the Saints.
Players from the Outer Servers. Civilizations from other planets that had already been assimilated by the Ethereal Plane years ago. They had survived their apocalypses by submitting to the Void Gods and acting as colonizers for the system. They descended upon newly merged worlds to harvest the resources and slaughter the native populations.
And they had set up camp right on Sebastian’s front lawn.
"Boss?" a weak raspy voice crackled through a heavy layer of static on his comm-link.
Sebastian’s hand flew to his ear. "Wraith! Where are you? What the hell happened here?!"
"Sub-level three... medical ward," Wraith coughed and the sound was wet and agonizing. "Time moved differently, Boss. You were gone for months. The Outer Servers hit us in June."
"Where is Valerie?" Sebastian demanded as his voice dropped into a terrifying metallic hum.
"She’s alive. She’s holding the core room with Galleon," Wraith wheezed. "But we’re entirely out of ammo. The railguns melted weeks ago. The barrier is at two percent. They’re just waiting for it to drop so they can harvest the refugees we have left."
Sebastian looked out over the parapet.
Planted directly into the ruined asphalt outside the flickering golden barrier were hundreds of massive jagged iron spikes.
Impaled on those spikes were the bodies of the Sanctuary labor division. Men and women in dirty construction clothes with their faces twisted in permanent agony. They had been left there to rot in the purple sun as a warning to the survivors huddled inside the Citadel.
A message written in blood on a massive piece of debris read: SUBMIT TO THE SAINTS. SURRENDER THE FALSE CITY.
Sebastian stared at the corpses of his workers. He stared at the glittering arrogant army of Saints hovering in the sky above his territory.
He didn’t feel fear. He didn’t feel despair. He felt a cold absolute and deeply possessive fury.
These arrogant shiny bastards had come into his house. They had broken his furniture. They had killed his employees.
"Wraith," Sebastian said as his voice was terrifyingly calm. "Tell Valerie to drop the shield."
"Boss? There’s ten thousand of them. They are all Level 70 minimum. If we drop the shield, they will swarm the Citadel in seconds."
"I know," Sebastian smiled. His pitch-black coat billowed in the toxic wind. His silver eyes burned with the unhinged wrath of a Sovereign.
"Tell her to drop the shield. I need them to come closer so I don’t have to walk as far to kill them all."