Chapter 91: [91]: The Juncture, Closing the Window
Sebastian descended the heavy basalt stairs with slow and methodical steps. The courtyard was covered in thick layers of pulverized marble and golden divine blood.
He reached the edge of the massive crater he had just carved into his own front yard.
Down at the bottom, Saint Helios was a ruined and twitching mess. The Level 85 Solar Deity was flat on his back with his body horribly distorted.
His armor was embedded directly into his flesh. He was coughing up thick globs of glowing blood. His eyes were wide with a mixture of agony and complete disbelief.
His health bar was flickering violently and hovered at a pathetic three percent. The gravity law was still active and pinned him with a relentless invisible weight.
Sebastian walked down the sloped shattered stone. The gravity didn’t affect him because he was the administrator of this localized physics edit.
He stopped right next to Helios’s mangled head.
"You... you..." Helios gurgled as blood bubbled over his lips.
The arrogance was entirely gone. It was replaced by the pathetic weeping terror of a bully who had finally picked a fight with a real monster.
"What... what are you?"
"I’m the guy you just tried to evict." Sebastian said. His voice was entirely devoid of emotion.
He didn’t draw a weapon to finish the job. He just raised his heavy leather-clad boot and placed it squarely over Helios’s face.
"Have a nice flight." Sebastian deadpanned.
SQUELCH!
Sebastian stomped down. With the backing of his Demigod-tier physical synchronization and the localized gravity field, the sheer kinetic force was absolute.
Helios’s skull gave way instantly. It flattened into a paste of crushed bone and glowing brain matter.
[Target Executed.]
[Experience gained negated. Level Cap Reached. (Divine Tier 1)]
[Loot Dropped: Solar Core, Divine Gold Plate (Ruined)]
Sebastian kicked the ruined armor aside. He scooped up the glowing yellow Solar Core and tossed it into his inventory. He then tapped his comm-link.
"Wraith. Valerie. Threat neutralized. I’m coming down to the med-bay."
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and walked toward the heavy titanium doors of the inner Citadel.
The descent into the sublevels was quiet. The usual bustling noise of the labor division was gone. Sanctuary felt like a ghost town.
When he finally pushed open the doors to the medical ward, he paused for a fraction of a second.
The room was a disaster. Makeshift cots were lined up wall-to-wall. They were filled with groaning and heavily wounded Abyss Knights and surviving refugees.
Valerie was standing near the back. She was wrapping a bloody bandage around the stump of a severed arm.
She looked terrible. The pristine corporate heiress was gone. Her hair was chopped short, jagged and uneven.
She wore practical blood-stained combat leathers instead of her azure silk robes. A nasty jagged scar ran down the left side of her face and narrowly missed her eye.
She looked like she hadn’t slept in a month.
Beside her, Wraith materialized from the shadows. The Assassin’s dark armor was heavily patched and he was favoring his right leg.
"Boss." Wraith nodded. His voice was a dry and exhausted rasp.
Valerie turned around and dropped the roll of bandages. Her blue eyes widened as she took in Sebastian’s new imposing black coat and the silver visor covering his face.
"Sebastian?" She whispered and her voice cracked.
She didn’t run to him for a dramatic hug. That wasn’t who they were anymore. She just slumped against a medical table and let out a long shuddering breath of absolute relief.
"You took your sweet time, you asshole." Valerie laughed but it sounded more like a sob. "I told you not to leave me with the dwarf."
Sebastian walked over. He gently reached out and traced a gloved finger near the edge of her new facial scar.
His silver eyes narrowed with a cold and terrifying fury that had absolutely nothing to do with game mechanics.
"Who did this?" Sebastian asked softly.
"Doesn’t matter. They’re dead." Valerie swatted his hand away gently.
"Time dilation in the Spire. You were gone for three months, Sebastian. The Outer Servers hit us in late June. They’ve been trying to break the Citadel ever since."
She paused to catch her breath. "We ran out of railgun slugs a month ago. We’ve been fighting them in the trenches."
"I saw the spikes outside." Sebastian said with his voice dropping into a dangerous tone. "I saw our people."
"They’re colonizers." Wraith stated and limped over to the table. He pulled up a holographic map.
"They call themselves the Saints. They come from assimilated worlds. The Void uses them to clear out high-resistance servers before the actual Titans drop in. And they found a backdoor."
Wraith pointed to the top of the map right over the Arctic Circle.
"The Juncture." Wraith explained. "It’s a massive physical tear in the sky. The servers haven’t fully merged yet, which means Server 894 still has a Level 60 cap for native players."
"But the Saints are using the Juncture to bypass the firewall. They’re dropping Level 70 and 80 players directly onto our heads."
Sebastian stared at the pulsing red scar on the holographic globe. He crossed his arms as his tactical mind spun up to maximum capacity.
He had just instantly deleted a Level 85 Sun God. His Demigod status and his 10,000x Nexus Glitch made him functionally untouchable.
He could walk outside right now and spend the next week swatting the thousands of Saints out of the sky one by one.
But that was inefficient. It was treating the symptom and not the disease.
"If there’s a hole in the wall letting the rats in, you don’t spend all day hitting the rats with a broom." Sebastian muttered. "You plug the damn hole."
He looked at Valerie. "I’m making you Acting Guild Master of Sanctuary while I’m gone. Use the Core to restore the outer shields. Do not let anyone in or out."
"Wait, where are you going?!" Valerie pushed herself off the table and grabbed her staff. "Sebastian, you just got back! You can’t just fight an entire army at the North Pole by yourself!"