Chapter 96: [96]: Earth Closed, The Juncture’s Threshold
The boiling Arctic Ocean was freezing and churning at the same time. It was a complete nightmare of conflicting temperatures but Sebastian didn’t care at all!
He swam through the dark water like a violent torpedo.
Ahead of him, Saint Apollo was violently thrashing around. The so called Solar Deity was finding out that glowing wings and deep sea swimming simply did not mix.
The glowing and arrogant god looked like a drowning moth! His bright solar armor hissed and sputtered as the crushing water ruined his divine aura.
Sebastian didn’t even need to breathe. His newly acquired Demigod status and optimized digital biology made him completely immune to the crushing depths. He simply reached out and grabbed Apollo by the ankle.
"Let go! Let go of me, you glitch!" Apollo’s voice bubbled through the telepathic comms. His tone was thick with sheer panic.
"Sorry, Apollo," Sebastian transmitted back with a completely flat mental voice. "Bath time is over. And you forgot to wash behind your ears."
Sebastian dragged the Sun God downward and drove his heavy boot right into the center of Apollo’s glowing chest plate!
The impact underwater wasn’t loud but the sheer kinetic force was absolute. The golden armor caved inward and completely shattered Apollo’s ribcage.
Before the Saint could even register the catastrophic damage, Sebastian plunged his hand directly into the ruined chest cavity! He bypassed the digital flesh and grabbed the blazing solar core powering the god.
With a brutal tug, Sebastian ripped it out!
Apollo’s avatar went completely rigid. The brilliant light of his body flickered and snapped into a muted grey. It instantly dissolved into a cloud of harmless digital bubbles that floated toward the surface.
Sebastian held the burning solar core in his hand. He didn’t even bother putting it in his inventory.
He just opened his mouth and unhinged his jaw with that terrifying [World Eater] mechanic. He swallowed it whole!
A sickening rush of stolen power flooded his veins immediately.
His health bar had been chipped away by the insane maneuvers of the past ten minutes but it suddenly surged well past its maximum! He could feel the raw data rewriting his internal code and compressing his muscles into something far denser than biological steel.
"Tastes like spicy heartburn," Sebastian grumbled as he wiped a streak of glowing blue and gold blood from his chin.
He bent his knees and anchored his boots against the dense water. Using a fraction of his gravity magic, he launched himself upward!
Splash!
He shot out of the boiling ocean like a ballistic missile. He broke the surface tension in a massive geyser of steam and seawater.
He soared right into the bleeding sky and hovered a few thousand feet above the ruined planet.
Down below, the world was a complete mess. The continents were fractured and the oceans were boiling.
But off in the distance, a tiny speck of golden light pulsed through the thick toxic smog. It was Sanctuary.
Sebastian’s pitch black eyes softened for a brief moment. Wraith had Valerie. She was safely locked away in the deepest basement on the planet.
She was resting on the Resurrection Altar. She would wake up with a terrible headache and she would probably yell at him for ruining her expensive clothes. But she would be alive.
"Keep the lights on, Princess," Sebastian whispered to the wind. "I have to go lock the front door."
He tilted his head upward. The Abyssal Gate stretched across the bruised heavens above him.
It was a massive and jagged tear in the fabric of reality!
Through the cosmic wound, Sebastian could see the swirling purple nebulas of the Juncture. It was the bridge between servers and the waiting room of the Void Gods!
The Void was actively trying to push more horrors through the gap. He could see the shadowy silhouettes of more skyscraper sized Titans waiting on the other side. They were eager to feast on a freshly assimilated Earth.
"Yeah, we’re closed for renovation," Sebastian muttered.
He flew straight up and accelerated to Mach 5!
The atmosphere screamed around him as he approached the bleeding tear. He stopped exactly at the absolute edge of the atmosphere where the digital code of Server 894 met the raw chaos of the multiverse.
He didn’t pull out a spellbook. He didn’t use a physical weapon either.
He just reached into his chest and grabbed the pulsing authority of the Chronos Heart he had absorbed.
He was a Sovereign of Laws. He had administrator privileges!
Sebastian raised both hands and his fingers glowed with a blinding silver light. He plunged his hands directly into the invisible edges of the server’s torn sky.
"System Command," Sebastian’s voice boomed. It didn’t travel through the air but right through the foundational code of the entire planet. "Isolate Server 894."
The engine hesitated. Red error windows violently popped up in his vision. They warned him that severing the connection to the network would result in total isolation.
"I said what I said," Sebastian gritted his teeth. He forced his multiplier into the command to completely overwhelm the server’s firewall. "Execute."
The reaction was instantaneous!
A massive shell of pure golden energy erupted from the planetary core! It shot outward in every direction and swept over the burning continents until it completely engulfed the globe.
Down on the surface, the immediate effects were hilarious.
A group of arrogant Saints hovered above the ruins of London. They had been busy terrorizing the local survivors but their magical wings suddenly dissolved!
"What? My mana! Where is my connection?!" a Level 75 Wind Deity shrieked as gravity suddenly remembered he existed.
THUD!
He plummeted from the sky and crashed headfirst into a double decker bus!
Before the stunned God could even stand up, a group of extremely angry British survivors swarmed the wreckage with cricket bats and iron pipes.
"Welcome to Earth, mate," a man yelled as he swung a bat directly into the Saint’s mortal face.
BAM!
The golden barrier finalized its enclosure. The monsters stopped spawning and the dimensional bleed was completely cauterized.
But Sebastian was still holding the edges of the tear! As the golden shield snapped shut, the violent recoil of the severed connection acted like a physical rubber band.
"Whoa!"
Sebastian was yanked backward and ripped entirely out of Earth’s atmosphere!
CRACK!
The jagged black tear in the sky snapped shut right in front of his face with a deafening sound! The bleeding sky of his home world was gone and replaced by a smooth curve of golden hard light.
He was locked out.