Chapter 97: [97]: The Anomaly Root Protocol, Juncture Scavenger
Sebastian tumbled backward through a weightless void before finally stabilizing himself. He looked around in surprise.
There was no sky here. There was no ground. There was just an endless expanse of floating shattered continents and the corpses of dead planets.
He was in the Juncture.
Sebastian stared at the golden sphere of Earth floating safely in the distance. He wiped the remaining god blood from his chin and his pitch black eyes narrowed.
He took in the horrifying scale of the hostile multiverse around him. A slow and terrifying smirk stretched across his face.
"Now," Sebastian whispered as he cracked his knuckles in the absolute silence. "Let’s see who runs this fucking game."
The silence of the Juncture wasn’t peaceful at all. It was the heavy and suffocating silence of a graveyard.
Sebastian drifted weightlessly in the void and slowly rotated to take in his new environment. It looked like someone had taken a hundred different video games, smashed them with a hammer, and tossed the pieces into a cosmic blender.
To his left floated a massive Gothic cathedral that was entirely upside down. Above him, a river of neon green binary code flowed like water through the shattered remains of a futuristic space station.
There was no up or down here. There was no north or south. It was pure server garbage.
"Well, the real estate out here is terrible," Sebastian muttered as he tried to access his UI.
He wanted to cast [Float] to navigate toward a nearby chunk of floating bedrock. He tapped into the comforting well of his limitless mana pool.
Nothing happened.
Sebastian frowned. He tried again and visualized the simple utility spell.
[Error 404: Server 894 Not Found.]
[Warning: Disconnected from Localized Mana Grid.]
A sharp spike of genuine concern hit him. "You have got to be kidding me. No roaming data plan?"
Without Earth’s server to process his magical commands, his spells were totally useless! He was a Demigod but his admin privileges were restricted entirely to his home turf. Out here in the Juncture, he was just a guy with ridiculously dense bones and a cool coat.
Before he could properly mourn the loss of his magical artillery, the debris field behind him violently shifted.
SKRRRRK!
The sound was like nails on a chalkboard but magnified by a thousand! Sebastian spun around in the zero gravity environment with his eyes narrowed.
A Juncture Scavenger burst out from behind a floating mountain!
It was completely horrifying. It looked like a massive centipede but it wasn’t made of flesh. Its segmented body was composed of rusted server racks and twisted steel beams. Its mandibles were massive hydraulic pincers dripping with corrosive white hot plasma.
The beast locked its optical sensors onto Sebastian. To a scavenger, a player packed with Demigod stats was basically a walking five star buffet!
"Of course," Sebastian sighed with a deadpan face. "I step outside my house for five minutes and immediately get mugged by a walking recycling bin."
The beast lunged forward! Its massive metal body swam through the vacuum of space with terrifying speed.
Sebastian couldn’t cast [Dimensional Sever]. He couldn’t drop a [Solar Flare]. He was floating helplessly in zero gravity with absolutely no leverage.
The scavenger’s massive pincers snapped shut right where Sebastian’s torso was!
Sebastian barely managed to twist his body and used his own momentum to contort out of the direct bite. But the jagged edge of the hydraulic pincer clipped his side.
SLIIIICE!
"Gah!" Sebastian grunted as his eyes widened in shock.
Pain! Actual burning pain tore through his left side! His black leather coat was ripped open and a deep bleeding gash appeared on his ribs.
He stared at the wound in absolute disbelief. He had deleted his nociception code! He wasn’t supposed to feel pain!
[Warning: Foreign Code Injection Detected.]
[Status: Void Toxicity Building.]
The scavenger’s plasma wasn’t just dealing physical damage. It was fundamentally attacking his base file! The Juncture didn’t care about Earth’s rules. It was bypassing his avatar’s sensory deletion and hurting his raw code directly.
"Okay. That actually hurts," Sebastian growled. His black eyes flared with pure annoyance. "You want to do this the hard way? Fine."
The centipede circled back and its metallic legs clacked against the void as it prepared for another pass.
Sebastian didn’t have magic but he still had his physical synchronization. He was still biologically built like a tank.
As the scavenger lunged a second time, Sebastian didn’t even try to dodge. He reached out and grabbed the edge of a floating marble pillar drifting nearby. He used it as an anchor and planted his boots firmly against the stone.
When the massive jaws snapped toward him, Sebastian launched himself forward like a bullet! He bypassed the pincers entirely and slammed his boots directly into the creature’s segmented face.
CRUNCH!
The sheer kinetic force of his synchronized muscles shattered the scavenger’s optical lenses! The beast shrieked in static and thrashed wildly.
Sebastian grabbed onto the rusted metal of its carapace. He pulled himself up and wrapped his arms around the beast’s primary neck joint. He didn’t use a sword. He just squeezed!
His biological steel muscles bulged and the dark veins in his arms pulsed as he literally tried to choke out a machine.
SNAP!
The thick metal plating buckled under his grip! The scavenger thrashed and violently slammed Sebastian into a floating asteroid but he absolutely refused to let go. He kept squeezing until the beast’s internal wiring sparked and severed completely.
The massive centipede went limp and its red glowing lights faded to black.
Sebastian floated away from the dead machine and panted heavily. He clutched his bleeding side. The pain was still there. It was a cold burning ache that made his vision swim.
Suddenly, his UI forcefully rebooted. The familiar blue screens completely vanished and were replaced by a harsh green interface.
[System Crash. Rebooting in Safe Mode.]
[Activating Anomaly Root Protocol.]
Sebastian blinked and coughed heavily. He brought his hand away from his mouth and saw it was covered in thick black liquid.
"Void Toxicity," he wheezed. "Fantastic. I have a terminal illness."
But the green interface didn’t stop there.
[Multiplier Status: Offline.]
[Recompiling... 10,000x Nexus Glitch shifted to: Code Compiler.]
[Target Eliminated. Concept Extraction Available.]
Sebastian stared at the dead scavenger. The green UI was highlighting a glowing red data packet floating in the center of the machine’s ruined head.
He didn’t know what it meant but he definitely knew how to loot. He reached out and grabbed the red packet.
[Extracted: Concept of Mass (Raw)]
[Code Compiler Activated: Compiling data x10,000...]
[Concept of Mass Maxed. Authority Granted.]