Chapter 101: [101]: Weaponized Error, The Warden’s End
THUMP!
"GAAAAH!"
Sebastian’s eyes snapped open in the pitch-black interior of the escape pod.
His back arched so violently his spine popped. The pod’s automated internal defibrillators had just dumped five thousand volts of electricity directly into his chest to jump-start his heart.
He rolled onto his side with his face pressing against the cold metal floor of the pod and violently dry-heaved.
He didn’t vomit blood this time. He coughed up a thick glowing green string of data that instantly evaporated into the air.
"Fuck me." Sebastian wheezed while clutching his chest. "Dying is exhausting."
His physical heart was beating again in a frantic terrifying rhythm.
The massive weight of the [Concept of Mass] he had used to crush his own organ was gone. It was cleared by the pod’s medical suite.
He pulled up his new hybrid green-and-blue UI.
[Vitals Restored.]
[Void Toxicity: 12% (Stabilized by Legacy Code)]
The Legacy Code he had absorbed in the Archive hadn’t cured his Void sickness but it had paused it. It gave him the breathing room he desperately needed.
Outside the pod, the deafening roar of the Data Purge Storm had faded. It was replaced by the eerie silent hum of the Juncture’s vacuum.
Sebastian placed his boots against the heavy white blast doors.
He didn’t wait for the biometric scanner. He just used his twenty percent physical synchronization and kicked the door right off its hinges.
CRASH!
The metal slab flew out into the void.
Sebastian stepped out onto the remains of the metallic asteroid and took a deep breath of the nonexistent air.
He wasn’t alone.
Floating exactly twenty feet away from the pod, completely unaffected by the vacuum, was a Void Warden.
It was horrifying in its pristine simplicity.
It was a tall humanoid figure entirely coated in reflective liquid chrome. It had no face. No eyes and no mouth or features at all. Just a smooth mirrored dome.
In its right hand, it held a logic-blade. It looked like a long thin rapier made entirely of glowing red highly condensed error code.
[Entity Identified: Void Warden (Executioner Class)]
[Level: 75]
[Status: Purging Anomalies]
The Warden didn’t speak. It didn’t roar or taunt him.
It simply raised the red blade and pointed it directly at Sebastian’s chest.
Sebastian didn’t reach for his weapons. He just cracked his neck and the sound echoed loudly through his own skull.
"You’re late." Sebastian deadpanned. "I already talked to management."
The Warden lunged.
It moved with a terrifying speed and literally skipped frames of animation to cross the distance in a microsecond.
Sebastian didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t summon a [Water Mirror] or try to alter gravity. He wanted to test his new toy.
He opened his green UI and focused on the new blinking tab the Legacy Code had installed.
[Mechanic Unlocked: Error Accumulation]
[Description: By performing actions that actively defy biological or mathematical logic, the User generates ’Error.’ This corrupted data can be weaponized to forcefully degrade hostile code.]
"Let’s make some mistakes." Sebastian whispered.
He closed his eyes and forcefully seized control of his own autonomic nervous system.
Using the raw brute-force control of his physical stats, he intentionally commanded his heart to stutter.
He forced it to skip every third beat. This dropped his blood pressure to catastrophic and entirely illogical levels while keeping his brain fully functional. It was a biological paradox.
The system instantly panicked.
[Warning: Biological Logic Failure!]
[Error Accumulated: 15%]
Sebastian’s right arm instantly shifted.
The black leather of his coat and the pale skin beneath it dissolved into a jagged and violently shaking mass of green and black pixels.
His hand looked like a literal computer glitch given physical form.
The Warden’s red logic-blade thrust forward aiming directly for Sebastian’s heart.
Sebastian shifted his torso just an inch.
SHLUCK!
He took the hit. The glowing red rapier pierced cleanly through his left shoulder.
"Guh." Sebastian grunted as his teeth ground together.
It burned badly as the corrupted code of the blade actively tried to delete his shoulder from existence.
But it secured the grapple.
The Warden was entirely devoid of emotion. It paused for a fraction of a second and its faceless dome tilted in confusion at the player who had willingly impaled himself.
"Gotcha." Sebastian smiled with a dark terrifying expression.
He reached up with his glitched pixelated right hand and grabbed the pristine chrome throat of the Void Warden.
The metallic entity violently thrashed and tried to rip its blade free. But Sebastian’s grip was an absolute and unbreakable iron vise.
"Transfer." Sebastian commanded the system.
[Action Registered: Error Transfer.]
[Target: Void Warden.]
He forcefully pushed the 15% Error he had accumulated in his own body directly into the core code of the executioner.
The reaction was instantaneous and absolutely revolting.
The flawless mirrored chrome of the Warden’s body suddenly rippled. A horrific sound shrieked from inside the entity’s chest.
"SKREEEEE-BZZZT!"
The Error acted like aggressive malware. The pristine metal began to violently bubble and boil.
The sleek humanoid geometry of the Warden broke down. It mutated wildly into a raw rotting mass of mismatched polygons and digital gore.
Its arms stretched and snapped. Its faceless dome caved inward and exposed a mess of sparking wires and bleeding red code.
The Warden dropped the logic-blade. Its hands frantically clawed at its own melting throat as the Error completely dismantled its programming.
In less than three seconds, the Level 75 Executioner was reduced to a screaming bubbling puddle of raw data before finally disintegrating into a cloud of harmless grey ash.
The red blade sticking out of Sebastian’s shoulder dissolved into nothingness.
[Target Eliminated.]
[Error Reset to 0%.]
Sebastian’s right arm snapped back to normal and the green pixels solidified back into leather and flesh.
He rolled his wounded left shoulder and winced slightly as the system slowly patched the puncture wound.
"Well," Sebastian muttered and kicked the pile of grey ash into the void. "That’s definitely better than a fireball."
He looked out into the endless expanse of the Juncture. The brief distraction was over.
He was still dying of Void Toxicity and he still needed a Server Filter.
He pulled up the coordinates for Outpost Rust.
"Alright, let’s go buy some meds." Sebastian sighed and dropped his mass to zero before leaping into the dark.