Chapter 116: [116]: The Apostle Cole, Holy Severance
The air in the lower intestines of the space leviathan was thick and entirely suffocating.
Sebastian stood thirty yards outside the ruined blast doors of Corbin’s bunker. He was planted firmly in the center of the rocky uneven tunnel.
He waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
CLANK. SCRAPE. CLANK.
The rhythmic grinding sound of metal on stone echoed down the corridor. It was the sound of an army that had violently discarded the concept of stealth in favor of absolute terrifying inevitability.
From the darkness emerged the vanguard of the Iron Disciples.
They were a horrifying sight. Ten zealots marched in perfect unfeeling unison. Their organic bodies were heavily mutilated. Left arms were replaced by massive crude iron maces bolted directly to the bone. Legs were swapped for heavy piston-driven steel struts that crushed the rock beneath them. They wore no armor over their chests and proudly displayed the jagged scars where they had forcefully carved away their own humanity.
They stopped thirty feet away from Sebastian. Their featureless welded iron masks stared blankly at the lone man blocking the path.
"State your designation flesh," one of the Disciples demanded. The voice wasn’t human. It was a localized synthesized audio projection that sounded like a text-to-speech program running through a broken speaker. "You stand in the presence of the Divine Code. Submit to scanning."
Sebastian didn’t say a word. He just stood there with his hands resting casually in the pockets of his torn black leather coat. His silver eyes analyzed their crude modifications with absolute withering boredom.
The Disciples didn’t wait for a polite response. They didn’t have the programming for patience.
"Hostile entity detected. Purge the glitch."
The ten heavily modified cultists surged forward. They didn’t run. They charged with a heavy mechanical momentum and their iron weapons raised to smash the ragged Drifter into paste.
Suddenly the air in the tunnel violently warped.
A blinding oppressive wave of pure white light erupted from behind the charging line of Disciples. The sheer magical pressure of the aura forced the fanatics to instantly halt their advance. They dropped to their iron knees and bowed their heads in complete subservient reverence.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes and shielded his face from the intense glare.
The ranks of the kneeling Disciples parted and a single figure floated forward.
He didn’t walk. He hovered six inches above the ground and remained entirely untouched by the filth of the slums.
The newcomer was clad in pristine glowing white robes that looked entirely out of place in the dark rusted hellhole of Outpost Rust. His armor wasn’t crude iron. It was flawlessly forged platinum etched with flowing mathematical equations that pulsed with holy mana. He didn’t wear a mask. His face was pale and perfect and completely devoid of any recognizable human emotion.
Floating above his head was a name tag that commanded immediate terrifying respect.
[Entity Identified: Apostle Cole]
[Class: High Inquisitor]
[Status: System Administrator (Partial Access)]
Sebastian’s posture stiffened slightly. This wasn’t just a heavily armored tank or a squishy mage. This was an Apostle. A player who had surrendered his autonomy to the System in exchange for a fraction of the server’s root commands. An Admin-lite.
"Anomalous data located," Apostle Cole spoke. His voice didn’t echo in the cavern. It resonated directly inside Sebastian’s skull and carried the cold absolute weight of a system notification. "You are the unregistered variable that severed the tracking beacon."
"I’m the guy who fixed a bad wiring job," Sebastian replied flatly. His voice maintained its deadpan calm. "You guys really need to stop bolting hardware to people’s spines. It’s a massive liability."
Cole didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. His perfectly smooth face remained a mask of absolute serenity.
"The beacon was a necessary anchor. The code-smith possesses restricted knowledge. He must be formatted," Cole stated simply.
He raised a glowing platinum-gloved hand and pointed a finger directly at a cowering unaffiliated slum scavenger who had unfortunately been hiding behind a rock nearby.
The scavenger shrieked in terror and tried to scramble away.
"Wait! Please! I don’t know them!" the alien begged.
Cole didn’t even look at the creature. He just executed a command.
"Holy Severance."
A beam of pure agonizing white light shot from Cole’s finger and struck the scavenger perfectly in the chest.
There was no explosion. There was no physical damage.
The alien’s eyes went wide. It opened its mouth to scream but no sound came out. Its physical avatar instantly froze and turned a dull lifeless grey.
Sebastian watched in absolute morbid horror as the fundamental code of the scavenger’s soul was violently ripped from its body. The digital essence of the player was dragged into the light and deleted from the server’s registry.
The grey lifeless avatar crumbled into a pile of fine meaningless ash.
There would be no respawn for that player. There would be no Resurrection Altar. They were just gone.
"Collateral data purged," Cole announced. His voice carried the terrifying satisfaction of a man closing a pop-up ad. He turned his glowing eyes back to Sebastian. "The System demands order. You are standing in the way of optimization. Hand over the code-smith Anomaly or you will be permanently uninstalled."
Sebastian looked at the pile of ash. He looked at the pristine arrogant Apostle floating above the mud.
He didn’t feel fear. He felt a deep familiar disgust. This was exactly why he hated the System. It didn’t care about life. It didn’t care about survival. It only cared about its own rigid sociopathic rules.
"You know," Sebastian said as his voice dropped into a low metallic hum that vibrated the air around him. "I’ve met a lot of guys with Admin privileges lately. They all act like they own the server."
Sebastian pulled his hands out of his coat pockets. He took a slow deliberate step forward. The twenty percent physical synchronization flared in his muscles and his dense boots cracked the stone beneath his feet.
"But every single one of them forgets the most important rule of IT," Sebastian whispered. A dark utterly unhinged smile spread across his face beneath the cracked white mask.
Apostle Cole frowned as his perfect facade slipped for a fraction of a second. He registered the terrifying impossible density of the raw data radiating from the ragged Drifter.
"And what rule is that?" Cole demanded and raised his hands to summon another beam of absolute deletion.
Sebastian didn’t draw his sword. He raised his right hand and his fingers violently glitched into a storm of raw green and black source code.
"When you find a virus you can’t delete," Sebastian growled. His silver eyes burned with the absolute authority of a Sovereign. "You’re about to get your hard drive formatted."