Chapter 123: [123]: The Corporate Dystopia, Neon Shadows
"I hate it here already," Sebastian muttered. He adjusted the collar of his ruined black leather coat to hide the bulky, blood-stained iron Spoofing Drive bolted directly into the inside of his left wrist.
"Shut up and look normal," Gwen hissed out of the corner of her mouth. She stood right beside him, her hands casually resting near the grips of her concealed kinetic pistols. She had her head bowed, playing the part of a subservient local. "You’re an Anomaly in a highly regulated corporate database. If you sneeze too loud, they’ll trace your packet data and orbital strike this entire platform."
Sebastian didn’t argue. He looked up at the sky.
There were no bleeding crimson clouds here. There were no massive tears in the fabric of the universe. The skybox was a flawless, perfectly rendered gradient of serene blue. Flying vehicles that looked like sleek, silver teardrops zipped through the air in perfectly straight, orderly traffic lanes.
BEEP! BEEP!
Three heavily armored Military Police drones hovered ten feet away. They looked like floating chrome eyeballs armed with heavy plasma repeaters. Their blue scanning lasers swept over the crowd of arriving players and NPCs in a rhythmic, terrifyingly efficient pattern.
"State your business, travelers," the lead drone hummed. Its synthesized voice lacked any trace of emotion. "Maintain order. Obey the Guilds."
The blue laser washed over Sebastian’s face.
For a fraction of a second, his real-world heart skipped a beat. He was a Level 60 Demigod. He possessed the literal administrative root access to the System. Underneath this ragged coat, his biological muscles were packed with the compressed, world-ending density of a collapsing star. If that drone read his true base files, the entire planetary firewall would descend on him in a microsecond.
He felt a sharp, cold pinch in his left wrist as the Spoofing Drive violently engaged. The iron needles buried in his bones injected a stream of fake, perfectly benign code directly into his digital aura.
[Spoofing Drive Active.]
[Masking Signature: Level 25 Drifter. Unaligned Citizen.]
The drone’s laser lingered on him for two agonizing seconds.
BING!
"Identities Confirmed. Civilian Status Verified. Welcome to the Capital," the drone chirped cheerfully before banking away to scan a terrified-looking elven merchant.
Sebastian let out a slow, deeply human exhale. He un-clenched his jaw. "Okay. The ugly iron tick works. Let’s get off this platform before the tech support gets suspicious."
"Follow me," Gwen whispered, taking the lead. "We need to get down to the Under-City. The upper levels are strictly for corporate executives, high-tier guild masters, and people who don’t look like they just crawled out of a dumpster."
They walked toward the edge of the transit platform. Sebastian’s boots felt strangely light on the polished white chrome. He was so used to having his Concept of Mass active, throwing his weight around to crush his enemies, that walking normally felt like wading through a swimming pool.
They stepped into a massive, glass-walled elevator tube that clung to the side of a towering skyscraper.
WHOOSH!
The doors slid shut, and the elevator immediately plummeted.
Sebastian leaned against the glass, watching the pristine, sunlit paradise of the upper city rapidly disappear. The clean white spires gave way to massive, brutalist industrial layers. The light faded, replaced by the harsh, strobing glare of neon advertisements.
The deeper they went, the darker it got.
"This server was assimilated thirty years ago," Gwen explained quietly, her eyes tracking the floor numbers ticking down on the display. "The local humanity completely submitted to the System. They traded their freedom for safety. The top guilds basically formed megacorporations. They own the mana grid. They own the respawn altars. They own the air you breathe."
"Sounds like old Earth," Sebastian said deadpan. "Just with more lasers and fewer HR departments."
"It’s worse," Gwen corrected. "If you cross the corporate guilds here, they don’t just kill you. They delete your banking data. They lock your respawn point in a torture dungeon. It’s a perfectly organized hell."
CLUNK.
The elevator hit the bottom floor. The glass doors slid open, and a wave of damp, incredibly humid air washed over them.
"Home sweet home," Sebastian smirked.
The Under-City of Server 112 was a sprawling, claustrophobic nightmare of cyberpunk architecture. Narrow, winding streets were packed tightly between towering support pillars. Endless tangles of thick, black cables and glowing blue mana-conduits hung from the ceiling like mechanical vines.
The streets were crowded with a dizzying mix of alien races, heavily modified cyborgs, and ragged human players trying to scrape together a living in the shadows. Neon signs advertising illegal cybernetics and cheap health potions buzzed loudly, casting long, colorful shadows in the eternal twilight.
"Keep your head down," Gwen ordered, stepping out into the bustling street. "We need to find a broker. Someone who can convert whatever garbage you have in your bottomless pockets into local credits."
Sebastian followed her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He kept his silver-tinged eyes focused on the ground.
He hated this. He hated sneaking around. Back on Earth, if someone looked at him wrong, he just turned up the gravity and turned them into a meat pancake. Now, he had to play the role of a pathetic, Level 25 nobody. It was like a billionaire being forced to carefully count his pennies at a grocery store.
They navigated the twisting, trash-choked alleyways.
"Hey. Seattle," Sebastian murmured, stepping over a puddle of glowing pink coolant. "Where exactly are we going?"
"A place called The Neon Lotus," Gwen replied, not looking back. "It’s a black-market hub. The broker there owes me a favor from my smuggling days. If anyone knows where a Regional Core is sitting, it’s him."
They turned a corner into a particularly dark, narrow alleyway illuminated only by a single, flickering yellow streetlamp.
Sebastian’s heavily synchronized, superhuman senses instantly flared. He felt the subtle shift in the air pressure before he even saw them.
"Hold up," Sebastian said, his voice dropping an octave.
Gwen stopped, her hand instantly going to her holster.
Stepping out from behind a rusted metal dumpster were four figures. They were locals. Low-level street thugs heavily modified with cheap, jagged cybernetics. The leader was a massive, bulky human with a crude hydraulic piston replacing his entire right arm. His face was covered in glowing, neon-green gang tattoos.
"Well, well. Look at the tourists," the cyborg leader grinned, revealing a mouth full of sharpened steel teeth. "You guys took a wrong turn. This is Scrap-Hound territory."
Sebastian let out a long, exhausted groan. "You have got to be shitting me. Do these servers just randomly generate you idiots whenever I walk into an alley?"
The cyborg’s smile vanished. "You got a smart mouth for a guy wearing a trash-tier coat. Hand over the credits. The guns. And whatever is in your inventory. Do it now, or I’m going to rip your head off."
Gwen slowly drew her pistols. "Sebastian. We can’t use magic. The local grid will flag the mana spike."
"I know," Sebastian sighed, rolling his neck.
CRACK.
"No magic. Just physics."
"Kill ’em!" the leader barked.
The cyborg lunged forward, raising his massive, hydraulic fist. The metal arm hissed, venting steam as the internal pistons fired, driving the heavy steel knuckles directly toward Sebastian’s face.
To a normal Level 25 player, that punch would be a guaranteed one-hit kill. It would shatter their skull and send them straight to the respawn screen.
But Sebastian wasn’t normal. He was a Level 60 Demigod with a thirty-percent physical synchronization to the real world. His biological meat was denser than titanium.
Sebastian didn’t dodge. He didn’t cast a shield. He didn’t even take his left hand out of his pocket.
He just casually raised his right hand and caught the hydraulic fist in his open palm.
SMASH!
The sound of the impact echoed off the brick walls. A shockwave of displaced air blew the trash out of the alleyway.
The cyborg leader froze. His eyes widened in absolute, unadulterated horror. His massive, mechanical arm had hit the ragged drifter’s hand and simply stopped. It was like he had just punched a solid mountain of bedrock.
"Is that it?" Sebastian asked, his voice deadpan and entirely bored. "My grandmother hits harder than that. And she’s been dead for twenty years."
"W-what?" the thug stammered, desperately trying to pull his arm back.
He couldn’t. Sebastian’s fingers clamped down around the steel fist. The sheer, terrifying grip strength of his biological synchronization crushed the thick metal plating like an empty soda can.
SCREEECH!
The sound of twisting, failing metal filled the alley. The cyborg screamed as his expensive hydraulic arm was effortlessly crushed into a jagged ball of useless scrap.
"My turn," Sebastian whispered.
He didn’t wind up. He didn’t use a martial arts technique. He just pulled his right arm back a few inches and casually punched the cyborg squarely in the center of his chest.
CRACK!
The sound was sickening. Sebastian’s fist bypassed the cheap dermal plating and completely shattered the thug’s sternum.
The leader was lifted clean off his feet by the sheer kinetic force of the blow. He flew backward through the air, sailing over his three terrified gang members, and slammed violently into the brick wall twenty feet away.
THUD.
The cyborg slumped to the ground, entirely unconscious, his health bar dropping into the deep red.
Sebastian calmly lowered his hand and dusted off his knuckles. He looked at the three remaining thugs, who were staring at him with their jaws hanging open.
"I’m having a very long, very stressful day," Sebastian said softly, his silver-tinged eyes locking onto them. "If you run right now, I won’t turn your spines into modern art."
The three gangers didn’t hesitate. They screamed in pure panic, turned around, and sprinted blindly down the alley, entirely abandoning their broken leader.
Sebastian let out a breath and turned back to Gwen.
The smuggler was staring at him, her pistols still raised. "I told you to keep a low profile! You just threw a man twenty feet through the air!"
"I didn’t use magic," Sebastian pointed out defensively, gesturing to the groaning body. "I just punched him. It was a perfectly normal, organic punch. The local firewall didn’t even blink."
"You are a walking nightmare," Gwen muttered, shaking her head and holstering her weapons. "Come on. The Neon Lotus is just around the corner. Try not to break anyone else on the way."
"No promises," Sebastian smirked, stepping over the crumpled cyborg and following her deeper into the shadows.