Chapter 226: [233]: Curb-Stomping Perfection, Pristine Source Code
The Cleaner’s six pulsing wings of deletion code flickered, sputtered, and violently shattered, turning into heavy, bloody clumps of bone and wet feathers.
Without its wings, and suddenly burdened by the weight of flesh and bone, the entity dropped.
"NOOOO!" the former angel shrieked, choking on its own newly rendered blood as it plummeted out of the sky.
It fell forty feet, crashing violently into the cracked pavement of the floating plaza.
CRUNCH!
The impact was absolutely devastating. Because it had never possessed a physical body, it had zero instincts on how to brace for a fall. Its newly minted legs shattered upon impact, the bones jutting out through the pale, pink skin in a gruesome display of compound fractures.
The entity writhed on the concrete, clutching its broken legs, sobbing and choking in a puddle of its own blood.
[HP: 65,000 / 100,000]
Sebastian walked slowly to the edge of the floating concrete slab he was standing on. He looked down at the screaming, bleeding mess of flesh and bone writhing on the plaza below.
The terrifying, invincible executioner of the Core OS had been reduced to a weeping, broken human being in a matter of seconds.
"You wanted to see how the other half lives," Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a dark, utterly ruthless hum. He cracked his neck, the satisfying pop echoing in the quiet ruins. "Let me give you the full tour."
Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the ledge, letting gravity pull his hyper-dense body straight down toward the screaming, fleshy angel. It was time to finish the job.
—-
Sebastian fell like a dropped anvil, his black leather coat whipping wildly around his legs.
He didn’t use a spell to slow his descent. He wanted the kinetic impact. He aimed his heavy, steel-toed combat boots directly at the cracked pavement of the floating plaza, landing just a few feet away from the writhing, screaming entity.
BOOM!
The concrete shattered beneath his boots, a spiderweb of cracks shooting out across the floating platform. Sebastian slowly stood up, brushing a piece of debris off his shoulder. His featureless black helmet stared down at the pathetic, bloody mess rolling on the ground.
The System Cleaner was no longer a flawless manifestation of absolute logic. It was a grotesque, asymmetrical nightmare of rapidly rendered human biology. Its newly formed legs were completely shattered from the fall, shards of wet white bone poking through the pale, pink skin. Its back was a mangled ruin of bloody feathers and broken, jagged bone spurs where its wings of light used to be.
It lay in a growing puddle of its own dark, thick blood, coughing violently.
"P-please..." the entity gurgled.
Its jaw hung loosely, the skin tearing at the edges as it tried to form words. Its bloodshot, wide human eyes stared up at Sebastian in sheer, unadulterated terror. It was experiencing the concept of fear and physical trauma for the very first time, and its logic gates were completely collapsing under the weight of the sensory input.
"Please?" Sebastian echoed, his voice distorted and cold through the helmet’s filter. He tilted his head slightly. "That’s a new word for you, isn’t it? I didn’t hear a lot of ’pleases’ when you were casually erasing my right arm from existence."
[Entity Identified: System Cleaner (Corrupted)] [HP: 50,000 / 100,000] [Status: Bleeding. Severe Trauma.]
Sebastian didn’t feel a single ounce of pity. This thing was a mindless, unfeeling erasure tool of the Grand Archons. It had spent its entire existence deleting anything that didn’t perfectly align with the System’s cruel, rigid math.
"Welcome to mortality," Sebastian whispered softly.
He took a slow, heavy step forward.
The Cleaner tried to drag itself backward, its meaty, trembling hands slipping in its own blood. It let out a pathetic, high-pitched whine.
Sebastian reached down with his left hand. He grabbed the entity directly by the fleshy, bruised throat. His thirty-percent synchronized biological steel muscles coiled, and he effortlessly lifted the heavy, bleeding creature completely off the ground.
The entity kicked its shattered legs, choking and gagging as Sebastian’s iron grip crushed its newly formed windpipe.
"You guys love to delete things," Sebastian said, his pitch-black eyes narrowing beneath his cracked visor. "Let me show you how humans hit the backspace key."
Sebastian violently slammed the entity back down onto the concrete. He didn’t let go of its throat. He pinned it flat against the ground.
He raised his heavy, metal-plated combat boot.
"Unsubscribe," Sebastian snarled.
He brought his boot down squarely on the center of the entity’s fleshy, newly rendered face.
CRUNCH! SQUELCH!
The sound was absolutely stomach-turning. The sheer, hyper-dense kinetic force of a Demigod’s stomp completely caved the skull inward. The bone shattered into a hundred jagged pieces. A massive, gruesome splatter of dark red blood and gray brain matter exploded across the concrete, painting Sebastian’s boot and the surrounding pavement in a thick layer of gore.
The entity’s body violently seized for a fraction of a second before going completely, entirely limp.
BING!
The glowing red health bar hovering over the corpse instantly vanished.
[Target Eliminated. System Cleaner Defeated.] [Experience Gain Negated by Level Cap.] [Loot Dropped: Pristine Source Code (Mythic)]
Sebastian slowly pulled his boot back, wiping a thick clump of gore off the sole by dragging it against the concrete. He let out a long, heavy exhale, the adrenaline slowly beginning to fade.
He looked down at the ruined, headless corpse. It didn’t dissolve into gray ash like normal players or monsters. The corrupted biology he had forced upon it lingered, a messy, bleeding testament to his reality-breaking malware.
But hovering directly above the puddle of brain matter was a small, perfectly spherical orb of pure, blinding white light. It didn’t pulse. It didn’t hum. It was perfectly, completely still.
It was the [Pristine Source Code].
Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He dropped to his knees and snatched the glowing orb with his left hand.
"Alright, doc," Sebastian muttered, staring at the smooth plane of static on his right shoulder. "Let’s see if this prescription actually works."
He opened his green Administrator UI. He didn’t use the [Law Synthesis] module. He didn’t need to write a new law. He just needed to overwrite the localized deletion file that was actively infecting his avatar.
He forcefully jammed the orb of Pristine Source Code directly against the gray television static of his missing arm.
"System," Sebastian commanded, gritting his teeth in anticipation of the pain. "Execute localized patch. Purge [NULL] data. Restore rendering parameters."
BZZZZT!
The reaction was instantaneous.
"GAAAAH!" Sebastian roared, his head throwing back as blinding, white-hot agony tore through his shoulder socket.
It felt like someone had poured liquid fire directly into his veins. The Pristine Source Code acted like a hyper-aggressive biological bleach. It violently clashed with the [NULL] infection, aggressively scrubbing the deletion code out of his foundational registry.
Thick, scalding hot steam erupted from his shoulder.
Right before his eyes, the gray static began to furiously boil. Jagged, bright green wireframes violently snapped into existence, jutting out from his shoulder like a digital skeleton. The wireframes rapidly filled in with dark, bruising purple code, which immediately hardened into pale human flesh and thick, rolling cables of biological steel muscle.
Blood—actual, red digital blood—sprayed from the connecting tissues as the arm violently knitted itself back together in real-time.
Sebastian gasped for air, his chest heaving as he watched his hand reform. The fingers snapped into place with loud, wet pops. The skin finalized its rendering, completely smooth and pale, save for the faint, pulsing silver runic scars that wrapped around his forearm. Finally, the sleek black leather of his tactical sleeve materialized over the limb, completing the restoration.
The steam slowly dissipated.
Sebastian slumped forward, resting his hands on his knees. He was panting heavily, sweat pouring down his face beneath the mask.
He slowly lifted his right hand. He flexed his fingers.
They moved perfectly. He curled his hand into a tight, dense fist. The kinetic power was completely restored. He felt the heavy, comforting weight of his Demigod stats flowing smoothly through the limb. The [NULL] infection was entirely purged.
"Oh, thank God," Sebastian whispered, a genuine, exhausted laugh escaping his lips. "I was really not looking forward to learning how to shoot left-handed."
He slowly pushed himself up to his feet. He rolled his newly rendered right shoulder, relishing the deep, satisfying pop of the joint.
He was whole again. He had the cure.
But the celebration was short-lived.
High above the floating plaza, two massive beams of blinding white light tore through the dark sky of the Dead Servers. The remaining two System Cleaners had finally navigated through the debris field. They hovered in the air, their six hard-light wings pulsing rhythmically, their faceless heads locking onto the location of their murdered comrade.
[MALWARE LOCATION CONFIRMED. INITIATING FORMAT.]
Sebastian looked up at the two pristine, unfeeling angels of deletion.
He didn’t run this time. He didn’t feel the cold spike of panic that had forced him to flee just a few minutes ago. He knew their weakness now. He knew exactly how to drag them down into the dirt and make them bleed.
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