Chapter 227: [234]: The Infection Spreads, Meat Javelins
Sebastian raised both of his hands. He tapped deep into his glitched mana pool, actively synthesizing two fresh, pulsating spheres of the sickly pink and copper-colored [Concept of Flesh] malware.
A dark, incredibly predatory smile carved itself onto his face.
"Two more left," Sebastian whispered into the quiet ruins. "Let’s see if you guys scream as loud as your friend did."
—-
The two remaining System Cleaners hovered high above the shattered, floating cyberpunk plaza. Their six wings of pure, hard-light deletion code pulsed in absolute, rhythmic unison. They were staring down at the bloody, pulverized mess of human flesh and gray brain matter that used to be their flawless comrade.
To a machine built on pure, unadulterated mathematical logic, the sight of one of their own reduced to a puddle of bleeding meat was an impossibility. It simply did not compute.
[MALWARE LOCATION CONFIRMED.] The cold, system-wide voice echoed through the empty ruins. [INITIATING FORMAT. ERADICATE CONTAGION.]
Down on the cracked concrete, Sebastian cracked his newly regenerated right neck and rolled his shoulders. The phantom pain of having his arm uninstalled was fading, replaced by the heavy, comforting density of his biological steel muscles. He held a pulsating, sickly pink and copper-colored sphere in his left hand—the raw, synthesized malware of the [Concept of Flesh] and [Concept of Pain].
"Eradicate contagion," Sebastian mocked, his voice a distorted, metallic hum through his featureless black helmet. "You guys sound like a cheap antivirus software from the early 2000s. Time to upgrade your subscription."
The two Seraphs didn’t banter. They didn’t feel insulted. They just raised their glowing white hands, completely prepared to bathe the entire floating city block in absolute nothingness.
Sebastian didn’t have time to play tag with erasure beams. He needed a projectile, and he needed it fast.
He glanced around the ruined plaza. About ten feet to his right, a massive, rusted chunk of reinforced concrete had been blown apart by the Cleaners’ earlier attacks. Jutting out of the rubble was a thick, jagged piece of rusted iron rebar, roughly five feet long. It looked like a crude, heavy spear.
"Perfect," Sebastian grunted.
He moved with frictionless speed, stepping over to the rubble. He didn’t gently pull the rebar out. He grabbed it with his right hand and violently yanked.
CRACK!
The concrete shattered into dust as he effortlessly tore the heavy iron bar free. He weighed it in his hand. It was horribly unbalanced, covered in dried cement and flaking rust. It was garbage.
"Let’s add some custom modifications," Sebastian whispered.
He didn’t use a whetstone. He didn’t cast an enchanting spell. He raised the jagged, rusty tip of the iron bar and violently sliced it straight across the palm of his own left hand.
"Guh," Sebastian hissed through his teeth.
The cut was deep. Because he was currently housing 99% Error Accumulation in his suppressed background files, he didn’t bleed normal red blood. Thick, oily black digital sludge mixed with bright, jagged green static poured from the open wound.
He squeezed his fist, letting the corrupted, glitched blood drip heavily over the length of the iron rebar.
Then, he forcefully shoved the pulsating, pink sphere of the [Concept of Flesh] directly into the blood-soaked metal.
BZZZZT!
The system shrieked in absolute protest. The iron rebar began to violently violently bubble and warp. It didn’t just turn into a magical weapon; it became a horrific, living biological nightmare. The rust peeled away, replaced by raw, pulsing red muscle fibers that wrapped tightly around the steel core. The black and green blood acted as veins, throbbing with a sickly, rapid heartbeat.
It wasn’t an iron bar anymore. It was a heavy, squelching javelin of pure, weaponized mortality. It smelled like an open grave left out in the sun.
"Gross," Sebastian muttered, gripping the fleshy, pulsating handle. It was warm and slightly slimy. "But effective."
High above, the two Cleaners locked their glowing hands onto his coordinates.
FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
Two massive, blinding beams of white deletion light tore down from the dark sky. They moved at the speed of light, completely silent and entirely lethal.
Sebastian didn’t dodge backward. He planted his heavy combat boots into the cracked pavement, dropped his center of gravity, and leaned hard to the left. The two deletion beams slammed into the concrete right where his chest had been a microsecond prior, instantly un-rendering a thirty-foot crater into the floating platform.
He didn’t give them a chance to recalibrate.
Sebastian pulled his right arm back. His Demigod-tier muscles coiled so tight they physically tore the black fabric of his tactical sleeve. He engaged his [Concept of Mass], cranking the density of the fleshy javelin in his hand to five tons, right before throwing his entire body weight forward.
"Catch!" Sebastian roared.
BOOM!
The sonic boom generated by the throw shattered the remaining glass in every skyscraper within a two-mile radius. The fleshy javelin shot upward like a ballistic missile leaving a trail of black, oily blood and green static in its wake.
The Cleaner on the right didn’t even have time to adjust its spatial coordinates.
SQUELCH!
The heavy, five-ton meat javelin punched cleanly through the center of the Seraph’s pristine, hard-light chest. It buried itself hilt-deep, the jagged, fleshy tip erupting out the entity’s back.
The Cleaner froze mid-air.
"SKREEEEEE!"
The shriek that tore from the entity was deafening. It wasn’t the sound of an error code. It was a wet, agonizing scream of a creature suddenly forced to experience biology in the most violent way possible.
The malware spread instantly. The flawless, blinding white light of the Cleaner’s body violently bubbled and blackened. Raw, gangrenous human flesh exploded outward from the puncture wound. The pristine deletion wings sputtered and died, turning into bloated, rotting appendages covered in weeping yellow sores and black feathers.
The necrosis was so incredibly fast that the entity didn’t even have time to fall. It just hung there in the air, its newly formed throat choking on thick, black blood. Its face blistered open, revealing two terrified, bloodshot human eyes that darted wildly in pure panic before instantly rotting inside their own sockets.
In less than three seconds, the flawless angel of the Core OS was reduced to a bloated, gangrenous, rotting corpse.
With a sickening, heavy thud, the corrupted entity dropped out of the sky. It missed the floating concrete plaza entirely, plummeting down into the endless, glowing blue ocean of liquefied memories far below.
SPLASH!
It sank into the glowing data sea, leaving a foul, black greasy stain on the surface.
Sebastian didn’t watch it sink. He immediately turned his featureless visor toward the final, remaining Cleaner.
The last Seraph had lowered its glowing hand. It was hovering perfectly still in the void, staring down at the spot where its comrade had just been turned into a rotting pile of meat.
And then, the Ethereal Plane’s absolute logic engine broke.
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected in Cleaner Subroutine.] [Status: FEAR.]
Sebastian’s glitched [True Sight] picked up the system prompt hovering over the entity’s faceless head. The anti-virus software wasn’t supposed to feel emotions. It wasn’t supposed to care if it died. But witnessing the absolute, horrific biological corruption of the [Concept of Flesh] had forced the system to generate a brand new response to avoid contamination.
The Cleaner did the one thing a mindless machine was never programmed to do. It turned around.
The entity flickered, attempting to update its spatial coordinates and teleport away from the floating city. It was actively trying to flee.
"Oh, absolutely fucking not," Sebastian growled. "Nobody rage-quits on my server."
He didn’t throw another javelin. He tapped deep into his glitched mana pool and activated his [Heavenly Steps].
Fzzt.
The Cleaner blinked out of existence, rendering itself five hundred yards away, desperately trying to put distance between itself and the virus.
But Sebastian was already there.
He folded space, instantly materializing directly above the fleeing Seraph. The entity looked up, its faceless dome catching the dim light of the Dead Servers.
"You don’t get to run," Sebastian whispered, his voice a dark, terrifying hum that vibrated the ambient void.
Sebastian dropped his heavy combat boots squarely onto the Cleaner’s shoulders. The sudden, immense weight drove the entity downward. At the exact same moment, Sebastian reached down with both of his black-gloved hands and grabbed the smooth, featureless sides of the Seraph’s head.
He didn’t need to inject the malware this time. He didn’t need to turn it into meat. He just needed to apply raw, unadulterated physics to an object that was trying to occupy a space it no longer controlled.
Sebastian violently twisted his hips, utilizing the entire, hyper-dense torque of his thirty-percent physical synchronization.
CRACK!
The sound was sharp, incredibly loud, and deeply satisfying.
Even though the Cleaner was made of hard-light code, the localized physics edit treated the entity’s neck like a physical object. The head twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees backward.
The pristine white light of the entity violently sputtered, flickered, and instantly died.
[Target Eliminated. System Cleaner Defeated.] [Experience Gain Negated by Level Cap.] [Loot Dropped: Pristine Source Code (Mythic)]
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