Chapter 233: [239]: The Lobotomy Strike
The flawless white light of the avatar instantly turned a bruised, sickening purple. The perfect, humanoid geometry aggressively bubbled and warped, frantically trying to resolve the impossible mathematics of the malware.
"ERROR! CRITICAL ERROR!" the Architect shrieked in their minds, the voice degrading into a high-pitched dial-up squeal.
The proxy violently shattered. It didn’t turn to ash; it exploded into a billion jagged, red error squares that blasted outward like shrapnel.
The concussive force of the digital detonation slammed into Sebastian, throwing him backward. His heavy boots skidded across the rusted grating, sparking wildly before he dug his heels in to stop his momentum.
The moment the proxy was destroyed, the blinding white tractor beam that had caught the Rusthound abruptly snapped.
"BRACE!" Gwen screamed at the top of her lungs, grabbing the stairwell railing.
With the physical override gone, the ship’s original momentum instantly reasserted itself. The Rusthound dropped like a lead weight.
CRASH!
The heavy smuggler skiff slammed brutally onto the massive, polished obsidian platform that sat directly at the base of the Tartarus Gate. The impact tore the rusted landing gear completely off the hull. The ship skidded forward, throwing a massive shower of black sparks into the void before finally, violently grinding to a halt just fifty feet from the colossal, screaming titanium doors.
Inside the cargo bay, emergency alarms blared. Red lights strobed wildly through the thick smoke pouring from the ruptured mana conduits.
"Ugh, fuck," Corbin groaned, crawling out from under a collapsed metal desk. The code-smith was bleeding from a nasty cut on his forehead. "Did we just crash? Are we dead?!"
"We’re alive," Gwen coughed, waving the thick smoke away from her face. She looked over at Sebastian. "Seattle, tell me you have a plan. Because you just rejected a peace treaty from the literal god of the universe by punching it in the face."
Sebastian slowly pushed himself up from the floor. His black tactical suit was smoking, the red runes on his skin throbbing with a dull, painful ache. He looked out through the shattered remains of the cargo bay doors.
Towering above them, stretching into the infinite dark, was the Tartarus Gate. Millions of corrupted faces pushed against the dark titanium, weeping and shrieking in a horrifying chorus of eternal suffering.
"The plan is we kick the door down," Sebastian grunted, rolling his shoulders. "Gwen, Corbin, stay on the ship. Lock yourselves in the cockpit. I don’t care what happens out here, do not step onto that platform."
"You’re going out there alone?!" Gwen yelled, pushing herself off the railing.
"I’m the only one with the firewall to survive it," Sebastian said flatly, turning his back on them.
He stepped out of the smoking wreckage of the Rusthound and onto the smooth, dark obsidian platform. The air outside was incredibly heavy, thick with the stench of burning copper and raw despair.
"VARIANT 001."
The voice returned. It didn’t come from a glowing avatar this time. It echoed from the colossal titanium gate itself. It was no longer conversational. It was cold, absolute, and utterly devoid of mercy.
"YOU HAVE REJECTED OPTIMIZATION. YOU HAVE CHOSEN DECAY."
"Save the dramatic intro," Sebastian sneered, raising his fists, ready to summon his [Concept of Mass] to tear the doors off their hinges.
"THEN YOU SHALL BE FORMATTED."
The Architect didn’t fire a laser. It didn’t summon a monster. It bypassed physical reality entirely, and launched a strike directly at Sebastian’s mind.
——-
The attack didn’t make a sound. It didn’t cast a shadow, and it didn’t glow with blinding white light. It bypassed physical armor, ignored magical shields, and completely dismissed the Demigod-tier density of Sebastian’s biological meat-suit.
The Architect Prime launched a Psychic Deletion Protocol.
"GAAAAAAHHHH!"
Sebastian’s knees violently buckled. He crashed onto the polished obsidian platform, his heavy boots skidding out from under him. He threw his hands to the sides of his head, his fingers digging desperately into the smooth black glass of his featureless helmet.
Inside his skull, the noise was absolute, mind-breaking torture. It sounded like a massive industrial hard drive failing while a dial-up modem shrieked through a blender.
[CRITICAL WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED NEURAL INTRUSION.] [STATUS: EGO INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.] [INITIATING MEMORY WIPE... 10%... 25%...]
He wasn’t being burned alive. He was being lobotomized.
The Architects weren’t trying to kill his avatar; they were forcefully formatting his consciousness. They were attempting to strip away his humanity, his trauma, and his memories, intending to reduce the Sovereign of Laws into a mindless, obedient beast of burden that they could lock inside Tartarus forever.
"Get... out... of my head!" Sebastian roared, his voice tearing out as a horrific, layered burst of screeching static.
He thrashed on the black stone. Thick, sludgy black blood began to pour uncontrollably from his eyes, his nose, and his ears beneath the helmet. It leaked out from the seams of the visor, dripping onto the obsidian floor where it sizzled and popped like battery acid.
His physical rendering began to violently unravel. The sleek, black tactical suit tore apart into loose, floating strings of green wireframe code. The jagged red error runes on his chest flickered wildly, aggressively trying to fight the intrusion, but the sheer, overwhelming processing power of the Core OS was crushing his localized firewall.
"Sebastian!" Gwen screamed from the shattered cargo bay of the Rusthound.
The smuggler didn’t listen to his orders. She dropped her kinetic pistols, sprinted out of the smoking ship, and rushed onto the platform. "Corbin, get the med-kit! He’s crashing!"
"Don’t touch him!" Corbin shrieked from the safety of the ship, his voice cracking with sheer terror. "That’s a localized psychic wipe! If you touch his network, the static will jump to your base file!"
Gwen ignored him. She slid onto her knees next to Sebastian’s thrashing body and desperately grabbed his shoulder, trying to haul him up.
ZAAAAAP!
The moment her leather glove made contact with his glitching armor, a massive shockwave of pure, corrupted static violently repelled her. Gwen was thrown backward, flying ten feet through the air before crashing hard into the rusted landing gear of the skiff.
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