Chapter 234: [240]: Psychic Deletion, The Earth Tether
"Ugh, fuck," Gwen gasped, clutching her ribs as she rolled into the dirt, entirely unable to breathe.
On the platform, Sebastian’s mind was being actively gutted.
The clinical, apathetic voice of Architect Prime echoed smoothly beneath the shrieking noise in his brain.
"Your emotional attachments are mathematical flaws, Variant 001. We are removing them to optimize your efficiency."
Sebastian tried to focus. He tried to pull up his [Code Compiler] to write a block, but he couldn’t remember the keystrokes. The knowledge was literally being erased.
A memory flashed in his mind. It was the smell of the cramped, rain-slicked alleyway outside his apartment in 2077, right before the Great Merge. He remembered the feeling of cold raindrops hitting his face.
[Deleting File: Baseline Origin.]
The memory instantly vanished. It was replaced by a blank, terrifying wall of white noise. He couldn’t remember what rain felt like. He couldn’t remember his apartment.
"No!" Sebastian choked out, black blood spilling from his lips.
Another memory flared. He was standing in Novice Village 109. He remembered the rusty iron dagger he had bought from the beggar, Old Man Clay. He remembered the heavy, comforting weight of the hilt in his hand when he evolved it into the [God-Slayer’s Edge].
[Deleting File: Tactical Inventory Logic.]
The memory dissolved into static. He forgot the dagger. He forgot how he had survived the first day of the apocalypse.
"STOP IT!" Sebastian shrieked, his fingers clawing uselessly at the obsidian floor, leaving deep, jagged gouges in the stone.
"You are experiencing unnecessary distress," Architect Prime stated coldly. "Relinquish the data. You will be clean. You will be perfect."
The deepest, most guarded sector of his digital soul was forcefully cracked open.
A vibrant, beautiful image flooded his dying mind. It was Valerie. She was standing on the balcony of Sanctuary, the wind whipping her dark brown hair around her pale face. He remembered the jagged scar running down her cheek. He remembered the fierce, unyielding defiance in her bright blue eyes when she told him she wasn’t leaving him alone in the dark.
He felt the profound, anchoring warmth of her love. It was the only thing keeping him tethered to his humanity.
[Target File Located: Entity ’Valerie’. Emotional Anchor.] [Initiating Permanent Deletion.]
"DON’T TOUCH HER!" Sebastian roared, a massive surge of raw, unadulterated willpower exploding in his chest. He forcefully shoved his 99% Error Accumulation directly into his own memory drive, desperately trying to shield the image of her face with a wall of malware.
But the Core OS was too heavy. The Architect’s logic stripped the malware away piece by piece.
Valerie’s face in his mind began to blur. The sharp, beautiful blue of her eyes turned into dull, low-resolution gray pixels. The sound of her voice, the way she called him ’Seattle’ with that perfect, sarcastic smirk, started to warp into a meaningless, robotic hum.
"Valerie..." Sebastian whispered, his physical voice growing incredibly weak.
He was losing her. He was losing the very reason he had ripped the multiverse apart.
His thrashing on the obsidian floor slowly ceased. His black, static-filled hands went limp. The green wireframes of his body began to turn a uniform, sterile white. The horrific, weeping mask of the Glitch was smoothing out, erasing the cracks, wiping away the tears of digital blood.
He was being sanitized.
"Who..." Sebastian murmured, his pitch-black eyes fading into a dull, empty gray. The agony was completely gone, replaced by a terrifying, hollow emptiness. "Who... am I?"
"You are the Administrator of Death," the Architect’s voice echoed, completely devoid of triumph. It was just stating a newly formatted fact. "You are perfect."
Sebastian lay perfectly still on the dark stone, his mind a blank, unwritten canvas of white static, waiting for his first command.
—-
The void inside Sebastian’s mind was terrifyingly quiet. It was a flawless, blank canvas of pure white static. The heavy, bruised-purple error codes that made up his identity were gone. The chaotic, green wireframes that tied his digital soul to his human memories had been aggressively scrubbed clean.
He was nothing. He was a newly formatted hard drive sitting on the shelf, waiting for the operating system to tell him what to do.
"You are the Administrator of Death," the clinical, apathetic voice of Architect Prime echoed in the sterile emptiness. "You are perfect."
Sebastian didn’t argue. He didn’t have the words to argue. The concept of rebellion had been uninstalled. He lay perfectly still on the polished obsidian platform, a hollow shell of white light, completely at peace with the absolute nothingness.
Millions of miles away, on the ruined, ash-choked surface of Earth, peace was nowhere to be found.
Deep inside the subterranean command center of Sanctuary, the air tasted like blood and burnt ozone. The massive, jury-rigged Astral Spire in the center of the grand hall was screaming. It sounded like a jet engine actively tearing itself apart. Thick, glowing blue mana cables whipped wildly against the stone floor, sparking and hissing as the machine threatened to catastrophically overload.
Valerie lay on the cold, runic-carved marble of the Resurrection Altar, her physical body violently convulsing.
"Valerie! Cut the tether!" Galleon roared over the deafening whine of the machinery. The dwarven engineer was frantically slamming a heavy iron wrench against a pressure valve, his face covered in black soot and sweat. "The leyline is pushing back! The signal is dropping! If you keep forcing the broadcast, the localized mana is going to boil your brain in your skull!"
"I’m losing him!" Valerie choked out.
Thick, dark red blood poured freely from her nose and ears, splattering against the pristine white marble. Her blue eyes were snapped wide open, entirely swallowed by a blinding, terrifyingly bright light. She couldn’t see the basement. She couldn’t see Wraith standing nearby with his daggers drawn, looking at her in sheer, helpless terror.
She could only see the empty, terrifying white static threatening to swallow the man she loved.
He’s forgetting!" Valerie screamed, her voice cracking with raw, unadulterated human desperation.
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