Chapter 249: The Digital Mountain, A Shitty Cardio Workout
Before Viper could respond, a massive shadow fell over them.
"RRAAAAWWRR!"
The heavily wounded Tartarus Daemon had finally recovered from the mob attack. It stomped toward them, raising its jagged executioner’s axe high above its head, aiming to crush Sebastian, Valerie, and Viper in a single, molten blow.
Viper shrieked, throwing his arms over his head in pure terror.
Sebastian didn’t even turn his head. He didn’t drop Valerie’s hand.
He just casually raised his left arm, pointing his index finger backward without looking. He accessed a tiny, microscopic fraction of his [Concept of Mass] and injected it directly into the Daemon’s falling axe.
"Heavy," Sebastian whispered.
CRACK!
The iron axe instantly spiked to a localized weight of ten thousand tons. The Daemon’s arms were violently ripped clean out of their sockets as the weapon plummeted downward, burying itself fifty feet deep into the red stone floor. The sudden, impossible loss of balance caused the massive, molten brute to pitch forward, smashing face-first into the obsidian ground.
Sebastian casually snapped his fingers, releasing a tiny, localized burst of [Error] into the downed beast’s skull, instantly turning its head to gray ash. The Daemon went limp, its health bar deleting silently.
Viper slowly lowered his arms, staring at the dead, headless giant in absolute, mind-numbing awe. He had just watched the Drifter casually swat a Level 85 sub-routine boss like a mildly annoying fly without even making eye contact.
Sebastian didn’t wait for a thank you.
"Good luck with the diet, Viper," Sebastian deadpanned.
He gently tugged Valerie’s hand, leading her around the massive, headless corpse of the Daemon. They continued their inexorable, steady march through the chaotic, bloody warzone, heading straight for the black glass mountain.
The ultimate router of the Ethereal Plane was waiting, and the Sovereign of Laws was finally ready to log out for good.
—-
The prison riot was an absolute, glorious bloodbath, but Sebastian didn’t have the time to sit back and enjoy the show.
Behind him, the air was a thick, suffocating soup of vaporized magma, burnt ozone, and the coppery stench of digital blood. Trillions of previously tortured souls were currently turning the Tartarus Daemons into smoking piles of slag. The heavy clanging of iron swords against molten rock echoed like a chaotic industrial symphony.
"Keep your head down, Princess," Sebastian muttered, his voice a distorted, metallic hum through his cracked porcelain mask.
He didn’t let go of Valerie’s translucent, glowing blue hand. He pulled her gently but firmly through the absolute madness, his towering, eight-foot-tall Glitch avatar casting a massive shadow over the red stone. His thirty-percent physical synchronization was working in overdrive, his heavy combat boots crushing the hot ground with every step.
"I’m keeping up," Valerie grunted, though her voice sounded thin and strained over the astral tether.
They left the immediate shoreline of the Blood Lake behind. The further they walked toward the center of the dimension, the more the environment changed. The porous, blood-red rock beneath their feet began to smooth out, shifting into something infinitely darker and sharper.
It was jagged, black glass.
They were approaching the base of the central hub of Tartarus. The colossal mountain loomed over them, stretching impossibly high into the fiery, churning sky. It wasn’t a natural geological formation. It was a massive, pulsing router made entirely of encrypted obsidian glass.
Deep within the mountain, thick, glowing veins of bruised-purple data pulsed rhythmically, sucking the agonizing energy from the millions of iron spires scattered across the dimension.
"Who builds a router the size of Mount Everest?" Sebastian complained, kicking a sharp shard of black glass out of his path. It skittered away with a sharp *CLINK*. "I swear, the Architects were just compensating for something. A simple metal box with some blinking lights would have done the job."
"You’re complaining about the architecture in literal hell, Seattle?" Valerie managed a weak, breathless laugh.
"I’m complaining about the lack of an elevator," Sebastian deadpanned, looking up at the incredibly steep, jagged incline of the mountain. "I hate cardio. Especially in a leather coat."
Before they could take another step, Valerie gasped.
*BZZZZT!*
Her Astral Avatar violently flickered. The smooth, pristine blue light of her Earth-mana abruptly fractured into jagged, low-resolution gray squares. She stumbled forward, her knees hitting the sharp black glass.
"Valerie!" Sebastian shouted, his deadpan demeanor instantly vanishing.
He dropped to one knee beside her, his massive, static-laced hands hovering just inches from her glitching shoulders. He didn’t dare touch her outside the safety of his insulated left glove.
Through the translucent projection of her face, Sebastian could see the horrific physical toll the connection was taking on her real body back on Earth. Bright red, digitized blood was pouring freely from her nose, running down her chin and dripping onto the glass. Her blue eyes rolled back into her head for a terrifying fraction of a second.
"Shit... fuck!" Valerie cursed, clutching the sides of her head. "The lag... the pressure here is insane. It feels like my brain is being squeezed in a vise."
The ambient code of the black glass mountain was incredibly dense. It was the absolute core of the prison’s power grid. The sheer gravitational weight of the localized data was actively crushing her fragile astral signal.
[WARNING: Astral Tether Destabilizing.]
[Signal Integrity: 42%... 38%... 31%...]
"You’re lagging out, Princess," Sebastian growled, his silver-tinged void eyes locking onto the flashing red prompt in his vision. "Your physical nervous system can’t handle the data density of this mountain. You need to disconnect."
"No!" Valerie spat, forcing her head up. Her eyes snapped back into focus, burning with that fierce, unyielding stubbornness. "I told you, I’m not dropping the call! If I log off now, you’ll lose the beacon. The Core OS will isolate your routing history, and you’ll never find the backdoor to Earth!"
"And what good is getting back to Earth if I just find a corpse on the altar?!" Sebastian yelled back, actual, unfiltered human panic bleeding into his voice.
"I’m not dying today, Sebastian," she wheezed, wiping the digital blood from her upper lip. She forced a strained, sarcastic smile. "I still have to buy you that synthetic steak, remember?"
Sebastian stared at her. He wanted to use his Root Access to forcefully sever her connection, but he knew she was right. If she dropped the tether, the infinite, dark labyrinth of the Core OS would swallow him whole.
"Fine," Sebastian gritted his teeth. "But you’re not walking up this stupid glass hill."
Sebastian stood up. He didn’t use his [Code Compiler] to write a new law, because any massive fluctuation in reality might shatter her fragile signal. Instead, he simply tapped into the raw, unadulterated Source Code humming in his veins.
He squeezed her left hand tighter.
"System," Sebastian commanded silently. "Route clean data. Filter through Sovereign Aegis. Target: Astral Conduit."
He took a tiny, microscopic fraction of the ten million units of pure Source Code he had swallowed and forcefully funneled it through his hand and directly into her avatar. It wasn’t a heal. It was raw, foundational bandwidth.
*FWASH!*
A warm, brilliant green light surged down his arm, mixing with the blue of her projection. The jagged gray static on her robes instantly smoothed out. The violent flickering stopped.
"Oh," Valerie gasped, her shoulders sagging in immediate relief as the crushing pressure in her skull momentarily receded. "That... that actually feels a lot better. Like drinking cold water after a marathon."
"I’m basically acting as a Wi-Fi extender for your soul," Sebastian grunted, feeling the sharp, burning strain of filtering pure code through his own corrupted malware. "But it’s going to burn my battery. We have to move fast."
He didn’t wait for her to stand. Sebastian wrapped his heavy, right arm—the one he had just regenerated—around her waist and effortlessly lifted her translucent form entirely off the ground. He carried her tucked securely against his side.
"Put me down, Seattle," Valerie complained weakly, though she immediately rested her head against his chest. "I’m the Guild Master. I look ridiculous being carried like a sack of potatoes."
"You don’t have physical weight, Princess, you feel like carrying a glowing balloon," Sebastian replied, his boots crunching against the glass. "Besides, I’m the hired muscle. It’s my job."
He turned his attention back to the massive, black glass incline.
The climb was absolute misery.
The gravity around the mountain didn’t pull downward; it pulled inward. The massive router was actively trying to suck them into its dark purple core. Sebastian had to manually engage his [Concept of Mass] with every single step, forcefully anchoring his heavy combat boots into the glass to keep them from being dragged into the obsidian wall.
CRUNCH! SMASH!
With every step, Sebastian kicked his steel-dense boots directly into the side of the mountain, physically carving a jagged staircase out of the indestructible glass. Shards of black debris rained down into the fiery canyon below.
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