Chapter 250: Prometheus Bound, The Glitchy Giant
"This is the worst fucking staircase in the universe," Sebastian panted, his chest heaving. The heat radiating off the glass was stifling. "When I get access to the developer tools, I am installing escalators. Everywhere. I’m going to make stairs a bannable offense."
Valerie actually let out a soft, genuine laugh, the sound vibrating warmly against his coat. "Make sure they have good elevator music, too."
"Elevator music is a war crime, but for you, I’ll allow it."
They climbed higher and higher, leaving the chaotic, roaring noise of the prison riot far below them. The air grew incredibly thin, not lacking oxygen, but lacking raw data. The environment was becoming increasingly sterile and oppressive as they neared the absolute peak of the High-Security Ward.
After thirty grueling, agonizing minutes of kicking steps into the glass, the incline finally began to level out.
Sebastian hauled himself up over the final ledge, his boots hitting a flat, sprawling plateau of perfectly smooth, polished black glass.
"We’re here," Sebastian breathed, gently setting Valerie down on her feet.
He kept a firm grip on her hand, funneling a steady stream of clean data to keep her tether stable. He stood up to his full, eight-foot height and looked across the summit.
The air up here was dead quiet. There was no wind, no heat, and no screaming. It was a perfectly flat, circular arena made of dark glass, hovering miles above the fiery hellscape of Tartarus.
And in the absolute center of the plateau, bound to the floor, was the reason the Core OS had built this mountain in the first place.
Sebastian’s silver-tinged void eyes narrowed. The sarcastic complaints about cardio instantly died on his lips.
"What in the hell is that?" Valerie whispered, staring at the center of the arena in pure horror.
"That," Sebastian muttered, his grip tightening on her hand. "Is a very old piece of software."
—-
The summit of the black glass mountain was a monument to absolute, sterile isolation.
There were no burning rivers of magma up here. There were no rusted iron spires. The air was chillingly cold, completely devoid of the chaotic, ambient mana that filled the rest of the Ethereal Plane.
Sebastian stood at the edge of the sprawling, circular plateau, his featureless black helmet tilted slightly forward. He kept his left hand securely locked around Valerie’s glowing blue fingers, acting as a living Wi-Fi extender for her fragile astral tether.
His silver-tinged eyes easily pierced the gloom, locking onto the colossal structure in the dead center of the arena.
"I think we found the original server host," Sebastian whispered, his voice a low, distorted hum.
In the middle of the black glass floor lay a giant.
But it wasn’t a standard, high-definition humanoid like the Grand Archons or the Saints. The entity looked completely wrong, as if it didn’t belong in the current version of the universe.
The giant was easily fifty feet long, its emaciated, skeletal body pinned flat against the glass. Its physical rendering was a horrifying mix of archaic, outdated source code. It didn’t have smooth, photorealistic skin. Its body was composed of jagged, low-resolution wireframes, glowing with a dim, flickering 8-bit green light. It looked like a character model ripped straight out of a retro, text-based terminal game from the 1980s, violently forced into a modern 3D environment.
Thick, glowing golden cuffs were clamped securely around the giant’s massive wrists, ankles, and neck. The cuffs were forged from pure, unadulterated [Admin-Code], chaining the entity directly to the indestructible glass floor.
[Entity Identified: Prometheus]
[Class: The First Architect (Obsolete)]
[Status: Quarantined. Foundational Asset.]
"Prometheus," Valerie read the system prompt hovering over the giant’s head. Her voice trembled. "The First Admin. The guy who warned you about the Core OS when you were in the Spire."
"Yeah," Sebastian grunted, taking a slow step forward. "He told me the original Admins tried to stop the Void from turning the system into a meat grinder. I guess management didn’t appreciate the feedback."
As they stepped closer, the sheer misery of the entity became apparent.
Prometheus didn’t scream. He didn’t thrash against his golden chains. He just lay there, his massive, low-resolution chest heaving with slow, agonizing, shuddering breaths. Every time he exhaled, a deep, booming groan vibrated through the glass floor, a sound of such profound, eternal sorrow that it made the digital hairs on the back of Sebastian’s neck stand up.
But the giant wasn’t alone on the summit.
"Sebastian, look up," Valerie gasped, pointing her carved oak staff toward the pitch-black sky directly above the plateau.
Circling lazily in the cold, dead air were three massive shadows.
*SKREEECH!*
A metallic, ear-piercing caw shattered the silence. The sound was like two rusty razor blades scraping against a chalkboard.
The shadows plummeted from the sky, landing heavily on the glass floor right next to the chained giant.
They were vultures. But just like everything else in the Core OS, they were a horrifying, biomechanical perversion of nature. They were the size of fighter jets, their bodies composed of sleek, razor-sharp blades of dark gray metal. They had no feathers, only interlocking plates of hard-light code. Their heads were smooth, eyeless domes that ended in massive, jagged steel beaks dripping with highly corrosive white static.
[Entity Identified: Automated Deletion Daemon (Scavenger Class)]
[Level: 95]
[Status: Executing Purge Routine.]
"Robot space vultures," Sebastian deadpanned, staring at the massive birds. "I really hate birds. Pigeons are bad enough, but these guys look like flying garbage disposals."
The vultures didn’t pay any attention to the intruders. They were entirely focused on their programmed task.
The largest of the three Daemons hopped forward on its heavy steel talons. It lowered its massive, eyeless head, hovering its jagged beak right over the center of Prometheus’s low-resolution, glowing green chest.
It didn’t hesitate. It violently drove its beak downward.
*SHHHK! SQUELCH!*
"Oh, God," Valerie gagged, turning her head away.
The metal beak punched cleanly through the giant’s archaic wireframe chest. It didn’t pull out blood or meat. The vulture violently ripped its head back, tearing a massive, glowing chunk of pure, white and blue Source Code right out of the First Admin’s torso.
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