"We’re here," Sebastian whispered.
They stood at the absolute end of the ten-mile bridge.
Looming before them, stretching infinitely upward into the absolute dark, and stretching endlessly downward into the abyss, was a wall of pure, seamless, blinding white material.
There were no doors. There were no keyholes. There were no seams, no cracks, and absolutely no weaknesses. It was a perfect, flawless, infinite plane of unyielding logic.
It was the absolute firewall of the Core OS.
"It’s just a wall," Valerie gasped, wiping a streak of red digital blood from her nose. "Prometheus was right. There’s no physical entrance."
Sebastian stared at the infinite white expanse. He let go of Valerie’s hand.
He didn’t pull out the [Prometheus Gift] orb yet. He just stepped right up to the flawless, sterile surface.
"You guys like building walls," Sebastian said quietly, his voice a low, terrifying hum that vibrated the very air. He placed his black-gloved hands flat against the pristine white surface. "Let’s see how much force a perfect world can take."
—
*WHRRRRRR-SCREEECH!*
The noise inside the subterranean command center of Sanctuary was absolutely deafening. It didn’t sound like magic. It sounded like a massive, commercial airplane engine was actively trying to tear itself apart inside a tiny concrete box.
Deep beneath the ruined, ash-choked streets of Earth, the air tasted like battery acid and hot copper.
"Coolant! Give me more fucking coolant!" Galleon roared.
The dwarven engineer was standing on a precarious, makeshift scaffolding built from the scavenged remains of the Sky-Fortress. His thick, braided beard was heavily singed, and his usually pale face was bright red from the apocalyptic heat radiating off the machine in front of him.
The Astral Spire was a chaotic, ugly, completely illegal piece of hardware. It was a towering, jagged mess of titanium hull plates and thick, exposed mana-conduits that stretched all the way up to the ceiling of the grand hall. And right now, it was glowing with a terrifying, blinding blue light.
*HSSSSS!*
Galleon hauled a massive, heavy iron canister over his shoulder and aggressively dumped hundreds of gallons of liquid nitrogen directly onto the primary runic array.
The moment the freezing liquid hit the glowing titanium, it instantly vaporized into a thick, blinding cloud of white steam. The metal hissed and popped, desperately trying to cool down, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
"It’s not working!" Galleon shouted, tossing the empty canister off the scaffolding. It hit the floor with a loud *CLANG*. "The localized mana limiters are completely melted! She’s pulling too much juice!"
At the absolute base of the towering machine, resting on the cold, runic-carved marble of the Resurrection Altar, was Valerie.
She was the living battery. She was the fleshy, biological conduit keeping the line open between Earth and the deepest, darkest corner of the multiverse. And she was paying a horrific price for it.
Wraith stood just a few feet away from the altar. The Level 25 Assassin was a guy who made his living in the shadows. He had slit throats, poisoned warlords, and watched men dissolve into pixelated ash without blinking an eye. He was cold, calculated, and professional.
But right now, Wraith was completely, utterly terrified.
"Boss," Wraith whispered, his raspy voice cracking as he took a hesitant step forward. "Boss, you have to stop."
Valerie didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
Her physical body was locked in a state of violent, agonizing paralysis. Her back was arched entirely off the marble slab, her muscles corded and twitching under the sheer, ungodly strain of funneling a planet’s energy through her nervous system. Her practical mechanic’s overalls were charred and smoking at the edges.
But it was her face that made Wraith’s stomach violently churn.
Her eyes were snapped wide open, but there were no pupils. Her eyes were completely swallowed by a blinding, brilliant blue light that looked like raw plasma. Thick, dark red human blood poured freely from her nose, running down her cheeks and dripping onto the pristine white marble of the altar. Blood was leaking from her ears, staining her choppy brown hair.
*BING! BING! BING!*
The green and blue holographic system monitors that Corbin had hastily rigged up around the room were flashing in aggressive, frantic red.
[CRITICAL WARNING: CONDUIT INTEGRITY FAILING.]
[Biological Host experiencing severe neurological trauma.]
[Heart Rate: 210 BPM. Blood Pressure: Fatal Threshold.]
[RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE DISCONNECT.]
"She’s literally cooking from the inside out!" Corbin shrieked from his terminal across the room. The rogue code-smith was huddled behind a reinforced steel desk, furiously typing on a keyboard that was actively smoking. "The Earth’s primary leyline wasn’t meant to fit inside a human brain! It’s like trying to shove the entire ocean through a garden hose! She’s going to have a massive stroke!"
*POP!*
A thick, glowing blue mana-cable running along the side of the Spire violently ruptured. A geyser of pure, unstable magic sprayed across the room, melting a hole straight through a solid stone pillar.
"Fuck this magic bullshit!" Galleon swore loudly, frantically wrapping his thick, fire-proof gloves around the sparking cable to forcefully hold it together. "I’m an engineer, not a goddamn miracle worker! Wraith, pull her out! Break the connection!"
Wraith didn’t hesitate. The assassin instincts kicked in. The mission was officially a failure. The priority was saving the Guild Master.
He lunged forward, reaching out with both hands to grab Valerie by the shoulders and physically rip her off the Resurrection Altar.
"I got you, Boss," Wraith gritted his teeth, his hands closing around her smoking overalls.
The moment his fingers made contact with her body, the universe forcefully rejected him.
*BZZZZZT!*
"GAAAAAH!" Wraith screamed.
A massive, localized shockwave of pure, unadulterated Earth-mana exploded outward from Valerie’s skin. It hit the assassin like a speeding truck. Wraith was violently thrown backward, flying twenty feet through the air before crashing heavily into a stack of empty ammunition crates.
*SMASH!*
Wooden splinters and heavy steel casings rained down on him as he crumpled to the floor. He groaned, clutching his ribs, his health bar taking a massive, ugly hit just from touching her.
"I said... do not... touch me," Valerie choked out.
Her voice didn’t sound human. It sounded like two massive tectonic plates grinding against each other. Blood spilled over her lips as she spoke, splattering down her chin.
She slowly turned her head, her blinding blue eyes locking onto the assassin struggling to sit up.
"Valerie, you are dying!" Wraith yelled, spitting a wad of blood onto the floor. He ignored the pain in his ribs and forced himself up onto his knees. "The barrier is holding! Earth is safe! The Saints are gone! You did your job! Now let the system shut down before your brain literally melts!"
"No," Valerie gasped, her entire body trembling as another massive surge of blue light pulsed through the titanium spire above her.
She squeezed her hands into tight fists, her fingernails digging so hard into her palms that they drew blood.
"He’s at... the door," Valerie wheezed, every word costing her a terrifying amount of physical effort. "He’s at the white wall. I can feel him. The ambient code there... it’s too heavy. If I drop the tether... he loses the navigation beacon. He gets swallowed by the blind spot."
"Boss, he’s a Demigod!" Corbin yelled from behind his desk. "He can survive it! You’re just a normal player!"
"He is a glitch!" Valerie snarled, her voice suddenly spiking with a fierce, unyielding corporate authority that echoed over the roaring machine. "He is a walking, bleeding software crash! The only thing keeping his mind from scattering across the multiverse is my signal!"
*CRACK!*
Another massive runic array on the side of the Spire shattered, raining glowing blue glass down onto the floor.
"Valerie, please!" Galleon begged, his thick arms bulging as he desperately tried to hold the melting conduits together. "We can’t hold the machine! It’s going to detonate!"
"Then let it detonate!" Valerie screamed back, blood flying from her mouth.
She didn’t care about the Citadel. She didn’t care about the pain tearing through her skull. In her mind’s eye, she didn’t see the dark, smoke-filled basement of Sanctuary. She saw the absolute, pitch-black nothingness of the Juncture. She saw a towering, terrifying monster of black static and weeping red runes.
She knew exactly who he was. She knew that beneath all the cynical sarcasm, the deadpan jokes, and the brutal violence, Sebastian was just a guy who was terrified of being left alone.
He had walked into hell for her. He had ripped the admin privileges out of the hands of gods just to make sure she woke up.
She was absolutely, stubbornly refusing to hang up the phone.
"I told him... I’d leave the light on," Valerie whispered, her voice barely audible over the screeching metal.
She closed her eyes, entirely surrendering her biological limits. She actively pulled the governor off her own mana pool. She reached deeper into the planet’s core, grabbing another massive, horrific surge of raw Source Code and yanking it upward.