Free Web NovelChapter 195: [196]: Unflinching Decision, Typing with Ash
He was the Sovereign of Laws. And he was about to write the most expensive patch note in the history of the universe.
The agonizing, mind-breaking fire ravaging Sebastian’s arms did not stop. It escalated.
As he pushed his hands deeper into the raw, uncompiled core of the Mainframe, the system’s rejection protocols went into maximum overdrive. The server treated his biological flesh like a catastrophic virus trying to infect its most secure directory.
Sebastian kept his silver-tinged eyes wide open, staring through the blinding, swirling matrix of blue and gold data. He watched with a terrifying, detached horror as the skin on his hands completely blackened and peeled away like burnt paper. The heat was so absolute that his blood didn’t even have time to drip; it simply instantly vaporized into a fine, red mist the second it was exposed to the raw code.
"I really liked these hands," Sebastian wheezed, a dark, humorless chuckle escaping his lips. "They were great for opening jars. Now I’m going to need a spatula just to pick up a coffee cup."
He tried to use humor to deflect the panic, but the sheer, unadulterated agony was tearing through his mental barricades. His forearms were completely stripped of flesh. He was looking at his own radius and ulna bones, currently glowing a dull, superheated orange as the marrow inside them began to forcefully boil.
But his skeletal, burning fingers remained perfectly steady. He had a firm digital grip on the jagged, red lines of the Spite Protocol wrapped around Valerie’s soul file.
He couldn’t use a keyboard. There was no physical console here. To rewrite the laws of reality, he had to perform mental keystrokes, physically grabbing strings of floating source code and tying them together using his own willpower as the compiler.
He opened his green Administrator UI, his vision swimming with painful, strobing error alerts. He accessed the ten million units of raw Source Code he had harvested from the Juncture.
"System," Sebastian commanded, his voice nothing but a ragged, static-filled rasp. "Access Law Synthesis module. Input parameter: Soul Stabilization. Input parameter: Administrative Immunity."
The raw Source Code flooded from his inventory into his burning hands. It felt like trying to hold a localized hurricane. The ten million units of data acted as a glowing, neon-green thread.
Sebastian began to type.
He physically pulled the green data thread, weaving it directly into the corrupted, red vines of the Spite Protocol. It was an incredibly delicate, painstakingly slow process. If he moved too fast, he risked severing one of Valerie’s core memory files. If he moved too slow, his arms would turn to ash before the code compiled, and they would both be deleted.
Every tiny movement of his skeletal fingers sent fresh shockwaves of absolute torture straight into his brainstem. He could feel his structural integrity failing. His physical avatar was screaming for a forced logout.
To keep himself anchored, to stop his mind from simply shattering under the weight of the pain, he forced himself to remember.
He thought of the cramped, rain-slicked alleyway in Ironhold, the smog choking the air. He remembered Valerie, the pristine corporate heiress, looking at him with desperate defiance as she bought his ridiculously overpriced ’Potion of Knitting’. She hadn’t begged for help. She had bought a solution and beaten her attackers into the pavement with her own hands.
He thought of the freezing, desolate canyon in the Northern Continent. He remembered the deafening roar of the Frost Dragon. He remembered Valerie stepping in front of him, her Arcane Valkyrie wings flaring as she took a glancing blow from the massive beast’s tail. He remembered the sickening crack of her ribs, the blood spilling from her lips, and the absolute, unyielding stubbornness in her eyes as she held the line so he could move.
She had never asked him to save her. She had just stood beside him, matching his ruthless pragmatism with her own quiet, unshakeable loyalty.
And then, he remembered the blinding, apocalyptic flash of white light in the sky above the Juncture. He remembered the Sky-Fortress detonating. He remembered catching her broken, bleeding body as they plummeted toward the boiling ocean. She had burned her entire mana pool, sacrificed her own digital existence, just to protect his stupid, rusted warehouse.
She had thrown away her life to save his base.
"You’re worth the durability damage, Princess," Sebastian whispered, a fierce, protective warmth pushing back against the cold, clinical logic of the Mainframe.
He clamped down on the digital thread. The system was fighting back harder now, the red code of the Spite Protocol actively trying to infect his green synthesis thread. The resistance was immense. His physical strength was failing.
He needed more power to force the compile. He needed to bypass the server’s safety limiters.
Sebastian accessed the [Error Accumulation] mechanic on his UI.
"Push Error to 99 percent," Sebastian commanded.
[WARNING: Critical Biological Logic Failure! Error Accumulation at 99%. Total physical fragmentation imminent!]
His entire body violently hitched. It wasn’t just his arms anymore. The sheer, catastrophic volume of intentional malware flooded his entire system. His black leather coat shredded into useless pixels. His chest tore open, revealing jagged, pulsing green wireframes fighting a losing battle against his rendering engine.
He was literally tearing his own existence apart to generate the raw processing torque required to bypass the Archons’ trap.
He shoved the 99% Error directly into his skeletal hands. The corrupted, glitched data acted like a sledgehammer, violently smashing through the restrictive firewalls of the Spite Protocol.
With a brutal, tearing motion, Sebastian ripped the red vines of the trap completely off Valerie’s soul file. He immediately forcefully wrapped the glowing green thread of his new Conceptual Law around her base code, sealing the breach.
"Compile!" Sebastian roared, his voice overlapping with a terrifying chorus of digital static.
The ten million units of Source Code ignited. The green thread flashed with a blinding, absolute brilliance.
For a terrifying, endless second, the server hung in suspended animation. The logic gates of the Ethereal Plane furiously processed the impossible mathematics of a human user forcing a foundational physics edit from within the core directory. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
Then, the system yielded.
BING!
A massive, beautiful blue window expanded perfectly in the center of his vision, overriding the frantic red error prompts.
[Law Synthesis Complete.] [New Conceptual Law Authored: The Sovereign’s Aegis.] [Effect: Target Entity ’Valerie’ is granted absolute immunity to System-mandated deletion protocols. Soul fragmentation repaired. Administrator holds active override.]
Sebastian stared at the scrolling text of Valerie’s character file. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
The angry, glaring red letters of her status effect flickered. The word ’Comatose’ dissolved.
The text shifted to a calm, pristine, incredibly beautiful green.
[Status: Active.]
Sebastian let out a long, ragged, shuddering breath. A genuine, entirely human smile broke across his sweat-drenched, glitching face.
He had done it. He had untangled the mess. He had successfully hit the ’Save’ button on the only file that actually mattered to him.
He slowly, agonizingly pulled his hands out of the data stream.
There wasn’t much left of them. From the elbows down, his arms were nothing but blackened, heavily charred bones held together by stubbornness, spite, and a few flickering strands of green wireframe. The pain was still a roaring inferno in his mind, but it felt distant now. It felt like a minor inconvenience compared to the overwhelming, triumphant relief flooding his chest.
He had won the hardest fight of his life. But he wasn’t clocked out yet.
Sebastian turned his ruined, skeletal hands toward the massive, swirling directory of the Mainframe.
Valerie was safe. Now, it was time to make sure the rest of the universe stayed off his front lawn.
It was time to close the server.
—-
The Mainframe of the Ethereal Plane was entirely silent, bearing witness to the catastrophic damage Sebastian had just inflicted upon himself. He stood knee-deep in the tranquil ocean of liquid starlight, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
He looked down at his hands. They were a complete horror show. The flesh was entirely gone, vaporized by the unyielding friction of the root code. What remained were fragile, blackened skeletal claws, held together by sheer willpower and rapidly flickering green error strings. Every tiny twitch of his fingers sent a fresh, blinding spike of agony straight into his brain.
He didn’t care. He had paid the toll, and he had the receipt.
Hovering perfectly in front of him, no longer bound by the malicious red vines of the Archons’ trap, was Valerie’s digital soul file. The bright, pristine green text reading [Status: Active] was the most beautiful thing he had seen since the apocalypse began.
"See you soon, Seattle," Sebastian whispered, offering the file a tired, crooked smile.
He gently pushed her floating directory aside. He didn’t have time to rest. The system was still processing the massive 99% Error accumulation tearing through his body. His avatar was actively fragmenting, his legs occasionally stuttering into transparent polygons before violently snapping back into reality. He was operating on a heavily ticking clock.
