Free Web NovelChapter 224: [230]: The Ambush in the Ruins, Evasion Tactics
He grabbed the foundational code of that spell and dragged it into the second slot. freewёbnoνel.com
[Input 2: Tier 7 Spell - Grand Cellular Regeneration]
"Multiplier," Sebastian commanded.
The 10,000x Nexus Glitch violently woke up. It grabbed the two concepts—the raw, absolute agony of human suffering and the biological rendering of cellular growth—and forcefully slammed them together through ten thousand simulated lifetimes of evolution.
The crucible in his UI began to spin. It didn’t glow with a majestic, holy light. It radiated a sickly, fleshy pink hue that smelled distinctly of copper and raw meat.
[Initiating Synthesis.] [Warning: Combining these parameters will result in highly volatile, organic malware. Proceed?]
"Execute," Sebastian snarled.
BZZZZT!
The synthesis completed with a wet, heavy squelch that actually made Corbin gag.
A new, terrifyingly unique law of physics materialized in his UI.
[Synthesis Complete.] [New Conceptual Laws Authored: Concept of Flesh & Concept of Pain.] [Effect: Forcefully renders biological vulnerability onto inorganic or digital entities. Bypasses absolute immunities by rewriting base structural code into organic matter. Target will experience localized nociception.]
"Oh, that is incredibly gross," Gwen noted, walking down the stairs from the cockpit. The smuggler stared at the UI prompt floating in the air. "You’re going to turn the angels into meat?"
"I’m going to make them bleed," Sebastian corrected, dismissing the menus with a flick of his eyes. "And then I’m going to break their legs. The Ethereal Plane wants to play rough? Fine. I’ll drag their perfect little firewall down into the mud with the rest of us."
"Well, you better do it fast," Gwen said, her tone suddenly dropping its casual cynicism. Her hand rested heavily on the grip of her kinetic pistol. "Because we have a massive problem."
Before Sebastian could ask, the Rusthound violently violently shuddered.
It wasn’t a sudden shift in gravity. It wasn’t an engine misfire. It felt like the entire ship had just been struck by a massive, invisible hammer.
CRACK!
The air inside the cargo bay warped. The soft, shimmering illusion of the ship’s stealth cloak—the high-tier camouflage that had been keeping them hidden from the System Hub’s sensors—suddenly fractured like a shattered mirror.
"The cloak just failed!" Corbin shrieked, sprinting toward a nearby terminal and frantically slamming his hands against the keys. "Something forcefully bypassed the encryption! We’re fully exposed on the local grid!"
"Did we hit debris?!" Gwen yelled, drawing both of her pistols.
"No," Sebastian said flatly, his silver-tinged eyes locking onto the heavy iron blast doors of the cargo bay.
He could feel it. The sudden, overwhelming drop in ambient temperature. The terrifying, oppressive weight of absolute, clinical logic pressing against the hull of the ship.
The temperature in the room plummeted. A thin layer of frost instantly began to form over the rusted metal crates.
Through the thick iron of the blast doors, a blinding, sterile white light began to bleed through the seams. It wasn’t burning through the metal; it was simply causing the iron to quietly, cleanly un-render into nothingness.
"They found us," Sebastian whispered, his biological steel muscles coiling tight as he raised his left hand, readying the newly forged [Concept of Flesh].
The heavy blast doors didn’t explode. They simply ceased to exist.
Standing in the void, hovering perfectly still in the empty space just outside the ship, were three System Cleaners.
The faceless, six-winged Seraphs didn’t move. Their blank, mirrored visors were locked entirely onto Sebastian.
[ANOMALY LOCATED.] the system-wide voice echoed through the ship, devoid of any anger or malice. [INITIATING FINAL PURGE.]
—-
The heavy iron blast doors of the Rusthound’s cargo bay simply ceased to exist. There was no explosive shockwave, no tearing of metal, and no dramatic shower of sparks. The thick, rusted steel just silently vanished, un-rendered by the blinding white light bleeding into the ship.
Sebastian stood his ground, his single remaining hand balled into a tight fist. Through the open gap where the doors used to be, three faceless, six-winged angels hovered perfectly still in the absolute void of the Juncture.
They were the System Cleaners. The ultimate anti-virus.
"Fuck me," Gwen screamed from the cockpit, her voice cracking over the ship’s internal comms. "They’re right on top of us! The stealth cloak is gone! We are fully exposed!"
"I can see them, Seattle!" Sebastian yelled back, his voice a distorted, metallic hum. He took a slow step backward, keeping his silver-tinged eyes locked on the three pristine entities. "Don’t try to shoot them! Bullets won’t even register in their code!"
[ANOMALY LOCATED.]
The voice didn’t come from the Seraphs. It echoed from the very fabric of the Juncture itself, entirely devoid of emotion, anger, or malice. It was just a cold, clinical statement of fact.
[INITIATING FINAL PURGE.]
The center Cleaner slowly raised its hand. Its long, perfectly smooth fingers glowed with a blinding, terrifying white light.
"Gwen! Move this piece of shit right now!" Sebastian roared.
The Rusthound’s anti-gravity engines violently shrieked. Gwen didn’t bother easing the throttle; she slammed it completely forward. The massive, patched-together smuggler skiff violently lurched to the left, throwing Sebastian hard against a stack of rusted metal crates.
VWOOSH!
A beam of pure, absolute deletion light shot from the Cleaner’s hand. It missed the center of the ship by mere inches, but it clipped the rear starboard engine.
There was no explosion. The heavy plasma thruster simply vanished. A perfectly cylindrical hole was carved straight through the hull, leaving a smooth edge of static where the metal used to be.
"We lost thrust on the right side!" Corbin wailed from the upper deck, clutching a railing for dear life. "The structural integrity is failing! They’re deleting the ship!"
"Gwen, look out the window!" Sebastian commanded, pushing himself off the floor with his left hand. The phantom pain of his missing right arm throbbed relentlessly, a sickening reminder of what happened when you tried to punch the ’Delete’ key. "Do you see that cluster of floating garbage? The ruined city?"
About a mile away, floating sideways in the bizarre gravity of the Dead Servers, was the massive, shattered remnant of a deleted cyberpunk server. It was a sprawling mess of upside-down skyscrapers, flickering neon signs, and floating concrete plazas frozen in time.
"I see it!" Gwen shouted, wrestling with the flight stick as the ship violently vibrated. "What do you want me to do? Parallel park in the apocalypse?!"
"Fly right into the middle of it!" Sebastian ordered, stumbling toward the open airlock. "The ambient garbage data in those ruins will clutter their sensors! Use the buildings as cover!"
"Hold on!" Gwen screamed.
The Rusthound dove forward, spiraling wildly out of control as it plummeted toward the floating city.
Behind them, the three Cleaners didn’t fly. They simply flickered.
FZZT. FZZT.
They updated their spatial coordinates, instantly teleporting hundreds of yards closer in a single microsecond. Another beam of white light tore through the void, completely erasing the top half of the ship’s radar dish.
"They are gaining on us!" Corbin sobbed. "They don’t obey physics!"
"That’s why I need to give them some," Sebastian muttered darkly.
The rusted skiff plunged into the floating cyberpunk ruins. It was an absolute maze of shattered glass, upside-down concrete pillars, and massive holographic billboards advertising fictional energy drinks. Gwen expertly threaded the needle, banking hard around a floating noodle stand and diving beneath a massive, suspended monorail track.
The sheer density of the environmental debris forced the Cleaners to slow their teleportation. They couldn’t simply phase through solid objects without deleting them first, and the sheer volume of floating trash was creating a massive digital bottleneck for their pursuit algorithms.
"Keep flying, Seattle!" Sebastian yelled, standing at the edge of the missing cargo doors. The wind of the Juncture whipped his black leather coat around his legs. "Don’t look back! Get out of the sector!"
"Sebastian, what are you doing?!" Gwen yelled over the comms. "Get away from the door!"
"I’m going to buy you some time," Sebastian said flatly. "And I’m going to get my arm back."
He didn’t wait for her to argue. The Sovereign of Laws looked down at a massive, floating concrete skyscraper passing directly beneath the ship.
He bent his knees. He tapped into his green, corrupted Administrator UI and accessed his [Concept of Mass]. He forcefully dropped his physical weight to absolute zero.
He launched himself out of the moving spaceship.
"Boss, no!" Corbin shrieked, but the sound was quickly swallowed by the void.
Sebastian soared through the empty air like a black bullet. He shot past a floating, neon-pink sign that read ’OPEN 24/7’ in a blocky, digital font. The moment he was directly over the shattered roof of the concrete skyscraper, he spiked his mass back up to a solid two tons. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
CRASH!
He hit the roof feet-first, his heavy combat boots cratering the concrete. A massive spiderweb of cracks shot outward from his impact zone.
He didn’t pause. He instantly broke into a full sprint across the roof.
