The Void-Drive Core had given Kieran two things: power and an ego large enough to fill the Grand Canyon.
He had neutralized three mages using nothing but a rusty knife and unauthorized access. He had hacked a fireball and downloaded a starship battery into his veins. He felt invincible. He felt like the ultimate anomaly.
He walked across the hangar floor, the new violet circuits etched into his skin pulsing like a drumbeat. He moved toward the elevator, toward the giant crystalline figure standing guard.
"What I am calculating the probability of survival for this encounter at 0.0003%," Spam stated flatly, hovering close to Kieran's shoulder. "That accounts for a sudden, unpredictable meteor strike deleting the Warden. I strongly suggest a tactical retreat to scavenge the cultist corpses first."
"Nonsense," Kieran scoffed, not slowing his pace. "Look at it, Spam. It's just code. Big, slow, predictable code. I have a stun ability now. I hit it with the [Blue Screen], I pierce its defense with the [Decompiler], and we ride the elevator."
"You just used the term 'pierce its defense' when referring to a fifteen-foot tall diamond man built by the Gods of this universe," Spam noted. "Your judgment is impaired by your recent mana intake. It's the equivalent of drinking four energy drinks and deciding you can bench-press a truck."
Kieran ignored him. He was twenty meters from the Warden. The Sentinel was motionless, its vast, multifaceted crystal head turned slightly, watching him with cold indifference.
Kieran sprinted.
He poured every ounce of his renewed energy into his legs. His body, now reinforced by the Core data, responded instantly. His Latency of 300ms was still slow, but the acceleration was terrifyingly fast.
Clang! Clang! Clang! His footsteps echoed across the metal floor.
The Warden raised a hand. It didn't need to analyze the threat. It just needed to delete the Error.
A pillar of pure, blinding white energy—the Erasure Primitive—slammed down from the ceiling. It didn't aim at Kieran's body. It aimed at the space he was about to occupy.
Kieran felt the heat, the pressure, the sheer weight of the System's intent.
"Lag!"
He forced the energy into his skill, delaying his velocity by a fraction of a second. The white beam vaporized the floor behind him, leaving a crater of pure void.
He closed the distance in a blur. Fifteen meters. Ten meters.
He leaped, launching himself into the air, aiming for the Warden's massive glass thigh.
The Warden's head tracked him perfectly. Its body remained unmoved. It was waiting.
Kieran slammed his hand—the hand etched with the powerful violet circuits—onto the crystal armor.
"BLUE SCREEN!"
[Skill: Blue Screen (Lv. 1) Initiated.]
Kieran expected the world to stop. He expected the Warden to freeze, its kernel panicking under the unauthorized access.
Instead, the violet light from his circuits simply... vanished.
[Target Authority: Administrator (Root Access).] [User Authority: Glitch (User Level 1).] [System Rejection: Access Denied.] [Error Type: Insufficient Privileges. Request Terminated.]
The red text filled Kieran's vision like a mocking splash of paint. The Warden didn't even flicker. His stun ability had been rejected by the System's firewall without effort.
Kieran hung there, plastered against the Sentinel's thigh. His body was screaming for him to run, but his mind was paralyzed by the impossible realization: He was nothing.
The Warden's head slowly dipped toward him.
Then, the construct did the equivalent of a sigh. It wasn't angry. It was just... performing maintenance.
It raised its crystalline index finger.
It didn't punch. It didn't strike. It simply tapped.
KRAK.
The impact was not force. It was code enforcement. It felt like every cell in Kieran's body had been compressed into a single, painful point.
Kieran's right arm, his un-Patched, human arm, snapped instantly. The bone disintegrated into powder. He was launched across the hangar bay like a discarded pebble.
He flew twenty, thirty, forty meters, spinning end over end, before slamming into a pillar of rusted shipping containers that formed the outer wall of the tower.
SHRIIIIK!
The containers exploded outward. Kieran's body crumpled, absorbing the entire force of the blow. He bounced off the structure, landing in a twisted heap in the grime.
[Catastrophic Damage Detected.] [Integrity: 100% -> 5%.] [Warning: Multiple System Failures. Lung Integrity: 0. Spinal Column: Shattered.]
Kieran lay motionless, staring blankly at the roof. He couldn't feel pain yet, only a searing numbness that meant true devastation. He tried to breathe, but his chest didn't move. He was suffocating.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The Warden was walking toward him. Slow. Deliberate. Every step shaking the floor.
Spam zipped frantically into view, his blue eye flashing. "Kieran! Get up! It's initiating the sweep! It's going to delete your character file!"
Kieran coughed. A massive amount of thick, dark blood erupted from his mouth. His vision swam.
"Can't..." he wheezed. His body simply refused to move. The [Spinal Column: Shattered] alert was very clear.
The Warden reached the pile of rubble. It stood over Kieran, its vast crystal shadow swallowing the remaining light. It raised both hands. The white light of the Erasure Primitive began to gather, not in a beam, but in a sphere, preparing to blanket the entire area.
This was not a fight. This was garbage collection.
"Override!" Spam screamed, firing a desperate, meaningless laser beam at the Warden's knee. The beam bounced harmlessly off the crystal. "I am attempting to create a distraction. It's not working! It doesn't perceive me as a threat!"
Kieran stared into the pure white energy that was about to erase him. This was the end. His brief, chaotic life as a glitch was over.
But in the white light, he saw something the Warden didn't.
He saw the tiny, microscopic dust motes floating in the air—the residual data from the earlier Bit-Roach explosion.
The Warden's targeting system was locking onto the spatial coordinates of the Error.
With the last flicker of his Decompiler focus, Kieran reached out with his mind and seized the coordinates of the dust motes floating one meter to his left.
[Skill: Logic Error (Target Misdirection).] [Cost: 2 Bytes.]
He forced his mind to believe that he was the dust motes. He forced the Warden's targeting system to register his existence one meter over.
The Warden fired.
The massive white sphere of Erasure slammed down onto the dust motes, vaporizing the air.
SHWOOOM.
The blast missed Kieran by a hair's breadth. The heat alone scorched his remaining hair and vaporized the ground beneath him.
The force of the blast, however, was enough to rip the floor open.
The ground beneath Kieran, already weakened by the earlier explosions, gave way. The metal grating and shattered concrete split apart.
Kieran fell.
He fell into absolute, choking darkness. He hit pipes, then chains, then a colossal column of compressed scrap metal, tumbling deeper and deeper into the structure. The Warden's powerful targeting system could not penetrate the chaotic magnetic interference of the levels below.
Kieran was falling into the Sub-Level. The Undercroft.
He landed in thick, viscous black sludge. The smell was suffocating—a mix of industrial oil, rust, and the metallic tang of deeply compressed death.
He lay there, sinking slowly, the sludge closing over his chest. He was broken.
[Integrity: 1%.] [System Alert: Decommissioning Protocol Initiated.]
"Kieran! Say something!" Spam materialized above him, his light dim and shaking.
Kieran managed a weak, guttural sound. He was alive.
He looked down at his body, half-submerged in the filth. His right arm was a ruined, bloody mess. His chest was caved in. The violet circuits on his left arm flickered like a failing neon sign.
He was a broken machine.
"Spam," Kieran croaked, the word thick with blood. "That thing..."
"It is Root Access," Spam said, the sarcasm replaced by grim finality. "You are a guest user. Never forget that. The difference is infinite."
Kieran stared up at the tiny square of light where the Warden stood, silently guarding the upper world. The arrogance was gone, burned away by the white light. In its place was a cold, quiet fury.
He wouldn't forget this.
He dragged his head through the slime, searching. His [Scavenger's Eye] was failing, but he could detect the weak presence of discarded hardware nearby.
He found it: a long, straight rod of reinforced titanium, half-submerged in the sludge. It was a component of an old orbital drop frame.
Kieran gripped it with his one good hand. He hauled himself up onto the rod, his broken body screaming.
He looked at his shattered body. His human flesh was useless. Weak. It betrayed him.
But the Abyss was full of steel.
"Spam," Kieran whispered, his voice gaining a new, terrifying edge. "Find me the Patch script. I need to fix my spine."
"The spinal column?" Spam questioned, horrified. "Kieran, you can't Patch a titanium rod into your vertebral column! That's... that's medical malpractice, times ten thousand!"
"I don't care," Kieran hissed, dragging the titanium rod closer. He looked at the mangled mess of his right arm. "I will not be weak again. I will not be flesh again."
He raised his metal left arm, positioning the titanium rod over his broken back.
"I tried to be a genius. Now I'll be a monster."