Chapter 301: The Bootleg Anchor, Diplomacy Sucks

Screams of absolute agony echoed through the peaceful morning forest.

In less than a minute, fourteen scavengers lay dead or dying in the grass, the ground slick with thick, pooling blood.

The bald leader was the only one left standing. He was backing away, his giant axe trembling violently in his hands. He looked at Sebastian, who was completely uninjured, his gray t-shirt splattered with fresh crimson blood.

"Please," the leader begged, dropping his axe to the dirt. "We didn’t know! We surrender!"

Sebastian slowly walked up to the terrified brute. He rested his bloody iron broadsword on his shoulder. He looked at the screaming, half-roasted boar thrashing in the dirt.

"You burned the bacon," Sebastian stated coldly.

He didn’t hesitate. Sebastian swung the heavy iron broadsword in a brutal, horizontal arc.

*SQUELCH.*

The bald leader’s head was cleanly detached from his shoulders. It spun through the air, landing with a wet thud in the bushes, while the headless body stood upright for a fraction of a second before collapsing into the bloody mud.

Sebastian let out a long, ragged exhale. He flicked the blood off his sword and sheathed it across his back.

Wraith stepped out of the shadows, walking casually across the massacre. The assassin hadn’t even drawn his daggers.

"Well," Wraith muttered, looking at the carnage. "That was incredibly messy, Boss."

"I haven’t had my coffee yet," Sebastian grumbled, walking back over to the tree to retrieve his metal thermos. "Clean this mess up, Wraith. Put their heads on pikes near the rift spawn points. Let the multiverse know that Earth isn’t a vacation spot."

"Yes, Boss," Wraith nodded, a dark, respectful smile hiding beneath his mask.

Sebastian took a sip from his thermos. The coffee was still hot. He turned around and started the long walk back to his ugly orange couch, fully prepared to take the longest nap in human history.

—

The walk back to the cabin was far too long for a man who hadn’t had his morning coffee yet.

Sebastian trudged up the dirt path, the heavy iron broadsword resting casually across his shoulder. His gray t-shirt was splattered with thick, bright crimson blood, but none of it was his. He felt physically fine—his thirty-percent biological steel density made short work of the scavengers—but mentally, he was exhausted.

*Crunch. Crunch.*

The gravel shifted under his heavy combat boots. The morning air was crisp and smelled faintly of pine and the distant, smoky aroma of breakfast being cooked in the town of Sanctuary below. It was a beautiful, picturesque morning. It was exactly the kind of morning that made him want to sleep until noon.

"I swear to god," Sebastian muttered to himself, taking a swig from his battered metal thermos. The coffee was lukewarm now, tasting slightly of iron. "If I have to decapitate one more idiot before lunch, I’m going to start charging an hourly rate."

He reached the crest of the hill, expecting to find the peaceful, quiet sanctuary of his wooden cabin.

Instead, he found a drum circle.

"What the actual fuck is happening to my front yard?" Sebastian groaned, stopping dead in his tracks.

Aelion and the nineteen other Elves from Server 889 were gathered in a perfect circle on his front lawn. They were no longer covered in lake mud. They had somehow managed to clean their flowing silk robes, which now shimmered brightly in the morning sun. They were chanting in a low, harmonic, incredibly irritating hum, tossing handfuls of glowing, sparkling green pollen into the air.

*HMMMMMMM.*

Valerie was standing on the porch, leaning against the wooden railing with her arms crossed. She held a mug of tea, her lips pressed tightly together in a desperate, failing attempt to hide a massive smile.

Sebastian marched forward, the heavy broadsword clanking against his back.

"Hey! Woodstock!" Sebastian barked, waving his free hand to clear the sparkling green dust from his face. "Get off my grass! What are you doing?"

*Achoo!*

Sebastian violently sneezed as the glowing pollen tickled his nose.

Aelion opened his eyes, ending the chant. He bowed deeply, pressing his hands together. "Sovereign! We are performing the Rite of the Verdant Hearth. We are blessing your domicile with the natural mana of the earth, that your crops may flourish and your enemies may find no purchase upon your soil."

"I don’t have crops, Aelion. I have an ugly orange couch and a half-empty fridge," Sebastian deadpanned, wiping his nose with the back of his blood-stained glove. "And if my enemies step on my soil, I don’t need magic pollen. I have a sword. Stop throwing glitter on my lawn."

Valerie couldn’t hold it in anymore. She burst out laughing, nearly spilling her tea.

"They mean well, Seattle," Valerie chuckled, walking down the wooden steps to meet him. She reached out and picked a glowing piece of green pollen out of his messy black hair. "They’ve been at it for twenty minutes. It actually smells like lavender."

"I hate lavender," Sebastian grumbled, though he leaned down and kissed her forehead anyway. "Where’s Wraith? I told him to clean up the mess in the woods."

"Right here, Boss," a raspy voice echoed from the side of the cabin.

Wraith stepped out from the shadows of the roof overhang. He wasn’t carrying a basket of tomatoes this time. In his hands, he held a heavy, incredibly ugly box made of rusted iron and glowing, jagged red crystals. The box was roughly the size of a microwave, and it was emitting a low, aggressive vibration that made Sebastian’s teeth ache.

*VMMMMMM.*

"I put their heads on pikes like you asked," Wraith said casually, dropping the heavy box onto the grass with a loud *THUD*. "But I found this sitting in the center of their camp. It was wired into a car battery and a pile of Source Code shards. It felt... wrong. So I brought it back."

Sebastian frowned, stepping away from Valerie and approaching the iron box.

The moment he got within three feet of it, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It didn’t feel like the natural, unbound magic of the new world. It felt rigid. It felt sterile. It felt exactly like the Ethereal Plane.

"What is that thing?" Valerie asked, her corporate instincts flaring. She stepped up beside him, her blue eyes narrowing at the glowing red crystals.

"It’s a localized server anchor," Sebastian whispered, a cold, heavy knot forming in his stomach.

Suddenly, the red crystals on the box violently flared.

*BEEEEEEP!*

A harsh, jagged red holographic field projected upward from the top of the box, painting the grass and the front of the cabin in a sinister, bloody light.

Sebastian’s brain, permanently altered by his time as the Sovereign of Laws, instantly recognized the data stream. But he didn’t even need his glitched brain to read it, because the box actively projected a glowing red system prompt into the open air for everyone to see.

`[Bootleg Server 001 Online.]`

`[Scanning Local Entities...]`

`[Warning: Physics Engine Override Initiated.]`

"Get back!" Sebastian roared, throwing his arm out to push Valerie behind him.

*WHOOSH!*

The gravity in the front yard abruptly, violently shifted. It didn’t reverse entirely, but it suddenly increased by a factor of ten within a twenty-foot radius of the box.

"Guh!" Wraith grunted, his knees instantly buckling. The assassin hit the dirt, pinned to the grass by the sudden, oppressive weight.

Aelion and the Elves shrieked in terror as the invisible force slammed them into the dirt. Their natural magic was instantly suppressed by the localized, artificial physics engine the box was projecting.

"Seattle!" Valerie cried out. She was forced down onto one knee, her hands pressed against the grass, gasping for air as the gravity crushed her chest.

Sebastian didn’t fall.

His thirty-percent biological steel density groaned in protest, his muscles burning as the artificial gravity tried to flatten him. He planted his heavy combat boots into the dirt, leaving deep, two-inch craters in the soil.

He stared at the glowing red text hovering in the air.

`[Establishing Warlord Domain: The Blood Steppes.]`

`[Applying Status Effects: Fear, Sluggishness, Mana Drain.]`

`[Error: Anomaly Detected. Suggested Action: Terminate.]`

"You’ve got to be shitting me," Sebastian snarled, his silver-tinged eyes burning with absolute fury.

He understood exactly what was happening. The System was dead, but the hardware from the old world still existed in the Juncture. The Warlords hadn’t just come to Earth to scavenge; they had brought bootleg server anchors. They were trying to forcibly overwrite Earth’s natural physics with their old, tyrannical game rules. They wanted to turn Earth into a dungeon all over again.

"I didn’t break the universe just so you could plug a router back in!" Sebastian roared.

He didn’t draw the iron broadsword. A sword wouldn’t break the heavily reinforced iron casing of the anchor.

He forced himself forward. Every single step required the kinetic force of a car crash.

*CRUNCH.*

He lifted his right boot, the muscles in his thigh bulging, and stepped toward the box.