Chapter 302: The Border Office, Sky Lizard

The red holographic field violently flickered, the bootleg system desperately trying to process the sheer, unadulterated physical mass moving through its localized domain.

`[Error! Kinetic Overload! Error!]`

"Fuck your Wi-Fi," Sebastian growled.

He reached the box. He didn’t use a spell. He raised his heavy right boot high into the air and brought it down with every single ounce of his hyper-dense, biological steel strength.

*KRA-SMASH!*

His combat boot drove entirely through the top of the rusted iron casing. The heavy metal crumpled like cheap tin foil. The red crystals completely shattered, exploding outward in a shower of useless, sparking glass.

*BZZZZT... pop.*

The red holographic text violently glitched, scrambled into a mess of unreadable code, and permanently died.

The ten-times gravity instantly vanished.

"Haaaaah!" Valerie gasped, collapsing fully onto the grass as the oxygen rushed back into her lungs.

Wraith coughed, slowly pushing himself up from the dirt, rubbing his neck. "Well. That was incredibly unpleasant."

Sebastian stood over the ruined, smoking box. He pulled his boot out of the crushed metal, shaking a few loose wires off his laces. He stared down at the broken machinery, a dark, heavy realization settling over his mind.

"They’re trying to terraform the planet," Sebastian stated quietly, turning to look at Valerie.

Valerie stood up, brushing the dirt off her jeans. Her corporate demeanor locked instantly into place. "If that scouting party had one, it means the other rifts opening around the globe are bringing them too. They want to turn Earth into a patchwork of bootleg servers."

"Not on my watch," Sebastian grunted, cracking his knuckles. He looked over at Aelion, who was still trembling in the grass.

"Hey, sparkles," Sebastian called out.

The Elf scrambled to his feet, bowing his head. "Yes, Sovereign?"

"If you want to live on my planet, you’re going to have to pay rent," Sebastian said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the town below. "Go find Galleon. Tell him to start building a wall around the lake. And tell him to set up a toll booth. If these Warlords want to visit Earth, they’re going to have to go through Customs."

Aelion blinked, thoroughly confused by the terminology, but he bowed deeply anyway. "At once, Sovereign!"

Sebastian looked at the smashed box one last time, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.

"So much for my vacation," he muttered.

"Look on the bright side, Seattle," Valerie smiled, walking over and slipping her arm through his. "At least we get to make the rules this time."

"Yeah," Sebastian smirked, a dark, dangerous light flashing in his eyes. "And rule number one is: No trespassing."

—

The "Sanctuary Customs and Border Protection Agency" was, to put it mildly, an absolute architectural disaster.

Galleon had built it in less than twelve hours. It sat squarely on the main dirt road leading toward the northern lake, completely blocking the most active dimensional rift zone. It was essentially a heavily reinforced wooden shack constructed from repurposed timber, corrugated steel roofing, and a disturbing amount of barbed wire.

Nailed to the front of the shack was a large, hand-painted wooden sign in aggressively bold red lettering:

**FUCK OFF OR PAY TOLL. NO EXCEPTIONS.**

Sebastian was sitting in a faded, striped canvas lawn chair directly in front of the shack. He was wearing his gray sweatpants, a plain black t-shirt, and a pair of dark sunglasses to block the harsh mid-morning sun. In his right hand, he held a ceramic mug of hot peppermint tea.

"This is ridiculous," Sebastian sighed, taking a slow sip. "I defeated the Prime Architect of the Multiverse so I could become a glorified bouncer."

Valerie sat next to him at a folding card table, completely ignoring his complaints. She was aggressively scribbling notes into a thick, leather-bound ledger, using a completely mundane ink pen.

"It’s called establishing a perimeter, Seattle," Valerie said without looking up. "If we don’t document who and what is falling out of these rifts, we’re going to have bootleg warlords squatting in the woods. Besides, Aelion and his people are doing all the heavy lifting."

She pointed her pen toward the lake.

The twenty Elves from Server 889 were hard at work. Stripped of their fancy silk robes and wearing basic linen tunics, they were hauling massive stones from the quarry to build a defensive wall around the waterfront. Their natural magic made the stones levitate slightly, allowing them to stack the heavy granite blocks with surprising speed.

*CLUNK. CLUNK.*

"I still don’t trust them," Wraith’s voice rasped from the roof of the shack.

The assassin was perched on the corrugated steel like a gargoyle, sharpening one of his iron daggers against a whetstone. *Shhhk. Shhhk.* "They smile too much. Nobody who survives a multiversal wipe smiles that much unless they’re planning an assassination."

"They’re just happy to be alive, Wraith," Valerie sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I’ll believe it when they stop throwing glitter on my lawn," Sebastian grumbled.

*BEEP... BEEP... BEEP.*

A strange, rhythmic electronic chirping sound interrupted the peaceful morning.

Sebastian lowered his sunglasses, looking toward the side of the wooden shack. Sitting on top of a stack of wooden crates was Galleon’s newest invention.

After Sebastian had smashed the Bootleg Anchor the day before, Galleon had spent the entire night reverse-engineering the broken red crystals and rusted wiring. He had combined it with a few scavenged parts from the old Vanguard machinery to create the "Scrap-Scanner." It looked like a toaster wired to a satellite dish, but it was designed to read the ambient dimensional frequencies of opening rifts.

The machine violently shuddered, spitting out a thin strip of receipt paper covered in glowing green text.

Valerie stood up, grabbing the paper as it printed.

`[Warning: Massive Biological Heat Signature Detected.]`

`[Dimensional Rift Opening in T-Minus 10 Seconds.]`

`[Threat Level: Big Fucking Lizard.]`

Sebastian stared at the paper, raising an eyebrow. "Did Galleon actually program it to say that?"

"He has a very specific coding language," Valerie smirked, pulling a rusted iron pipe from her belt. "Heads up, Seattle. Sounds like a big one."

*KRA-THOOM!*

The sky directly above the lake violently tore open. A massive, jagged rift of deep emerald and violet light split the clouds apart. The sheer atmospheric displacement generated a massive gust of wind that kicked up dirt and dust, nearly knocking Sebastian’s lawn chair over.

Sebastian calmly set his tea mug down on the folding table. He stood up, stretching his neck until it popped loudly. *CRACK.*

"Alright," Sebastian sighed, drawing the heavy iron broadsword from the scabbard on his back. "Let’s see what fell out of the ugly tree today."

*ROOAAAAARRRR!*

A deafening, blood-curdling screech echoed from the rift.

It wasn’t a ship. It wasn’t a raiding party of scavengers.

Falling out of the glowing portal was a massive, fully-grown Armored Sky-Drake. In the old days of the Ethereal Plane, this thing would have easily been classified as a Level 90 Raid Boss. It was the size of a commercial passenger jet, covered head-to-tail in thick, interlocking iron-gray scales that looked like literal plate armor. Its wingspan was immense, blotting out the sun as it aggressively flapped to arrest its fall.

The beast smelled overwhelmingly of raw sulfur and rotting meat.

"Oh, come on!" Wraith yelled from the roof, tossing his dagger in the air and catching it. "A dragon? We don’t even have a ballista yet!"

"It’s a Drake, not a dragon. It only has two legs," Sebastian corrected dryly, walking casually past the toll booth shack and out onto the dirt road.

*CRASH!*

The Sky-Drake slammed into the earth about fifty yards away, completely crushing a cluster of large oak trees into splinters. The ground violently shook.

The beast shook its massive, horned head, its slitted yellow eyes darting around in absolute fury. It was a displaced predator, ripped from its high-tier monster server and dumped into an unfamiliar world. It was confused, angry, and incredibly hungry.

Its eyes locked onto the Elves building the wall near the lake.

The Drake opened its massive, jagged maw. Deep inside its throat, a bright, glowing orange liquid began to aggressively bubble.

"It doesn’t have magic, but it still has biological chemistry," Valerie warned, stepping up behind Sebastian. "That’s a chemical combustion gland!"

*FWOOSH!*

The Drake lunged forward, exhaling a massive, roaring torrent of liquid chemical fire. The flames burned a sickening, bright green, melting the dirt and turning the sand into glass.

The Elves shrieked, diving into the lake to avoid the inferno.

"Hey! Godzilla!" Sebastian roared, sprinting directly toward the beast.

The Sky-Drake snapped its massive head toward the annoying human running at it. It inhaled deeply, preparing to unleash another torrent of chemical fire directly at Sebastian to turn him into a pile of ash.

Sebastian didn’t try to dodge. He knew he couldn’t outrun a cone of fire that wide without his old movement skills.

But he didn’t need to.

As he sprinted past the construction site of the wall, Sebastian dropped his iron broadsword. He reached out and grabbed a massive, fifteen-foot-long solid iron girder that Galleon had forged for the gate’s foundation.