Location: [NULL]
Status: Data Fragmentation in Progress
There was no up. There was no down. There was only the screaming silence of static.
Vikram floated in a boundless expanse of white noise. He looked at his hands; they were flickering, phasing between solid flesh and jagged pixels. He tried to summon his trident, but nothing happened. The Ocean God Trident was physical matter; it couldn't exist in a realm of pure deleted code.
"We are dead," a distorted voice whimpered nearby.
Subject Zero, the mighty glitch that had threatened to consume Earth, was curled into a ball of red wireframe mesh. It looked terrified. "This is the Recycle Bin. The Void of Deletion. Nothing comes back from here. The system... it's scrubbing us. Bit by bit."
Vikram looked at his legs. His boots were already dissolving into binary numbers—0s and 1s floating away into the white mist.
[System Warning: Existence Failure Imminent.]
[Time until Total Erasure: 09:59]
"Ten minutes," Vikram noted calmly. "That's generous."
Subject Zero uncurled, its faceless head snapping toward Vikram. "Generous?! You maniac! You dragged us into the abyss! We could have ruled the universe! Now we are just junk data waiting to be overwritten!"
Vikram drifted closer to the Glitch. Despite losing his physical form, his presence was undeniable. His soul—the Fifth Gene—was burning brighter here than in the physical world.
"You don't get it, do you?" Vikram said, his voice echoing like a corrupted audio file. "You are afraid because you are code. You think this place is the end because the System told you so."
Vikram reached out a flickering hand and grabbed a passing stream of white noise. He squeezed it. The noise turned into a black sphere of Void energy.
"But I have the Void Gene," Vikram grinned, his teeth flashing like white pixels. "To you, this is a garbage dump. To me... this is an all-you-can-eat buffet."
Location: The Sea of Rust (Physical World)
Status: Siege Mode
Outside the black pyramid, the situation had gone from bad to catastrophic.
General God-Killer was plugged into the pyramid's external port, sparks flying from his mechanical shoulder. "He's locked in! The server initiated a Hard Reset! If I don't bypass the wipe protocol, Vikram's consciousness will be deleted along with the virus!"
"Can you stop it?" Mira shouted. She stood atop a pile of scrap metal, creating a dome of water to shield the team.
"I can slow it down!" God-Killer yelled. "But the server knows I'm hacking it! It's activating the Active Defense Protocol!"
KLANG... KLANG... KLANG...
The mountains of scrap metal surrounding them began to shift.
From the rust, thousands of red lights ignited.
[Defense Protocol: PURGE.]
[Deploying: Sentry Droids (Mark IV).]
[Deploying: Heavy Mech-Walkers.]
The scrap heaps exploded outward. An army of machines rose from the grave. Skeletal droids with laser rifles, massive tanks with spider legs, and flying drones buzzing like angry hornets.
"There must be thousands of them!" Elara notched three arrows at once. "We have to hold the line!"
"Defend the General!" Seraphina commanded. Her wings flared, shining like a beacon in the dusty air. "If he disconnects, Vikram dies!"
The battle erupted.
Seraphina was a whirlwind of light. She flew through the swarm of drones, her light-sword slicing through metal chassis like they were paper. "Sky Art: Holy Sever!" Every swing caused an explosion of sparks.
Elara used the terrain. She shot arrows into the joints of the heavy walkers. "Nature Art: Iron-Eater Vine!" The vines she summoned weren't green; they were grey, evolved to eat metal. They burrowed into the tanks, crushing their engines from the inside.
Mira controlled the battlefield. She pulled moisture from the air and the coolant fluids from the destroyed mechs. "Ocean Art: Acid Rain!" A corrosive downpour melted the armor of the infantry droids.
But there were too many. For every droid they destroyed, three more crawled out of the Sea of Rust.
"I need more time!" God-Killer screamed. A laser blast took off his left mechanical ear. "Just five more minutes!"
A massive shadow fell over them.
From behind the pyramid, a colossal machine stood up. It was fifty meters tall—a Titan-Class Guardian. It had a cannon on its chest the size of a train tunnel.
[Target Acquired: Intruders.]
[Charging: Omni-Beam.]
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Captain Great Tooth shouted from the airship above, firing his cannons uselessly at the Titan's energy shield.
The Titan aimed at the pyramid's control panel—at God-Killer. It didn't care about the intruders; it was programmed to sanitize the infected port.
"Mira! Shield!" Seraphina screamed, diving down.
The three queens combined their powers—Light, Water, and Wood—to form a barrier in front of God-Killer.
BOOOOM!
The Omni-Beam hit the barrier. The ground shook. The barrier cracked. Mira coughed blood. Seraphina's knees buckled.
They couldn't hold it.
Location: [NULL]
Status: Assimilation
Inside the void, Subject Zero was screaming.
"Stop! STOP IT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Vikram wasn't listening. He had plunged his hands deep into Subject Zero's chest. But he wasn't killing him.
He was absorbing him.
The Void-Glutton Beast (Vikram's pet) had manifested in this digital space as a massive, shadowy mouth. It was devouring the white static of the Recycle Bin, converting raw deleted data into energy for Vikram.
And Vikram was using that energy to rewrite his own existence.
[System Alert: High-Density Data Absorption.]
[Soul Gene is mutating.]
[Warning: Biological brain cannot handle this much information.]
[Solution: Offload processing to external AI.]
"You wanted to merge with Earth's internet?" Vikram roared, his body glowing with blinding purple code. "You wanted to be a god of information? Fine! Then become my information!"
Subject Zero tried to glitch away, but Vikram's grip was absolute.
"You are just code!" Vikram shouted. "And I am the Admin!"
He activated the Soul Gene to its limit.
"Soul Art: Domination - Format C:"
A shockwave of purple energy blasted through the white void.
Subject Zero disintegrated. It didn't die; it was broken down into its base components—trillions of lines of code, algorithms, and hacking protocols.
Vikram opened his mouth and inhaled.
He swallowed the Glitch.
He swallowed the Recycle Bin.
He swallowed the emptiness itself.
His brain felt like it was melting. Knowledge flooded him. He saw the history of the Second Sanctuary. He saw the blueprints of every machine ever built. He saw the encryption keys to the server.
[Evolution Complete.]
[Soul Gene -> Techno-Soul Gene (God-Tier).]
[New Ability: Mecha-Morphosis.]
[New Ability: Digital Divinity.]
Vikram opened his eyes. They were no longer human eyes. They were glowing purple HUDs (Heads-Up Displays) scrolling with infinite data.
"Time to reboot."
The Resurrection of Steel
Outside, the Titan Guardian charged its cannon for a second shot. The queens were exhausted. Their barrier had shattered. God-Killer was bracing for death.
"It's been an honor," God-Killer closed his organic eye.
The Titan fired.
ZIIIIIING!
The beam didn't hit them.
Just inches from God-Killer's face, the beam hit a wall of... Purple Glitch.
The air distorted. The beam was absorbed, redirected, and fired back at the Titan.
BOOM!
The Titan's head exploded. The massive machine teetered and crashed backward into the scrap heap.
Silence fell over the battlefield. The thousands of droids stopped moving. Their red eyes flickered and turned Purple.
The Black Pyramid behind God-Killer began to transform. The smooth stone rippled and changed shape, turning into liquid metal.
From the liquid metal, a figure emerged.
He didn't walk out; he materialized from the code.
Vikram stood there. But he wasn't wearing his Asura Armor.
His skin was the armor. It was a sleek, seamless fusion of organic skin and shifting digital nanotechnology. Circuit patterns glowed softly under his epidermis. His hair was made of silver optical fibers.
He looked at the army of droids.
"At ease," Vikram said. His voice sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once—from the droids' speakers, from the ships' radios, even from God-Killer's cybernetic ear.
The droids dropped their weapons. They knelt.
God-Killer stared at him, mouth agape. "Vikram? What... what are you?"
Vikram looked at his hand. He flexed his fingers, and his hand transformed into a plasma cannon, then back into a hand.
"I am the Update," Vikram smiled.
He looked at Mira, Seraphina, and Elara, who were staring at him in shock.
"Sorry for the wait, ladies. The Wi-Fi was terrible in there."
[System Notification: Administrator Access Granted.]
[Current Status: Ruler of the Sea of Rust.]
[Assets Acquired: Mechanical Army (10,000 units), Titan-Class Guardian (Repairable).]
Vikram walked over to the fallen Titan Guardian. He touched its metal leg.
"Techno-Soul: Arise."
Purple energy rushed from his hand into the dead machine. The Titan groaned. Its blown-off head began to regenerate, rebuilding itself from nearby scrap metal.
Within seconds, the fifty-meter robot stood up again. Its eye glowed purple. It saluted Vikram.
"We have a ship," Vikram pointed to the Titan. "And now, we have a tank."
He turned to the north, towards the center of the Second Sanctuary, where the Imperial Capital of Ashborn lay.
"God-Killer," Vikram said. "You said Emperor Ashborn betrayed the Old Sword Saint. You said he rules this world."
"Yes," God-Killer nodded slowly. "He possesses the Necromancer System. He controls the dead."
Vikram's digital eyes narrowed.
"He controls the dead. I control the machines. Let's see which army breaks first."
The Emperor's Shadow
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in the Floating Castle of Eternity.
Emperor Ashborn sat on a throne made of white dragon bones. He was a beautiful man with pale skin and long black hair, holding a goblet of blood-wine.
Suddenly, the goblet cracked in his hand.
A shadow appeared beside him. It was his Royal Advisor.
"Your Majesty?"
"The Server in the Red Desert," Ashborn's voice was soft, velvety, and terrifying. "Someone just hacked it. Someone just gained Administrator privileges."
"Impossible," the Advisor gasped. "Only the Founders possess those keys. Shall I send the Shadow Legion?"
Ashborn stood up. He walked to the balcony and looked south.
"No," Ashborn smiled. "The Shadow Legion is useless against a Technomancer. Send the Three Calamities."
"The... Three Calamities, sir? The Poison King, the Beast Lord, and the Illusion Witch? Is that not overkill?"
"He killed the Demon God Avatar. He conquered the Sky. And now he owns the Machines," Ashborn's eyes glowed with necromantic green fire. "Overkill is the only language he will understand. Bring me his head, or don't come back."