Chapter 23: The Digital Exorcism
The server room transformed into a kill box. Six experimental Hydra Defense Sentinels—clunky, bipedal automatons powered by crude Tesseract batteries—stomped from their alcoves. Their rotary cannons began to spin, filling the air with the smell of hot oil and impending lead.
The Defensive Dance
Arthur didn't panic. With his S+ Intelligence, he didn't just see the turrets; he saw the trajectory lines of every bullet before they left the barrels.
[ BATTLE LOG ]
Arthur activates [Spatial Anchor: Kinetic Barrier].
Sentinels fire!
Result: Projectiles hit the "locked" air and drop, harmlessly stacking in a pile of lead.
"You are... inefficient," Zola's voice buzzed through the intercoms. "You defend while I upload. By the time my sentinels fall, I will be across the Atlantic."
"You're not going anywhere, Arnim," Arthur gritted out. He knew the Neural-Sync was at 65%. He couldn't leave the terminal, or the connection would sever. "I'm not just downloading you. I'm tagging you."
The Virtual Breach
Arthur slammed the butt of [The Archive's Edge] into the floor. He didn't use a kinetic blast. Instead, he forced his own consciousness into the data stream, using the staff as a bridge.
[ SKILL ACTIVE: NEURAL-SYNC — VIRTUAL PROJECTION ]
Arthur's vision split. One half of his mind saw the physical room—the Sentinels closing in, their heavy claws reaching for him. The other half saw a world of glowing green binary and flickering vacuum-tube logic. In this digital space, Arnim Zola appeared as a towering, distorted face made of light.
"This is my domain!" the digital Zola roared, the code-landscape shifting into sharp, jagged spikes. "Here, I am the law of physics!"
"Then I'm the debugger," Arthur countered. In the digital world, he didn't have his staff, but he had his [Mercury Catalyst] blood, which appeared as flowing gold ink. He reached out and grabbed a "pillar" of Zola's logic, his hands burning through the encryption like acid.
The Final Push
[ NEURAL-SYNC: 90% ... 95% ... ]
In the physical world, a Sentinel slammed its metal fist into Arthur's shoulder. The [Archivist Combat Shroud] absorbed the blow, but the impact forced a cough of blood from his lips. He didn't move his hand from the console.
[ NEURAL-SYNC: 100% — COMPLETE ]
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ]
Ability Gained: [Digital Trace] — You can now track Zola's consciousness through any electrical grid.
New Perk: [Logic Plague] — Your attacks now cause "Glitch" damage to mechanical enemies.
"No! This is... impossible!" Zola's digital face fractured.
Arthur snapped back to reality. The gold light in his eyes flared, and he unleashed the stored energy of the download in a massive [Logic Plague] pulse. The Sentinels didn't explode; they simply stopped. Their internal clocks were reset to zero, their gears grinding as they tried to execute commands that no longer existed.
The Empty Shell
Arthur pulled his hand away from the terminal. The screen showed a "Transfer Failed" error on Zola's end. The upload had been intercepted. Zola wasn't deleted—he was too vast for that—but he was now a prisoner of his own fragmented code, and more importantly, Arthur had his map.
"Steve," Arthur rasped into his comms, leaning heavily on his staff. "The mountain is clear. But tell Howard we've got a problem. Zola wasn't the brain... he was just the librarian."
Current Status:
DP Balance: 6,700 (Earned for Boss Defense).
Sync Level: 45%.
Condition: Moderate Internal Damage (Endurance B is holding).