Chapter 152: [154]: Server 404, The Ash Wastes

The transition to Server 404 was not a seamless glide through digital space. It

felt like being forcefully shoved through a high-speed industrial fan made of

pure mathematics.

"Guh!"

Sebastian materialized with a heavy, concussive thud, his boots slamming into

the ground. He stumbled forward, his thirty-percent physical synchronization

easily catching his massive weight before he could face-plant.

He stood up straight and immediately regretted taking a breath.

"Fuck me," Sebastian coughed, waving a black-gloved hand in front of his face.

The air was absolutely lethal. It didn’t smell like sulfur or the metallic tang

of blood. It smelled like burning hair and superheated bleach. Every inhale felt

like dragging sandpaper down his trachea.

BING! BING!

His UI instantly flared with aggressive, blinking red warnings.

[System Alert: Entering Server 404 - The Ash Wastes.] [Environmental Hazard:

Extreme Heat Detected.] [Warning: Ambient Temperature exceeds 150 Degrees

Celsius.] [Debuff Applied: Searing Lungs. -100 HP/sec.]

Sebastian didn’t panic. He just rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother casting a

cooling spell. He didn’t reach for a water potion.

His [Thermal Immunity] passive law, perfectly evolved through the 10,000x Nexus

Glitch, instantly recognized the hostile environment. The conceptual law of

absolute thermal rejection wrapped around his avatar like an invisible, soothing

second skin. The terrifying heat simply ceased to interact with his biology.

"Nice try, server," Sebastian muttered, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness.

He looked around. The landscape was a breathtaking, horrifying monument to

digital despair.

There was no sky. Instead, two massive, bloated, sickly-orange suns hung

suspended in a violently swirling canopy of dark purple smog. The light they

cast was harsh, casting long, unnatural shadows across the endless dunes.

But it wasn’t sand beneath his boots.

Sebastian crouched down and scooped up a handful of the white, powdery substance

that made up the desert. He let it sift through his fingers.

CRUNCH.

It was bone. Millions upon millions of pulverized, completely shattered human

and monster bones, mixed with the raw, grey wireframe data of deleted assets.

"A literal graveyard," Sebastian whispered, standing back up.

Server 404 wasn’t a standard game world. In the lore of the Ethereal Plane, when

a player’s data became too corrupted, or when a lower-tier server finally

succumbed to the Void, the System didn’t just cleanly delete the files. It

dumped the garbage here. It was the cosmic trash bin of the multiverse.

The wind howled, whipping the bone-dust into blinding, abrasive tornadoes that

scoured the jagged, rusted metal spires jutting out of the dunes.

Sebastian was alone. Wraith hadn’t loaded in yet, likely delayed by the heavy

encryption protocols of the transit.

Sebastian didn’t wait. He didn’t have time to hold hands. He opened his

administrative map. The UI projected a massive, glowing holographic grid over

his vision.

He wasn’t looking for towns or refugee camps. He was looking for the largest

concentration of localized mana on the server. He was looking for the World

Core.

"There," Sebastian said softly.

About ten miles to the north, a massive, violently pulsing red blip illuminated

his radar. It was sitting at the bottom of a colossal geological depression.

He started walking.

He didn’t use his [Heavenly Steps] to teleport. The ambient magical interference

from the twin suns was incredibly dense, and forcefully bending space right now

would just drain his physical stamina unnecessarily. He simply engaged his

Demigod-tier muscles and marched through the oppressive, lethal wasteland.

With every step, the bone-sand crunched loudly beneath his boots. The sheer

scale of the desolation was staggering. He passed the half-buried, rusted husks

of massive Vanguard siege mechs. He walked over the colossal, fossilized

ribcages of Void Titans that had long since rotted away.

"The System really doesn’t care about recycling," Sebastian noted, kicking a

skull out of his path. It shattered into grey pixels upon impact.

As he walked, his mind drifted back to Sanctuary. He thought about the cold,

pristine slab of the Resurrection Altar. He thought about Valerie lying there,

her avatar completely frozen, her digital soul held hostage by a line of code.

A dark, heavy anger settled in his chest. It wasn’t the fiery, explosive rage of

a berserker. It was the cold, terrifying certainty of an executioner.

He was going to tear this entire planet apart to get the fuel he needed. And he

wasn’t going to lose a single minute of sleep over it.

After thirty minutes of relentless, unbothered marching, the rolling dunes of

bone abruptly ended.

Sebastian stopped at the edge of a massive, yawning chasm.

The canyon was easily five miles wide and dropped straight down into absolute

darkness. The jagged cliffs looked like they had been violently torn apart by a

massive tectonic shift.

But it wasn’t dark at the bottom.

A sickly, pulsating red glow emanated from the depths of the gorge, casting

eerie, shifting shadows against the canyon walls. The smell of raw,

unadulterated copper and rotting meat wafted up from the abyss, completely

overpowering the smell of the burning ash.

Sebastian peered over the edge. His [True Sight] instantly pierced the gloom,

revealing the source of the light.

"Well, that’s not ominous at all," Sebastian deadpanned.

He didn’t bother looking for a safe path down. He didn’t care about climbing

gear.

He just casually stepped off the ledge.

Gravity aggressively grabbed him, pulling his hyper-dense body down toward the

glowing red depths at a terrifying speed. The wind roared in his ears as he

plummeted past the jagged rock faces.

He didn’t panic. Right before he hit the bottom, he forcefully edited his mass

to zero, instantly arresting his momentum. He floated gently for the last ten

feet, his boots touching down on the solid, obsidian floor of the canyon with a

soft, perfectly silent tap.

He restored his mass and looked up.

He had found the source. And he had found the locals.

—-

The bottom of the canyon was a localized nightmare that perfectly encapsulated

the absolute cruelty of the Ethereal Plane.

Sebastian stood in the shadows of a towering, jagged rock formation. His

silver-tinged eyes scanned the massive, cavernous space.