The drop was twenty feet. For a Level 50 Paladin, this would be a superhero landing—knees bent, dust billowing, looking cool for the cameras.
For Kieran, it was a math problem involving gravity, bone density, and a very hard floor.
"Gravity is a constant, Kieran," Spam whispered helpfully as Kieran hung from the broken grate by his fingertips. "Your knees, however, are variables. Variables that are about to snap."
"Shut up," Kieran hissed. "I'm aiming for the cushion."
"The cushion is a person."
"Exactly."
Kieran let go.
The wind whistled past his ears for a split second. He plummeted into the gloom of the Hangar Bay, the Glitched Fang gripped tightly in his hand.
He didn't scream. He didn't flail. He fell like a stone.
Below him, the first Cultist was busy chanting a prayer to the Engine. He never finished the verse.
CRUNCH.
Kieran's boots slammed into the mage's shoulders with the force of a falling anvil. There was a sickening, wet snap as the Cultist's collarbone shattered. The mage collapsed instantly under the weight, his face smashing into the metal grating of the floor.
Kieran rode the body down, using the mage's spine as a shock absorber. He rolled forward, absorbing the momentum, and came up in a crouch, dagger raised.
[Stealth Attack Successful.] [Critical Hit: Spine Severed.] [Target Status: Paralyzed.]
The Cultist beneath him gurgled, reaching out with a trembling hand. His face—a blank, static screen—flickered violently, trying to render a scream but failing due to the crushed windpipe.
Kieran didn't hesitate. He stomped.
He drove his heel down onto the back of the Cultist's head.
SMASH.
The screen-face shattered like an iPad dropped on concrete. Glass and black ichor sprayed across the floor. The mage's body spasmed once, then dissolved into a cloud of gray pixels.
[Target Deleted.] [XP: 0.] [Comment: That was excessive. Do it again.]
Kieran straightened up, shaking the digital gore off his boot. "One down."
The other two Cultists stood frozen near the Void Core. Their processors lagged, taking a full second to register that their colleague had just been rebooted into oblivion.
Then, their screens turned a deep, angry crimson.
[Entity: Second Cultist] -> [Combat Mode: ENGAGED.] [Entity: Third Cultist] -> [Combat Mode: ENGAGED.]
"Oh, look," Spam drawled, floating down lazily. "You angered the IT department. They have sticks."
The Cultists raised their staffs—twisted rods of circuitry and copper wire. The air in the hangar instantly grew hot and heavy. The smell of burning hair filled the room.
The second Cultist slammed his staff onto the ground. A circle of binary runes appeared at his feet, glowing orange.
"Thermal spike!" Spam warned, his voice rising an octave. "Dodge, you moron!"
Kieran scrambled to the left, diving behind a rusted shipping crate just as a bolt of fire roared past him. It struck the spot where he had been standing, melting the floor plating into slag.
"Fireballs," Kieran spat, peering around the corner. The heat was intense, singeing his eyebrows. "Of course it's fireballs. It's always the flashy stuff with these guys."
"They are casting a synchronized routine," Spam analyzed. "The second one is charging a heavy projectile. The third one is putting up a Firewall. You have approximately four seconds before you are roasted like a holiday turkey."
"Four seconds?" Kieran grinned, his teeth stained with blood from the earlier fight. "Plenty of time."
He didn't hide. He vaulted over the crate.
He ran straight at them.
The second Cultist finished his chant. A sphere of swirling, roaring flame the size of a beach ball materialized at the tip of his staff. The heat was suffocating.
[Spell Detected: Pyro_Blast.exe] [Damage Potential: Lethal.]
The mage thrust the staff forward. The fireball launched. It screamed through the air, illuminating the hangar in terrifying orange light.
Kieran didn't dodge. He planted his feet.
"Are you glitching out?!" Spam screamed. "Move!"
Kieran raised his left hand—the hand that flickered with the ghostly transparency of the Decompiler class.
"Scavenger's Eye," he whispered.
The world slowed down. The roaring fire wasn't fire anymore. It was geometry. It was math. It was a compressed file of angry data hurling toward his face.
He saw the variables written in the flames: [Velocity: 50m/s] [Temperature: 800C] [Vector: Forward]
Kieran reached out. He didn't try to catch the fire; that would kill him. He tried to catch the code.
His fingers brushed the edge of the spell.
SSSSST.
Pain shot up his arm. It felt like sticking his hand into a blender made of lava. His skin blistered instantly, peeling away to reveal the wireframe bone beneath.
[Warning: Integrity Dropping.] [System Error: Unauthorized Access.]
"Access..." Kieran gritted his teeth, forcing his hand to close around the virtual handle of the spell. "...GRANTED!"
[Skill: Deconstruct (Override).]
He grabbed the [Vector] variable. It was a slippery, violent string of code, fighting him, trying to burn his mind. Kieran poured his will into it, twisting the logic of the universe.
He didn't have enough mana to delete it. But he had enough to turn it.
He ripped the variable to the side.
The fireball, inches from his face, shuddered. It turned from orange to a sickly, glitching purple.
WHOOSH.
It whipped around in a tight U-turn, defying inertia.
The second Cultist stood there, staff raised, his screen-face blank with confusion. The System didn't allow friendly fire. Magic wasn't supposed to do that.
The purple fireball slammed into the Cultist's chest.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. It wasn't just fire; it was a logic bomb. The Cultist was blown backward off his feet, his robes disintegrating, his chest cavity caved in. He slammed into the Void Engine's magnetic field and sizzled, turning into dust before he even hit the floor.
[Target Neutralized.] [Style Points: 10.]
"Two down," Kieran panted, clutching his burned left hand.
The final mage, the third Cultist , panicked.
He looked at his dead partner. He looked at Kieran, who was standing there smoking, skin peeling, eyes glowing with murder.
The Cultist dropped his staff.
[Enemy Status: FEAR.]
He turned and fled. He hovered rapidly across the floor, gliding toward the exit at the far end of the hangar.
"He's running to get the manager!" Spam yelled. "If he alerts the Warden, we're dead! Catch him!"
"I can't!" Kieran shouted, sprinting after him.
Even with his upgraded Latency, the mage was faster. The Cultist was gliding on a cushion of mana, while Kieran had to run on human legs. The gap was widening. Twenty meters. Thirty meters.
"I need range," Kieran growled.
He looked at the Glitched Fang in his hand.
"Spam, give me the vector."
"Windage negligible. Target velocity 12 meters per second. He's weaving left."
Kieran stopped running. He skid to a halt, digging his heels into the grime. He pulled his arm back.
He aimed not at where the mage was, but where he would be.
But thirty meters was too far for a throw. The physics engine would calculate drag, gravity, and air resistance. The dagger would lose momentum.
"Unless..." Kieran narrowed his eyes. "Unless I skip the physics."
He focused on the air in front of him. He visualized the space between him and the mage not as distance, but as a loading screen.
[Skill: Lag Throw.] [Cost: 5 Bytes.]
Kieran threw the dagger.
It left his hand. And vanished.
For 0.5 seconds, the dagger ceased to exist in the material plane. It clipped through the air molecules. It clipped through gravity. It traveled with zero resistance, teleporting forward.
THWACK.
The dagger reappeared buried to the hilt in the back of the Cultist's head.
The mage's momentum carried him forward, but his body went limp. He face-planted into the floor, sliding like a ragdoll for another ten feet before dissolving into pixels.
[Target Neutralized.] [Combat Encounter Complete.]
Kieran stood alone in the silence of the hangar, his chest heaving.
"Nice throw," Spam admitted, floating over. "Although, statistically, that was 90% aim-assist and 10% luck."
"I'll take it," Kieran wheezed.
He walked over and retrieved his dagger from the pile of pixel dust. Then, he turned his attention to the center of the room.
The Void-Drive Core.
It hung there, pulsating with a deep, violent violet light. The air around it buzzed like a hornet's nest. It was terrifyingly beautiful.
[Object: Void-Drive Core (Corrupted).] [Contains: 50,000 Terabytes of Raw Mana.] [Warning: Do not touch. Seriously.]
Kieran walked toward it, entranced. The hunger in his gut—the hunger of the Decompiler class—was roaring now. It wanted that data. It needed it.
"Kieran," Spam warned, blocking his path. "Do not eat that. You will explode. I am not being sarcastic. Your biological hard drive is a floppy disk. That is a supercomputer."
"I'm starving, Spam," Kieran whispered. "I'm leaking code. I need to patch the holes."
"Just a sip," he promised.
He reached out. The magnetic containment field pushed against him, sparks flying as it rejected his touch.
[Access Denied.] [Admin Privilege Required.]
"I said..." Kieran snarled, shoving his hand forward. His skin sizzled, burning away. He didn't care. He shoved his wireframe hand through the barrier. "...I'm hungry!"
His fingers touched the cold crystal.
FLASH.
There was no sound. Just pure, white pain.
Kieran's back arched so hard his spine cracked. He opened his mouth to scream, but only static came out.
Power flooded him. It wasn't the gentle blue mana of the roaches. This was ancient, heavy, corrupted data. It felt like swallowing razor blades made of lightning.
[Integrity: 100%...] [Capacity Full.] [Capacity Exceeded.] [buffer_overflow_error]
His veins turned black, then violet. They bulged against his skin, glowing so bright they illuminated his skeleton.
"Let go!" Spam screamed, firing a laser at Kieran's arm to try and sever the connection. "You're going to crash the kernel!"
Kieran couldn't let go. The crystal had fused to his hand. It was downloading itself into him.
He saw the universe. He saw the code of the stars. He saw the face of the Architect.
[System Critical.] [Forcing Reboot...] [Class Adaptation Triggered.]
Kieran fell to his knees. The crystal finally released him.
He slammed into the floor, convulsing. Smoke rose from his skin. The violet light didn't fade; it settled. It etched itself into his flesh, forming intricate, glowing circuit patterns that ran from his hand, up his neck, and across his face.
He lay there, gasping, staring at the ceiling.
[Update Complete.] [Class: The Decompiler (v.1.1).] [New Script Unlocked: BLUE SCREEN.]
Kieran lifted his hand. It wasn't shaking anymore. It looked... synthetic.
"Spam?" he rasped.
"You are an idiot," Spam said, his voice shaking with simulated relief. "A lucky, suicidal idiot. You should be a pile of ash."
"But I'm not," Kieran said, standing up.
He felt strong. For the first time since the Integration, he didn't feel sick. He felt like a loaded gun.
He looked across the hangar.
"Where's the Warden?"
"At the elevator," Spam said. "But Kieran... just because you ate a battery doesn't mean you're God."
Kieran grinned. The violet circuits on his face flared.
"Let's go find out."