Chapter 181: His Falling Temple

Raziel tightened his jaw and stared at the dark ceiling of the hydraulic tunnel.

The entity dropped a quarantine dome over the entire academy and initiated a total deletion protocol.

“We are trapped on the board,” Raziel stated.

He calculated the exact distance between Level -6 and the surface courtyard.

“The deletion code is eating the foundation from the top down,” Caius warned.

The transfer novice dragged Zorya deeper into the Founder’s room and looked at the dead body of Elector Mordecai.

“The stone guardian is gone, the ancient runes are dead. We have zero defensive magic left.”

Zorya coughed and wiped the red blood from her chin.

Her unchained silver eyes locked onto Raziel’s face. She felt the cold, empty void inside his chest through their permanent bond.

“You killed your own soul,” Zorya whispered.

“I bought us the key,” Raziel answered and tapped the heavy bronze map inside his tunic.

“I unlocked the Sovereign Override. I can dictate the physical rules inside a ten-meter radius.”

He grabbed his iron dagger from the dusty tiles and sheathed it at his belt.

“I can hold the deletion back,” Raziel explained. “But I cannot cover the entire academy. I can only punch a hole through the static big enough for us to escape.”

The blue interface erupted in his vision. The screens bled frantic red pixels and blocked his sight completely.

[CRITICAL ALERT: SECTOR PURGE IN PROGRESS.]

[ENVIRONMENTAL DELETION RATE: 80%.]

[WARNING: WORLD PHYSICS COLLAPSING.]

Raziel dismissed the text with a brutal mental command. He did not have time to read the casualty reports of the server.

“Follow me,” Raziel ordered Caius and Zorya.

He ran out of the Founder’s cell and headed straight for the rusted iron rungs bolted into the damp stone wall of the shaft.

He grabbed the cold metal and pulled his exhausted body upward.

Caius hauled Zorya off the floor and followed him up the dark tunnel.

A massive, deafening roar echoed down the shaft. It sounded like an earthquake tearing the physical world apart.

Thick dust and small rocks rained down on their heads as the upper levels of the academy groaned under the pressure.

Raziel climbed past Level -5 and Level -4.

His muscles screamed and his left arm throbbed with burning pain from the crossbow wound.

He ignored the physical agony and focused entirely on his breathing.

He reached Level -3 and stopped climbing.

He looked up through the center of the dark shaft.

The heavy stone ceiling of the East Basement did not exist anymore.

A colossal, unrendered gray void hung directly over the tunnel.

The red digital static chewed on the jagged edges of the missing bricks and crawled down the walls.

The deletion code reached the underground.

Raziel activated the seventh Forbidden Gift. Sovereign Override.

VMMMM!

A sphere of pure, blinding white light erupted from his chest.

The domain expanded outward in a perfect ten-meter radius and saturated the dark shaft.

The white energy crashed into the descending red static.

BZZT!

The glitching polygons sparked and shattered against the Domain Authority.

The white light pushed the deletion code backward and carved a safe, rendered path through the gray void.

Raziel forced the server to obey his physical rules inside the localized bubble.

“Stay inside the light!” Raziel yelled down the shaft to Caius and Zorya. “If you touch the gray void, you cease to exist!”

Raziel climbed higher.

He pushed his body into the blinding white sphere and forced the path open.

The red static screamed and scratched against the edges of his domain, fighting to consume his flesh.

He reached Level -1 and pulled himself out of the hydraulic tunnel.

He stood in the ruined corridor outside the East Basement.

The stone archways and the decorative torches vanished into gray nothingness. The brick walls dissolved into floating red polygons.

Raziel maintained the Sovereign Override and pushed the white light outward. He cleared a path to the main staircase.

Caius and Zorya climbed out of the grate and stumbled onto the dusty tiles.

They ran up the stone stairs and reached the ground floor of the administrative wing.

Raziel kicked the heavy wooden doors open and stepped out into the main courtyard.

He froze.

St. Celeste did not look like a ruined temple.

It looked like a massive, glitched video game.

The blue sky above the academy disappeared completely.

A colossal dome of pure, unrendered black static covered the entire zone.

The black sky absorbed the sunlight and plunged the courtyard into heavy, unnatural twilight.

Literal walls of red error code closed in from the perimeter of the academy grounds.

The massive digital barriers stretched hundreds of feet into the air and formed a perfect quarantine box.

The red walls moved inward and erased the physical grass, the dirt, and the stone statues.

Lucian stood near the center of the courtyard.

The noble held his empty hands out and stared at the encroaching red walls in pure horror.

He lost his steel dagger to the static an hour ago, and he possessed zero magic to fight an environmental wipe.

Lara sat on the grass right behind him.

The young empath clutched her head and rocked back and forth.

She dragged Mirael out of the red static earlier, and the bleeding Oracle lay unconscious next to her boots.

Raziel sprinted across the remaining dirt.

He kept the white light of the Sovereign Override blazing from his chest and pushed the deletion code away from his friends.

“Raziel!” Lucian shouted. He spun around and saw the white sphere approaching.

He looked at the glowing gold and black veins on Raziel’s arms.

“What the hell is that?”

“It is our exit,” Raziel answered and stopped in front of the noble. “Grab Mirael. We are leaving.”

Lucian did not ask questions.

He grabbed the unconscious Oracle by the shoulders and hauled her off the grass.

Lara stumbled to her feet and leaned against Caius.

Zorya stood inside the white sphere and looked up at the massive black static dome covering the sky.

“The entire server is crashing in this sector,” Zorya stated.

She read the invisible mana currents with her silver eyes. “The Architect is dropping the zone into the trash bin.”

“We punch through the red wall,” Raziel ordered.

“My Domain Authority overrides the deletion. I can carve a tunnel through the quarantine box.”

Raziel raised his hands and focused the entire output of his Umbral Paragon core into the Sovereign Override.

The white light intensified and burned away the shadows in the courtyard.

He stepped forward.

He led the group toward the encroaching red wall of digital static.

The glitching polygons towered over them and screamed with a deafening sub-audible frequency.

The physical pressure hit their chests and popped their eardrums.

Raziel did not flinch. He walked directly into the red wall.

The white sphere of Domain Authority collided with the error code.

BZZT!

The white light bored a perfect, ten-meter cylindrical tunnel straight through the massive digital barrier.

The Architect’s deletion code dissolved into harmless ash inside Raziel’s domain.

“Keep moving!” Raziel yelled.

He strained against the massive stamina drain. His vision blurred and his nose bled.

They walked through the white tunnel.

The red static screamed against the edges of the sphere, fighting to crush them, but Raziel held the line.

They reached the other side of the red wall.

Raziel stepped out of the deletion code and collapsed onto his knees in the dirt.

The white light of the Sovereign Override died instantly. The ten-meter radius vanished and plunged them back into the natural daylight of the world.

Lucian dropped Mirael onto the grass and fell onto his back.

Lara gasped for air and clutched her chest.

Caius and Zorya leaned against each other and breathed hard.

They survived the quarantine box. They escaped the server wipe.

Raziel wiped the blood from his nose and looked up.

He did not see the familiar dirt road leading away from St. Celeste.

He stared at a massive, endless expanse of white sand.

The blue interface erupted in his vision and the screens flashed with pure white text.

[QUARANTINE BREACH DETECTED.]

[ANOMALY RELOCATED TO THE PERIPHERY.]

[WELCOME TO THE DEAD ZONE.]

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep