In a white void cyberscape, Ethan found himself standing in the midst of it. The cyberscape built itself into a big mansion with a barrier around it, “A level 1 cyber defense with a level 4 cyber defense within it. A mansion as a cyber defense, how primitive… but effective, I like it. Let's see how good his defenses are.”

Ethan strolled to the barrier and touched it, corruption started eating away the barrier as it spread and withered the barrier. With the barrier down, the next line of defense activated as an army of anti-virus agents materialized outside the mansion, “Ah great, these guys again. Luckily this time, I can fight back.”

The anti-virus agents charged toward Ethan with erasure swords and guns as he summoned his black cube: Protéus and transfigured it into a sword coated with Corruptión on the edge of the blade. Ethan dodged their attacks as the guns went PEWPEWPEW as erasure rays were being blasted at Ethan, he moved swiftly as he slashed some of the agents leaving corruption to do the rest. He then grabbed one of the agents to use as a shield against the erasure guns and rushed towards the other agents with his agent shield and swiftly managed to get the erasure gun then tried to shoot the rest of the agents but access to the gun was denied from Ethan which surprised him. He corrupted the gun and started shooting corruption rays at the agents, leaving no agent alive as they glitched and withered away.

“As always anti-virus agents pose no threat to me, so long as I don’t get hit by their erasure rays in their cyberscape…Now onto the next line of defense, which is the mansion,” thought Ethan as he made his way to the house and entered it. “Whoa… this place is bigger than I thought.”

“What foolish intruder dares enter the fortress of Lord Codey?”

Ethan was surprised to see a tall lean anti-agent materialize in the centre of the room, “And what are you supposed to be?”

“I am Delaware, one of the three anti-sentinels of Lord Codey.”

“Oooh, oh I see, so he is a modified anti-agent and one of three. That’s interesting, so Codey applied level 5 cyber defense logic to level 3 cyber defenses… that takes a lot of skill, skill I don't think Codey has.”

“As one of the three anti-sentinels, it is my duty to rid intruders like you from this domain, so brace yourself for extermination,” said Dellware then charged at Ethan and attacked with a spear. Ethan dodged the attack which left an erasure cut on the floor then it regenerated itself, “So his spear is also an erasure weapon, I’ll have to be careful of it,” thought Ethan as Delaware continued to attack him.

For Ethan, all it would take was one cut from his blade, and his victory would be secured, as he cut Dellware’s arm. Corruption starts to spread on Dellware’s arm but he cuts off his arm with his erasure spear, it drops to the floor and withers away into data while the corruption returns to Ethan. Delaware grows his arm back using data, “Fascinating, he is smart enough to cut his arm off to prevent the spread of corruption and has a decent understanding of data manipulation that he can heal himself. I should try to apply this cyber defense level to Tony’s cyber defenses.”

After growing back his arm, Dellware powered up his erasure spear and threw it at Ethan. The erasure spear pierced through Ethan’s left shoulder as his left arm and shoulder area were eradicated. “Damnit… I wasn’t expecting his attack to be that fast, Luckily I managed to move enough for the attack to only hit my shoulder area and not my core,” thought Ethan as he regenerated his Corruptión body using corrupted data, “This is gonna hurt like hell later. For my sake, I can’t afford to take any more damage so I need to end this quickly and cautiously.”

Delaware summoned back his erasure spear and began to attack Ethan while he was healing but Ethan dodged the attacks and countered by impaling Delaware in the chest with his corrupted sword then pulled it out and swiftly decapitated Delaware’s head as it flew off. Ethan transfigured Protéus back into a black cube and placed it on Delaware’s erasure spear, it then absorbed the erasure spear as pure data archiving it in its database. Momentarily, Ethan picked it up Proteus and walked away while completing the regeneration of his left arm and shoulder as he ascended the stairs to the 2nd floor. The 2nd floor was a lounging area as there were many couches, TVs, and other entertainment. Ethan looked around the lounge and found someone sleeping on one of the couches, “There’s no way she’s sleeping on the job… well if she’s one of those anti-sentinels then this is better for me, I can corrupt her while she asleep,” thought Ethan as he was about to touch her.

PEW!

Ethan was shocked as he realized that his hand had been shot off by an erasure ray and jumped back away from the anti-sentinel. The anti-sentinel yawned, “smack smack… we actually have an intruder… when last did we have one of those here… you know, you could’ve just moved on to the next floor and I wouldn’t have noticed… but you tried to attack me in my sleep so now I have to erase you.”

The anti-sentinel yawned again as she got up and stretched, “If you’re here… then Dela must be dead... That means you’re the real deal… which also means I must take you seriously.”

SNAP

PEW!

Ethan’s Corruptión body dropped to the floor like a corpse as an erasure ray shot through his head, “Hooo?? You’re done already? Well that was easy,” said the anti-sentinel as she laid back down on the couch to continue her nap.

...........................................................

Ethan groaned, “......This is not good… the pain is piling up… if this continues to stockpile then I may not even wake up when I return to my body. I need to stop underestimating Codey’s cyber security and use corruption already, I just need to make sure that I don’t destroy the cyber security constructs because I’ll need them later on,” thought Ethan as he regenerated his head and started getting up.

“Huuuhhhh…… you’re still alive….just give me 5 more minutes….ZZZ”

“She’s not taking this seriously at all, she has irregular behavior for an anti-agent, they usually are very hostile and will try to get rid of the threat as soon as possible… but she’s more concerned about her sleep than the threat… fascinating, let's see if I can negotiate with her.”

“Hey miss? If I leave you be, will you let me pass to the next floor?” asked Ethan.

She yawned, "Yes I would… but my boss would nag me later about not doing my job then I won't be able to sleep as much as I’d want to… so it’s better to just get rid of you and restore the peace.”

“Or, you can join me and avoid this whole conflict. Plus I will let you sleep as much as you want without any interruptions. So what do ya say?”

“Hmm…. Question, are you able to make me into an AI?”

Ethan smirked as he answered, “Yes.”

“….Then I accept your offer.”

“Excellent, what is your name miss?” asked Ethan as he walked closer to her.

“….I’m Alisson, but you can call me Alice.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Alice. I’m Ethan your new boss,” he reached out his hand to shake hers and when they made contact, corruption spread onto her, “Do not fear it, you are only becoming a part of me. For now, you may sleep, but I will wake you again when I need you.”

The corruption absorbed Alice completely leaving no traces of her behind, “…Wow, so that’s how her cybernetic power works…Hehe, she will be an interesting addition to my cyber defenses… now, on to the next floor.”

Ethan ascended the stairs once again to the 3rd floor and found a vast open room made of wood, “You’ve come here a lot sooner than I expected intruder. Alice must’ve been an easy opponent for you, which would make you a worthy opponent. Welcome to my dojo, I will teach you three things: humility, pain, and death. You can call me, Sensei Tenzin, the last member of the anti-sentinels,” said a figure sitting on the wooden floor in the centre of the dojo.

“He seems calm and confident, if he is the last member then he is likely the strongest of the 3. If that is the case then I need to be cautious otherwise I will suffer more damage than I did on previous floors.”

“Come, let us begin our battle intruder,” said Tenzin as he stood up and stretched.

Ethan walks to the centre of the room and stands before Tenzin. He summoned Protéus and transfigured it into a sword with erasure coated on the blade, “Proteus has adapted to erasure, now I can actually fight against erasure weapons on equal terms.”

Tenzin summoned his sword as it materialized from pure data, “A blade of pure erasure, that’s interesting. Erasure is a dangerous cybernetic force that is lethal to work with as a cybernetic being, it destroys all data it touches but can be controlled using restrictions within its encoding that allows one to manipulate it without getting erased in the process. It fascinates me to see how cyber beings use erasure even though they know how dangerous it is. It’s like humans working with nuclear energy even tho they know how dangerous it is, cuz one wrong move and it’s game over,” thought Ethan as Tenzin stood in his battle stance.

Ethan attacked first as their swords clashed and repelled one another as the two erasure blades canceled each other out, but the two continued to clash swords with a barrage of continuous slashes that clashed and canceled. The two clashing seemed to be at a stalemate, but to Ethan’s surprise, Tenzin’s blade swiftly sliced through his and his Corruptión body. “What the… how???…. He must’ve increased the erasure output of the sword to cut through mine,” Ethan jumped away putting distance between himself & Tenzin, and began healing himself. Tenzin didn’t let up though as he released an erasure slashing burst that reached Ethan and managed to slice through his leg as Ethan managed to move most of his body out of the way of the attack. Ethan was dazed but at that moment, Tenzin stabbed the floor with his erasure sword. It took a moment for Ethan to realize that he had been impaled by multiple erasure swords that had emerged from the floor. 

....................

"That’s it.”

Ethan melted away as his Corruptión body lost its form and started to spread rapidly as it engulfed everything from Tenzin to the entire cyberscape within Codey’s cyber vessel. Corruptión absorbed Tenzin but isolated Codey on the 4th floor and slowly corrupted his soul causing him to glitch vigorously then Ethan emerged out from the corruption, “I didn’t want to use this method of attack because I wanted to preserve your cyber security for my own benefit, but you guys left me no choice… Now I have to destroy the constructs of your cyberscape and also hope that I can survive the aftermath of this cyber mission.”

“Grrkrrkgrrkrrrr L-Lord grrk Qrinn grrkrrk p-please grrrr have m-m-merrrrkrrrkgrrk” Codey couldn’t even say a clear sentence as he was glitching too much.

“It’s too late to be begging for mercy Codey, I mean you did say that you’d rather die than betray your Lord Mavis. Now you have to live with that decision,” said Ethan as corruption completely engulfed Codey and rendered him lifeless & corrupted causing him to wither away.

Ethan looked around at his cursed work as he had just ruined a perfectly good cyber security, “It’s a shame really… but no point in tormenting myself over it, I have a body to return to." He left the corrupted cyber vessel and was back in open cyberspace.

“Well look who decided to come back, you left me here in this state, why can’t I move still?” asked Tony.

“Oh, my bad, I had to keep Codey immobilized for safety measures,” said Ethan as he deactivated Frigoré.

“Well, couldn’t you have released me at least?”

“No. I’m running out of time here Tony so please listen, I’m about to return to my body and I need you to be there physically in case my body or heart gives out.”

“What you do mean by that?”

“Just quickly go to my body and you’ll see what I mean. I’m at the IT lab.”

Tony returned to reality and downloaded the layout map of the HQ then started rushing to the IT lab. Ethan traversed back to his body and waited, “(Sighs)….I can endure this…. I can survive this right?....... the longer I wait pondering this, the more exhausted my brain will get and the less likely I will survive this, so….I better get in there and get this over with.”

Corruptión came out of the Frigoré portal and engulfed Ethan’s body, suddenly, his body started shaking violently on the ground, “Ethan?! ETHAN!!!”

Chemic and Kunoichi were panicking at seeing Ethan have a seizure, Ethan regained consciousness

“GUH! GUUAAH! GRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!”

“ETHAN?! What’s wrong?!”

Blood leaked out of Ethan’s nose, eyes, and ears as his seizure slowly stopped but he was still screaming from his excruciating pain. Kunoichi quickly ran out of the room to look for help, while Chemic tried tending to Ethan. Then all of a sudden, Ethan just stopped moving or screaming.

"Oh no no no no no, ETHAN?!"