A torrential downpour of glowing sickly green liquid began to fall. It wasn’t water. It was pure unadulterated deletion code.
The heavy drops hissed as they cut through the air, completely ignoring gravity as they accelerated toward the Iron Bastion’s protective dome.
"Hold the line, Aegis," Declan ordered. He opened the book.
The first heavy drops of the Atmospheric Deletion Storm hit the top of the Iron Bastion’s energy dome.
The sound was absolutely horrific. It did not sound like normal rain hitting a roof.
It sounded like ten thousand strips of raw meat hitting a super-heated industrial frying pan all at the exact same time.
The transparent purple barrier of the city violently hissed and sparked as the bright green acid rain began to aggressively eat away at the underlying code.
The entire sky turned into a blinding flashing strobe light of failing magical energy.
[Dome Integrity Drain: -50,000 HP/sec]
[Aegis Shield Reserves: 9,450,000 / 10,000,000]
Declan didn’t even look at the glowing red warning prompt flashing frantically in the corner of his vision.
He just held the Source-Code Illusion Tome flat in his left hand, feeling the heavy cold sapphire cover against his palm.
He didn’t want to create a fake dragon to fly up and fight the clouds. He didn’t want to create a fake army to draw aggro away from the city.
A Level 95 macro-hazard didn’t care about monsters. It didn’t have an aggro table.
It only cared about destroying the spatial coordinates of the city below. It was a blunt unthinking instrument designed for raw deletion.
"System," Declan commanded, his voice dropping into a heavy resonant bass that vibrated the metal railing of the penthouse balcony.
"Target the airspace directly above the energy dome. Establish a new visual and physical coordinate plane."
He tapped directly into his Ascendant-tier mana pool.
He had over fifty thousand raw mana points. It was a completely absurd amount of magical energy he had gained from consuming the Primordial Ocean Heart back in the deep sea.
He was essentially a walking nuclear reactor, and he did not have to worry about mana conservation.
He channeled the dark heavy Abyssal energy directly down his arm and into the thick sapphire book.
The silver data lines carved into the cover lit up, instantly absorbing his raw stats.
[Item Deployed: Source-Code Illusion Tome]
鈫� Mana Cost: -10,000
鈫� Illusion Density: Absolute
A blinding flash of white-gold light erupted from the open pages of the tome. It shot straight up into the air.
It pierced right through the dark purple clouds and intercepted the falling green rain.
But it didn’t form a shield. It didn’t form a physical barrier made of rock or ice or fire.
To the terrified players screaming in the courtyard below, absolutely nothing changed.
They looked up and saw the horrific green storm clouds still raging just a few hundred feet above the city.
They saw the jagged lightning flashing and the heavy toxic rain pouring down in massive sheets.
They braced themselves for the inevitable collapse of the dome, fully expecting to be turned into bubbling digital sludge in a matter of minutes.
But suddenly, the hissing sound stopped.
The violent sparking against the purple energy dome ceased entirely.
Down by the main gates, Sloane stopped blowing her emergency whistle.
She lowered her arms and stared up at the sky, utterly confused. The rain was still falling.
It was coming down in an absolute torrential downpour. But it wasn’t hitting the dome anymore.
It was just vanishing.
The exact moment the green deletion drops crossed an invisible line exactly ten feet above the Iron Bastion’s shield, they simply popped out of existence.
There was no splash. There was no hissing steam. There was no damage registered on the city’s interface.
It was as if the rain was falling directly into a completely different dimension.
Up on the balcony, Declan casually closed the sapphire book. The heavy metal latch clicked shut with a sharp snap.
He slipped the Divine-grade artifact back into his digital inventory, shoving his hands back into the pockets of his dark Predator’s Coat.
"Status," Declan asked the AI standing perfectly still next to him.
"Dome integrity stabilized at 9,200,000," Aegis reported.
Her glowing blue optical sensors tracked the falling rain with machine-like precision, her metallic face completely expressionless.
"Incoming atmospheric damage has been completely nullified. Zero threat detected. The storm is currently expending all of its energy against a void."
Declan smiled a cold and highly satisfied smile.
He hadn’t blocked the storm. Blocking it would just mean a battle of attrition between his mana and the server’s mana.
He had simply used the developer artifact to create a perfectly tangible and permanent illusion of empty space directly above the city.
To the naked eye, the sky looked exactly the same.
But to the server’s automated physics engine, Declan had just inserted a massive invisible Null Space directory right over their heads.
He had essentially created a giant digital junk folder in the sky.
The Level 95 Deletion Storm was mindlessly pouring its millions of points of damage directly into a fake coordinate plane.
The game engine was busy calculating the total destruction of a city that didn’t actually exist in that specific sliver of airspace.
The attack was hitting the illusion, successfully deleting the fake data, and completely missing the actual Iron Bastion sitting safely beneath it.
[Result: 100% of incoming atmospheric damage redirected to Null Space]
"Let it rain," Declan chuckled as he turned his back on the horrific green sky. "They can waste their mana up there all day."
"It actually looks kind of relaxing when you know it can’t melt your face off."
He looked closely at the dark purple clouds churning high up in the atmosphere. His Abyssal Sovereign eyes easily pierced through the visual effects of the storm.
He wasn’t looking at the rain. He was looking at the underlying code structure of the attack.
He watched the glowing green hexadecimal numbers driving the storm. He watched the way the lightning branched across the sky.
This wasn’t a random glitch. This wasn’t the server automatically spawning a hazard zone just because he had forcefully annexed Sector 6.
The code was way too neat. The deployment was entirely too precise.
The timing of hitting them exactly when they were trying to organize the new territory was absolutely perfect.
"This is highly organized," Declan muttered.
He walked over to the edge of the balcony and leaned his elbows on the cold iron railing.
"Someone over in Sector 1 isn’t just pushing random buttons on a developer console."
"They are actively directing this storm. They have a single intelligence managing the area-of-effect targeting."
"Corporate guild leaders rarely possess the technical proficiency to manage raw atmospheric code," Aegis noted.
Her synthetic voice was completely calm as she processed the data floating in the air.
"They rely on automated system scripts and pay-to-win items. Manual targeting of a Level 95 hazard implies a user with a heavily modified administrative class."
Declan’s eyes narrowed. "Someone like me."
He thought about the arrogant streamer who had tried to drop an orbital strike on his head.
He thought about Director Sterling crying in the executive boardroom before getting crushed into a golf ball.
Those guys were just rich corporate suits relying on expensive gear. They didn’t know how to actually manipulate the game’s base code.
They just threw real-world money at the screen until things died.
But whoever dropped this storm knew exactly what they were doing. They understood the game engine. They understood how to bypass the standard rules.
"Sector 1 is trying to test my defenses," Declan said, standing up straight. He cracked his knuckles, the dense mythical alloy popping loudly.
"They throw a massive weather event at me to see if I panic. They want to see what kind of shields I have before they send their real army across the border."
"Shall I prepare the Void Artillery cannons for a retaliatory strike, Boss?" Aegis asked.
Her metal fingers twitched slightly as she prepared to link directly with the city’s heavy siege weapons. "I can blind-fire into Sector 1 and cause significant structural damage."
"No," Declan smiled darkly. "You don’t shoot a sniper with a shotgun. If they want to play a quiet game of chess, we let them make the next move."
He turned his back on the raging and harmless storm.
The Iron Bastion was perfectly safe, completely hidden beneath an illusion of empty space that swallowed every drop of the deadly acid rain.
He didn’t need to waste any more time staring at it.
"Keep the drones mining in Sector 6," Declan ordered as he walked back toward the heavy wooden doors of his luxurious penthouse.
"Tell Sloane to calm the refugees down and get them back to work. And let me know the second their scout ship arrives."
"I want to personally greet the guy who thinks he can out-hack me."