Declan stood on the high and spiked battlements of the Iron Bastion as he watched the fake sky burn.
High above the city, the Level 95 Atmospheric Deletion Storm was still raging like an apocalyptic nightmare.
Massive clouds of bruised purple data churned violently to dump endless sheets of highly corrosive green acid rain down upon Sector 7.
But it was not hitting his city at all!
The acidic deletion code was pouring directly into the massive invisible Null Space directory he had deployed. He used the Divine-grade Source-Code Illusion Tome for this.
To the naked eye, it looked like the storm was washing over the Iron Bastion. But to the game engine, the storm was just dumping its lethal payload into an empty digital trash can.
Down in the courtyard, the three thousand players of his newly formed Eclipse Legion were going about their business.
They totally ignored the world-ending weather event directly over their heads. They knew as long as the Warlord stood on the wall, they had absolutely nothing to worry about.
Declan leaned against the cold iron railing in his sleek pitch-black Predator’s Coat. His dark eyes filled with swirling purple energy scanned the false storm clouds.
"They have to be getting curious," Declan muttered to himself. "You do not drop a Level 95 server wipe on a target and not check if they died."
He tapped his physical fingers against the metal railing as he waited.
Sector 1 was the highly sanitized and perfectly pristine corporate utopia of the server.
It was where all the billionaires, board members, and sponsored esports streamers lived comfortably.
They had spent the last two days throwing everything they had at him. They sent an elite hit squad but he crushed them easily.
They dropped a Level 100 Eradicator on him and he deleted it. They triggered a massive weather event but he literally redirected it into a fake folder!
They were running out of options and Declan knew they would want to assess the damage. He didn’t have to wait long.
His epic-tier Quantum Radar running passively in his neural link suddenly pinged.
A single highly concentrated red dot appeared on his minimap moving incredibly fast. It dropped straight down from the upper atmosphere.
It slipped perfectly through the chaotic green rain of the Deletion Storm.
Declan looked up. His Level 85 Abyssal Sovereign stats gave him physical eyesight that could probably spot a fly on the moon!
He saw it. It was a sleek and perfectly aerodynamic stealth ship.
It looked like a smooth silver dart completely devoid of any hard edges or exhaust ports.
The hull was covered in a highly advanced optical camouflage that made it bend the light around it. This rendered it practically invisible to the naked eye.
The ship didn’t make a single sound. Its anti-gravity thrusters were completely silent like a ghost.
It was a masterpiece of corporate engineering designed to slip behind enemy lines to record data and leave without triggering a single proximity ward.
It glided smoothly through the fake sky and easily bypassed the Illusion Tome’s parameters.
The illusion didn’t physically block objects but just hid the city beneath it.
The pilot inside clearly thought Sector 7 was a melted and bubbling crater.
The ship slowed down and dropped lower to get a better camera angle of the assumed destruction.
"Found you," Declan smiled coldly.
He didn’t pull out a plasma rifle or order the automated anti-air turrets to fire. He wanted to catch the guy inside instead of blowing the ship up.
He stood up straight and cracked his neck.
’System,’ Declan commanded in his mind. ’Void Blink.’
The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond as Declan vanished from the high stone wall of the Iron Bastion.
He didn’t just teleport fifteen meters. He chained the skill!
With his +20 Ring of the Void-Walker equipped, his teleportation skills consumed absolutely zero stamina.
He could spam the movement ability as fast as his brain could process the spatial coordinates.
And right now his brain was heavily buffed by his Abyssal Neural Interface!
Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.
[System/Math Breakdown] 鈫� [Void Blink Chained: 5x] 鈫� [Stamina Cost: 0 (Ring of the Void-Walker)]
He skipped across the empty air like a stone skipping across a pond. He bypassed gravity, wind resistance, and physical distance entirely.
He materialized perfectly in mid-air exactly five hundred feet above the ground right in the flight path of the silver stealth ship.
The corporate pilot inside the cockpit didn’t even have time to register the sudden obstacle.
He was flying at over two hundred miles an hour. One second the sky was empty and the next second a guy in a black trench coat was directly in front of his windshield!
Declan didn’t dodge. He just reached out with both hands and grabbed the nose of the ship as it rammed into him.
BANG!
The kinetic impact was massDeclan scanned the logs rapidly. He expected to see messages from Director Sterling of Apex Paradigm or orders from the CEO of Proud Sword Megacorp.
Instead, he saw something entirely different.
[Sender: The Architect] 鈫� [Message: Assess the structural integrity of Sector 7. Do not engage the anomaly. Record the environmental data and return. We need to verify if his code is bleeding into our baseline.]
Declan frowned. "The Architect?"ive but Declan’s physical body possessed the raw density of a collapsing star thanks to his Leviathan physiology.
He acted like a solid titanium brick wall in the sky.
The sleek silver ship violently shuddered and its forward momentum instantly died.
The metal hull groaned and buckled under Declan’s iron grip. He was physically holding a hovering aircraft in place with his bare hands!
Through the reinforced glass canopy, Declan locked eyes with the pilot.
The guy was wearing pristine white and gold tactical armor with a golden system tag hovering over his helmet.
[Name: Hidden] 鈫� [Level: 75 Corporate Scout]
The pilot’s eyes were wide with pure and unfiltered terror.
He frantically grabbed his control yoke and tried to throw the ship into reverse.
The silent engines whined in protest as they fought against Declan’s absurd physical strength.
"You guys need to stop flying over my house," Declan said.
His voice was completely muffled by the wind but the pilot could clearly read his lips.
Declan let go of the nose with his right hand and slammed his dense spiked boot down onto the hood of the ship for leverage.
Then he drove his fingers directly into the thick bulletproof glass of the cockpit canopy.
The high-tier corporate glass was designed to withstand direct anti-aircraft fire. It was supposed to be completely unbreakable.
To Declan, it felt like pushing his fingers through a sheet of stale crackers!
CRACK!
His fingers pierced the glass easily. He grabbed the heavy metal frame of the canopy and violently ripped his arm backward.
The screech of tearing metal filled the cold air. Declan completely tore the entire roof off the stealth ship and casually tossed it over his shoulder!
The violent rush of wind instantly sucked the controlled air out of the cabin.
The Level 75 Corporate Scout screamed in panic and reached for his sidearm.
Declan didn’t give him the chance. He reached into the open cockpit and grabbed the scout by the heavy chest plate of his white armor.
He yanked him completely out of his pilot’s seat!
He held the struggling player over the massive drop.
"Who sent you?" Declan demanded with his Warlord voice cutting through the rushing wind.
"You’re dead!" the scout shrieked while kicking his legs wildly. "Sector 1 is going to pave over your little slum! We are going to format you into a basic text file!"
Declan sighed. "I asked a simple question. If you don’t want to answer it, I’ll just read your mail."
He didn’t bother interrogating the guy further. Declan’s dark eyes flared with raw and aggressive purple energy.
His SSS-Rank talent Boundless Enhancement wasn’t just for upgrading swords and shields.
It was a core developer tool that allowed him to forcefully interact with the game’s base code.
Declan slammed his free hand directly against the side of the scout’s helmet.
"System. Force extraction. Pull his communication logs."
A glaring red warning box popped up over the scout’s head.
[Warning: Unauthorized neural intrusion. Target possesses Level 75 encryption.]
Declan pushed his raw stats forward and completely crushed the red warning box into digital dust.
The system screamed in protest but the Warlord’s authority easily bypassed the corporate firewalls.
A stream of bright blue data flowed out of the scout’s helmet and directly into Declan’s visual interface.
He was literally downloading the guy’s recent chat history straight into his own brain!
The scout gasped and his body seized violently as his private files were forcefully copied.