"A localized firewall," Declan muttered, staring at the glowing white grid lines covering the floor around them. "You didn’t just lock my gear. You locked the entire coordinate space. You force the server engine to run on its original factory settings as long as I am standing inside this circle."
"Exactly," Arthur smiled politely. "It is the perfect counter to a Warlord who relies on glitches. You cannot bypass my armor because your weapon no longer possesses the Spacetime Laceration trait. You cannot drop a meteor on my head because your spell no longer ignores casting requirements. You are entirely restricted to the rules of the game."
Declan cracked his knuckles. He didn’t look panicked. He didn’t look terrified. He just looked highly annoyed.
"I really hate people who play control builds," Declan said flatly.
"It is not a build," Arthur replied, his white suit glowing slightly brighter. "It is a necessity. The Primordial Grid is highly unstable. Your actions in Sector 7 and Sector 9 proved that the system can be abused. I cannot allow you to spread your memory leaks to the rest of the planet."
Arthur raised his right hand.
He didn’t pull out a massive plasma rifle. He didn’t summon a dark matter sword. He just tapped a sequence on a glowing white interface that appeared over his wrist.
"I gave you an opportunity to surrender your administrative rights peacefully," Arthur stated. "Since you declined, I will simply execute your avatar manually and clear the corrupted data from the registry."
The gray void around Arthur shifted.
The white grid lines on the floor flared aggressively. Massive pillars of pristine white light shot up from the un-rendered data directly behind the Architect.
"Let us see how you fight when the math is fair."
The massive pillars of white light faded, revealing a line of towering figures standing directly behind Arthur Cross.
Declan stared at them. There were ten of them. They stood perfectly still, entirely silent in the gray void. They were massive, heavily armored knights wearing pristine, glowing white tactical armor. They didn’t carry plasma rifles or heavy siege cannons. They held long, glowing broadswords made of solid white energy.
A bright golden system tag hovered aggressively over the squad leader.
[Target Information]
[Name: Order Sentinel]
[Level: 90 (System Enforcer)]
[HP: 80,000 / 80,000]
Declan’s eyes narrowed. "Level 90 mobs. You brought your own security guards to a private meeting."
"I am the Architect," Arthur said smoothly. He took a slow step backward, putting the wall of pristine white knights between himself and Declan. "I do not engage in brutal, close-quarters physical combat. I direct the system. And right now, the system recognizes you as a low-level threat."
The ten Order Sentinels raised their glowing white broadswords in perfect synchronization.
Declan didn’t pull out a magic spellbook. He didn’t try to summon a decoy. His SSS-Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, was completely suppressed by Arthur’s domain. He couldn’t force a skill fusion. He couldn’t overwrite the server logic. He was entirely cut off from his cheat codes.
But he wasn’t completely helpless.
He had consumed the Level 50 Spire Master core. He had consumed the raw data of the Abyssal Leviathan. His physical vessel had been permanently altered. Even without the massive ten-times multipliers and the true-damage reflection traits, his base Level 85 stats were still hard-coded directly into his DNA.
He still had fifteen thousand points of raw, un-buffed physical damage.
"Kill him," Arthur ordered.
The ten Order Sentinels charged forward. They moved incredibly fast, crossing the fifty feet of empty gray space in a fraction of a second. The lead knight brought its heavy white broadsword down in a brutal, vertical cleave aimed right at Declan’s collarbone.
Declan didn’t try to block it. He didn’t have a shield. He just stepped inside the knight’s guard.
He ducked under the glowing energy blade, letting it slice harmlessly through the empty air above his shoulder. He planted his boots firmly on the gray floor, rotated his hips, and drove his bare right fist directly into the exact center of the Sentinel’s white chest plate.
CRACK!
The sound of the impact echoed sharply in the silent void.
Declan’s Level 85 base Strength was more than enough to handle standard game armor. His fist punched straight through the pristine white metal. The chest plate caved inward, violently shattering the core logic of the monster.
The Order Sentinel froze in place. Its health bar instantly zeroed out. The heavy white armor dissolved into a massive shower of bright white digital pixels that rained down around Declan’s boots.
"One down," Declan grunted.
He didn’t get to celebrate.
Before the white pixels even hit the floor, they abruptly stopped falling. The digital dust reversed direction. It rapidly swirled back together, forming a tight, glowing sphere of code.
A fraction of a second later, the exact same Level 90 Order Sentinel dropped back onto the gray floor. Its armor was completely flawless. Its health bar was sitting perfectly at maximum. It immediately raised its broadsword and swung again!
Declan leaned backward, barely dodging the blade. The tip of the energy sword sliced through the front of his black leather coat.
"They don’t die," Declan noted, quickly stepping back to put distance between himself and the wall of advancing knights.
"They are an extension of the Absolute Equilibrium domain," Arthur explained casually from the back of the room. The Architect was just watching the fight with his hands folded behind his back. "As long as my domain is active, the baseline status of the room is strictly maintained. The baseline dictates that I have ten guards. If you destroy one, the domain simply resets its coordinate data. You are fighting a mathematical constant."
Declan gritted his teeth. He dodged another heavy horizontal swing from a Sentinel and kicked a third one directly in the knee, shattering its leg joint.
The knight collapsed, but the broken armor instantly regenerated, snapping the leg back into perfect working order.
"You really made a boring skill," Declan yelled over the clashing of weapons.
He threw a heavy right hook, completely obliterating the helmet of a charging Sentinel. The monster’s head exploded into white pixels, but the body didn’t even fall. The pixels just snapped right back onto the neck, reforming the helmet instantly.
Declan backed up another ten feet. He pulled up his system interface using a quick mental command. He checked his biological state.
His health was fine. He wasn’t taking hits. His base Agility was high enough to weave through the heavy sword swings. But his stamina bar was dropping fast!
Without the +20 Overclock Ring, he wasn’t getting his massive cooldown reductions. Without his Abyssal Sovereign class multipliers, every single punch and dodge drained his natural stamina reserves. He was fighting a wall of literally immortal enemies in a bare-handed brawl.
If his stamina hit zero, he would be paralyzed with exhaustion, and the Sentinels would chop him into tiny pieces.
"I can’t out-punch a respawn timer," Declan muttered to himself. "I need to drop his domain. Or I need to leave."
He glanced past the fighting knights. Arthur Cross was standing perfectly still in the center of the white glowing grid. The boundary line of the Absolute Equilibrium domain ended exactly one hundred feet away.
Beyond that invisible line, the gray, featureless void remained untouched.
If Declan crossed that line, Arthur’s talent couldn’t suppress him anymore. His gear would power back up. His Abyssal Sovereign stats would instantly return. He could just pull out his massive +40 halberd and delete the entire area.
But the ten Order Sentinels were completely blocking his path to the edge of the grid.
Declan tapped into his digital inventory. He navigated to the Origin Point exchange.
"System," Declan commanded in his mind. "Purchase stamina restoration. Max out the bar."
[System/Math Breakdown]
[Origin Points spent on immediate stamina recovery: -50,000.]
[Stamina fully restored.]
Fifty thousand points vanished from his bank account. Declan didn’t care. The burning ache in his muscles instantly vanished, replaced by a sudden rush of fresh digital energy.
He didn’t have his Sovereign Neural Interface ear-cuff active, which meant he couldn’t zero-cast his heavy spells. He actually had to use the game’s mechanics.
Declan stopped dodging. He planted his boots into the floor and crossed his arms over his chest. He took a deep breath, channeling his raw, un-buffed Level 85 base mana directly into his core.
"He’s casting," Arthur noted, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Sentinels. Interrupt the sequence."
The ten white knights lunged forward simultaneously, their glowing broadswords aimed directly at Declan’s chest.
They didn’t reach him.
Declan threw his arms outward.
"Abyssal Shockwave!"