It wasn’t the apocalyptic, reality-tearing spatial distortion that he normally used to completely delete endgame hazard bosses. Arthur’s domain severely nerfed the spell, forcing it down to its absolute baseline parameters.
But a base-level Abyssal Shockwave cast by a Level 85 player was still a massive hit.
A thick ring of dark purple kinetic energy erupted from Declan’s body!
The shockwave slammed into the ten charging Order Sentinels.
[System/Math Breakdown]
[Abyssal Shockwave Cast. Damage: 15,000 (Nerfed).]
The damage didn’t kill them. It didn’t even drop their health bars past the halfway point. But Declan wasn’t trying to kill them. He was trying to move them.
The raw concussive force of the blast picked the heavy white knights right off their feet. They were launched backward, crashing violently into each other and slamming into the invisible boundary wall of the domain.
The shockwave kicked up a massive cloud of gray digital static from the un-rendered floor, completely obscuring the area in a thick, blinding dust screen.
"He is using environmental displacement," Arthur said, waving a hand to clear the dust in front of his face. "Secure the perimeter. Do not let him approach the edge."
Down in the smoke, Declan didn’t run for the edge. He didn’t want to get intercepted by a recovering knight.
He focused his mind on the exact coordinates of the empty gray void outside the white grid.
"Void Blink."
The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond.
He bypassed the physical distance, the smoke screen, and the wall of scrambling knights entirely.
Declan materialized exactly one hundred and one feet away from Arthur Cross.
He stepped outside the boundary line.
The heavy, oppressive suppression of the Absolute Equilibrium domain vanished instantly!
The rusty iron stick lying on the floor inside the grid suddenly vanished into blue pixels and reappeared in Declan’s hand as the massive, humming +40 Eclipse Severance halberd! His pitch-black Predator’s Coat flared with thick, swirling shadows. The dark, corrupted veins on his neck pulsed violently as his Abyssal Sovereign stats forcefully rebooted!
[Combat Status: Disengaged.]
Declan stood in the gray void, feeling the absolute weight of his power return. He rested the heavy dark matter halberd on his shoulder.
He looked through the fading dust screen at the Architect.
"Your math sucks, Arthur," Declan called out loudly.
Arthur Cross just stared at him from inside the white grid. The CEO didn’t look angry that his target had escaped. He just looked calculating.
"This parley is concluded," Arthur stated smoothly. "I look forward to our next interaction, Player V."
Declan didn’t reply. He tapped his +20 Ring of the Void-Walker.
"System. Abyssal Warp-Gate. Target: Iron Bastion."
The dark matter portal tore open behind him. Declan stepped backward into the swirling black void, leaving the pristine corporate boss alone in the un-rendered server space.
Declan materialized on the polished dark wood floor of his luxurious penthouse inside the Iron Bastion.
The massive black portal hissed shut behind him, leaving absolutely no trace of spatial energy. The room was perfectly quiet. The digital fireplace crackled warmly in the corner, and the heavy velvet curtains blocked out the bright purple light of the city forges outside.
He didn’t throw his halberd against the wall. He didn’t yell in frustration. He wasn’t angry. He was completely and entirely focused.
He walked over to the massive leather couch and sat down heavily. He dismissed the +40 Eclipse Severance back into his digital inventory.
He tapped his communication earpiece.
"Nova. Morgan. Get up to the penthouse. Now. I need a war council."
Less than two minutes later, the heavy wooden doors of the room swung open.
Morgan walked in first. The elite corporate assassin had her hands resting casually on the hilts of her combat daggers. Her sharp eyes scanned the room out of pure habit.
Nova followed closely behind her. The icy-blue haired hacker carried her glowing silver data pad. She looked fully rested and completely back in her professional element.
Aegis, the Level 80 System Defense Entity, stepped out from the shadows near the refrigerator. Her sleek, matte-black cybernetic chassis hummed quietly as she took her place standing directly behind Declan’s couch.
Finally, a puddle of liquid silver seeped under the crack of the doorway. It bubbled upward, forming the tall, faceless humanoid shape of Mirage, the Level 100 Mimicry Daemon.
Declan looked at his assembled team.
"I found the other SSS-Rank talent," Declan stated flatly.
Nova froze. Her fingers stopped tapping on her data pad. She looked up, her blue eyes wide with immediate concern.
"You met with Arthur Cross?" Nova asked. "Declan, I told you his stats are an absolute anomaly! The corporate chatter says he completely shut down Sector 1 without firing a single weapon!"
"He did," Declan confirmed. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "He invited me to a neutral server void. He offered me half the global map if I agreed to stop breaking the game’s physics engine."
Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Half the map is a very generous offer. I assume you politely declined?"
"I swung my halberd at his neck," Declan said casually.
Nova groaned loudly and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course you did. You tried to execute a guy who possesses absolute root control over the baseline code."
"It didn’t work," Declan admitted. "My blade bounced off. He activated a domain. Absolute Equilibrium. It expanded exactly one hundred feet. The second it touched me, it completely stripped away every single piece of enhanced gear I had. It turned my Sovereign-tier halberd into a rusty iron stick. It shut down my class multipliers. I had to punch his guards with my raw base stats."
Morgan crossed her arms. "A localized suppression field. That is a major problem for a Warlord who relies heavily on hacked equipment. If you can’t use your massive area-of-effect spells or your reality-tearing sword, how do you beat him?"
"That is why you are here," Declan looked at Nova and Mirage. "I need to know how his code works. I need to know how to break his math."
Nova walked over to the small glass table in the center of the room. She placed her silver data pad down and swiped her hand over it. A complex, glowing blue holographic diagram projected into the air.
"If his talent is Absolute Equilibrium, he isn’t casting a debuff on you directly," Nova explained, rapidly typing on her virtual keyboard. "He is using the server’s own base-code to overwrite the environment. He is essentially creating a localized firewall that aggressively rejects any data that exceeds Level 1 standard parameters."
Declan frowned. "So he just turns off the game’s progression system in a one-hundred-foot radius."
"Correct," Mirage droned in its flat, synthetic voice. The faceless silver Daemon drifted closer to the hologram. "However, Administrator, such a localized area-of-effect requires a massive, constant drain of raw mana to maintain. A domain of that magnitude cannot sustain itself indefinitely without a significant power source."
"He has to be burning thousands of mana points a second just to keep the firewall active," Nova agreed, pointing at the fluctuating energy levels on the diagram. "If he drops the domain, your stats return."
"He won’t drop it," Declan said. "He knows I will just delete him the second my gear comes back online. He will keep that domain up as long as he has mana."
"Then we crash the domain," Mirage stated simply.
Declan looked at the Level 100 Abyssal boss. "Explain."
"A firewall only possesses a finite processing capacity," Mirage elaborated, its liquid silver hand pointing to the edge of the holographic grid. "If the influx of corrupted data exceeds the firewall’s ability to delete it, the system experiences a critical memory overflow. The domain will physically shatter."
"You want me to DDoS a guy’s superpower?" Declan asked, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.
"Exactly," Nova’s eyes lit up as she understood the AI’s logic. "Arthur’s talent suppresses your enhancements and your multipliers. But it cannot suppress your raw, native base stats! If your base, un-buffed mana pool is larger than the maximum capacity of his Equilibrium domain, your mere physical presence will crash his talent!"
Declan pulled up his system interface. He checked his biological state panel.
[System/Math Breakdown]
[Strategic Analysis Complete.]
[Required Base Mana Pool to shatter Equilibrium Domain: 50,000+]
[Declan’s Current Base Mana: 16,500]
Declan stared at the numbers. His base mana was sitting at sixteen thousand. That was incredibly high for a normal player, but it wasn’t fifty thousand.
He couldn’t use his +20 gear to artificially boost it. He couldn’t use his Abyssal Sovereign class multipliers. He needed raw, hard-coded base points.
"I need thirty-four thousand more points of base mana," Declan said, closing the interface.
Morgan let out a low whistle. "You can’t get that from leveling up. Even at the new Level 85 cap, the stat point distribution won’t cover that kind of gap."
"I don’t level up for stats," Declan replied coldly. He stood up from the couch. He looked out the heavy glass windows of the penthouse, staring at the dark, monster-infested wastelands far beyond his city walls.
"I eat boss cores for stats," Declan muttered. "Nova. Pull up the global map. Find me the highest-density, non-instanced boss on the server. I need a massive battery."