Chapter 114: [114] : Orbital Ion Reflector, True Damage
Kato stared at the massive dark matter halberd resting on Declan’s shoulder. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
The air inside the luxurious executive office felt incredibly heavy. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the weapon’s axe head was literally sucking the light out of the room. The expensive holographic paintings on the walls flickered and distorted as the gravity well messed with their projectors.
Kato’s hands were shaking violently. He had completely dropped his small plasma pistol.
In his sheer panic, his inventory flashed. A massive, two-handed heavy plasma cannon materialized in his grip.
It was easily the size of a motorcycle engine! Glowing pink energy coils spun rapidly along the heavy barrel. This was a weapon meant to be mounted on a heavy armored vehicle, not fired indoors.
"You think a heavy stick scares me?" Kato shrieked. He struggled to keep the massive cannon aimed directly at the center of Declan’s forehead.
His voice cracked with pure panic. "I am a Level 65 Plasma Berserker! I run the biggest guild on this side of the planet! I am not accepting a server wipe!"
Declan didn’t flinch. He didn’t even shift his stance. He just looked at Kato with boredom.
"You have three seconds to accept the system prompt," Declan said smoothly. His voice wasn’t loud at all, but it carried a terrifying weight in the room. "Three."
"I’ll blow your head off!" Kato threatened. His finger hovered over the heavy trigger.
Sweat poured down his face, ruining his bright pink hair. "I will melt you down to your base code!"
"Two," Declan counted casually.
Kato didn’t wait for one. His survival instincts took over completely. He knew a Warlord wouldn’t just count down for fun.
He squeezed the trigger with everything he had.
The heavy plasma cannon hummed with a loud mechanical whine and fired.
A blinding, super-heated bolt of neon pink energy shot out of the massive barrel at point-blank range. It was designed to melt through heavy tank armor in a single shot.
The sheer heat of the projectile instantly incinerated the mahogany desk between them. It scorched the expensive carpet into black ash!
Declan didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t even swing his halberd to cut the blast.
He just tapped his administrative interface with his mind.
’System. Project Base Defense.’
He was the absolute owner of the Iron Bastion. Because the servers were currently merging and breaking down, his administrative authority extended far beyond his city limits. He was a walking capital city.
Instantly, a ten-foot section of pure black iron materialized directly in front of Declan. It sprouted massive, razor-sharp steel spikes.
It crashed heavily onto the office floor, cracking the concrete foundation beneath the carpet.
It was a localized projection of his +20 Thorned Aegis city wall!
The pink plasma bolt slammed directly into the black iron barrier.
It didn’t melt the metal. It didn’t even leave a tiny scorch mark. The physics engine recognized the wall as a Level 100+ equivalent defensive structure.
[System Trait Activated]
↳ Absolute Reflection
The system logic of the mutated wall triggered instantly. It absorbed the entire kinetic and elemental payload of the massive plasma blast.
It didn’t just stop the attack. It calculated the raw damage output, doubled it, and reflected it straight back at the shooter as unblockable true damage! This was the power of a walking god!
A massive beam of dark red energy exploded out of the iron wall.
It crossed the ruined office in a microsecond.
"AGH!" Kato screamed.
The reflected blast hit his right shoulder. It completely vaporized his cybernetic arm.
The expensive, high-tier silver plating shattered into digital dust. The heavy plasma cannon clattered to the floor, completely ruined and melted down to the chassis.
The force of the reflection launched Kato backward like he had been kicked by a giant. He crashed into his heavy leather chair, flipping it over entirely.
He slammed hard against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the back of his office.
The reinforced glass spider-webbed violently, but it didn’t break.
Declan casually waved his hand. The projected iron wall vanished back into the air. It left only a massive cracked trench in the floor to prove it had ever been there.
Kato lay on the floor, clutching the smoking stump of his shoulder.
Digital blood poured onto the carpet, hissing and burning small holes in the fabric. His health bar had plummeted from a full green bar into a dangerously flashing red zone.
"Normal attacks don’t work on me, Kato," Declan said calmly. He rested the heavy dark matter halberd on his shoulder and slowly walked around the smoldering remains of the desk.
"Your guns are completely useless. Your stats are entirely irrelevant," Declan continued. His dark eyes looked down at the broken guild leader. "You are playing a shooter. I am playing as a literal god."
Kato stared up at the Warlord in the black coat. Pure terror completely replaced his previous arrogance.
He finally understood what the Apex Paradigm mercenaries had realized earlier.
You couldn’t fight a walking glitch with standard gear. It didn’t matter how much real-world money you spent on plasma cannons. The game engine was rigged against him.
"You want a server wipe?!" Kato coughed up a mouthful of bright blue pixels. His eyes darted around the room frantically.
"Fine! You want to play with the big guns? Let’s play!"
Kato frantically tapped his remaining hand against his system interface. He wasn’t hitting the accept button on the Deathmatch prompt.
He was bypassing his standard inventory and pulling out his absolute last resort.
A massive, blinding golden system warning popped up in the center of the room.
It was so bright it physically hurt the eyes, throwing harsh shadows against the walls.
[Sovereign-Tier Corporate Asset Deployed]
↳ Target Locked: Player V
Declan stopped walking. He frowned and looked up at the ceiling.
"What did you just do?" Declan asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"I bought an insurance policy," Kato laughed. It was a manic, desperate, and completely crazy sound.
"A little toy from the Apex Paradigm black market. It costs ten million credits a shot. I was saving it for a World Boss. But you’ll do just fine!"
High above the neon-lit skyscraper, the dark, smog-choked clouds of Sector 9 parted.
A massive satellite, orbiting entirely outside the game’s standard rendering distance, suddenly shifted its position.
It was a colossal piece of corporate artillery designed specifically by the developers to physically erase corrupted server data and wipe out glitching zones.
It was not a weapon meant for players.
[Item Activated]
↳ Orbital Ion Reflector
↳ Initiating Code Deletion
"Die, you arrogant glitch!" Kato screamed from the floor, spitting more blue pixels. "Let’s see your little iron wall reflect the server itself!"
A pillar of pure, blinding white light shot down from the heavens.
It wasn’t a laser. It wasn’t fire, or ice, or plasma. It was pure server deletion code.
It was the exact same mechanic the Level 80 Seraph of the Protocol had used back in the Ascension Trial, but magnified by a thousand percent.
The beam smashed through the roof of the skyscraper. It didn’t cause an explosion. It just instantly vaporized whatever it touched.
The steel beams, the concrete floors, and the glass ceilings of the top ten stories simply ceased to exist!
It came straight down for Declan.
Declan didn’t have time to use Void Blink. The beam was entirely too massive.
It was as wide as a commercial airliner and covered the entire center of the executive office. There was nowhere to teleport that wasn’t already being bathed in deletion magic.
He didn’t panic. He just reacted.
He raised his left arm, immediately equipping his +20 Black Aegis riot shield just as the light hit him.
The sound of the impact was absolute, terrifying silence.
The deletion beam completely drowned out the physical world. It bypassed the Black Aegis entirely!
The shield’s Kinetic Repulsion trait was designed to absorb physical momentum and reflect concussive force. It was absolutely useless against a digital attack designed to erase data completely.
The white light flooded past the titanium shield and slammed directly into Declan’s avatar.
A terrifying damage number popped up in Declan’s vision. It was a number so large the system UI actually stuttered trying to format it.
[True Damage Taken]
↳ -1,000,000 HP
One million points of unblockable true damage!
The sheer force of the beam crushed Declan to his knees. The floor beneath him instantly disintegrated, completely unable to withstand the orbital strike.
Declan was driven straight down through the gaping hole, dropping into the executive suite below.
The white light consumed him entirely.
The game engine aggressively tried to scrub his Abyssal Sovereign file from the server’s registry once and for all, burying him under a mountain of collapsing concrete and pure deletion code.
