Chapter 118: [118] : Meat Grinder, Deleting the Vanguard
The glowing yellow wall shattered into tiny sparks of harmless light.
The barrier was gone.
There was absolutely nothing standing between Declan and the entire Neon Syndicate.
"Kill him!" Forty thousand voices screamed at the exact same time.
The sound hit Declan like a physical wave. It was deafening to the ears. It was the sound of an entire city block filled with heavily armed and max leveled players rushing forward with pure murder on their minds.
The front line did not hesitate at all. Ten thousand close combat players charged forward in a massive and coordinated wave.
They were the vanguard. They were the heavy tanks, the berserkers, and the brawlers.
They wore thick cybernetic armor that glowed with neon pink and green energy lines. They carried massive plasma axes, humming energy swords, and heavy gravity hammers.
They stomped across the sleek black concrete of the central plaza. The ground actually shook under the weight of ten thousand players sprinting at full speed.
"Fire! Cover the vanguard!" A raid leader shrieked from the backlines.
Thousands of plasma rifles lit up the dark and rainy sky. A blinding storm of hot pink and bright blue energy slugs poured over the heads of the charging frontline.
The projectiles screamed through the air, aimed directly at the center of the plaza.
They were aiming right for Declan and his hundred pitch black shadow clones.
Declan didn’t move. He didn’t flinch in the slightest. He didn’t even take his hands out of the pockets of his dark Predator Coat.
He just watched the massive light show coming his way.
The plasma bolts hit his shadow clones first. The high tier energy rounds were designed to melt through thick tank armor and vaporize health bars.
But the clones did not have health bars. They did not have physical hitboxes at all. They were immortal concepts made of pure dark matter.
The glowing plasma slugs simply phased right through the broad chests of the shadow clones. The bullets hit the wet concrete behind them and exploded into useless showers of sparks.
The clones didn’t even blink their glowing purple eyes. They stood in perfect military formation, forming a protective ring around Declan.
"The guns aren’t working!" A heavy knight yelled from the front of the charging wave. "They are just shadows! Ignore them! Crush the Warlord!"
The vanguard closed the distance. Ten thousand players crashed into the center of the plaza like a tidal wave of metal and neon lights.
They swarmed the shadow clones. They tried to push past the dark figures to get to Declan standing casually by the concrete bench.
"You are dead glitch!" A massive berserker screamed loudly.
He leaped into the air, raising a giant plasma axe over his head. He aimed a devastating downward strike right at Declan’s skull.
Declan looked up at the screaming player. He looked perfectly bored.
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket.
The air in front of his palm violently distorted. The heavy dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd materialized directly into his grip.
The razor thin blade made of the night sky hummed loudly. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the axe head pulsed with a terrifying and hungry energy.
Declan didn’t swing the halberd at the leaping berserker. He didn’t need to do that.
He just planted the bottom of the heavy iron shaft into the concrete floor.
"Gravitational Annihilation." Declan said smoothly.
The ultimate weapon trait triggered instantly.
The tiny black sphere spinning inside the blade violently expanded. It didn’t explode outward like a bomb. It did the exact opposite.
A localized singularity ripped open right in the dead center of the charging vanguard. It was a literal physics breaking black hole!
The sound of the clashing weapons and the screaming players completely vanished.
The audio was instantly sucked into the void. The neon lights from the cyberpunk skyscrapers around the plaza warped and bent, plunging the center of the battlefield into an unnatural darkness.
Then, the pulling force hit.
It was absolute chaos.
The singularity grabbed everything within a massive fifty meter radius. And right now, that radius was completely packed with ten thousand close combat players who had just rushed into Declan’s personal space.
The berserker in mid air didn’t even get to swing his axe. He was violently yanked sideways. He flew into the black hole so fast his character model blurred.
"What is this?!" A heavy tank screamed out.
He dug his heavy metal boots into the concrete, trying to resist the pull. It was entirely useless. The gravitational force ripped the concrete right out of the ground, dragging the tank and the floor he was standing on straight into the void.
Thousands of highly trained and max geared corporate players were ripped off their feet simultaneously. They flew through the air, screaming in absolute terror.
They were completely helpless against the gravitational pull.
They didn’t just get pulled in. They got crushed entirely.
The singularity dragged all ten thousand players into a single localized point in space.
The visual was absolutely horrifying. Heavy silver and neon armor crumpled like cheap tin foil. High tier energy shields shattered like fragile glass. Bones snapped and popped in a terrifying sound of destruction.
"Help me! Pull me back!" A player shrieked as he was dragged into the spinning ball of metal and flesh.
"I can’t move!"
"My health bar! It is melting!"
The players were compressed into a violently spinning ball of scrap metal, digital blood, and terrified avatars. The game physics engine couldn’t handle the massive amount of mass occupying one single coordinate.
The system threw up endless strings of red error codes in the air, desperately trying to calculate the damage.
[System Error]
↳ CRITICAL ERROR: Mass collision detected.
↳ Entity overlap exceeding server limits.
↳ Calculating structural damage... Error. Error.
The sound of ten thousand players being crushed into a space the size of a compact car was sickening. It sounded like a massive industrial garbage disposal chewing on a pile of wet bricks.
Blood sprayed out of the compressed ball in massive geysers. Bright blue digital pixels exploded like fireworks as thousands of health bars instantly hit zero.
Declan just stood there, leaning casually against the shaft of his halberd.
The singularity didn’t affect him. He was the Warlord. He owned the code.
His pitch black shadow clones didn’t move either. They just stood in a perfect circle, watching the enemy vanguard get turned into crushed digital paste.
"Hold the line!" An officer screamed from the back of the plaza, way outside the pull of the black hole. He watched his entire frontline disappear into the dark vortex. "What kind of skill is that?! Mages, break the gravity well!"
It was too late.
The Gravitational Annihilation trait only lasted for two seconds.
Two seconds was all it took to finish them.
The singularity reached its maximum capacity. It had eaten ten thousand players, their heavy armor, their weapons, and a massive chunk of the concrete plaza.
Then, it collapsed.
The release of pressure was catastrophic.
The compressed ball of players violently exploded outward. It was not a fire blast. It was a physical shockwave of pure kinetic force.
A massive rain of crushed polygonal meat, shattered cybernetic armor, and bright blue digital pixels showered the entire battlefield. It rained blood and scrap metal for five solid seconds!
Chunks of twisted neon metal and jagged bone slammed into the neon lit skyscrapers around the plaza, shattering thousands of glass windows in a deafening crash.
When the dust finally settled, the center of Sector 9’s beautiful central plaza was completely ruined.
A massive fifty meter crater was carved out of the solid black concrete.
The ten thousand members of the Neon Syndicate vanguard were instantly deleted. Not a single one survived the crush.
The ground inside the crater was littered with thousands of perfectly compressed golf ball sized cubes of gore and metal. That was all that was left of the elite corporate tanks and brawlers.
Declan stood perfectly still at the edge of the crater.
His pitch black Predator Coat wasn’t even dusty. The fifty points of absolute flat defense had completely repelled the rain of blood and metal.
He rested the +40 Eclipse Severance casually on his shoulder.
He looked across the massive crater at the remaining thirty thousand players of the Neon Syndicate.
They were completely paralyzed. The mages on the rooftops had dropped their staffs. The snipers on the fire escapes were staring through their scopes in pure disbelief. The remaining riflemen on the ground were shaking so badly they couldn’t even keep their guns aimed.
The entire guild was frozen in pure horror.
Declan smiled. It was a cold and bloodthirsty look that completely erased any hope they had left.
"Ten thousand down." Declan called out. His voice traveled perfectly across the silent and ruined plaza. "Thirty thousand to go."
