Chapter 123: [123] : Bio-Feedback, Shattering the Ice
Vane did not handle rejection well.
The Level 60 corporate Splicer was used to getting whatever he wanted in the Primordial Grid. He had the best gear real-world money could buy. He had a massive, highly funded guild backing his every move. And he had an incredibly fragile ego that shattered the moment someone told him no.
"You think you can just walk into my vault and disrespect me?" Vane snarled. His handsome, perfectly rendered face was completely twisted with ugly rage. "I am a VIP player! I’ll melt you down to your base code!"
He took a step back and hoisted the massive plasma rifle. He didn’t aim at Declan. He didn’t even look at the guy who confronted him. Vane aimed the glowing, high-tech barrel directly at Nova’s chest.
"Let’s see how much you talk when your avatar is burning!" Vane yelled, his voice cracking with pathetic anger.
He didn’t hesitate. He pulled the heavy trigger.
Declan wasn’t expecting something like this, he was utterly surprised, he thought Vane has a romantic relationship with Nova.
A glaring red system warning instantly popped up in everyone’s vision, overriding their standard interface with an emergency priority alert.
[Warning: Hyper-Compressed Plasma Cutter Fired.]
[Lethal Damage Imminent.]
[Calculating trajectory...]
A blinding, white-hot beam of pure plasma erupted from the barrel of the heavy rifle. It wasn’t a normal energy slug. It wasn’t a standard fireball that you could just sidestep. It was a concentrated, continuous laser designed to slice through heavy tank armor and bunker doors in a fraction of a second.
It moved at the speed of light. The air inside the freezing server room literally ignited, instantly superheating the entire space.
Nova reacted purely on instinct. She was a top-tier player. She didn’t freeze like a panicked newbie. Her high-level stats kicked in immediately. She rapidly spun her silver staff, slamming the base of it against the black glass floor.
She dumped a massive chunk of her mana pool to summon her absolute strongest defensive spell.
"Aegis Hex!" Nova shouted.
Three layers of thick, hexagonal blue magic shields materialized in the air in front of her. They locked together perfectly, forming a solid, glowing wall of defensive data.
The plasma beam hit the first shield.
SHATTER!
The sound was deafening. The blue magic broke like cheap glass hit by a sledgehammer. The heat of the corporate weapon was simply too intense. The beam punched straight through the first layer, completely vaporizing the code.
Then it hit the second shield. The blue hexagons turned bright red for a microsecond before instantly exploding into useless sparks.
Then the third layer vanished.
Nova’s eyes widened in sheer horror. The shields didn’t even slow the beam down. The game’s math heavily favored the offensive power of the cash-shop weapon. The lethal, white-hot code was literally inches away from her chest!
She couldn’t cast another spell. She couldn’t dive out of the way. She was going to get deleted.
’Void Blink.’
The world went pitch-black.
Declan didn’t teleport forward to attack Vane. He didn’t pull out his mutated cleaver. He teleported laterally.
He tapped into his massive stamina pool and completely bypassed the physical space between himself and the hacker. He materialized directly in front of Nova, placing his broad back to her and his chest squarely in the path of the incoming plasma beam.
He didn’t pull out the +20 Black Aegis riot shield. He didn’t even brace his heavy spiked boots against the floor.
The hyper-compressed plasma slammed directly into the center of Declan’s chest.
BOOM!
The kinetic force of the impact was absolute insanity. The beam exploded against Declan’s pitch-black Predator’s Coat. The explosion threw a massive shockwave of displaced air and blistering heat outward in a tight, violent circle.
The blast completely destroyed the nearest server racks, sending burning metal and sparking wires flying across the room.
Declan stood his ground. His boots dug into the black glass floor, carving two shallow trenches. His real-world physical density absorbed the hit effortlessly. To him, the impact felt like someone throwing a heavy medicine ball at his chest.
The +10 Predator’s Coat didn’t even scorch. His absolute flat defense swallowed the heat, and his massive Abyssal Sovereign health pool barely even registered the scratch damage that leaked through.
But Nova was standing right behind him.
She wasn’t hit by the plasma beam, but she was caught directly in the secondary kinetic shockwave!
The force hit her like a speeding dump truck. She was physically lifted off her feet. She flew backward through the air, her silver staff spinning wildly out of her grip.
She crashed hard against a row of heavy metal server racks. The thick iron bars dented inward from the brutal impact of her spine.
"Nova!" Sloane screamed from the doorway. The Quartermaster ran forward, her green healing staff already glowing brightly in her hands. Morgan drew her combat knife, her eyes frantically scanning the room for secondary threats.
Nova collapsed onto the floor in a miserable heap. Her silver staff clattered away into the dark. She gasped loudly, her hands flying to her stomach as she curled inward.
A terrifying red warning flashed violently over her head.
[CRITICAL ALERT: Massive Internal Trauma Detected.] [Warning: Lethal kinetic overflow.]
"Argh!" Nova screamed.
It wasn’t just a simple drop in HP. In this merged reality, high-tier damage didn’t just chip away at a health bar, it broke actual bones and ruptured organs. It was a raw, visceral scream of genuine human agony that echoed horribly through the massive vault.
The kinetic shockwave generated by Declan blocking the beam had been so intense that the sheer blunt force had crushed her against the steel racks.
Nova curled into a tight ball on the glass floor. Her pristine, icy-blue eyes were squeezed shut in absolute, blinding pain.
She violently dry-heaved. Her body convulsed, and she coughed up a massive mouthful of thick, dark red blood that splattered across the floor.
Her beautiful, expensive silver cybernetic suit was completely ruined. The reinforced fabric tore along the ribs, and blood stained the pristine white plating. She looked absolutely miserable.
Her cold, stoic facade was completely shattered. The arrogant, untouchable hacker was trembling uncontrollably. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe through the intense nausea and the agonizing, completely real pain in her spine.
"Help her," Declan ordered. His voice was cold and entirely flat, cutting through the ringing silence of the room.
Sloane dropped to her knees next to the hacker. She didn’t hesitate. She immediately pressed her glowing green hands against Nova’s chest, flooding her battered body with basic healing magic.
"It’s okay, I’ve got you. Just breathe," Sloane whispered frantically. She watched the flashing red health warnings hovering over Nova’s head, praying her spells could knit the hacker’s broken ribs back together.
Declan turned slowly. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the last bit of heat from the plasma beam dissipate from his dark coat.
He looked through the lingering smoke of the explosion.
Vane was standing by the central console. The corporate player was staring at Declan in absolute, wide-eyed disbelief. The heavy barrel of his plasma rifle was smoking, the energy coils completely drained from the ultimate attack.
"You... you just tanked a hyper-compressed cutter," Vane stammered. His perfectly styled hair was messed up by the wind of the blast. He took a nervous, shaky step backward, his boots clicking against the glass.
"That does twenty thousand true damage!" Vane yelled, his voice pitching up in panic. He frantically pulled up his combat logs, tapping his interface to see if the game had glitched. "That ignores armor! You shouldn’t even have a torso right now! You should be dead!"
Declan didn’t say a word. He just stared at the guy in the shiny white and gold armor.
He looked down at Nova, who was still coughing up blood on the floor while Sloane desperately tried to stabilize her. He looked at the ruined server racks that had crumpled under the impact. He looked at the mess the corporate idiot had just made in his designated loot room.
Declan reached his right hand out into the empty air.
He didn’t pull up a menu. He didn’t look at his inventory. He just tapped into his Abyssal Sovereign authority.
The air in front of his palm distorted violently, screaming as the physics engine was forced to render an impossible item. The heavy, dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd materialized directly into his firm grip.
The weapon dropped with a heavy, satisfying weight. The razor-thin blade, completely devoid of physical mass, looked like a jagged tear into the night sky. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the axe head hummed with a hungry, destructive static that immediately began pulling the smoke in the room toward it.
Declan rested the massive weapon casually on his shoulder. His dark eyes flared with raw, terrifying purple energy that completely swallowed the whites of his eyes.
"You ruined her suit," Declan said smoothly. His voice dropped to a heavy, unnatural bass that rattled the glass floor under their feet. "I am going to ruin you."
