Chapter 125: [125] : Corrupted Core Guardian, The Event Horizon
Nova did not waste time. She pulled a spare black tactical jacket out of her digital inventory and pulled it on over her ruined silver suit.
She wiped the dried blood off her chin with the back of her sleeve and tied her icy blue hair back into a tight no nonsense ponytail.
She walked over to the massive circular control console in the center of the room.
She didn’t look at the spot where Vane had been deleted. She just placed her hands on the glowing white keyboard and started typing at a blinding speed.
"The Ten Thousand Demon Palace mainframe is heavily encrypted," Nova reported.
Her voice was back to its crisp professional tone. However, there was a new edge of deep respect when she addressed Declan.
"But since you completely removed the administrator who was guarding the local network, I can bypass the secondary firewalls."
Lines of green code reflected in her eyes as she ripped through the system’s defenses.
"We need to go down," Nova said. She hit a final key. "The actual quarantine vault is located on the 9th floor of the mainframe structure. That is where the Sovereign tier loot is held."
A loud heavy clanking sound echoed through the room.
Behind the central console, a section of the black glass floor split open and slid apart. It revealed a wide perfectly square elevator shaft leading straight down into absolute darkness.
"Let’s go," Declan said.
He didn’t hesitate. He just walked right up to the edge of the shaft and stepped off!
He didn’t use a teleport skill. He just let gravity take him.
Sloane sighed loudly. She gripped her green healing staff and jumped in after him. Morgan and Nova followed closely behind.
They fell for about ten seconds through the pitch black shaft.
Declan’s +10 Spiked Striders hit the metal floor at the bottom with a heavy thud. The Kinetic Dampener trait absorbed the massive fall damage perfectly. He didn’t even bend his knees.
The girls landed behind him. They used their high level agility stats to roll and bleed off the momentum.
Declan looked around.
The 9th floor of the mainframe was not a pristine server room. It was a complete nightmare!
The room was a massive cavernous dome. The walls were not made of metal or glass. They were made of thick pulsing red organic tissue.
Giant glowing purple veins the size of tree trunks snaked across the floor. They pumped raw corrupted data into the center of the room.
The air was freezing cold and smelled like rotting ozone.
"Keep your guards up," Morgan whispered. She pulled her combat knife and stepped into the shadows. Her stealth suit shimmered as she activated her active camouflage. "This place is crawling with hostile code."
"I don’t care about the code," Declan said flatly. "I care about the guy guarding it."
Sitting directly in the center of the fleshy cavern was a monster that defied standard game logic.
It didn’t look like a beast. It looked like a walking server crash!
It was twenty feet tall and composed entirely of jagged floating chunks of black metal, sparking blue wires, and raw bleeding red digital pixels.
It didn’t have a face. It only had a massive singular glowing purple eye located right in the center of its chaotic chest.
A golden system tag hovered aggressively over its shifting form.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Corrupted Core Guardian
↳ Level: 80 (Abyssal Boss)
↳ HP: 850,000 / 850,000
"Level 80!" Sloane gasped. She took a step backward and gripped her staff so hard her knuckles turned white.
"Declan, that thing has almost a million health points! And it is an Abyssal Boss! It ignores standard physical defense!"
"Good thing I don’t use standard physical defense." Declan replied smoothly.
The Corrupted Core Guardian registered their presence.
The massive purple eye in its chest flared with a blinding violent light. It didn’t roar. It emitted a deafening high pitched dial up modem screech that physically shook the walls of the cavern.
The monster raised two massive arms made of floating black metal blocks and pointed them directly at the party.
Bright red warning circles rapidly formed in the air around the boss.
"It is casting an AoE deletion spell!" Nova yelled from the back. "Get out of the radius!"
Sloane and Morgan immediately scrambled backward. They ran for the cover of the elevator shaft.
Declan didn’t run. He just cracked his neck.
"You guys really love your cast times." Declan muttered.
He didn’t pull out his massive +40 Eclipse Severance halberd. He didn’t summon the +20 Carnage Cleaver either.
He just tapped his mental interface and opened his active skill menu.
He had farmed an insane amount of Origin Points and consumed the cores of multiple World Bosses. His Abyssal Sovereign class had unlocked a new dedicated execution mechanic.
He hadn’t tested it yet. This seemed like the perfect time.
"System," Declan commanded quietly. "Activate Abyssal Overwrite."
[Skill Activated: Abyssal Overwrite]
↳ Type: Sovereign Execution Skill
↳ Cost: 2,000 Mana
↳ Description: The user temporarily discards their physical rendering and merges directly with raw void energy. Generates a localized event horizon.
The moment the skill triggered, the game engine physically screamed!
Declan’s pitch black Predator’s Coat didn’t just flutter. It dissolved.
His physical body turned into pure swirling black ink. The air around him violently collapsed inward. It created a literal physics breaking black hole exactly where he was standing!
The gravitational pull was absolute insanity.
The heavy pulsing red veins on the floor were instantly ripped upward and sucked into the dark sphere.
The loose metal blocks and sparking wires scattered around the room flew through the air. They vanished the second they touched the event horizon.
The Corrupted Core Guardian’s massive red magic circles completely shattered.
The spell was canceled instantly. The boss couldn’t cast anything. It was too busy trying not to get dragged into the void!
The twenty foot tall monster dug its floating metal legs into the fleshy floor. It screeched loudly as the gravity well pulled at its corrupted code.
Declan didn’t wait for it to slip.
From the center of the swirling black hole, a massive arm made entirely of dense dark matter reached out and gripped the air.
The heavy unpolished shaft of the Warden’s Halberd materialized directly into the shadowy hand.
Declan, currently existing as a localized singularity, swung the weapon in a wide devastating horizontal arc.
The blade didn’t hit the boss. It didn’t need to.
The sheer kinetic force of the dark matter swing combined with the gravitational pull of the Abyssal Overwrite. It created a wave of pure deletion energy.
It washed over the massive Level 80 monster like a tsunami hitting a sandcastle.
There was no clashing sound. There was no explosion.
The Corrupted Core Guardian simply ceased to exist!
Its 850,000 health points were entirely irrelevant. The physical space it occupied was violently scrubbed from the server.
The massive black hole collapsed instantly.
Declan’s physical body popped back into existence. His boots hit the floor with a solid thud and his black coat settled neatly around his legs.
He rested the heavy halberd casually on his shoulder.
The room was totally silent.
[Corrupted Core Guardian Level 80 Defeated!]
[Experience Points Gained: 1,200,000]
Declan smiled. "Well. That was fast."
He walked forward toward the empty space where the boss used to be.
Lying on the fleshy floor, glowing with intense blinding purple light, were three items.
He had cracked the vault. It was time for the payday.
