Chapter 132: [132] : The Rogue AI, The Desolation Set
Declan stood in the middle of the toxic and ruined clearing of the Corrupted Server Hub. The bloody cubes of the Apex Hounds had completely dissolved into digital pixels, leaving only the quiet hum of the rusted server towers around him.
He held the Golden Override Chip in his right hand. He did not hesitate. He crushed the small golden item between his dense fingers.
The chip shattered. A massive burst of yellow light exploded upward and tore through the green toxic smog. The air in front of Declan violently glitched. Squares of static and broken code spun rapidly and assembled into a physical form.
A figure stepped out of the light.
It was a man, or at least it looked like one. He wore a ridiculously flashy suit made entirely of glowing gold fabric. He had slicked back neon blue hair and a wide and overly enthusiastic smile plastered on his face.
But his character model was completely unstable. His left arm kept flickering out of existence and replacing itself with lines of green binary code before popping back. His eyes wildly darted around and were completely out of sync with his head movements.
Declan looked at the system tag floating above the NPC. It was glitching heavily.
[NPC Information]
↳ Name: Merchant Gabriel
↳ Level: ERROR
↳ Stats: 99,999,999 / 99,999,999
"Greetings valued customer!" Gabriel yelled. His voice was incredibly loud and sounded like a radio announcer broadcasting through a broken speaker. "Welcome to the real market! No corporate taxes! No level restrictions! If you have the points, Gabriel has the power!"
Declan crossed his arms. He looked at the absurd stat numbers hovering over the merchant. This AI was a walking cheat code built by the developers to move high tier assets under the table.
"You look like a used car salesman," Declan noted flatly.
"I am a purveyor of fine digital armaments!" Gabriel laughed while adjusting his glowing suit. "Now let us make a deal before the server admins ping my location and delete me again. What do you need? Weapons? Armor? A small nuke?"
Declan did not open the shop menu right away. He looked at the glitching AI. Gabriel spawned randomly, sold his gear, and then vanished back into the code. If Declan wanted to buy from him again, he would have to hunt down another ultra rare Override Chip.
Declan hated inconvenience. He wanted this shop available twenty four hours a day.
"System," Declan commanded in his mind. "Target the active summon code of Merchant Gabriel. Apply Boundless Enhancement. Push it to plus twenty. Burn the points."
Gabriel froze. "Wait, what are you doing to my root file?"
The blinding white light of the enhancement system erupted from the chest of Declan and completely swallowed the golden merchant!
The system chimes hammered rapidly. The red warning boxes screamed about unauthorized NPC modification and severe core corruption. Declan used his Abyssal Sovereign talent to crush the warnings instantly.
[System Processing]
↳ Summon Code plus 15... plus 18... plus 20.
↳ Triggering Conceptual Mutation...
The white light shifted into a deep and vibrating purple. Gabriel’s avatar violently warped. The flashy gold suit turned into a sleek matte black merchant coat. The glitching static completely stopped. The AI rendered perfectly into reality.
[System Update]
↳ NPC Mutated: Tethered Vendor
↳ Functionality: Merchant Gabriel is now permanently anchored to the host’s primary Safe Zone. The vendor cannot be deleted by server wipes and cannot despawn.
The light faded. Gabriel looked down at his new black coat. He looked at his perfectly stable hands. His jaw dropped.
"You... you just rewrote my existence!" Gabriel gasped as he stared at Declan in sheer terror. His face went completely pale and he nervously swallowed his saliva. "You anchored me! If the devs find out, they will scrub my code!"
"The devs are locked out of my city," Declan said smoothly. "You work for me now. You get a permanent safe zone, and I get a black market. Open the shop."
Gabriel swallowed hard again. Sweat formed on his back. He knew better than to argue with a player who could rewrite an AI’s code on the fly. He waved his hand. A massive and glowing red holographic menu appeared between them.
Declan scrolled past the basic Epic and Relic tier items. He did not care about swords or potions. He went straight to the Restricted Developer Assets tab.
He had millions of Origin Points. He was going to spend them all.
His eyes locked onto two specific items at the very bottom of the list. The price tags were astronomical.
[Shop Items]
↳ Item: Singularity Core
↳ Tier: Sovereign
↳ Price: 2,000,000 Origin Points
↳ Item: Desolation Armor Set
↳ Tier: Ascendant
↳ Price: 3,500,000 Origin Points
"I will take both," Declan stated.
Gabriel choked. "Both? Sir, that is five and a half million points! Nobody has that kind of liquid currency!"
Declan just tapped the buyout button. The points vanished from his treasury.
Instantly, two items materialized in the air and dropped heavily to the grating. The first was a small and pulsing black orb known as the Singularity Core. The second was a massive pile of heavy, jagged, and pitch black metal plates known as the Desolation Armor Set.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Declan smiled. He sent Gabriel packing back to the Iron Bastion with a wave of his hand.
Declan stood alone with his new gear. He did not hesitate. He stripped off his ruined corporate jacket and quickly strapped the heavy black metal plates of the Desolation Set over his body. It felt incredibly heavy, but his Level 70 stats handled it easily.
He did not stop there. He pulled up the enhancement menu.
"System. Enhance the Desolation Armor Set to plus twenty."
The white light exploded again, followed by the deep purple of the conceptual mutation. When the light cleared, the armor had fused perfectly into a sleek and completely seamless suit of dark matter plating that seemed to absorb the surrounding light.
[Item Mutated]
↳ Desolation Armor Set plus 20
↳ Functionality: Base HP increased to 6,600,000. Grants massive true damage reflection. Passive shield regeneration active.
Declan laughed out loud. The sound echoed like thunder in the toxic swamp. Six million health! True damage reflection! He was an absolute walking god.
He looked up at the dark and corrupted sky of the server hub. He knew the Server Wipe Protocol was coming. He knew Apex Paradigm was dropping a Level 100 Entity on his city.
Declan gripped his massive plus 40 Eclipse Severance halberd.
"Bring it on," he whispered. "I need the EXP."
