Chapter 143: [143] : The Data Escape, Sniping the King
The Apex Eradicator was trying to pull the plug on itself.
High above the ruined streets of Sector 7, the massive Level 100 boss stopped acting like a physical machine. It triggered a core survival protocol hard coded into its system by the developers at Apex Paradigm.
If the Purge Entity failed to delete a target, it was programmed to securely upload its remaining data back to the central corporate servers to prevent its unique Sovereign tier code from being looted by players.
The massive, heavily damaged metal chassis of the Eradicator suddenly began to glow with a bright, sickly yellow light.
The physical armor plates, the smoking thrusters, and the shattered cannons began to rapidly dissolve. They didn’t turn into the standard blue pixels of a dead monster. They turned into a thick, swirling stream of green and gold binary code.
The boss was literally unpacking its own physical rendering!
"It is running away!" Kendra yelled from the Iron Bastion wall. She raised her plus 10 Sniper Bow, her hands shaking as she quickly knocked an arrow. "It is turning back into raw data! It is going back to the developers!"
Kendra let the arrow fly. The projectile soared through the air and hit the glowing stream of code. The wooden shaft just phased right through the light and kept flying into the distance. It did absolutely zero damage.
"Don’t bother shooting," Nova said, her voice entirely flat. The icy hacker just stared at the glowing stream in the sky. "It dropped its physical hit box. Normal weapons and spells will just pass right through it. The upload takes exactly ten seconds. Then it is gone."
Up in the sky, the swirling mass of green and gold code condensed into a single, massive data packet. It looked like a brilliant shooting star hovering right over the city.
The data packet violently shot straight up, aiming for the dark purple clouds covering the server ceiling. It was moving at incredible, physics breaking speeds.
Down in the glass crater, Declan did not look panicked. He didn’t look worried. He just looked incredibly annoyed. He hated it when games had unkillable enemies that ran away in cutscenes.
"You drop a million points of damage on my head, and then you try to hit the escape key when you start losing?" Declan said smoothly.
He didn’t bother raising the massive Orbital Ion Reflector again. The siege cannon dealt true physical damage, but the boss didn’t have a physical body right now. The beam would just shoot through the data stream uselessly and waste his mana.
Declan willed the heavy cannon back into his digital inventory. It vanished instantly into his storage.
He looked up at the fleeing data packet. It was already hundreds of feet in the air, rapidly closing in on the cloud cover.
"I don’t let loot run away," Declan stated.
He reached out his right hand. The air in front of his palm distorted violently, screaming under the sudden shift in reality.
The massive, dark matter shaft of the plus 40 Eclipse Severance halberd dropped perfectly into his grip. The razor thin blade, holding the spinning black hole in its center, hummed with a violent, chaotic static.
He didn’t need to deal physical damage. He just needed to delete the space the data was occupying.
Declan tapped into his massive stamina pool. He locked his pitch black eyes onto the glowing green star rocketing into the sky.
’Void Blink.’
The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond.
Declan vanished from the crater. He completely bypassed the physical distance and the atmospheric pressure. He materialized a thousand feet in the air, appearing perfectly in the direct path of the escaping data packet.
Gravity instantly grabbed him. The toxic wind roared violently in his ears, whipping his black Predator Coat around his heavily synced body.
He was falling, but he didn’t care. He was exactly where he needed to be.
The massive stream of green and gold code was rocketing straight up toward him. It was less than fifty feet away.
The system threw up a rapid string of warning prompts in his vision, trying to deter him from attacking an administrative action.
[Notice: Target is currently in an invulnerable data state.]
[Notice: Upload progress at 92%.]
[Notice: Upload progress at 95%.]
Declan smiled. It was a cold, ruthless expression that held absolutely zero mercy for the corporate machine.
He gripped the heavy dark matter shaft of the halberd with both hands. He didn’t activate the Gravity Well trait. He didn’t need to crush the code. He just needed to cut the server connection entirely.
"Upload canceled," Declan roared over the howling wind.
He swung the massive halberd horizontally in a wide, devastating arc.
The Spacetime Laceration trait activated effortlessly. There was no clashing of metal. There was no fiery explosion.
There was just the distinct and sickeningly wet sound of thick canvas tearing perfectly in half!
A jagged, pitch black line appeared in the empty air. It wasn’t a projectile. It was a literal tear in the server coordinate plane.
The spatial tear ripped forward at the speed of light. It swept directly through the exact center of the rising data packet.
The plus 40 Eclipse Severance completely ignored the boss invulnerable data state. It didn’t calculate defense. It didn’t care about HP. It literally just severed the game space the packet was occupying from the rest of the server!
The bright green and gold light instantly froze.
The data stream was cut perfectly in half.
[Notice: Upload progress at 99%.]
[Upload Failed. Connection Severed.]
The massive Level 100 entity let out one final, distorted screech of pure digital static. The sound echoed across the entire sky, sounding like a dying computer processor failing for the final time.
A split second later, the two halves of the data packet violently lost their glow. They turned a dull, lifeless gray.
The code shattered. It didn’t explode. It just instantly dissolved into millions of tiny, harmless blue pixels that rained down over Sector 7 like a gentle snowstorm.
Declan let himself fall. He fell for several seconds, watching the blue pixels drift past his face.
He hit the ground just outside the city walls. His plus 10 Spiked Striders hit the wet asphalt with a heavy, solid crunch. The Kinetic Dampener trait absorbed the entire massive impact, leaving him standing perfectly upright without even bending his knees.
He rested the dark matter halberd casually on his shoulder. He looked at the empty sky.
The system chimes suddenly hammered inside his head. They were so loud and triumphant they actually vibrated his teeth.
[System Purge Entity: The Apex Eradicator Defeated!]
[Target permanently erased from server registry.]
"Sniping is a lot easier when your bullets ignore math," Declan chuckled softly.
