Chapter 154: [154] : The Emperor-Grade Payload (1)
"Turn the cameras off." Declan’s voice echoed with a heavy unnatural bass that rattled the valley. "You are trespassing on my property."
Cipher just stared at the pitch-black hover-tank. Then he looked at the guy in the dark trench coat who had just stepped out of it.
The corporate celebrity let out a loud and highly practiced laugh. It was the kind of laugh designed perfectly for a livestream audience.
"Did you guys hear that?" Cipher yelled as he turned to face one of the three camera drones floating around his head.
"Some random slum rat rolls up in a scrap tank and thinks he owns a developer vault! This is Sector 1 territory now buddy. You are way out of your league."
The hundred heavily armored guards standing behind Cipher raised their glowing white plasma rifles. They did not look scared.
They were the elite security detail for the Proud Sword Megacorp. They were all Level 60 and above. They were paid absolute fortunes in real-world credits to babysit the company’s top streamer and make sure he secured the best loot on the server.
Up on the rocky ridge, Morgan leaned out of the passenger side of the Abyssal Rover.
"Declan, there are a hundred of them." The assassin warned quietly. "They have a fully established firing line. We need to fall back and funnel them into a chokepoint."
"Stay in the car." Declan replied without looking back. "I do not have time to play tactical games with a streamer."
Declan shoved his hands into his coat pockets. He did not pull out the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd. He did not summon his Black Aegis riot shield.
He just looked directly at the massive white steel doors of the Blacksite Vault located right behind Cipher’s army.
"Light him up!" Cipher ordered casually and waved a hand at his guards. "Make it look good for the chat!"
A hundred plasma rifles whined as their energy coils charged to maximum capacity.
They did not get to fire a single shot.
"Void Blink." Declan commanded in his mind.
The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond. Declan completely bypassed the physical space of the valley. He did not run. He did not dodge.
He just stopped existing in front of the firing line and instantly materialized a hundred feet away, standing right at the base of the massive vault doors.
The corporate guards blinked in confusion. They lowered their rifles.
"Where did he go?" A heavy tank player asked while looking around the empty dirt road.
"Behind you idiots!" Cipher shrieked as his perfectly styled hair bounced while he spun around.
Declan ignored the yelling. He looked at the heavy steel blast doors of Blacksite Vault 04. They were easily three feet thick and covered in high-level digital locks.
A normal guild would need a master hacker and hours of puzzle-solving to get through.
Declan just raised his right foot. His Abyssal Leviathan Physiology granted him a permanent 10x multiplier to his base physical mass. He kicked the center seam of the steel doors.
BOOM!
The sheer kinetic force of a collapsing star slammed into the metal. The high-level digital locks shattered instantly.
The heavy steel doors shrieked in protest, buckled inward, and violently blew off their massive hinges. They crashed into the dark hallway inside with a deafening clatter.
Declan casually strolled into the dark facility.
"Get after him!" Cipher screamed with his face turning red. "He is trying to steal my content! Move!"
The corporate army scrambled. They rushed through the broken doorway and chased the Warlord down a long sleek white hallway.
Declan did not run. He just walked at a normal pace and let his high Agility stat naturally eat up the distance.
The hallway opened up into a massive pristine server room. It was called the Aero Wing.
The walls were lined with thousands of glowing blue data drives. Sitting directly in the center of the room was the vault’s final defense system.
It was a Level 100 boss!
It looked like a massive mechanical angel. It had a sleek silver chassis that floated gracefully a few feet off the polished floor. It did not have legs.
Instead of arms, it had two heavy plasma cannons mounted to its sides. Four wings made of hard-light energy projected from its back to cast a cold blue glow across the room.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Aero Core Administrator
↳ Level: 100
↳ HP: 12,000,000 / 12,000,000
Declan stopped near the entrance. He crossed his arms and watched the machine.
A second later, Cipher and his hundred guards poured into the server room. They fanned out instantly to form a perfect defensive semi-circle around their celebrity leader.
"Keep the Warlord pinned down!" Cipher yelled at his tanks. "Do not let him get the last hit! The sponsors paid for me to solo this boss on stream!"
Cipher stepped forward. He raised his massive white energy cannon. He wanted to look like a hero. He wanted the perfect clip for his highlight reel.
"Plasma Storm Barrage!" Cipher roared.
It was a sponsored corporate ultimate skill. The heavy cannon in his hands lit up like a dying star.
A torrential downpour of super-heated plasma bolts erupted from the barrel. Hundreds of bright pink energy slugs tore across the room and aimed directly at the floating mechanical angel. The sheer heat of the attack melted the floor tiles instantly.
Declan just watched with a bored expression.
The Level 100 Aero Core Administrator did not even try to dodge. It did not spin up its cannons to return fire. It simply raised one of its hard-light wings.
A perfectly clear vacuum-sealed barrier materialized in front of the boss.
The massive barrage of plasma hit the shield and simply stopped. There was no explosion. There was no damage text. The vacuum shield entirely absorbed the thermal energy and suffocated the plasma into harmless puffs of gray smoke.
Cipher’s jaw dropped. "What?!"
The boss did not give him time to figure out the game mechanics. The Administrator snapped its silver chassis forward. It crossed the room in a fraction of a second.
It did not shoot its cannons. It just swung its heavy solid metal wing like a baseball bat.
It swatted Cipher directly in the chest.
CRACK!
The corporate celebrity was launched backward like a cannonball. He flew over the heads of his own guards and smashed violently into a heavy steel server rack.
The rack crumpled under the impact. Cipher collapsed to the floor in a miserable groaning heap. His pristine gold armor was heavily dented and his health bar dropped straight into the flashing red zone.
"Well, that was embarrassing." Declan noted loudly.
The hundred corporate guards froze in terror. They looked at their broken leader and then they looked at the Level 100 boss floating effortlessly in the center of the room.
Declan did not wait for them to regroup. He stepped past the terrified guards.
He raised his left arm. The +20 Aegis Vanguard Bracer locked onto his forearm. The dark metal hummed with deep Abyssal energy.
He raised his right hand. The space around his fingers tore open. The massive dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd dropped perfectly into his grip.
The razor-thin blade made of the night sky pulsed aggressively. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the axe head dragged the ambient light of the room into its endless void.
Declan locked his pitch-black eyes onto the Aero Core Administrator.
The boss registered his threat level. It instantly raised its vacuum shield again.
"That shield blocks physical projectiles and magic." Declan said softly. "But I don’t use either of those."
He did not swing the halberd. He did not want to accidentally delete the entire server room and lose the loot. He just triggered his fused skill.
"Event Horizon Annihilation."
Declan pointed the heavy blade directly at the boss. The +20 Aegis Vanguard Bracer flared with a bright golden light.
[System Trait Activated: Absolute Targeting]
[20% chance to ignore spatial geometry, physical barriers, and evasion stats.]
Because Declan’s raw synchronization rate and Abyssal Sovereign stats were completely breaking the game engine, the 20% chance was forcefully overridden. The system had no choice but to calculate it as a guaranteed hit.
The localized black hole did not spawn in the air between them. It did not travel through the room like a projectile. It completely bypassed the boss’s vacuum shield.
It spawned directly inside the Aero Core Administrator’s chest cavity!
The Level 100 boss did not even get to screech. The gravitational pull of the singularity instantly crushed the machine from the inside out.
The sleek silver armor, the heavy plasma cannons, and the hard-light wings were violently sucked into a single microscopic point of dense matter.
It sounded like a massive piece of scrap metal getting chewed up by an industrial grinder.
A split second later, the singularity collapsed.
The boss was entirely deleted.
[Aero Core Administrator Level 100 Defeated!]
[Experience Points Gained: Error. Level Cap Active.]
Declan completely ignored the system prompts. He walked forward to the exact spot where the boss had just vanished.
Sitting on the pristine white floor, totally untouched by the violent execution, was a pile of glowing loot.
He saw several King-grade data drives and a massive stack of high-tier crafting materials. But what caught his eye was the heavy weapon resting at the top of the pile.
It was a massive sniper rifle. It was easily six feet long, made of sleek dark blue metal, and covered in pulsing ice-blue energy coils.
Declan picked it up. The system identified it instantly.
[Item Retrieved: Cryo-Kinetic Annihilator]
↳ Tier: Emperor
↳ Type: Heavy Ballistic Weapon
↳ Description: Fires super-cooled kinetic slugs that freeze the target’s code upon impact. Deals massive physical damage and permanently reduces target Agility by 50%.
Declan smiled. "Kendra might like this."
He tossed the massive rifle and the rest of the loot into his digital inventory. He dusted off his hands and turned around to face the room.
The hundred corporate guards were completely silent. They were staring at him with their mouths hanging open. They had just watched a guy point a stick at a Level 100 boss and delete it without even moving.
Over by the ruined server rack, Cipher was slowly pulling himself up from the floor. He was coughing up blue digital pixels.
He looked at the empty space where the boss used to be. Then he looked at Declan.
The corporate streamer’s face twisted into an ugly mask of pure rage.
