Chapter 171: [171] : Siren’s Logic, The Developer’s Daughter
Declan stood frozen like a statue in the middle of the bright server room.
The massive +40 Eclipse Severance halberd was completely locked in mid-swing. The dark matter blade hummed uselessly against the frozen air, entirely unable to move a single millimeter forward.
The deafening electronic frequency continued to blare relentlessly from the giant speakers on the walls. It was a continuous bone-rattling drone that felt exactly like standing inside an active jet turbine.
[Status: Absolute Paralysis.]
He couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t step forward. The game engine had applied a strict conceptual lock on his physical coordinate data.
Directly in front of him, the four Level 100 Feedback Beasts raised their thick wire-wrapped fists. They were completely unaffected by the heavy sound. They stepped right up to his frozen body, preparing to smash his skull into the silver floor.
"Declan!" Nova screamed from the back of the room. The hacker was still on her knees desperately clutching her head to block out the noise.
Declan didn’t panic. He just waited for the hit.
The four massive beasts swung their heavy fists down simultaneously.
CLANG!
The attacks hit him squarely in the chest and shoulders with the force of a speeding truck.
They didn’t even scratch his black coat!
His mutated Sanguine Engine passive had permanently stacked a massive over-heal blood shield around his physical body. Combined with the Sovereign Crown sitting invisibly on his head, he had over three hundred thousand points of raw unbreakable defense.
The Level 100 monsters bounced off his passive shield like toddlers punching a solid brick wall. The kinetic force just washed over him completely harmlessly.
"You guys hit like wet noodles," Declan noted calmly. He couldn’t move his jaw much, but he could still talk through the paralysis.
Suddenly, the deafening frequency in the room shifted. It pitched up into a sharp incredibly violent screech.
The sound wasn’t aimed at Declan this time.
The high-pitched frequency hit the four Feedback Beasts. The monsters froze in place instantly. Their thick wire bodies began to vibrate violently shaking at an absolutely impossible speed.
A second later, all four Level 100 beasts simply shattered!
They didn’t explode in a fiery blast. They were literally vibrated into digital dust. Millions of bright blue pixels rained down onto the silver floor, completely erasing them from the server.
Declan raised an eyebrow. He was still totally paralyzed, but the immediate threat of getting punched was gone.
The heavy frequency dialed down, turning into a low threatening hum that just hovered in the air.
In the exact center of the server maze, a figure slowly materialized out of thin air.
It wasn’t a monster. It looked like a young girl.
She was maybe twelve years old, wearing a simple old-fashioned white summer dress. But she wasn’t human. She was made entirely of glowing translucent blue data. Her eyes were completely white and empty, and tiny green numbers constantly scrolled across her digital skin like falling rain.
A golden name tag floated neatly above her head.
[Target: Siren]
[Status: Corrupted Administrator Entity]
Siren floated a few inches off the silver floor. She glided smoothly through the tall server racks and stopped right in front of Declan.
She looked up at the Warlord in the pitch-black coat. She looked at the massive physics-breaking halberd frozen tightly in his grip.
"You are an anomaly," Siren’s voice echoed through the room.
It didn’t come from her mouth. It came from the massive speakers mounted on the walls. It was incredibly loud, heavily layered, and entirely devoid of any human emotion.
"You carry the scent of a Spire Master," Siren stated. "You carry the raw code of the Leviathan. But you do not belong in my sanctuary."
"I am just browsing," Declan replied smoothly, looking down at the glowing digital ghost. "Mind turning off the music? I can’t move my arms."
Siren’s glowing white eyes narrowed in pure annoyance.
"You seek the developer assets," Siren stated coldly. "You seek to steal the core files to fight the Convergence. You are selfish violent code. You will be purged like the rest of the glitches."
A golden system prompt suddenly flashed directly in front of Declan’s face, completely blocking his view of the girl.
[Hidden Objective Discovered: Override Siren’s Logic]
↳ The entity is trapped in a corrupted logic loop. Physical damage is nullified by the Acoustic Anomaly.
↳ Objective: Stabilize the core processing parameters using advanced data manipulation.
Declan read the prompt. He couldn’t swing his sword. He couldn’t punch her. The game was actively forcing him into a puzzle mechanic instead of a boss fight.
He really hated puzzles.
"You call this a sanctuary?" Declan said loudly. He didn’t try to physically struggle against the absolute paralysis. He just used his voice.
Siren tilted her head slightly. "It is the only uncorrupted sector in the Hub. My father built this place for me."
"Your father was a terrible programmer," Declan sneered.
Siren flinched as if she had been physically struck. The low hum in the room spiked angrily vibrating the floorboards.
"Do not insult the Creator!" she yelled through the speakers. "His code is flawless!"
"Flawless?" Declan laughed. It was a cruel highly mocking sound. "I am looking at your frequency arrays right now. Your audio compression is a total joke. You are using brute-force volume to simulate a physical barrier. It’s incredibly inefficient."
He kept his tone perfectly casual. "You are burning eighty percent of your processing power just to hold me still. It sounds like a garbage disposal."
Siren floated closer. The blue data making up her face shifted in pure unadulterated outrage.
"I control the absolute acoustic physics of this realm!" she yelled, the speakers whining with static.
"You control a broken stereo system," Declan countered smoothly.
He tapped into his Abyssal Sovereign class. He didn’t use his massive physical strength. He used the +1,500 Intelligence stat he had gained from the Sovereign Neural Interface clipped to his ear.
His brain was operating exactly like a supercomputer. He could literally see the raw audio code floating in the air around him like sheet music.
"Your sine waves are totally misaligned," Declan stated calmly, listing off the raw data he was reading in real-time. "You have a massive memory leak in your secondary harmonic dampeners. If you keep running this specific frequency, your own feedback loop is going to completely delete your core file in exactly four hours."
Siren froze. The heavy pressure in the room lessened just a tiny fraction.
"You... you can read my base code?" she asked. Her voice dropped the heavy amplification from the walls. She sounded exactly like a confused lost child.
"I can read it," Declan smiled a confident Warlord smile. "And I can fix it. But I can’t type on a keyboard if you hold my arms hostage."
Siren hovered there for a long moment. The system entity was at war with itself. The corruption inside her demanded she delete the intruder immediately, but her core developer logic recognized that his diagnostic assessment of her failing systems was perfectly accurate.
She slowly waved her glowing blue hand.
The deafening frequency vanished entirely. The absolute silence that followed was jarring to the ears.
[Status: Absolute Paralysis Removed.]
Declan lowered his arms. He rolled his heavy shoulders, feeling the tension finally leave his dense muscles. He calmly willed his massive halberd back into his digital inventory. It vanished into a swirl of pixels.
He didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t cast an attack spell. He just walked right past the glowing digital girl and headed straight for the main terminal sitting in the center of the room.
"You have five minutes," Siren warned softly, floating behind him. "If you cannot stabilize the array, I will turn the volume back up. And I will vibrate your physical vessel into ash."
"Just watch the master work," Declan said.
He sat down at the heavy metal console. He placed his hands over the glowing white keyboard. It was time to show the game engine exactly why he was the Warlord.
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