Chapter 176: [176] : Corporate Armada, The Invincible Escape
The massive iron blast doors of the Audio-Visual Hub didn’t just open. They violently exploded inward!
A deafening crash blasted through the cavernous room as the heavy metal doors were blown completely off their hinges. They flew through the air and slammed into the black glass floor. They kicked up a massive cloud of dust, smoke, and digital static.
"Secure the perimeter!" a loud magically amplified voice barked from the hallway.
Dozens of heavily armored players poured into the server room. They moved with absolute and highly trained military precision.
They weren’t wearing scavenged trash. They didn’t have rusty swords. They wore sleek matching gold and white tactical armor that practically glowed in the dim light of the vault.
They carried massive tower shields and high-tier energy spears that hummed with lethal power.
They formed a perfect impenetrable shield wall right at the entrance.
Behind the heavy tanks, rows of mages and archers filed into the room. The mages immediately raised their silver staffs.
Bright red magic circles instantly expanded across the ceiling and the walls. The air in the room grew incredibly heavy and thick with static.
"Spatial Lock confirmed!" a mage yelled out from behind the shield wall. "All teleportation and movement skills are disabled!"
Morgan cursed under her breath. "We’re trapped. They locked the coordinate plane."
"I told you we should have left five minutes ago!" Sloane panicked. She gripped her green healing staff tightly. "They brought an entire army down here!"
Declan didn’t look worried. He stood perfectly still with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.
He watched the corporate army completely fill the front half of the room.
There were easily over a thousand players standing there.
A tall man in highly ornate gold armor stepped through the shield wall. He didn’t wear a helmet. He had a sharp arrogant face and a cruel smirk. He carried a massive broadsword that crackled with golden lightning.
A system tag hovered proudly over his head.
[Name: Commander Thorne]
[Level: 80]
[Guild: Golden Vanguard]
Thorne looked around the room. He saw the ruined server racks. He saw the terrified hacker and the panicked Quartermaster.
Then his eyes locked onto the guy in the black coat standing right in the center.
"Player V," Thorne sneered. His voice blasted loudly through the room. "The glitch from Sector 7. You have been a very busy rat today."
"I try to stay active," Declan replied smoothly. His voice carried a heavy unnatural bass that vibrated the floorboards.
Thorne pointed his glowing broadsword directly at Declan’s chest.
"You stole Apex Paradigm’s property," Thorne stated coldly while listing off the Warlord’s crimes. "You wiped out the Apex Hounds. You hijacked a Server Wipe event. And now you are trespassing in a Golden Vanguard secure facility."
"It’s a public dungeon," Declan noted casually. He looked entirely unimpressed. "I don’t see your name on the door."
"I am putting my name on your grave!" Thorne roared. "Hand over the developer loot! Give me the Override Key and the Sovereign skills! Do it now, and I will let your little friends log out before I delete your character file!"
Declan just stared at the Level 80 Commander.
He didn’t pull out the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd. He didn’t summon the +20 Black Aegis riot shield to defend his party. He didn’t even drop his casual posture.
He just found the whole situation incredibly boring.
"You guys really all read from the exact same script," Declan sighed. He shook his head slowly. "You corner me. You demand my loot. You threaten to delete me. And then I break all your toys."
Thorne’s face turned completely red with rage. The veins in his neck bulged.
"You arrogant trash!" Thorne shrieked. He lost his cool entirely. "You can’t teleport! You can’t run! You are locked in a room with a thousand max-level players! We will turn you into digital paste!"
"You’re right," Declan smiled. It was a dark terrifying expression. "I can’t teleport. But my portal can."
Declan didn’t cast a spell. He didn’t chant any magic words. He just tapped into his massive Ascendant-tier mana pool.
"Abyssal Warp-Gate."
He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
SNAP!
The sound cracked like a gunshot in the tense room.
The air directly behind Declan violently tore open. It didn’t fizzle or glitch. It literally ripped the fabric of the game engine perfectly in half.
A massive towering portal made of pure swirling black dark matter appeared. It was easily twenty feet tall and completely ignored the glowing red Spatial Lock magic covering the walls.
The red magic circles actually shattered like cheap glass the second the black portal expanded! The restrictive code simply could not handle the physical presence of a mutated Divine Anomaly skill.
Thorne’s jaw dropped. His eyes went wide with pure horror.
"He broke the lock!" a mage screamed from the backline. "The spatial parameters are completely ignoring my code! It’s impossible!"
"Fire!" Thorne panicked as he swung his sword down. "Don’t let him leave! Shoot him!"
The Golden Vanguard army reacted instantly.
A thousand players unleashed their ultimate attacks at the exact same time. Massive fireballs, jagged ice spears, and heavy armor-piercing arrows completely filled the air.
It was a literal tidal wave of pure destruction aimed right at Declan’s face! The sheer volume of incoming damage would have vaporized a small mountain.
"Let’s go," Declan ordered calmly.
He turned around and walked straight into the pitch-black portal.
Sloane, Morgan, and Nova didn’t hesitate. They sprinted after him and dove into the dark matter gateway just as the sky lit up with deadly magic.
The massive wave of corporate firepower slammed into the spot where Declan had just been standing.
But they didn’t hit anything.
The ten-second invincibility frames of the Abyssal Warp-Gate activated perfectly. The fireballs, the plasma slugs, and the ice spears simply phased right through the black portal like it was made of thin air.
They crashed harmlessly into the back wall of the server room and exploded into useless sparks and loud bangs.
The dark matter portal hissed and instantly shrank into a single tiny dot.
Then it vanished completely.
Thorne stood in the middle of the smoking server room. He stared at the empty space where his ultimate payday had just been standing.
He had a thousand men, absolute spatial control, and the element of surprise.
And the Warlord had just walked away without even drawing a weapon.
"Find him!" Thorne screamed blindly into the empty room. "Find him now!"
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