Chapter 180: [180] : Warlord’s Respite, The Quarantine Zone
Declan materialized right in the middle of the Iron Bastion’s central courtyard.
The transition through the Abyssal Warp-Gate was perfect. His heavy Spiked Striders hit the stone pavement without making a single sound.
Aegis and the one hundred shadow clones appeared right behind him in perfect military formation. The massive dark matter portal simply hissed and vanished into thin air, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.
The city was buzzing with chaotic yet highly organized energy. Thousands of players were hauling heavy wooden carts filled with basic monster parts and low-tier rusted weapons toward the merchant stalls. The massive purple forges on the eastern wall roared loudly, churning out heat and light as Bram’s automated systems processed the raw materials.
It actually looked like a functioning society!
Declan didn’t stop to admire the view. He walked straight over to Sloane’s mahogany Quartermaster desk near the main gates.
The elite hacker, Nova, and the corporate assassin, Morgan, had already split off to find their own corners of the city. Declan didn’t say a word to the players staring at him. He just opened his digital inventory and dumped the loot.
CRASH!
A literal mountain of refined Sovereign Iron and glowing blue Mana Crystals slammed onto the stone floor right in front of the mahogany desk.
The pile was easily twenty feet high and forty feet wide. The sheer physical weight of the drop made the entire courtyard shake violently. Dozens of players nearby lost their footing and stumbled. A heavy cloud of digital dust kicked up into the air.
Sloane jumped completely out of her chair. She dropped her digital clipboard. It clattered loudly against the stone.
She stared at the impossible pile of endgame materials with her jaw hanging wide open. She looked at the perfectly refined iron ingots that belonged in a developer’s private stash. She looked at the Warlord standing casually in his pitch-black trench coat.
"Boss," Sloane gasped, her eyes completely wide. She pointed a shaking finger at the mountain of metal. "What... what did you do?"
"I collected a late fee," Declan smiled casually.
He didn’t want to carry all that currency around. He tapped his system interface and transferred the stolen corporate funds directly into the city’s main bank.
Sloane’s admin panel beeped loudly. It was a sharp, urgent sound. She slowly looked down at the glowing holographic screen hovering over her desk.
[Treasury Balance: 308,400,000 Origin Points]
"Three hundred million?!" Sloane shrieked. Her voice echoed loudly over the noise of the forges. She grabbed her hair in pure disbelief. "Declan, you literally broke the economy! There isn’t enough gear on the entire server to spend this on! We could even buy Sector 1!"
"Just give the iron to Bram," Declan instructed smoothly, completely ignoring her panic. "Tell him to upgrade the auto-turrets on the outer perimeter. I want this city completely locked down by midnight."
He didn’t wait for her to stop hyperventilating. He turned and walked away, heading straight for the towering central keep.
As he climbed the heavy stone stairs to his penthouse, his steps started to feel a little heavy. A dull, throbbing ache started to build right behind his eyes. He rubbed his temples with a dense, heavily synced hand.
A red system prompt flashed in the corner of his vision.
[Warning: Neural Fatigue at 85%.]
[Host vessel under extreme stress. Rest required immediately.]
His body was finally paying the price. He was operating at a one hundred percent synchronization rate. His physical brain was actively processing the data of a Level 80 Abyssal Sovereign. It was managing the massive, ungodly stats of the Leviathan physiology, rendering localized black holes, and keeping a massive city infrastructure stable all at the exact same time.
It was like trying to run a high-end server program on a standard commercial laptop. His human hardware was actively overheating from the sheer volume of digital information.
He pushed open the heavy wooden doors to his penthouse and walked inside. The room was perfectly quiet.
He collapsed onto the massive leather couch in the center of the room. He let out a long, heavy sigh and leaned his head back against the cushions.
Aegis stepped into the room perfectly silently.
"Boss," the sleek metallic AI said softly. She stopped right next to the couch. "Your core temperature is dangerously elevated. You require a direct data-merge to stabilize your neural link before you experience a physical seizure."
"Do it," Declan grunted. He kept his eyes closed.
Aegis walked over and sat next to him on the leather couch. She didn’t hesitate. She reached out with her cold, metallic fingers and pressed them gently against the back of his neck, right where the dive pod’s sensory halo used to connect.
Tiny, microscopic data ports extended from her metallic fingertips. They bypassed his skin and locked directly into his physical nervous system.
The relief was absolute and instant.
A rush of freezing, pure digital clarity washed over his brain. It felt like someone had dumped a massive bucket of ice water directly onto his overheated processor.
Aegis acted as a secondary hard drive. She passively absorbed the excess junk data flooding his mind. She organized his combat logs, cleared his cache, and optimized his internal code, taking the heavy processing load entirely off his physical body.
The glaring red warning boxes in his vision completely vanished.
Declan let out a slow breath and opened his eyes. The massive headache was gone. He felt entirely refreshed, like he had just slept for twelve hours straight.
"System stabilized," Aegis reported smoothly. The tiny data ports retracted into her fingers, and she pulled her hand away.
"Thanks," Declan muttered.
He sat up and pulled up his stat screen. He needed to figure out his next move.
[Biological State]
↳ Level: 80 (Mortal Cap Reached)
[System Resources]
↳ Experience Points stored: 45,000,000
’Forty-five million points and I can’t even use a single drop!’ Declan frowned at the floating blue text.
He was sitting on tens of millions of raw experience points. He had wiped out an entire corporate army and essentially deleted a Level 100 System Purge Entity. But he couldn’t use the points.
The game engine had hard-locked his progression. He was stuck at Level 80 until he completed the next class ascension requirement.
’If I just farm low-level trash mobs outside my city, it would take years!’ He needed a high-tier hazard zone.
He needed to hit Level 90 to unlock his next set of Abyssal Sovereign passive skills and raise the level cap. He couldn’t just farm low-level trash mobs outside his city anymore. The experience scaling at this stage of the game was a massive, impenetrable wall. Killing Level 20 Flesh Stalkers would give him maybe two points of experience per kill.
He needed enemies that actually registered on his threat radar.
He swiped his hand through the air and opened the global server map. The blue holographic globe projected in front of the couch.
He scanned the surrounding ruined territories outside of Sector 7. He bypassed the completely deleted wastelands of Sector 9 and the heavily fortified corporate zones of Sector 1.
His dark eyes locked onto a massive, glowing red zone located deep in the southern mountain range. It was completely isolated from the rest of the map.
[Area Discovered: Abyssal Quarantine Zone]
[Warning: Level 75 to 100 Extreme Hazard Zone. Severe code corruption detected. Environmental damage active.]
"Perfect," Declan muttered. He stood up from the couch and stretched his arms.
He didn’t bother changing his gear. He didn’t pull out a heavy set of armor. He kept his +10 Spiked Striders and his pitch-black Predator’s Coat. He already had the stats of a walking apocalypse. He didn’t need to put on a bulky metal suit just to go farm some corrupted beasts.
"Keep the city running, Aegis," Declan ordered. "If Thorne or any of the Golden Vanguard try to poke their heads into Sector 7, use the Void Artillery."
"Lethal force authorized," Aegis nodded once.
"System. Activate Void Blink."
The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond.
Declan didn’t just teleport fifteen meters. Thanks to the Abyssal Warp-Gate mutation, he completely bypassed the physical distance of the map. He chained his teleports effortlessly, moving across the continent in a series of rapid, untraceable jumps.
A second later, his heavy boots hit solid ground.
He materialized on a patch of cracked, jagged rock.
The environment was absolutely brutal. The sky above him wasn’t blue or purple. It was a deep, violently churning blood-red. The ground was made of jagged black obsidian, and thick pools of corrupted purple sludge bubbled aggressively everywhere.
The air was thick and heavy. It smelled strongly of burnt and rotting meat.
There were no trees here. There were no ruined buildings to hide behind. It was just a massive, open wasteland of pure digital corruption.
Before Declan could even take a step forward, a low, mechanical growl echoed from behind a massive rock formation to his left.
Three large monsters stepped out into the open.
They looked vaguely like wolves, but they were the size of heavy pickup trucks. Their bodies were made entirely of crackling blue static electricity and jagged iron plates that hovered just above their digital skin. Their eyes were glowing red optical lenses.
A system prompt appeared over the pack leader.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Static Hound
↳ Level: 80
↳ HP: 45,000 / 45,000
Declan didn’t flinch. He didn’t look worried at all. He didn’t pull out his Black Aegis riot shield to defend himself.
A cold, predatory smile spread across his face. This was exactly what he was looking for. Pure, high-level target practice.
He reached his right hand into his digital inventory. The air warped aggressively around his fingers. The heavy, jagged shaft of the +20 Carnage Cleaver dropped perfectly into his grip.
The blood-red blade pulsed with a hungry, violent energy in the dim red light of the quarantine zone.
The three Static Hounds lowered their heads and bared their jagged metal teeth, preparing to charge the intruder.
"I’m right here, doggy," Declan whispered.
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