Chapter 184: [184] : Extermination Rewards, The Static Forest
Declan stood perfectly still in the middle of the massive and completely smooth trench he had just carved directly into the physical fabric of the server.
The dark matter scythe had cleanly deleted the entire army of one thousand Corrupted Troopers in a single silent strike.
There was no loud clashing of heavy metal weapons.
There was no fiery explosion of magic.
There was no desperate drawn-out struggle for survival against impossible odds.
He just swung his arm and an entire heavily armed corporate battalion simply ceased to exist!
The air across the ruined airstrip was still filled with a localized snowstorm of bright blue digital pixels.
They floated up into the dark blood-red sky like a reverse waterfall. Millions of points of shattered code rained down over the gray concrete, leaving behind an eerie and absolute silence.
Declan casually rested the massive dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd on his right shoulder. He did not even look out of breath. He didn’t even have a scratch on his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.
A bright golden system prompt immediately popped up in the center of his vision, accompanied by a very loud and very satisfying digital chime.
[Daily Quest: Void Extermination Complete!]
↳ Objective: Slay 1,000 Abyssal Entities within the commercial district breach zone.
↳ Status: 1,000 / 1,000 Killed.
↳ Threat Level Assessed: Trivial.
"Trivial is a bit insulting to them." Declan muttered, looking at the massive field of dropped loot covering the concrete. "They lined up very nicely for me. You have to respect that kind of organization."
Another golden prompt flashed, instantly replacing the first one on his interface.
[Quest Rewards Generated.]
↳ +100,000 Origin Points Transferred to Treasury.
↳ +50 High-Tier Material Drops Secured.
↳ SSS-Rank Completion Bonus: [Box of Assorted Sovereign Scrap]
Declan’s dark eyes lit up with genuine amusement.
He tapped his digital interface to check his treasury balance. It was already sitting at a completely absurd and economy-breaking number from his earlier massacres and his taxation of the Iron Bastion.
But an extra hundred thousand points for exactly five seconds of actual work was always a welcome sight!
He tapped the sleek dark silver +20 Ring of the Void-Hoarder sitting on his right index finger.
The Mythic-tier ring immediately flared to life with a deep and pulsing void energy.
The ring acted like a massive physics-defying industrial vacuum. It sucked the fifty high-tier material drops, the thousands of scattered monster cores, and the glowing golden reward box directly into his infinite digital storage space.
The heavy physical items vanished from the real world in a rapid flash of dark energy.
"Easiest money I have ever made." Declan smiled as he dusted off his hands.
He was just about to turn around and lock onto a new set of coordinates to Void Blink his way to the next group of red dots on his minimap. But his enhanced Abyssal Sovereign senses picked up something else.
It wasn’t a monster growling. It wasn’t the heavy stomping of a giant boss.
It was the frantic and desperate sound of heavy boots slapping against wet concrete.
Declan turned his head slightly. His pitch-black eyes with swirling purple energy easily pierced through the thick toxic fog of the Abyssal Quarantine Zone.
About three hundred yards away, a group of five players was sprinting directly toward his cleared airstrip.
They were running for their absolute lives!
They looked completely miserable as they were covered head to toe in dark purple corrupted sludge. Their cheap iron armor was heavily dented, scratched, and sparking with residual magic damage.
Two of them had completely dropped their heavy wooden shields and iron swords just so they could pump their arms and run faster.
Declan recognized the armor immediately. It was the standard-issue +10 mutated black iron gear he had mass-produced and handed out back at the Iron Bastion.
These were his guys. These were Sector 7 scavengers.
They didn’t see Declan standing there by the trench. They were too busy looking over their shoulders, completely consumed by pure and unfiltered panic.
They were stumbling, coughing, and pushing each other forward.
"Keep moving!" The leader of the group shrieked. His health bar was flashing a highly dangerous blinking red right above his head. "Do not stop! Do not look back! It is right behind us!"
They were so panicked they weren’t watching where they were going. They were about to run right past the safe airstrip and blindly sprint straight into a highly corrosive bubbling magma vent just a few yards away.
Declan sighed loudly. He really hated terrible pathing.
He didn’t want to lose his valuable workforce to an environmental hazard because they forgot how to look forward.
He casually stepped directly into their path and let his Abyssal Sovereign aura flare out just a tiny fraction of an inch.
The air in front of the fleeing scavengers instantly turned incredibly thick and heavy. It felt like they had just run full speed into a solid wall of deep-sea pressure.
The five players choked, completely losing their forward momentum. They collapsed onto their hands and knees, sliding painfully across the rough ash-covered concrete of the airstrip.
"What the hell?!" One of the scavengers gasped, desperately trying to push himself up. His arms were shaking violently against the crushing gravity. "We are trapped! The zone is locked!"
"You guys are running the wrong way." A cold and heavy voice echoed over the empty airstrip.
The scavengers froze. They stopped struggling against the pressure and fearfully looked up.
Standing ten feet away from them was a tall guy in a pitch-black trench coat. He was casually holding a massive dark matter halberd that looked like a jagged tear in the fabric of reality.
His eyes were swirling pools of dark purple energy that looked right through them!
"Boss!" The squad leader yelled. The absolute terror on his dirt-covered face instantly vanished and was replaced by overwhelming relief. "Player V! You are here!"
"I am." Declan said smoothly. He tapped his mental interface and dialed back his heavy aura so his employees could actually stand up without breaking their digital spines.
"What are you doing this far out? This is a Level 75 to 85 Extreme Hazard Zone. You guys are barely pushing Level 30. You should be farming slimes by the border."
The scavengers scrambled to their feet, practically tripping over each other to stand at perfect attention in front of the Warlord.
"We were on an escort mission Boss!" The leader explained rapidly. He was still panting hard and clutching his dented chest plate. "We were assigned to guard the icy hacker Nova. She paid us out of her own pocket to bring her out here!"
Declan raised an eyebrow. The heavy halberd rested easily on his shoulder. "Nova is out here?"
"Yes! She said she picked up a massive encrypted data signal on her scanners." The scavenger pointed a shaking finger back into the thick dark red fog they had just run from.
"She said it looked like an unreleased developer terminal sitting right in the middle of the woods."
"So where is she?" Declan asked. His voice dropped an octave, turning instantly cold.
"She is trapped!" The player cried out, his voice cracking with lingering fear. "We found the signal. It was inside this weird corrupted place called the Static Forest. The trees are not made of wood Boss. They are literally made of gray television static."
"We got to the center of it. She plugged her silver data pad into a ruined terminal. But the second she bypassed the first firewall, the game engine went completely crazy!"
Another scavenger stepped forward, his eyes wide with horror. "It was an ambush Boss. The system spawned a horde right on top of us. But they were not normal area mobs."
"Level 100." The squad leader swallowed hard. "Abyssal horrors. Thousands of them. They dropped right out of the sky and surrounded the entire forest in a complete circle."
Declan’s dark eyes narrowed. "Level 100 mobs do not just spawn for a broken terminal."
"We tried to hold the line so she could safely disconnect." The leader continued, looking down at his empty hands in shame. "But our weapons just bounced right off them. We could not even scratch their armor. Nova told us to run. She threw up a massive ice barricade and locked herself inside the terminal room to buy us time to escape."
"She is entirely surrounded Boss. That ice wall is not going to last much longer. Those things are going to eat her alive!"
Declan didn’t yell. He didn’t panic. He just stared in the direction they had pointed.
Nova was his absolute best cyber-warfare asset. She was the one who cracked the Ten Thousand Demon Palace for him. She was the one actively decrypting the stolen corporate data drives back at the Iron Bastion to upgrade his city’s infrastructure.
He had literally just spent millions of Origin Points fixing her physical nervous system after a bad server feedback loop. She was a massive investment.
"I am not losing my lead IT tech to a bunch of bugs." Declan stated flatly.
He didn’t bother pulling out a health potion for the bruised scavengers. He just looked at them with his Warlord expression.
"Take the main highway back to Sector 7. Do not stop for dropped loot. If you die on the way back, I am deducting the respawn cost directly from your paychecks."
The scavengers vigorously nodded their heads. They didn’t argue with the Warlord. "Yes Boss! Thank you Boss!"
Declan didn’t wait for them to leave. He turned his body toward the deep toxic fog covering the eastern side of the wasteland.
Level 100 Abyssal horrors. A trapped master hacker. An unreleased developer terminal.
It sounded like a massive pile of high-tier loot just waiting to be claimed!
Declan tapped directly into his massive Ascendant-tier mana pool. He locked onto the general coordinates the scavengers had pointed out.
"Void Blink."
The world went pitch-black for a fraction of a millisecond. Declan vanished from the airstrip entirely, leaving only a faint ripple in the toxic air.
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