Chapter 185: [185] : The Mimicry Daemon (1), A Terrible Actor
Declan moved through the Abyssal Quarantine Zone like a skipping shadow.
He didn’t run. He didn’t pull out the massive Abyssal Behemoth Rover to drive.
He just chained his Void Blink skill perfectly, teleporting fifteen meters at a time in rapid succession.
With his Level 80 Abyssal Sovereign stats and his +20 Sovereign Neural Interface ear-cuff, the spatial relocation skill had absolutely zero cast time.
To anyone watching, he was just a continuous blur of dark leather shooting across the cracked obsidian ground.
He completely bypassed the brutal environmental hazards. He teleported right through a massive river of bubbling purple sludge without singeing his boots.
He bypassed a roaming pack of Level 80 Elite Siege Golems before their clunky aggro sensors could even register his digital presence.
He crossed five miles of highly toxic heavily corrupted wasteland in under thirty seconds!
He didn’t need a map or a tracking module. He just followed the massive suffocating pressure of raw endgame data radiating in the distance.
Declan skidded to a halt. His heavy +10 Spiked Striders dug deep into the dirt. This killed his forward momentum instantly without dealing him a single point of kinetic damage.
He stood at the very edge of a massive unnatural crater.
Down in the basin was the Static Forest.
It was a complete visual nightmare. The trees did not have green leaves or brown bark. They were towering jagged pillars of gray and white television static that constantly hissed and popped with corrupted energy.
The ground beneath them wasn’t dirt or grass. It was a shifting nauseating floor of broken binary code that looked like a dying computer screen.
And surrounding the entire perimeter of that glitched forest was an absolute sea of monsters!
The scavengers had not exaggerated. There were easily thousands of them.
They were massive hulking beasts made of dense dark matter and heavy rusted iron plating. They didn’t have faces, just gaping maws filled with spinning mechanical teeth that ground together with a horrific screech.
Golden system tags floated aggressively above the endless horde.
[Abyssal Devourer. Level: 100]
[Abyssal Devourer. Level: 100]
They were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, completely blocking every physical entrance into the static woods.
They were actively bashing their heavy iron-plated fists against a massive glowing blue dome of ice that covered the very center of the forest.
The thick ice barrier was cracking loudly under the sheer physical pressure of thousands of Level 100 attacks. Deep spiderweb fractures spread across the magic shield with every heavy synchronized thud.
A normal raid group would need forty max-leveled players, heavy siege cannons, and perfectly timed area-of-effect spells just to clear the outer ring of this mob.
It was a mathematically impossible scenario for a solo player.
Declan just shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets.
"I really hate standing in lines." Declan muttered.
He didn’t summon his massive halberd to carve a path through the meat shield. He didn’t drop a miniature sun on them to melt the area.
He didn’t want to risk shattering the developer terminal Nova was trying to hack, and he definitely didn’t want to accidentally vaporize his own employee.
He just tapped his mana pool again.
"Void Blink."
Declan completely ignored the physical hitboxes of the monster army. He ignored the thick heavily armored bodies pressing against each other in a rabid frenzy.
The world went pitch black. He teleported directly through the center of the horde, bypassing hundreds of feet of solid dark matter and rusted iron in a fraction of a millisecond.
He materialized perfectly on the other side, stepping right through the thick glowing blue ice wall without breaking a single crystal.
He was inside the barricade!
The center of the Static Forest was a small circular clearing of flat gray stone.
In the middle of the clearing sat a sleek pristine white metal server terminal. It looked completely out of place in the dark glitching woods. It looked like a piece of high-end corporate furniture dropped into a swamp.
Standing right next to the terminal was Nova.
The elite hacker was wearing her pristine silver cybernetic suit. Her icy blue hair was tied back in a neat professional ponytail. She was holding her glowing silver staff in her right hand.
Declan stopped walking. He looked at her.
Something was completely wrong.
Nova wasn’t aggressively typing on a holographic keyboard. She wasn’t running frantic decryption algorithms on the terminal to secure the loot.
She wasn’t barking orders or complaining about the server lag.
She was just standing there, looking at him.
The heavy deafening sound of the monsters smashing against the cracking ice wall just a few feet behind her didn’t seem to bother her at all.
"Declan." Nova said softly. Her voice lacked its usual sharp professional edge. It sounded breathy. It sounded entirely too soft, too perfectly modulated.
She took a step toward him. She dropped her heavy silver staff onto the stone floor. It clattered loudly, but she didn’t even look down at the expensive piece of gear.
"You came for me." Nova whispered. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest and looked up at him with wide trembling blue eyes. "I was so scared. There are so many of them outside. I thought I was going to be deleted."
Declan didn’t move. His dark eyes remained completely flat and utterly unimpressed.
"I didn’t think anyone would make it in time." Nova continued, taking another slow step forward. Her hips swayed in a highly exaggerated and completely unnatural walking animation that no real human player would ever use.
"You are so strong Warlord. You walked right through that terrible army just to save me."
She stopped right in front of him. She reached her hands out, aiming to rest them gently on his broad black leather chest.
"Protect me hero." She murmured, her voice dripping with an artificial sickly sweetness.
Declan just stared at her. He didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t cast an anti-magic spell to break the illusion.
He just raised his bare right hand and casually backhanded her directly across the face!
Smack!
The sound was sharp, brutal, and incredibly loud in the small clearing.
The sheer physical force of his Level 80 Abyssal Sovereign base stats hit the hacker like a speeding commercial truck.
Nova didn’t just stumble. She was launched sideways, spinning through the air before crashing heavily into the base of the white server terminal.
She didn’t bleed. She didn’t cry out in normal human pain.
The exact moment Declan’s hand made contact, her perfect silver tactical suit and her icy blue hair shattered like a cheap fragile mirror!
The digital illusion violently broke apart into thousands of jagged glass shards that dissolved into the toxic air before they even hit the ground.
Declan lazily rolled his shoulder. "Nova would literally rather eat a bowl of broken glass than call someone a hero."
Sitting on the floor next to the terminal, the shattered disguise completely faded away.
It revealed the true physical model of the creature hiding underneath the code.
It wasn’t a human player. It wasn’t an NPC.
It was a tall and incredibly slender humanoid figure made entirely of shifting liquid silver.
It didn’t have a face, just a smooth mirrored surface that reflected Declan’s dark coat perfectly. Its arms were entirely too long, ending in sharp needle-like silver claws that scraped against the stone.
A bright red and highly aggressive system tag popped up over its faceless head.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Mirage
↳ Class: Mimicry Daemon
↳ Level: 100 (Abyssal Sub-Routine)
↳ HP: 3,500,000 / 3,500,000
The creature let out a horrifying distorted screech. It sounded like two different audio tracks playing over each other at maximum volume on a blown-out speaker.
It realized the Warlord wasn’t buying the act.
"Terrible acting." Declan said smoothly, crossing his arms. "You completely messed up the dialogue. Now, where is my hacker?"
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