Chapter 187: [187] : The Deep-Web Admin Node, Unboxing the Hacker
The silver liquid making up the Level 100 Mimicry Daemon finally stopped bubbling. Its faceless mirrored head tilted downward as it stared at the heavy golden scroll burning on the stone floor.
The Root Command Protocol had completely rewritten its core registry!
Mirage wasn’t a hostile boss anymore. To the game’s engine, the terrifying shape-shifting monster was now just another piece of registered property belonging to the Warlord of Sector 7.
"Good," Declan said. His voice rumbled with a heavy, unnatural bass that vibrated through the floor. "Now, unbox my hacker. We have work to do."
Mirage didn’t argue at all. It didn’t screech or throw a temper tantrum about losing its freedom. The master and slave link was absolute.
The slender silver creature raised its long, needle-like claws and tapped the glowing white terminal in the center of the clearing.
A series of rapid, high-pitched mechanical clicks echoed from the machine.
The blue ice wall surrounding the terminal hissed loudly as a thick stream of compressed data shot out from the primary drive. The stream hit the stone floor right next to Declan’s heavy spiked boots and rapidly expanded outward.
A bright flash of blue light illuminated the entire clearing!
When the glare finally faded, Nova was sitting on the ground. The Level 55 Arcane Splicer was clutching her chest and coughing violently as her digital avatar re-rendered into physical space.
"Argh!" Nova gasped as she wiped a strand of icy blue hair out of her eyes. "My head... it feels like someone shoved my brain through a cheap dial-up modem."
"You look fine," Declan noted casually. He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. "Get up. You’re on the clock."
Nova glared up at him with frustration. Her pristine silver cybernetic suit was covered in gray static dust from the forced compression. She grabbed her glowing silver staff off the ground and used it to push herself up to her feet.
"You let it zip me into a local folder!" Nova snapped as she pointed a shaking finger at the tall Warlord. "Do you have any idea what being buffered in a sub-drive feels like? It is complete sensory deprivation! No audio, no visuals, just raw hexadecimal math floating in the dark!"
"It kept you from getting eaten by Level 100 trash mobs," Declan replied smoothly. "You should be thanking my management skills."
Nova opened her mouth to argue, but then her blue eyes shifted past Declan’s shoulder. She saw the Level 100 Mimicry Daemon floating obediently two feet behind him like a metallic shadow.
The hacker froze. Her jaw dropped slightly in disbelief.
"You... you bound it," Nova whispered. Her sharp and professional tone slipped for a second, replaced by pure shock. "That is an Abyssal sub-routine. It is hard-coded to reject player tethers. How did you force a slave link on a Level 100 entity?"
"I gave it a choice," Declan said. A cold, bloodthirsty smile spread across his face. "Work for me, or get turned into scrap metal. It made the smart call."
Declan turned toward his new pet. He didn’t care about the lore behind how the monster was programmed. He only cared about what it could do for his bank account!
"Talk," Declan ordered the Daemon. "Why were thousands of Level 100 monsters trying to bash this terminal open? What is so important about this clearing?"
Mirage bowed its faceless head. When it spoke, its voice didn’t sound like two distorted audio tracks clashing together anymore. The Root Command Protocol had forced its vocal synthesis into a clean and highly synthetic monotone.
"The surrounding entities are not area-specific spawns, Administrator," Mirage reported. "They are part of an automated deletion wave directed by the deep server."
"A deletion wave?" Nova asked. She stepped closer and tapped her wrist terminal to check the local area broadcast. "Why would the system try to delete its own terrain?"
"Because of what lies beneath us," Mirage explained. Its liquid silver arm morphed into a long and thin pointer, gesturing directly at the cracked stone floor beneath their feet. "This terminal is merely a surface-level access point. Below this sector sits the Deep-Web Administrator Node."
Declan raised an eyebrow. "Another developer stash?"
"Affirmative," Mirage stated. "It is the ancient and hidden server architecture constructed by the original creators of the Primordial Grid. It houses unreleased asset files, master control directories, and Sovereign-grade prototypes that were deemed too destructive for public release."
Declan’s dark, purple-swirling eyes lit up with genuine interest.
He loved the sound of items that were deemed too destructive! Those were usually the ones that broke the game balance the hardest when he pushed them to plus twenty.
"If it’s a developer vault, why is the server trying to destroy it?" Declan asked.
"The Great Convergence has caused a massive memory overflow across all sectors," Mirage replied smoothly. "The merging of Earth and the Grid has strained the core physics engine to its absolute limit. To conserve processing power and prevent a complete system crash, the automated security protocols have initiated a purge of all non-essential and hidden directories."
Mirage pointed back toward the surrounding Static Forest.
"The Abyssal Devourers were spawned to dismantle the outer firewalls of the Node. Once the firewalls are down, the system will permanently wipe the Deep-Web directory from the database to reclaim the memory space."
"They are deleting the loot to save hard drive space," Declan muttered. He shook his head in disgust. "Terrible optimization."
"How long do we have before the wipe completes?" Nova asked. Her fingers flew across her holographic keyboard as she tapped into the local timer.
"The outer Sovereign-grade defense programs of the Node have been temporarily disabled by the mass-deletion glitch," Mirage answered. "This has created an unprecedented vulnerability in the vault’s entrance. However, the system purge will reach critical threshold in exactly ten hours."
[System Notification]
↳ Hidden Area Unlocked: Deep-Web Administrator Node
↳ Status: Scheduled for Permanent Server Purge
↳ Time Remaining: 09:59:42
"Ten hours," Declan said. He cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing like steel cables snapping in the quiet clearing. "That is plenty of time to clear the shelves."
"Declan, wait," Nova warned, grabbing his sleeve desperately. "You don’t understand how these deep-web vaults operate. The regular Blacksite Vaults are dangerous, but a primary Admin Node is packed with developer-grade security traps. We are talking about localized logic bombs, infinite loop corridors, and spatial shredders that don’t care about your health pool!"
"I have a ninety base Agility stat, a regenerating blood shield, and an immortal shadow army," Declan reminded her flatly. "I don’t care about traps."
"You can’t punch a logic bomb, Warlord!" Nova snapped back. "If we go down there blind, we will get permanently stuck in a coordinate loop until the ten-hour timer runs out and the server deletes us along with the vault!"
Declan looked at his new Level 100 slave. "Do we have a map?"
"Negative, Administrator," Mirage replied. "The internal directory of the Node is dynamically generated. However, as an Abyssal sub-routine assigned to patrol the outer perimeter, I possess access keys to the primary descent elevator."
"Good enough," Declan said. He turned and started walking toward the edge of the clearing where a large, circular slab of dark metal sat embedded in the ground. "Let’s go."
Nova let out a loud, frustrated groan. She tossed her hands up in the air before jogging to keep pace with him.
"I hate working for you," the hacker grumbled. "You literally treat extinction-level server events like a trip to the grocery store."
"I get results," Declan said smoothly.
He reached the dark metal slab. It was easily thirty feet across, covered in heavy and glowing yellow warning strips alongside thick biometric scanning plates.
Mirage glided forward without hesitation. The Daemon didn’t wait for orders. It pressed its liquid silver hand directly against the primary scanner.
The yellow warning strips instantly turned a solid, confirming green!
[Access Granted: Perimeter Sub-Routine Recognized.]
[Initiating Descent to Deep-Web Administrator Node.]
With a deep, mechanical groan that vibrated right through the soles of their boots, the massive metal slab began to sink into the earth.
There were no safety rails at all. There was no protective cage either. It was just a massive, open cargo elevator dropping straight down into a pitch-black shaft that seemed to stretch on forever!
The air around them rapidly turned freezing cold. It didn’t smell like the ozone and static of the forest above. It smelled like ancient, sterile dust and raw, highly concentrated electricity.
As they descended deeper into the dark, the walls of the shaft shifted. The dirt and rock faded away, replaced by towering sheets of polished and seamless black alloy lined with pulsing blue data channels.
"Keep your weapons ready," Nova whispered while holding her silver staff tight across her chest. Her eyes darted to the shadows flickering on the elevator walls. "The moment we hit the bottom, the internal automated defenses will trigger."
Declan didn’t pull out his halberd. He just stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the floor numbers rapidly tick down on the elevator’s interface panel.
Floor -10. Floor -25. Floor -50.
The speed of the descent was sickening, but Declan’s real-world body was operating at an eighty percent synchronization rate. His internal organs were built to withstand the extreme forces of a fighter jet. He barely even felt the drop!
"Mirage," Declan said without turning his head. "What is the highest-value target in this vault?"
"Server G-88, Administrator," the Daemon replied instantly. "It is the primary developer training and simulation room. It contains the core experimental tools utilized by the original programming team to construct the rules of the Primordial Grid."
"Server G-88," Declan repeated, committing the name to memory. "That is our stop."
With a sudden and heavy thud that made Nova stumble and catch herself on her staff, the massive cargo elevator came to a dead halt.
The pitch-black darkness of the shaft vanished as a towering set of double blast doors in front of them slowly ground open.
A blinding and sterile white light flooded the elevator platform!
Declan stepped forward, his spiked boots clicking loudly against the flawless, reflective glass floor of the Deep-Web Admin Node.
The hunt for the developer’s personal stash had officially begun!
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