Chapter 190: [190] : The Developer’s Stash, Black-ICE Sentinels
Declan closed his status menu and cracked his neck.
The sound echoed through the cold, white glass laboratory like two heavy steel bolts snapping in half!
His physical body and his digital avatar were completely merged now. There was zero difference between his real-world muscles and his game stats. At one hundred percent synchronization, his base health sat at an absurd 7,600,000 points!
He did not feel heavy at all. He did not feel slow or sluggish. Instead, he just felt like he could walk straight through a solid brick wall without even ruining his coat.
"You look like a final boss," Nova muttered from behind him.
The elite hacker was standing near the doorway of Server G-88. She had her glowing blue data pad tucked under her arm. Her new silver tactical suit was covered in a thin layer of frost from the freezing temperature of the room.
"I feel like one," Declan replied casually.
He reached down and picked up the empty titanium cylinder that had held the Divine-grade Core Code Injection. He tossed it casually over his shoulder. It hit the white glass floor and shattered into useless digital dust!
"We got what we came for," Morgan said as she stepped out from the shadows near the entrance. Her twin combat daggers gleamed with a dull gray poison enchantment. "Siren is busy running maintenance on the upper levels. But the server purge timer is still ticking down. We have about nine hours left before this whole node gets wiped out completely."
"Then let’s not waste time," Declan said.
He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat and started walking toward the main exit.
His plus ten Spiked Striders hit the floor without making a single sound. The Frictionless Movement trait completely erased his footstep audio!
Mirage glided silently behind him. The Level 100 Mimicry Daemon kept its liquid silver head bowed, acting like a loyal guard dog following its master.
They stepped out of Server G-88 and walked back into the main corridor of the Deep-Web Admin Node.
The hallway was wide and built with polished chrome walls. Glowing white LED strips ran along the ceiling, making it look like the inside of a massive supercomputer.
But they did not get far at all!
Less than a hundred yards down the corridor, the air violently distorted.
A series of loud, mechanical alarms blared through the hallway. The white LED strips on the ceiling suddenly turned a glaring, angry red!
[System Security Alert]
↳ Unauthorized Entity presence confirmed in restricted Sector G-88.
↳ Deploying Black-ICE Defense Grid.
"We tripped an alarm?" Nova asked, her fingers flying across her wrist interface. "That doesn’t make sense! Siren cleared our administrative signatures!"
"It isn’t Siren’s alarm," Declan said, his dark, purple-swirling eyes locking onto the far end of the hallway. "It’s the automated system developer fallback. The game engine is trying to protect its leftover assets."
The polished chrome floor ahead of them opened up!
Massive metal plates slid back, and thousands of heavy, rectangular blocks of black data rose out of the ground.
The blocks shifted and rapidly assembled into towering humanoid figures.
They were seven feet tall and made entirely of jagged, black anti-virus code. They held massive shields forged from solid static electricity and carried long, glowing red riot lances.
There weren’t just ten or twenty of them.
The entire corridor was completely packed from wall to wall!
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Black-ICE Sentinel
↳ Level: 100 (Automated Security Program)
↳ HP: 500,000 / 500,000
"Three thousand of them," Morgan said as she read the output on her tactical visor. Her voice remained steady, but her grip on her daggers tightened. "They have Level 100 defense scaling. That is a literal wall of hit points!"
"They’re just security programs," Declan noted flatly.
He did not look impressed at all. A Level 100 mob with half a million health was terrifying to a normal guild. To him, it was just a minor delay.
He reached his right hand out. The space around his fingers began to warp and tear, preparing to pull the plus forty Eclipse Severance halberd out of his digital storage.
Before his fingers could even close around the dark matter handle, the ceiling above the Sentinel army exploded!
BOOM!
It wasn’t a magic spell. It was a physical breach!
A massive, twenty-foot-wide section of the reinforced chrome ceiling was violently blown inward. Twisted metal rebar and heavy chunks of concrete rained down onto the heads of the Black-ICE Sentinels.
The sound of roaring engines echoed down from the gaping hole above.
A heavy, white corporate transport ship hovered right over the breach. Its anti-gravity thrusters pushed a massive storm of dust and wind down into the corridor.
"Someone else is here," Nova warned, backing up a step.
Through the falling debris and smoke, a figure dropped from the hovering transport ship.
He fell fifty feet and landed dead center in the middle of the Sentinel army!
CRASH!
A blinding wave of golden plasma erupted from his landing spot. The kinetic force of the drop blew dozens of the Level 100 Sentinels backward, shattering their static shields and sending their black data bodies crashing into the corridor walls!
When the smoke cleared, a single player stood in the middle of the destruction.
He wore a ridiculously ornate suit of platinum and red power armor. A long, white cape made of hard-light energy billowed out behind his shoulders. He held a massive, double-barreled plasma rifle that glowed with an intense, burning heat.
Hovering around his head were four sleek, gold-plated camera drones. Their red recording lenses were spinning rapidly.
A bright golden system tag floated proudly above his helmet!
[Name: Mercer]
[Level: 78]
[Class: Vanguard Prime]
[Guild: Proud Sword Megacorp]
"What is up, Sector 1!" Mercer yelled into the empty air, posing aggressively for his floating camera drones. "Your boy Mercer is live from the Deep-Web Admin Node! The devs tried to lock this place down with a Level 100 security grid, but Proud Sword doesn’t care about firewalls!"
He hoisted his massive plasma rifle with one hand and fired a casual shot into the chest of a struggling Black-ICE Sentinel.
The pink plasma bolt melted a hole straight through the robot’s torso, reducing it to a pile of glitching blue pixels!
"Look at these trash mobs!" Mercer laughed for his stream audience. "They think half a million HP is going to stop the Vanguard Prime? We are clearing this entire vault today, chat!"
Down the hallway, Declan let out a heavy, tired sigh.
He dropped his right hand. The warped space closed up, leaving his halberd back inside his inventory.
"Another streamer," Declan grumbled. "Why is it always streamers?"
"That’s Mercer," Morgan whispered, her eyes narrowing behind her visor. "He’s Cipher’s replacement. When you deleted Cipher during the Sector 1 broadcast, Proud Sword Megacorp lost their main advertising asset. They promoted Mercer and dumped millions of credits into his build to save their stock price."
"He talks even louder than the last guy," Declan said.
Mercer turned around to face the remaining Black-ICE Sentinels blocking his path down the corridor. He didn’t even notice Declan, Nova, and Morgan standing sixty yards away in the dim lighting.
"Chat, let’s show these bots what a real corporate budget looks like!" Mercer shouted into his camera drones.
He tapped a sequence on his wrist gauntlet.
"Orbital Support, authorize strike! Clear my path!"
A red warning laser shot down from the transport ship hovering above the ceiling breach. It painted a thick, straight line down the center of the Sentinel formation!
[Warning: High-Yield Ordnance Incoming.]
"Get back," Declan ordered calmly.
He didn’t run. He just took two casual steps backward, positioning himself in front of Nova and Morgan. He let his passive Abyssal Sovereign aura flare out by a fraction of an inch, creating a dense, invisible wall of gravity around their immediate space.
A second later, the orbital drop hit!
It wasn’t a laser beam. It was a rapid-fire barrage of heavy, super-heated tungsten cylinders dropped from the upper atmosphere of the server!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The entire Deep-Web corridor violently shook!
The explosions chained together in a straight, blinding line of pure white fire and shattered metal. The sheer explosive force ripped the remaining chrome plating off the walls and melted the floor into bubbling puddles of liquid silver!
The Level 100 Black-ICE Sentinels didn’t stand a chance at all.
Their static shields were completely overwhelmed by the raw area-of-effect damage. Thousands of automated robots were vaporized instantly, turning into a massive, rising cloud of blue digital dust and scrambled code!
The deafening noise echoed down the hallway for several seconds before finally dying out.
The smoke slowly drifted up through the ceiling breach.
Where three thousand Level 100 security programs had just been standing, there was now only a wide, blackened trench of melted floor and falling blue pixels.
Mercer stood at the edge of the trench, holding his plasma rifle high in the air.
"And that is how you clear a room!" Mercer roared, playing up his excitement for the camera drones. "Zero casualties! Maximum efficiency! Proud Sword Megacorp owns this node!"
He turned around, ready to march down the cleared hallway toward the developer vaults.
He froze.
His arrogant, open-mouthed smile disappeared instantly!
Standing at the far end of the melted trench, completely untouched by the fire, the smoke, and the shrapnel, was a tall guy in a pitch-black trench coat.
His hands were casually stuffed into his pockets. He didn’t have a weapon drawn. He didn’t even have a scratch on his boots!
Beside him stood a female hacker in a silver suit, a cloaked assassin, and a towering, faceless creature made of liquid silver that radiated Level 100 boss energy.
Declan looked across the smoking trench at the corporate celebrity.
"You missed a spot," Declan said flatly.
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