Chapter 191: [191] : Orbital Kinetic Drop, Clash of Egos
The silence in the ruined corridor was heavy.
The only sound left was the quiet hissing of the melted chrome floor cooling down and the faint buzzing of Mercer’s four camera drones.
Mercer stared across the blackened trench. His glowing blue tactical visor zoomed in on the tall guy in the black coat.
The system scanner in his helmet worked rapidly, trying to pull up a player profile.
[Target Scan Complete]
↳ Name: Hidden Alias (Player V)
↳ Guild: The Eclipse Legion (Level 6 Sovereign Faction)
↳ Threat Assessment: Fatal Anomaly
Mercer’s eyes went wide behind his visor!
He knew that name. Every single corporate player on the server knew that name!
This was the guy who had literally chopped a thirty-foot military mech in half. This was the Warlord who had dropped a space station on a World Boss and permanently erased the entire Neon Syndicate guild from the database in a ten-minute deathmatch!
More importantly, this was the guy who had grabbed Cipher by the throat and crushed his neck on a live broadcast!
"Player V," Mercer said. His voice lost its obnoxious streamer hype for a second, sounding tight and nervous.
The four camera drones immediately swiveled away from Mercer and zoomed in directly on Declan.
The live chat on Mercer’s streaming interface exploded into a blur of white text!
[User_ProGamer: NO WAY! IT’S HIM!]
[ProudSword_Fanboy: Mercer, get out of there! That’s the Warlord from Sector 7!]
[Tank_Main_99: Look at his stats! Why is the system flagging him as a Fatal Anomaly?!]
[Clip_God: THIS IS ABOUT TO BE THE BEST STREAM EVER! FIGHT HIM!]
Mercer saw the chat scrolling. He saw his viewer count jumping by the hundreds of thousands every second!
His corporate sponsors were watching. His guild leaders were watching.
He couldn’t back down. If he used a teleport scroll or ran away right now, his career was over. His brand would be dead. He had to look tough. He had to act like he was in control of the lobby!
Mercer forced a loud, arrogant laugh and took a heavy step forward to the edge of the melted trench.
"Well, look what we have here, chat!" Mercer yelled, spreading his arms wide to show off his glowing platinum armor. "The little glitch from the slums decided to wander into a high-tier zone! You’re a long way from your dirty little swamp, Player V!"
Declan didn’t move his hands from his pockets. He just looked at the streamer with pure boredom.
"You guys really need to hire new scriptwriters," Declan said smoothly. His deep, bass-heavy voice easily carried over the humming of the camera drones. "Every time one of you corporate guys shows up, you say the exact same thing. Then you shoot at me. Then you explode."
Nova chuckled from behind Declan, crossing her arms over her silver suit. "He’s not wrong. It is a very predictable loop."
Mercer’s face turned bright red behind his visor. The humiliation stung worse than taking real damage!
"You think you’re funny because you got lucky in Sector 7?" Mercer barked, pointing his heavy plasma rifle directly at Declan’s head. "That was a low-level zone! You fought unprepared guilds with junk gear! Proud Sword Megacorp spent fifty million real-world credits optimizing my character file!"
He gestured to the smoking remains of the Black-ICE Sentinels.
"I just wiped three thousand Level 100 mobs in one hit! I own the orbital fire support for this entire sector! You are standing in my drop zone!"
"Your drop zone?" Declan raised an eyebrow. "I already looted the vault, genius."
Mercer froze. "What?"
"The developer stash," Declan continued casually. "The Source-Code Tome. The Core Code Injection. I took all of it twenty minutes ago. You wasted your orbital strike on an empty hallway."
The live chat on the stream went completely wild! Millions of viewers were laughing at the corporate star.
Mercer’s health bar didn’t drop, but his ego shattered into a thousand pieces!
"You stole my guild’s property!" Mercer shrieked, completely losing his professional streaming persona. "That loot belongs to Proud Sword! Drop your inventory right now! Hand over every single item you took from Server G-88, or I will permanently erase your character file!"
"No," Declan said simply.
"I will melt you down to basic hexadecimal text!" Mercer roared!
He didn’t pull the trigger on his plasma rifle. He knew standard energy rounds wouldn’t look impressive enough for the stream. He needed a massive, flashy execution!
He slammed his hand onto the golden command interface on his chest plate.
"System! Authorize Class Ultimate! Override local sector gravity!"
A glaring, brilliant gold system prompt exploded into the air above Mercer’s head, visible to everyone in the corridor and everyone watching the broadcast!
[Skill Activated: Orbital Kinetic Drop]
↳ Type: Cybernetic Class Ultimate (Emperor Tier)
↳ Cost: 4,000 Mana
↳ Description: Locks onto the target’s exact spatial coordinates and calls down a high-density, magnetized kinetic projectile directly from the orbital satellite grid.
↳ Special Effect: Creates a localized gravity well that pins the target to the floor, reducing movement speed by 90% and disabling dodge mechanics.
The air in the Deep-Web corridor instantly changed!
The temperature spiked from freezing cold to boiling hot in a single second.
A massive, crushing gravitational force slammed down from the ceiling, pressing directly against the floor where Declan, Nova, and Morgan were standing.
The remaining white glass tiles on the floor cracked and shattered into thousands of tiny pieces under the sudden weight!
"He’s locking the space!" Morgan yelled, trying to lift her boots against the heavy gravity. Her stealth suit flickered as the pressure messed with her camouflage. "It’s an unavoidable target lock! We can’t step out of the radius!"
"You’re dead, glitch!" Mercer laughed maniacally, pointing his glowing gauntlet at the ceiling. "You can’t dodge this! That is ten thousand tons of solid tungsten dropping straight onto your skull at Mach 5!"
High above the Deep-Web Admin Node, tearing through the dark, red-clouded sky of the server, a massive white-hot streak of light shot downward!
It looked like a falling star!
The sheer speed of the projectile compressed the air ahead of it, creating a screaming, high-pitched sonic boom that rattled the entire underground facility.
The ceiling above Declan started to glow a bright, cherry red as the heat of the incoming kinetic projectile burned straight through the upper layers of rock and steel!
"Declan!" Nova shouted, grabbing his arm. "That thing is going to punch through the roof in three seconds! Use your halberd! Cut the coordinate plane!"
Declan didn’t reach for the plus forty Eclipse Severance.
He didn’t pull out the plus twenty Black Aegis riot shield to absorb the impact either.
He just looked up at the glowing red ceiling. His pitch-black eyes, filled with swirling golden galaxies, reflected the intense light of the falling meteor.
"A kinetic drop," Declan muttered. He sounded completely bored. "He threw a heavy rock at me."
He casually took his right hand out of his coat pocket.
"Let’s see how his rock handles my math."
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