Chapter 91: [91] : The Sky Shatters, The End of the Old World
Declan slowly walked over to the shattered window of the executive boardroom.
He completely ignored the cold rain blowing into the room. His eyes were fixed on the sprawling neon lit city of Metropolis.
The sky was literally tearing apart!
Massive jagged fissures of glowing purple light ripped through the dark smog choked clouds. It looked exactly like a giant broken TV screen that someone had just smashed with a heavy hammer.
Behind those massive cracks, the swirling chaotic dark cosmos of the Primordial Grid was clearly visible.
This was not a game interface anymore. It was not a hologram projecting into the air.
It was completely real!
"Phase Three," Declan whispered softly.
He rested the heavy dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd on his shoulder. He stood there and watched the end of the world happen in real time.
Down in the streets below, absolute chaos erupted.
The purple cracks in the sky widened into massive gaping chasms. The dimensional overlap hit one hundred percent. The Grid began dropping its environment directly onto the real world.
Massive chunks of alien terrain started falling from the sky.
Declan watched a towering heavily fortified gothic castle from Sector 2 drop straight out of the clouds.
It smashed directly into the downtown financial district. It crushed half a dozen sleek corporate bank skyscrapers like they were made of wet cardboard. Plumes of thick gray dust and shattered concrete shot hundreds of feet into the air.
Over to the east, the sky ripped open again.
A massive boiling river of bright orange lava from the Bone Ash Wastes poured out of a portal like a fiery waterfall.
It flooded the city’s main highways. It instantly melted the abandoned cars and turned the asphalt into bubbling black sludge.
And then the monsters poured out with the terrain.
It was not just the low level Flesh Stalkers creeping out of the alleyways anymore. The big stuff was finally allowed to cross over!
Declan saw massive winged dragons with scales the color of dried blood diving out of the purple rifts. They swooped down over the panic stricken city.
One of them easily snatched a fleeing commercial helicopter right out of the air. It crushed the metal chassis in its jaws like a tin can before tossing the burning wreckage into a glass building.
He saw towering fifty foot stone golems marching through the commercial district. They were blindly stomping through the intersections. They treated city buses and police cruisers like annoying stepping stones.
The real world military finally tried to respond.
A squadron of military fighter jets screamed past the Apex Paradigm building. Their afterburners glowed bright orange in the dark apocalyptic sky.
They locked onto one of the massive dragons and fired a volley of heavy air to air missiles.
The missiles hit the flying beast perfectly. They exploded in a massive barrage of fire and shrapnel.
The sound echoed loudly and shook the glass of the nearby buildings.
But when the smoke cleared, the dragon was completely unharmed!
It just kept flying right through the blast zone and completely ignored the physical damage. It let out a deafening roar and spit a massive wave of dark green acid.
The acid splashed across the lead fighter jet and instantly melted the wings off. The jet spun out of control and crashed into a high rise apartment building.
"Patch notes just dropped," Declan noted flatly. "Guns are nerfed."
It did not have a health bar that responded to standard explosives. It operated on Grid logic. The military had not read the rules!
Standard human weapons were officially useless. Guns, tanks, and missiles were entirely obsolete against conceptual armor and magic stats.
Down below on a massive suspension bridge, the army deployed a line of heavy Abrams tanks.
They fired their 120mm main guns at a massive Sludge Brute that was oozing its way across the bridge.
The heavy tank shells slammed into the monster’s chest. They did not even explode.
The thick rotting green slime just absorbed the kinetic force!
The Sludge Brute kept walking forward. It casually slammed its massive fist down onto the lead tank and crushed the heavy armor flat like a pancake.
The old world was gone. The game was reality now.
Declan stood calmly in the ruined boardroom. The toxic wind whipped his black Predator’s Coat around his legs.
He did not look panicked. He did not look worried about the giant monsters destroying the city outside.
He looked down at his right hand. He looked at the double edged +40 Eclipse Severance resting easily in his grip. The tiny black hole in the blade hummed. It was eager to delete something.
He had his Warlord stats. He had his impenetrable city waiting for him in Sector 7. He had his immortal Shadow Legion ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.
He had completely broken the system’s rules. Now the system was his to command!
"I need to get back to my city," Declan said to the empty room.
He did not bother looking for the stairs. He did not bother calling an elevator. He just stepped out onto the window ledge and jumped.
He plummeted toward the chaotic streets of Metropolis. The wind roared in his ears.
A massive winged Gargoyle spotted him falling.
The Level 25 monster screeched and banked hard. It dived straight toward Declan with its stone claws extended.
It thought he was just another helpless human falling to his death.
It was very wrong.
Declan did not pull out his halberd. He just clenched his left fist. His physical body possessed a sixty percent synchronization rate with his Abyssal Sovereign class.
His raw physical density was absurd!
When the Gargoyle got close, Declan just punched it right in the face.
CRACK!
His fist slammed into the solid stone monster. The kinetic force generated by his high Agility and Strength stats was completely overwhelming.
The Gargoyle’s head shattered into a million tiny gravel pieces.
The monster’s body instantly dissolved into bright blue digital pixels. It left a glowing Reality Shard to fall into the abyss below.
"Void Blink," Declan commanded in his mind.
The world went pitch black for a millisecond. He vanished from the sky and bypassed a massive chunk of the fall.
He reappeared a hundred feet lower.
"Void Blink."
He cast it again. And again. He chained the teleportation skill flawlessly.
Because he was pulling from his massive Ascendant tier mana pool, the stamina drain on his real body felt like absolutely nothing.
He teleported through the sky. He dodged falling buildings, raining lava, and flying monsters. He was a dark blur moving straight toward the slums.
The megacorps had built a bridge between two dimensions. They had used billions of gamers as cheap labor to slowly merge an alien universe with Earth so they could harvest the magic and control the new reality.
And Declan had just blown the bridge up!
He had completely severed the safety protocols. He forced the two sides to violently and instantly crash into each other.
He looked ahead.
In the distance, glowing brightly through the toxic smog and the rain, was a massive pillar of purple light.
It was his Earth Sanctum!
He jumped off the roof and hit the muddy street below. His +10 Spiked Striders absorbed the impact completely.
The Frictionless Movement trait activated. It allowed him to slide across the wet asphalt like he was ice skating.
He zipped past a group of Level 5 Ash Lizards that were busy eating a burning car. They did not even have time to turn their heads before he was gone.
He was heading home. He needed to merge his two cities before the really big monsters decided to wander into Sector 7.
