Chapter 94: [94] : The Alien Vanguard, The Outer Sectors
The Iron Bastion was running exactly the way Declan wanted it to run. It was a well oiled and highly aggressive machine.
It had been twenty four hours since he forcefully dragged the digital fortress into the physical slums of Sector 7.
The massive black iron dome of the safe zone pushed the toxic rain and the thick smog far away.
Inside the ten kilometer radius of his city, the air was perfectly clean and the stone streets were spotless.
The ruined buildings of the real world had been entirely overwritten by the clean gothic architecture of the Primordial Grid.
And the players were finally learning how to work for a living.
Down by the heavy iron main gates, Sloane was sitting behind her large mahogany desk.
She had three different holographic screens floating in front of her face.
She was aggressively tapping on them to manage the massive inventory of the city.
She looked like a tired retail manager dealing with a holiday rush.
A group of ten players walked through the gate.
They were wearing cheap real world clothes underneath rusted iron chest plates and holding chipped iron swords.
They looked absolutely exhausted. They were covered in dark mud and digital blood.
"Next!" Sloane yelled without looking up from her glowing screens.
The leader of the hunting party stepped up to the desk. He was a middle aged guy who used to be a corporate accountant before the world ended.
Now, he was a Level 4 warrior.
He reached into his digital inventory and dumped a massive pile of glowing monster cores and raw iron ore onto the stone pavement.
The heavy thud resonated across the courtyard.
"Ten Level 5 Ash Lizards," the accountant said. He wiped sweat from his forehead.
He was panting heavily. "And a whole pack of Flesh Stalkers. We got cornered near the old transit station. That covers the entry tax for my group right?"
Sloane glanced at the pile of loot.
Her glowing purple Quartermaster badge hovered over her head, giving her full access to the treasury systems of the city.
She waved her hand. The pile of monster parts and iron vanished and got sucked directly into the bank of the Bastion.
"Tax paid," Sloane announced loudly. "You guys are cleared for another twenty four hours inside the barrier."
"Head over to the central keep. Hot food is being served in ten minutes. Next!"
The hunting party let out a massive collective sigh of relief.
They practically dragged their feet toward the center of the city. They were happy they did not have to sleep in the monster infested wasteland outside.
A night out there meant certain deletion.
Declan watched the entire exchange from the high stone balcony of his central keep.
He leaned against the cold iron railing. He was wearing his sleek pitch black Predator Coat.
His Abyssal Sovereign stats were sitting perfectly still and thrumming with raw unchecked power just beneath his pale skin.
He took a sip from a tin cup of hot dirt flavored instant coffee. It was terrible but he loved it because it was his.
"It is actually working," Kendra said as she walked up beside him on the balcony.
She had her mutated +10 Sniper Bow slung across her back.
She looked down at the courtyard. There were dozens of hunting parties lining up at the desk of Sloane.
They were paying their daily tax to survive. People were grouping up, sharing tips on how to kill the roaming zombies, and actually acting like a community.
"Of course it works," Declan replied casually. "People adapt quickly when the alternative is getting eaten by giant bugs. Fear is a fantastic motivator."
"Bram finished the western wall turrets," Kendra reported as she pointed out toward the edge of the city.
"He used the raw mana crystals to power them. If any Flesh Stalkers get within two hundred yards of the dome, the automated guns vaporize them instantly."
"The perimeter is totally secure. We are safe."
Declan nodded.
The megacorps had tried to shut the power off to starve him out. They had tried to send an elite hit squad of super soldiers to execute him.
He had just stolen their guns, ignored their blackout, and built an empire right in their backyard.
He had over ten million Origin Points sitting in the treasury. He had an immortal Shadow Legion waiting in his shadow.
He had won the game. He was the undisputed Warlord of Sector 7.
But the game was not done playing.
Suddenly, a harsh and glaring red light washed over the entire city.
Declan stopped drinking his coffee. He looked up.
The sky outside the black energy dome was usually a chaotic and swirling mess of purple clouds and dark dimensional rifts.
But right now, the purple was entirely gone.
The sky had turned a deep and burning crimson. It looked like the atmosphere had literally caught fire.
A massive system prompt unrolled across the heavens. It was so large that everyone in the city could read it perfectly.
The letters burned brightly in the sky.
[Global Server Alert: The Grid is expanding.]
[The Great Convergence has reached the second phase threshold.]
[Local Server Locks removed. Cross dimensional pathways established.]
[The Outer Sectors are now open.]
The busy courtyard below instantly went dead silent.
The players stopped walking. Sloane stopped tapping her screens. The weapons at the forge stopped clanging.
Everyone just stared up at the burning red sky in pure confusion.
"Outer Sectors?" Kendra whispered. Her voice was shaking slightly. She gripped the railing tightly.
"What does that mean? I thought there were only nine sectors on Earth. Did the map just get bigger?"
"The Grid isn’t just on Earth," Declan said. His voice was flat. His dark eyes narrowed as he watched the sky burn.
Thatcher, the blind NPC in the dungeon, had told him the truth.
The Primordial Grid was a universal containment protocol. It was an assimilation engine that moved from planet to planet to force civilizations to evolve or die.
Earth was just the newest target.
Which meant there were other planets. Other worlds that had already been completely consumed and integrated into the code of the game.
"The system doesn’t like anomalies," Declan muttered. He set his tin cup down on the stone railing.
"I hold a monopoly over Sector 7. I broke the level cap. I brought a digital city into the real world. The developers at Apex Paradigm couldn’t stop me."
"So the system is bringing in outside help to fix the glitch."
High above the city, the red clouds began to violently swirl.
They formed a massive and roaring vortex of pure fire and dark matter.
The heat radiating from the sky was intense.
Even through the energy dome of the Iron Bastion, the players in the courtyard started sweating.
The air grew heavy and suffocating. It felt like standing directly in front of an open oven.
A deafening sound reverberated across the ruined slums of the city. It sounded like glass shattering and multiplied by a million.
The center of the fiery vortex ripped wide open!
A portal formed in the sky. It wasn’t a normal blue or purple dimensional rift.
It was a massive and jagged hole made of pure white hot energy. It looked like a tunnel leading directly into the center of a dying star.
"Declan," Kendra gasped. She took a step back from the balcony railing. Her eyes were wide with panic. "Something is coming through."
Declan didn’t move. He just watched the portal.
A figure stepped out of the white hot rift.
It was a humanoid shape but it was way too large to be a normal person.
The figure floated effortlessly in the air and thousands of feet above the city. It was easily nine feet tall.
It wore heavy and ornate armor made of dark volcanic glass. Thick veins of liquid magma pumped through the cracks in the armor plating.
A massive cape made entirely of roaring and physical flames billowed out behind its broad shoulders.
It didn’t fall. Gravity simply didn’t apply to it.
It just stood there in the sky and looked down at the tiny black dome of the Iron Bastion.
A golden system tag appeared above the head of the figure.
It was completely different from the tags they had seen on the Flesh Stalkers or the Abyssal monsters.
[Player Information]
↳ Name: Korr, Saint of Embers
↳ Species: Assimilated Draconian
↳ Level: 90
↳ Status: Invader from the Outer Sectors
The entire city of players let out a collective scream of sheer horror!
"Level ninety?!" a warrior down in the courtyard shrieked. He dropped his rusted sword onto the pavement. It clattered loudly.
"Level ninety! The World Boss we saw in the swamp was only fifteen! We can’t fight a Level 90!"
"It’s a player!" someone else yelled and pointed frantically at the sky. "It’s an alien player!"
Panic instantly gripped the Iron Bastion.
The hunting parties that had just returned started scrambling backward to try and hide behind the central keep.
Players who had survived the Purge Wave and the Abyssal Tide were reduced to crying messes in seconds.
They had just gotten used to fighting Level 5 lizards and Level 10 zombies.
A Level 90 invader from another planet was a mathematical impossibility. It was a walking delete button for the entire server.
Sloane grabbed the magical megaphone sitting on her desk. She slammed her hand down to activate it.
"Everyone stay calm!" Sloane yelled. Her magically amplified voice echoed through the courtyard.
"Do not break the lines! The barrier is a Sovereign tier shield! Nothing gets through the dome! We are safe inside the city!"
She was trying to keep order but even her voice was trembling.
She looked up at the floating giant of fire and magma and her face went completely pale.
She had seen Declan do impossible things. She knew he was Level 70.
But Level 90 was a completely different universe of stats.
Up on the balcony, Declan just stared at the alien player.
He didn’t pull out a weapon yet. He didn’t activate his Abyssal aura. He didn’t yell.
He just analyzed the situation like a gamer looking at a new patch note.
"An assimilated player from a conquered world," Declan noted smoothly.
"The system opened the gates and let the old veterans into the new server. It’s a cross server invasion event."
"Declan, what do we do?" Kendra asked.
She had an arrow knocked on her sniper bow but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t aim.
"He is twenty levels higher than you. If he hits the shield, the mana drain will empty the treasury in seconds. The dome will fall!"
Declan cracked his neck. The dense and mutated bones popped loudly in the tense air.
"I built this city brick by brick," Declan said. His pitch black eyes locked onto the flaming figure in the sky.
"I don’t care if he is an alien. I don’t care if he is Level 90. He is standing in my airspace. And he looks like a walking loot bag."
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark coat.
"Let’s see what kind of loot an alien drops."
