Chapter 25: [25] : Warlord of the Bastion, The Shadowblade Token
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The sound was deafening. It sounded exactly like a massive fireworks show mixed with a giant car crusher. Hundreds of monsters were exploding into blue light every single second.
The system notifications in the corner of Declan's vision were scrolling by so incredibly fast. They just looked like a solid blur of white text.
"This is insane," Kendra whispered.
She was standing a few feet behind Declan with her bow lowered. She could not stop staring at the endless tide of monsters dying senselessly against their wall. "There are so many of them."
"And they are completely ignoring the people outside who could not pay the toll," Sloane added. Her voice sounded a little sick and terrified.
Declan looked past the exploding monsters. Sloane was absolutely right.
There were still a few hundred players trapped outside the dome. They were the stubborn ones who refused to pay the ten Origin Points or the poor ones who simply did not have any crafting materials to trade.
They had grouped up together. They were holding their cheap rusted swords and wooden shields, foolishly thinking they could fight off the event.
They were dead wrong.
The Flesh-Stalkers did not just attack the wall. They swept through the crowd like a lawnmower going through tall grass.
Screams of pure terror and agony echoed through the dark toxic fog. Players were sliced in half and impaled. They were instantly deleted from the Grid.
It was a total slaughter!
"Don't blame me for this," Declan said flatly. "I did not make the rules of the Purge. I just built a really safe city."
Sloane swallowed hard and looked down at her admin interface. "We processed over three thousand people. The treasury is sitting at exactly 30,000 Origin Points."
"We also have a mountain of raw iron, wood, and monster cores. We are officially the richest people in Sector 4."
"Good, "Keep organizing the inventory. I have a feeling we are going to need a lot of materials to build this place up properly."
Suddenly, a loud and desperate banging sound came from the gate area.
Declan turned his head immediately. Through the transparent black iron, he saw a small group of players running desperately toward the dome.
They were being chased by a pack of six Flesh-Stalkers.
The group was getting ripped apart as they ran. The guy in the back was snatched up by a scythe claw and instantly turned into blue pixels.
The remaining three players slammed into the barrier. They were screaming and pounding their fists against the smooth energy shield.
"Let us in! Please! Open the gate!"
Declan walked slowly toward the gate.
He recognized the guy in the front. His pristine white suit was totally ruined. It was torn to shreds and covered in gray mud and toxic green slime. His slicked-back hair was a complete mess.
He did not have his fancy crystal goblet anymore.
Wth?
It was Caldwell. The Guild Master of the Sovereign Syndicate!
His massive five-hundred-man army was completely gone. It had been wiped out by the Purge Wave in less than ten minutes.
The elite pay-to-win guild was nothing but a pile of dropped loot sitting in the mud. Caldwell only had two heavily armored guards left. They were actively getting torn apart by the Flesh-Stalkers right behind him.
"Let me in!" Caldwell shrieked.
He pressed his face against the barrier. His eyes were wide with pure and unadulterated terror. "You! Player V! Let me in right now!"
Declan stood casually on the inside of the dome. He did not press the button to open the gate. He just looked at Caldwell with a bored expression on his face.
He actually thought Caldwell was one of the people in control of the game. But his face was screaming desperation.
"The toll is ten Origin Points," Declan said. His voice carried perfectly through the barrier. "Or equivalent crafting materials."
"I do not have any Origin Points with me!" Caldwell screamed.
He dodged clumsily as a Flesh-Stalker's claw sparked against the barrier right next to his head. "I spent them all on my army! My army is dead! Open the damn gate!"
"No points, no entry," Declan said smoothly. "House rules."
"Do you know who I am?!" Caldwell howled. His face was purple with rage and fear. "I am the heir to the Caldwell Tech Conglomerate! I have millions in the real world!"
"Millions! Let me in, and I will wire a million to your bank account right now! Fifty million! Name your price!"
Declan laughed out loud. It was a cold and empty sound.
"I do not care about your bank account," Declan said. "Money means absolutely nothing in the Grid. The only currency that matters here is survival. And right now, you are completely broke."
One of Caldwell's guards was suddenly grabbed by a Flesh-Stalker. The guard screamed as he was lifted into the air and violently snapped in half.
Caldwell witnessed horror.
Immediately, Caldwell fell to his knees in the mud. He banged his fists against the barrier. He was sobbing uncontrollably.
The arrogant and untouchable guild leader was completely broken. He was just a terrified rat backed into a corner.
"Please," Caldwell begged. Tears mixed with the toxic rain on his face. "The system locked us in! The Purge Wave disabled the log-out buttons for the entire sector! I do not want to die. I do not want my pod to fry my brain. Please. I will give you anything."
Declan crouched down so he was eye-level with the crying billionaire.
"Anything?" Declan asked softly.
"Yes! Anything! My gear, my inventory! Take it all!"
Declan narrowed his eyes. He had seen the way Caldwell commanded his troops. He had seen the way the guy threw low-level newbies to their deaths just to drain a boss's mana.
Caldwell was a parasite. But parasites usually hoarded the absolute best loot.
"I do not want your trash armor," Declan said. "But a guy like you running the biggest pay-to-win guild in the sector, you definitely have a Class Token."
"The rare kind. The kind you buy off the black market for millions of dollars before you even dive."
Caldwell froze completely. His eyes darted around nervously.
"Give it to me," Declan demanded. "Hand over the Class Token, and I open the gate. Refuse, and I watch you get eaten."
"I cannot do that," Caldwell stammered. "It is a Shadowblade Token! It cost me four million real-world dollars to secure! It is an Epic-tier class! I need it!"
"You need it?" Declan pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the horde of monsters. "You are going to need a mop and a bucket in about five seconds. Last chance, Caldwell."
The last guard beside Caldwell was instantly vaporized by a scythe strike.
Caldwell was entirely alone. Three Level 20 Flesh-Stalkers turned their eyeless faces toward him. They hissed loudly and raised their blades.
"Okay! Okay! Take it!" Caldwell screamed in absolute panic.
He frantically swiped at his system interface. A small and glowing purple coin materialized in his hand. He slapped it against the barrier's trade window.
Declan tapped his own screen.
[System Notification]
↳Trade Accepted.
↳Item Received: Shadowblade Class Token.
"Open it!" Caldwell sobbed.
Declan pressed the button on Sloane's desk. A tiny section of the black dome snapped open instantly.
Caldwell dove through the gap headfirst. He landed face-down in the clean stone courtyard. The gate snapped shut a millisecond before a Flesh-Stalker's claw could breach the threshold.
Caldwell just lay on the ground. He was hyperventilating and clutching his chest. He was alive, but he had lost absolutely everything.
He was going to be a problem.
But Declan did not even look at him. He turned his back on the crying billionaire and looked at the item in his hand.
It was a small and heavy coin made of dark metal. It pulsed with a faint and shadowy aura.
[Item Information]
↳ Name: Shadowblade Class Token
↳ Tier: Epic
↳ Description: Consume this token to acquire the Shadowblade Class. Greatly increases base Agility and unlocks advanced stealth and assassination skill trees.
"An Epic-tier class," Declan muttered. A wide and dangerous grin spread across his face.
He looked up and out over the massive fortified courtyard of the Iron Bastion. Over three thousand players were huddled together.
Some were crying. Some were resting. Some were just staring at the black dome above them in pure awe.
They had all paid him to live.
They were in his city. Under his shield. Under his rules.
The tutorial phase was officially over. The spawn zone was dead.
The stakes just got bigger.
Declan Vance was no longer just a guy who got thrown into a debtor's prison. He was the Warlord of Sector 4. And he was just getting started.
-----x-----
Chapter 26: [26] : Mutating the Class, Eclipse Sovereign
The Purge Wave raged outside the Iron Bastion like a bad thunderstorm, but inside the dome, it was completely peaceful.
Declan sat on a large and comfortable armchair that Sloane had pulled out of a ruined building. He had dragged the chair right into the middle of the city square.
He ignored the thousands of players whispering and pointing at him from a safe distance.
He was entirely focused on the glowing purple coin in his hand.
[Item: Shadowblade Class Token]
It was a good class. For a normal player, an Epic-tier class token on the first day of the Grid was a massive game-changer. It meant instantly out-scaling everyone else in speed and critical damage.
But Declan was not a normal player. He did not do ordinary Epic tiers. He did broken tiers.
Everything was peaceful now, he could use this opportunity to work on some upgrades.
He pulled up his system interface.
[System Resources]
↳ Origin Points: 30,500
Sloane had done a fantastic job running the toll booth. He had enough currency to buy a small country.
"Let us see if my talent works on class items," Declan whispered to himself.
He mentally selected the Shadowblade Token and opened the enhancement menu.
"System. Enhance the Shadowblade Class Token. Push it to plus ten."
The familiar blinding white light erupted from his hand. It was much brighter this time. Enhancing an Epic-tier item required a massive amount of energy.
The chimes rang out in his head like heavy church bells.
[System Enhancement Initiated]
↳ Cost per level for Epic Tier: 1,000 Origin Points
Declan did not care about the cost. He watched his balance drain as the light grew more intense.
[Shadowblade Token +1... +2... +3...]
[Shadowblade Token +4... +5...]
The system threw up the massive and glaring red warning box right on cue.
[Notice: Maximum safety threshold reached. Item shatter imminent. Severe soul backlash guaranteed if enhancement fails.]
A normal player would drop the item in terror. A soul backlash meant the VR pod in the real world would literally fry their nervous system.
Declan just smiled.
[Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Cap removed. Safety protocols bypassed.]
The red warning box shattered into a thousand tiny digital pieces. The system tried to stop him, and his SSS-Rank talent just completely bulldozed over the game's core coding.
[Shadowblade Token +6... +8... +10.]
Ten thousand Origin Points vanished from his inventory.
The coin in his hand began to physically change. The purple glow deepened until it turned into a suffocating pitch-black void.
The metal cracked and reformed. It was no longer a simple coin. It looked like a tiny swirling black hole encased in a ring of jagged dark silver.
[Class Token has reached +10.]
[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]
A wave of heavy cold energy pulsed out from the token. It was so strong that the players sitting twenty feet away shivered and backed up immediately.
Declan looked at the new stats.
[Item Information]
↳ Name: Eclipse Sovereign Class Token
↳ Tier: Ascendant (Mutated)
↳ Description: Consume this token to acquire the Eclipse Sovereign Class. The user becomes a master of the void. Greatly multiplies base Agility and Strength.
↳ Class Mechanic Unlocked: Eclipse Charges. The user generates one Eclipse Charge for every five seconds spent standing in complete darkness or heavy shadow. Maximum of 5 charges. Consuming a charge multiplies the physical damage of the next attack by 200%.
Declan stared at the text. He read it twice.
"Two hundred percent per charge," Declan breathed. "If I stack five charges, my next hit does a thousand percent more damage. That is a ten times multiplier."
"On top of the Warden's Halberd mass increase."
It was absolutely disgusting. It was a math equation designed to completely break the physics engine!
"Acquire," Declan commanded.
The dark silver ring shattered. The swirling black hole inside expanded and shot directly into Declan's chest.
He gasped. It felt like a block of ice had been dropped into his stomach. The cold energy flooded through his veins, rewriting his avatar's base code.
His muscles tightened. He felt impossibly light, as if gravity did not really apply to him anymore.
[System Notification]
↳ Class Successfully Acquired: Eclipse Sovereign
↳ Base Agility increased by 50.
↳ Base Strength increased by 30.
↳ New Resource Unlocked: Eclipse Charges (0/5)
Declan stood up from the armchair. He did not just stand up. He practically floated to his feet.
His new base Agility of 70 made his movements feel completely effortless. He flexed his fingers. The power coursing through him was intoxicating.
As usual, he needed to test the mechanic.
He looked around the ruined city square. The Iron Bastion's black dome blocked out the sky, but Sloane had set up several glowing mana-crystals to provide light.
However, there was a dark alleyway between two collapsed buildings just a few yards away.
Nice spot for a quick excursion.
Declan walked into the alley. He stepped out of the crystal light and into the deep shadows.
He stood perfectly still.
A small counter appeared at the bottom of his vision.
[1... 2... 3... 4... 5]
[Eclipse Charge Generated. Current: 1/5]
Declan looked down at his feet. The shadow cast by his body was changing. It was not just a normal shadow anymore.
It looked thicker. It looked like a puddle of black ink that was slowly starting to bubble.
He waited twenty more seconds.
[Eclipse Charge Generated. Current: 5/5 (Maximum)]
His shadow was literally writhing now. Tiny tendrils of dark energy whipped off his boots. He felt like a coiled spring.
The sheer amount of destructive potential stored in his body made his skin tingle.
"Hey, boss!"
Declan turned around. Sloane was jogging toward the alley. She had a glowing clipboard hovering in front of her face.
His little excursion was over.
"We have a slight problem with the city building mechanics," Sloane started saying. Then she stopped dead in her tracks.
She stared at Declan. She stared at the bubbling pool of darkness beneath his feet.
"What in the world is wrong with your shadow?" Sloane asked. She took a nervous step backward. "Are you leaking?"
"I just got a new upgrade," Declan said smoothly. He stepped out of the alley and back into the light.
The moment the light hit him, the bubbling darkness vanished. The counter in his vision remained at maximum, but the visual effect hid itself.
"You got weirder. That is what you got," Sloane grumbled and shook her head.
"Listen, I was going through the Iron Bastion management panel. We have tons of resources. We have enough Origin Points to fund this entire thing. But I cannot build advanced automated defenses like turrets or spell-wards."
"Why not?" Declan asked. "Just click the build button."
"It is locked," Sloane explained. She showed him the clipboard. "The system says we need a specialized NPC to process the raw materials into complex machinery. We need an Artificer or a Master Blacksmith."
"Otherwise, this iron is just going to sit in the treasury doing nothing."
Sounds complicated, but anyway.
Declan frowned. "Where do we get one of those?"
"I checked the Global Auction House forums," Sloane said. "People from other sectors are talking about hidden NPCs. There is a rumor about a guy named Bram."
"He is supposed to be a genius mechanist. But he is located deep underground."
"Okay, How deep?"
"Sector 4, Subterranean Hollows," Sloane read. "It is a Level 30 cave system directly beneath the Ashlands. Nobody has been able to clear it yet because the monsters down there hit like trucks and have insane armor."
That's what I'm talking about.
Level 30. That was double the level of the World Boss he had just crushed.
Declan cracked his knuckles. He had five Eclipse Charges ready to burn, a teleportation skill, and a new class that begged to be used in the dark.
"A Level 30 dark cave," Declan smiled. "Sounds like my kind of vacation. I will go get our mechanic."
-----x-----
Chapter 27: [27] : The Artificer of the Hollows, Subterranean Descent
The Purge Wave was still active outside the Iron Bastion. Millions of Flesh-Stalkers were still throwing themselves against the Thorned Aegis walls and turning into bloody mist.
Crazy zombies.
Declan did not care. He needed an Artificer, and a swarm of gray zombies was not going to delay his city planning.
He walked to the edge of the safe zone. He did not open the gate. He just used Void Blink.
The world went pitch black. He bypassed the horde completely. He teleported through the wall and chained five blinks together in rapid succession.
He zipped across the muddy wasteland like a ghost. He left the screeching monsters far behind.
It took him twenty minutes of blinking and running to reach the coordinates Sloane had given him.
The entrance to the Subterranean Hollows did not look like much. It was just a massive and jagged crack in the ground at the base of a dead volcano in the Ashlands. Thick and foul-smelling smoke billowed out of the hole.
Seems dangerous.
Declan jumped in!
He fell for several seconds before using Void Blink to safely deposit himself on a rocky outcropping inside the cave.
It was pitch black. There were no glowing crystals here. No lava rivers. Just oppressive and suffocating darkness.
For a normal player, this was a nightmare. They would have to use torches, which would instantly alert every monster in a mile radius to their location.
For an Eclipse Sovereign, it felt like coming home.
It was the perfect skill for this environment.
[Eclipse Charge Generated. Current: 5/5]
Declan's eyes adjusted quickly. The high agility and intelligence stats from his class and ring gave him perfect dark vision. The cavern was massive and filled with towering stalagmites and deep ravines.
He walked forward silently. His +10 Spiked Striders did not make a single sound on the stone.
Skitter. Skitter.
A sound echoed from the ceiling above him. It sounded like dozens of knives tapping against solid rock.
Declan looked up. Clinging to the cavern roof directly above him was a monster. It looked like a centipede, but it was the size of a city bus.
Its body was covered in thick dark purple armor plating. Its mandibles dripped with glowing green acid.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Cave Crawler
↳ Level: 30
↳ HP: 12,000 / 12,000
Twelve thousand health! And judging by the thick plates, it probably had an absurd defense stat.
A normal party of ten players would spend twenty minutes chipping away at this thing while desperately dodging its acid spit.
Declan did not even pull out his heavy halberd. He reached into his digital storage and pulled out the +20 Carnage Cleaver.
The jagged and blood-red blade pulsed softly in the dark.
He did not throw a rock to pull aggro. He did not shout.
"Void Blink."
Declan vanished from the cavern floor. He teleported fifteen meters straight up. He appeared right next to the massive insect on the ceiling.
Gravity immediately took hold of him, but he did not need to fly. He just needed a fraction of a second.
He swung the cleaver at the crawler's heavily armored side.
He mentally triggered one of his class resources.
[System Notification]
↳ 1 Eclipse Charge Consumed.
↳ Physical Damage multiplied by 200%.
The red blade blurred. It did not just strike the armor. It tore through the purple plates like a hot knife through butter.
The 200% multiplier turned his casual slash into a devastating kinetic impact.
Schwing!
The cleaver bit deep into the soft meat beneath the armor.
[System Ability Activated]
↳ Trait Activated: Hemorrhage
Declan let himself fall. He landed perfectly on his feet on the cavern floor. He took zero fall damage thanks to his boots.
He did not even look up at the monster. He just raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
SNAP!
[System Ability Activated]
↳ Trait Activated: Blood Burst
The Cave Crawler did not even have time to shriek.
The massive bleed stacks applied by the cleaver, multiplied by the Eclipse Charge damage, detonated entirely from the inside of the wound.
It was like eating too much until your stomach exploded.
BOOM!
The top half of the giant centipede violently exploded! Dark green blood and shattered purple armor rained down from the ceiling like a disgusting waterfall.
The lower half of the monster twitched once and fell. It crashed into the stone floor before dissolving into blue pixels.
[System Notification]
↳ Cave Crawler Level 30 Killed!
↳ Experience Points Gained: 4,000
↳ Origin Points +100
Declan smirked. He had just one-shot a Level 30 mob in two seconds. The Eclipse Sovereign class was stupidly broken!
He kept walking deeper into the Hollows.
He encountered four more Cave Crawlers and a pack of Level 28 Blind Cave Bears. He did not sneak past any of them.
Seems like he was enjoying it.
He used Void Blink to close the distance instantly. He burned an Eclipse Charge, applied a bleed, and snapped his fingers.
He was farming them. He was a silent and teleporting grim reaper clearing out the hardest dungeon in Sector 4 without breaking a sweat.
After an hour of walking and slaughtering, he found what he was looking for.
At the end of a long tunnel, the cave opened up into a wide and circular chamber. This room was not natural. The walls had been smoothed out.
There were piles of scavenged metal, broken gears, and glowing runic batteries stacked everywhere.
The entrance to the chamber was blocked by a massive barricade of sharpened steel beams. Behind the barricade sat two heavy automatic crossbow turrets.
They were currently tracking Declan's movements as their gears whirred loudly.
"I would not take another step, Grid-walker."
The voice came from behind the barricade. It was gruff and tired and full of gravel.
Declan stopped just out of range of the turrets. He peered into the scrap-cave.
Sitting at a heavy iron workbench was an older man. He had wild gray hair and a thick beard stained with grease. He wore a heavy leather blacksmith's apron.
He was holding a blowtorch in his right hand.
His left arm was completely gone, severed just below the shoulder.
Seems like all the NPCs here are old men.
[Target Information]
↳ Name: Bram, The Exiled Artificer
↳ Type: Interactive Master NPC
"You are Bram," Declan said casually. He completely ignored the crossbows pointed at his chest.
"And you are an idiot if you think you are robbing my workshop," Bram snorted. He set the blowtorch down.
"Those turrets fire armor-piercing... bolts at three hundred feet per second. Turn around and walk back to whatever hole you crawled out of. I do not work for you player types."
Declan did not turn around.
He needed to calm the old man down.
"I am not here to rob you," Declan said. "I am building a city. I need an Artificer to manage my automated defenses. You are hired."
Bram laughed loudly. It was a harsh and barking sound.
"Hired? By a Grid-walker? You people are all the same. You run around swinging swords and getting yourselves killed, and you think you own the place. I do not build toys for children."
Are all old men this pigheaded ?
Declan looked at the massive turrets. Then he looked at Bram's missing left arm.
Ha had to do something.
"Void Blink."
Declan vanished instantly!
The turrets spun wildly as they completely lost their target lock.
Instantly, Declan appeared directly behind Bram's workbench inside the fortified barricade. He leaned against the stone wall and crossed his arms over his black coat.
Bram jumped out of his chair. He stumbled backward in absolute shock. He grabbed a heavy iron wrench from the table and held it up like a club.
"How did you bypass the spatial wards?!" Bram yelled. His eyes were wide in disbelief.
"I am just a little bit different," Declan said calmly. He looked at the stump of Bram's left arm.
"Looking at you, you are a master mechanist, but you cannot forge properly with one hand. That is why you are hiding down here in the dark."
Bram gritted his teeth and lowered the wrench slightly. "What do you want?"
Now he is being reasonable.
Declan smiled. "I want you to run my city's forges. And in exchange, I might help in fixing your arm."