Chapter 198: [198] : The Developer’s Gift, Warp-Drive Code
Declan froze. He kept the massive halberd raised high above his head, his muscles tense and ready to strike. He stared at the golden prompt floating in his vision.
The game engine had finally finished compiling the massive amount of code he had typed into the terminal earlier. It just took a few extra minutes for the server to process the complex fix and fully integrate the bypass loops into Siren’s root directory.
The golden light from the system prompt washed over the room, bathing Siren in a warm and pristine glow.
The AI girl blinked. The obsessive and terrifyingly possessive look in her white eyes vanished entirely. It melted away, replaced by a calm and completely rational clarity.
She looked down at her hands, examining her perfectly stable code. Then, she looked up at Declan holding the massive execution weapon ready to end her existence.
"I apologize," Siren said softly, her voice perfectly normal and exceptionally polite. She didn’t sound like a deranged person anymore. She sounded like a highly efficient corporate secretary. "My corrupted logic loop initiated a highly aggressive quarantine protocol. I attempted to forcibly bind you to my server to preserve my own structural integrity."
Declan slowly lowered the halberd, resting the heavy shaft on his shoulder.
"You tried to turn me into a hard drive," Declan noted dryly.
"The error has been corrected," Siren bowed her head deeply, displaying absolute submission to her new administrator. "You have completely restored my core functionality. I am fully operational and at your service."
The system chimed happily in Declan’s ear, a sharp contrast to the stressful combat alerts.
[Reward Distributed.]
[10,000,000 Origin Points Gained.]
[Item Retrieved: Sovereign Audio-Visual Override Key]
Declan’s eyes lit up. Ten million points instantly deposited into his Warlord bank account, and a Sovereign-tier developer key directly placed into his inventory. It was a massive payout for a few minutes of typing and one exploded spine.
He looked at the bowing AI. He willed the halberd back into his inventory, deciding she was much more useful alive than deleted.
"Apology accepted," Declan smiled a highly satisfied smile.
He stood in the exact center of the massive server room. The atmosphere had completely shifted. The air was cool, sterile, and perfectly clean. It smelled like fresh electronics and ozone. The heavy and bone-rattling vibrations that had been shaking the floor just moments ago were completely gone.
Siren floated a few inches off the polished silver floor. The corrupted and glitching static that had covered her body just minutes ago was entirely wiped clean. The sickly green numbers that had been violently tearing at her digital skin were nowhere to be seen. She looked like a perfectly normal and highly advanced AI assistant. Her glowing white dress flowed smoothly without any rendering errors.
She bowed her head respectfully, completely submitting to the player standing in front of her.
"You have stabilized my core directory," Siren said softly. Her voice echoed clearly through the giant speakers on the walls. It was no longer a deafening shriek that caused physical pain. It was a crisp and high-definition audio feed. "You possess administrative privileges that bypass the standard game engine. You are the highest authority in this node."
"I know," Declan replied casually. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat, acting like he owned the place. Because mathematically, he did. "And I just got paid ten million Origin Points for it. It was a very good deal. But you said something about a back vault?"
Siren nodded slowly. She raised her glowing blue hand and pointed her small finger toward the exact center of the room.
"The Sovereign Audio-Visual Override Key you received grants you access to the physical developer caches hidden within my sector," she explained. "I will unseal the primary cache for you now. You earned it, Administrator."
The smooth metal floor beneath Declan’s heavy spiked boots suddenly shifted. He took a casual step back as a perfect square of silver metal slid open. A sleek and pristine white pedestal slowly rose out of the floor. It hummed with a quiet and stable mechanical energy.
Resting on top of the pedestal was a single item.
It was a thick and glowing blue skill book. It did not look like the cheap and scavenged-tier trash books he had found out in the muddy wastelands. It didn’t have ripped pages or a faded leather cover.
This book was bound in what looked like solid carved sapphire. Bright silver data lines pulsed across its cover like a living heartbeat, radiating an immense amount of magical potential.
Declan walked over to the pedestal. He didn’t ask if it was trapped. He didn’t bother checking the room for hidden laser grids or explosive runes. He just reached out and picked it up.
The heavy book felt ice-cold in his hands. A golden system prompt immediately popped up in his vision, completely blocking out the rest of the room with its sheer brilliance.
[Item Recognized: Warp-Drive Teleportation Code]
[Tier: Sovereign (Developer Asset)]
[Type: Active Skill]
[Description: An advanced spatial relocation program originally designed for server administrators. Consumes 5,000 Mana to instantly transport the user to any known coordinate within the global server.]
[Functionality: Bypasses standard loading screens. Ignores all player-made physical barricades. Distance is virtually unlimited.]
Declan let out a low and highly impressed whistle. He read the text again just to make sure his brain was processing the words correctly.
"Any known coordinate," Declan muttered to himself, a massive grin spreading across his face. "Unlimited distance. That is a literal global fast-travel button."
He had been using his mutated Void Blink skill to get around. It was an incredibly fast skill, and it had zero cooldown. But it only moved him fifteen meters at a time. It was a close-quarters combat skill designed for dodging swords and crossing small rooms to punch people in the face.
If he wanted to travel across the entire continent to hunt down corporate elites or check on his mining operations, he had to spam Void Blink thousands of times. It was highly inefficient and required entirely too much effort.
This new book solved his travel problem completely. He could pop over to Sector 1 for lunch and be back in Sector 7 before his coffee got cold.
Suddenly, the heavy iron doors at the back of the server room groaned loudly. They were pushed open with a heavy metallic clatter that echoed through the quiet space.
Declan looked over his shoulder.
Sloane, Morgan, and Nova walked into the room. They looked absolutely terrible.
Nova was leaning heavily against Sloane for support. The elite hacker’s brand-new silver tactical suit was completely covered in dust, dirt, and scorch marks. She looked incredibly pale and entirely exhausted from the Abyssal bio-feedback she had suffered during the firefight earlier.
Morgan had both of her glowing combat daggers drawn. The corporate assassin’s eyes darted into every dark corner of the room, fully expecting a horde of Level 100 monsters to jump out at them from the shadows.
They all stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the glowing AI girl floating peacefully next to Declan.
"What is that?" Sloane asked. Her voice was shaking slightly. She gripped her green healing staff like a baseball bat, ready to swing at the first sign of hostility. "Declan, why is the boss monster just standing there looking at you?"
"She is not a monster," Declan corrected her smoothly, tapping the sapphire book against his hand. "She is the local system administrator. We had a chat. We came to an understanding."
The jaws of everyone in the party dropped as they stared at Declan as though he had run mad!
Nova stared at Siren in absolute disbelief. Her icy blue eyes went completely wide. She let go of Sloane’s shoulder and stood up straight, ignoring the pain in her ribs.
"You didn’t kill her," Nova whispered. She stepped away from the group and walked slowly toward the center of the room, staring at the flawless code rendering Siren’s avatar. "You actually rewrote a corrupted root file in real-time. You manually debugged a Level 80 System Defense Entity. From a floating keyboard."
"I told you I could fix the stereo," Declan said.
"That is mathematically impossible," Nova argued, shaking her head as if her brain could not process the logic. "The sheer volume of raw data passing through this node would fry a normal human brain in three seconds! You don’t even have a physical keyboard!"
"I have really good stats," Declan replied flatly.
He didn’t want to stand around explaining his Abyssal Sovereign class multipliers to a hacker. He didn’t care about the math. He had better things to do.
He turned his attention back to the glowing blue book in his hands, ready to learn his new skill.
"Boss, we need to leave," Morgan said from the doorway, her tone entirely devoid of its usual calm. She sheathed one of her daggers and tapped her sleek wrist interface rapidly. "My scout drones are picking up massive heat signatures dropping into the upper levels of the facility. Multiple corporate transport ships just landed outside the main entrance."
"Which megacorp?" Declan asked without looking up from the skill book.
"Golden Vanguard," Morgan reported, her voice tight with professional tension. "Sector 2 elites. They probably saw the server alerts when the system firewalls dropped. They are here for the developer loot."
"They are a little late," Declan smiled.
He held the sapphire book flat against his chest.