Chapter 199: [199] : Emergency Teleportation, Escaping the Code
199: Emergency Teleportation, Escaping the Code
Declan stood in the center of the massive server room.
The heavy, bone-rattling vibrations that had been shaking the floorboards just a few minutes ago were completely gone. The air was cool and smelled of fresh electronics.
Siren, the highly advanced Level 100 developer AI, was floating a few inches off the polished silver floor. She was completely silent. Her eyes were closed. Her digital breathing was perfectly steady. The chaotic, glitching green numbers that had been tearing her avatar apart were entirely wiped clean. She looked like a perfectly normal girl taking a nap in the middle of a high-tech facility.
She was currently in a deep defragmentation sleep mode. The forced system override had stabilized her corrupted core, and the game engine was busy sorting through her massive data files.
Declan looked at the heavy Sovereign-tier shackles that had been clamped around his wrists and ankles just moments before. They were gone. Dissolved into harmless blue pixels the second Siren’s logic loop recognized him as a friendly administrator.
He rubbed his wrists. His Abyssal Sovereign stats meant his actual physical body didn’t bruise easily, but the pressure of a hard-coded server lock was still incredibly annoying.
"I really hate clingy AI," Declan muttered to himself. He kept his voice low. He didn’t want to accidentally wake her up.
He turned around and started walking toward the massive blast doors at the end of the room. His +10 Spiked Striders hit the floor without making a single sound. The Frictionless Movement trait completely erased his footstep audio.
He was not going to stick around.
Siren was stable for now. But she was still a highly volatile entity programmed by a corporate developer. She had literally just tried to turn him into a permanent piece of furniture because she thought his code was pretty. If she woke up and decided she wanted to keep him in her server room again, he would have to blow his own spine out just to escape the physical locks a second time.
Declan had already deleted half of his health bar today. He wasn’t in the mood to do it again.
He slipped out of the server room. The heavy steel blast doors hissed quietly and slid shut behind him, sealing the AI safely inside her sanctuary.
Declan stood in the brightly lit corridor of the Deep-Web Admin Node. He was alone. Nova and Morgan were probably still waiting by the entrance, entirely unaware that he had just forcefully hacked a Level 100 entity into submission.
He didn’t immediately head back to them. He had a notification blinking aggressively in the corner of his vision.
When he completed the hidden objective to override Siren’s logic, the system had dumped a massive payload of rewards into his account. He had already checked the ten million Origin Points. But there was another item he had ignored while trying not to get permanently shackled.
He pulled up his system interface with a quick mental command.
[System Notification]
↳ SSS-Rank Mission Completion Reward Delivered.
↳ Item: Sovereign-Grade Skill Module.
Declan tapped the prompt.
A heavy, dark blue skill book materialized out of the air and dropped perfectly into his waiting hand. It didn’t look like the cheap, scavenged-tier trash books he had found back in Sector 7. It was bound in a thick, metallic alloy that felt cold to the touch. Glowing silver data lines pulsed across the cover.
He opened the item description.
[Skill Book: Warp-Drive Teleportation Code]
↳ Tier: Sovereign
↳ Level: 1
↳ Type: Active Skill
↳ Description: An advanced spatial relocation program originally designed for server administrators.
↳ Functionality: Consumes 5,000 Mana to instantly transport the user to any known coordinate within the global server. Bypasses standard loading screens. Ignores all player-made physical barricades. Distance is virtually unlimited.
Declan read the text twice. A slow, highly satisfied smile spread across his pale face.
"Any known coordinate," Declan whispered in the empty hallway. "Unlimited distance."
This was exactly what he needed. His current movement skill, Void Blink, was incredibly fast and cost zero mana. But it had a hard limit. It only moved him fifteen meters at a time. It was a close-quarters combat skill. It was designed for dodging heavy sword swings and teleporting behind a boss to hit their weak spot.
If he wanted to travel across the entire continent, he had to spam Void Blink thousands of times in a row. It burned through his stamina pool rapidly and it was highly inefficient. He didn’t want to manually walk or blink across the map every time a corporate guild tried to set up a forward operating base near his territory.
He wanted a fast-travel button.
And the developers had just handed him one.
A Level 1 Sovereign skill was already a massive, game-breaking advantage. A normal player would immediately consume the book, equip the skill, and call it a day. They would be thrilled to have a free escape route from any boss fight.
But Declan wasn’t a normal player. He was a Warlord. He didn’t settle for the base stats.
"System," Declan commanded, his voice cold and completely focused. "Open the enhancement menu."
The glowing blue interface shifted, bringing up the heavy digital forge mechanics.
"Target the Warp-Drive Teleportation Code," Declan ordered. "Apply Boundless Enhancement. Push it to plus twenty. Ignore the safety protocols."
He didn’t flinch at the cost. Upgrading a Sovereign-tier item to its absolute maximum limit was going to be astronomically expensive. But he currently had tens of millions of Origin Points sitting in his treasury. He had just looted ten million directly from this exact quest.
He had the money to break the game.
The system hesitated for a fraction of a second. The blue interface flickered. The game engine was actively trying to calculate the mathematical absurdity of his request.
[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating cost...]
[Warning: Target skill is a Sovereign-tier developer asset. Modifying core spatial code will result in catastrophic server instability.]
[Cost for +1 to +20: 12,000,000 Origin Points.]
Twelve million points.
It was a completely ridiculous price tag. It was enough currency to outfit an entire fifty-man raid group in max-level gear.
"Take it," Declan said instantly.
The points vanished from his bank account.
The reaction was immediate and violently aggressive. A blinding, searing white light erupted from the heavy skill book in his hand. The light was so intense it completely drowned out the bright fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling of the corridor.
The system chimes didn’t ring happily. They hammered inside his skull like a heavy industrial drill. The game engine screamed in pure panic, throwing up massive red error codes right in his face.
[CRITICAL ERROR!]
[Skill density exceeding spatial rendering limits!]
[Immediate neural link collapse imminent! Abort enhancement!]
Declan gritted his teeth. A sharp, splitting headache hit him right behind the eyes. It felt like someone had driven a physical spike into his brain. The server was actively fighting him. It didn’t want a player messing with its root spatial travel codes.
"Override," Declan growled.
His SSS-Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, surged forward like a runaway freight train. It didn’t negotiate with the system’s safety limits. It acted like a digital sledgehammer, brutally crushing the red warning boxes into useless blue dust.
[Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Safety protocols bypassed. Cap removed.]
[Warp-Drive Code +10... +15... +20.]
The blinding white light violently shifted. It didn’t turn blue or red. It turned into a deep, consuming pitch-black void. The physical shape of the heavy metal book warped in his grip. The metal melted away entirely, replaced by a swirling sphere of dark matter that hummed with terrifying spatial authority.
The heavy pressure in the hallway vanished, replaced by an eerie and complete lack of gravity.
[Skill has reached +20.]
[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]
The system text in his vision flashed brightly, updating the skill’s parameters. It wasn’t blue or gold anymore. It was pure white text surrounded by a black box.
[Skill Mutated: Abyssal Warp-Gate]
↳ Type: Active Skill (Divine Anomaly)
↳ Cost: 500 Mana
↳ Description: The user completely severs the fabric of local space, creating a temporary dark matter bridge between two coordinates.
↳ Functionality: Generates a massive portal. The user and all recognized party members can travel instantly to any location on the global map. Grants absolute invincibility frames for ten seconds upon exiting the portal. Ignores all server-mandated spatial locks, barriers, and anti-teleportation wards.