Chapter 201: [201] : The Warlord’s Annexation, Expanding the Empire
"Zero latency," Nova breathed out in pure shock, her icy blue eyes wide. "We just crossed a hundred kilometers instantly. There was no data drag at all. The server didn’t even try to buffer our character models. That is physically impossible on this server’s architecture."
Morgan stood up straight and sheathed her combat daggers. The assassin looked equally impressed.
"Do you have any idea how broken that is for infiltration?" Morgan asked, shaking her head. "You can bypass any corporate safe zone on the planet without triggering a single alarm."
"I keep telling you," Declan smiled coldly, adjusting the collar of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat. "I don’t care about the server’s math. The rules do not apply to me."
Behind him, the massive dark matter gateway hissed sharply. It snapped shut and vanished into thin air. It didn’t leave behind a trace of smoke or static. It left absolutely no sign that it had ever been there.
The corporate hit squads back in the Admin Node were currently breaching an empty hallway. They were going to spend hours clearing traps, only to find the developer vault completely cleaned out.
Declan let out a low, satisfied laugh. He had successfully robbed the game’s creators, escaped a Level 100 AI, and completely humiliated the top-tier corporate guilds.
He looked around his city.
The Iron Bastion was buzzing with chaotic energy. Thousands of players were rushing back and forth between the heavy iron gates and the merchant stalls. They were carrying wooden carts full of raw iron ore and monster parts. The massive purple forges on the eastern wall roared loudly, churning out heat and light as Bram’s automated systems processed the raw materials.
It looked like a fully functioning society.
But to Declan, it just looked a little too small.
He had millions of Origin Points. He had an immortal army. He had a physical body synced to the density of a collapsing star. He didn’t just want a single fortress in a ruined slum anymore.
He wanted an empire.
"You guys take a break," Declan told Nova and Morgan. He didn’t wait for their response. He turned around and walked straight up the heavy stone stairs of the central keep.
He had some serious remodeling to do.
Declan pushed open the heavy wooden doors and stepped out onto the high stone balcony of the central keep.
He rested his hands on the cold iron railing. He didn’t sit down on his massive metal throne. He didn’t pull out a hot cup of dirt-flavored coffee from his inventory. He didn’t rest.
He looked out over his territory.
The transparent purple energy dome of the Iron Bastion hummed quietly above him. It completely pushed back the toxic, freezing rain of the real world. Inside the one-kilometer radius, the air was clean and the stone streets were spotless.
But beyond the barrier, the world was a complete nightmare.
He looked toward the eastern horizon. He was looking directly at Sector 6.
Sector 6 used to be the highly advanced, heavily guarded military stronghold of Titan Heavy Industries. It used to be filled with pristine white bunkers and massive combat mechs. But that was before the Great Convergence dropped the borders. That was before the Abyssal Tide wiped out their entire army.
Now, Sector 6 was just a massive, completely ruined wasteland.
Through the faint purple glow of his shield, Declan could see the thick black smoke rising from the destroyed corporate towers. He could see the millions of glowing red eyes shifting in the toxic mud. The Abyssal monsters had completely overrun the neighboring zone. They were currently chewing on the scrap metal left behind by the fleeing corporate players.
It was a total dead zone.
"Perfect," Declan muttered.
He shoved his right hand deep into the pocket of his dark Predator’s Coat.
He bypassed the rusty swords and the massive stacks of raw Void-Ore sitting in his digital storage. He pulled out a single, highly specific item.
It was a heavy, four-sided prism made of solid pitch-black dark matter. It was covered in glowing, bleeding red runes that pulsed with a terrifying administrative authority.
It was the +20 Sovereign Root Authority.
He had looted it as a broken fragment from a corporate boss days ago. He had forcefully dumped thirty million Origin Points into it, bypassing the game’s safety protocols and mutating the developer token into a literal world-editing tool.
He held the heavy prism in his palm. It felt incredibly dense.
Declan didn’t pull up a map. He didn’t open a system menu to carefully select boundary lines. He just raised his hand and aimed the dark matter prism directly at the burning, monster-infested wasteland of Sector 6.
He squeezed his fist.
With his Abyssal Sovereign physical stats, his grip possessed the raw kinetic force of an industrial hydraulic press.
CRACK!
The Sovereign-tier developer artifact shattered into a million pieces in his bare hand.
A blinding, violent wave of pure gold and dark purple light exploded outward from his fingers. It didn’t shoot forward like a laser. It rapidly expanded in a perfect, massive circle, completely swallowing the high balcony.
"System," Declan’s voice dropped to a heavy, unnatural bass that physically shook the iron railing beneath his hands. "Override. Initiate Territorial Annexation."
The game engine didn’t throw up an error code. It didn’t try to stop him. The token gave him absolute root access.
The entire world violently shuddered.
It felt like a magnitude ten earthquake had just ripped straight through the core of the planet. Down in the courtyard, thousands of players screamed and dropped to the stone pavement, covering their heads in sheer panic. The heavy purple forges flared wildly.
The massive black iron walls of the Iron Bastion groaned. The thick metal shifted and stretched.
Then, the glowing purple energy dome detached from the walls. It shot outward.
It didn’t just expand a few feet. It moved at the speed of light. The barrier swept across the ruined highway, instantly crossing the invisible boundary line separating Sector 7 from Sector 6.
The terraforming process was absolute and terrifying.
As the energy dome washed over the ruined corporate military bases, the physical reality of the zone was forcibly overwritten. The burning white bunkers melted away like hot wax. The massive rivers of toxic sludge instantly evaporated into harmless white steam. The cracked and broken concrete was violently smoothed out, replaced by elegant, heavy black stone paving.
Towering gothic spires made of dark iron forcefully erupted from the dirt, piercing the smog-choked sky.
Sector 6 was deleted. It was completely paved over by the architecture of the Iron Bastion.
Declan permanently claimed a second sector without fighting a single war.
The system chimes hammered inside his skull in rapid, overwhelming succession. Glowing gold notifications flooded his vision, scrolling so fast they blurred together.
[System Override Accepted.]
[Item Consumed: Sovereign Root Authority +20]
[Territory Expanded: 1,000 Square Kilometers]
Declan lowered his hand. He looked out at the horizon. The Iron Bastion was no longer just a small safe zone in a slum. It was a sprawling, endless megacity that stretched as far as the eye could see.
But the system wasn’t done.
The 10-kilometer expansion hadn’t just overwritten the buildings. It had overwritten the physical space occupied by the millions of Abyssal monsters currently infesting Sector 6.
The game engine couldn’t render hostile entities inside an Absolute Safe Zone. So, it simply deleted them.
Millions of high-level Void beasts were instantly crushed by the shifting code. They dissolved into a massive, continent-wide snowstorm of bright blue digital pixels.
[Passive Assimilation Triggered.]
[Hostile Entities within new borders successfully purged.]
[Calculating Loot Drops...]
"Payday," Declan smirked.
The numbers hit his screen all at once.
[Origin Points Gained via passive assimilation: +12,400,000]
Twelve million points! He had just passively farmed an entire sector’s worth of monsters without taking a single step off his balcony!
[Current Treasury: 132,400,000]
Declan stared at the final number. One hundred and thirty-two million Origin Points. He was sitting on an unfathomable mountain of wealth. He had the funds to build automated armies. He had the funds to push every single piece of gear he owned past the absolute mathematical limits of the game.
He leaned against the iron railing and let out a low, highly satisfied laugh.
The megacorps thought they could control the Great Convergence. They thought they could sit in their pristine towers in Sector 1 and dictate the rules of reality to everyone else.
Declan cracked his knuckles. He owned two sectors now. He was coming for the rest of them.