Chapter 68—Sovereign Authority.
Chapter 68—Sovereign Authority.
The air beneath the inverted pyramid came to an absolute standstill.
The blade Kaelen drew was not made of forged metal, steel, or enchanted crystal. It was a physical tear in the veil of reality itself—a slender, pitch-black katana that seemed to drink every photon of light in the cavern. Around its edge, tiny fractures of distorted space flickered like dark lightning.
---
[WEAPON REVEALED!]
EQUIPPED: The Void Blade (Origin Artifact)
STATUS: Unbound
EFFECT: Bypasses all Physical, Elemental, and Conceptual Defenses!
---
General Malakor stood frozen atop the stone rubble, his crimson eyes trembling behind his visor. As an ancient Tier-SSS Sentinel who had conquered dozens of mortal worlds, he had felt the aura of high gods, dragons, and supreme archmages.
But the presence overflowing from the sword in Kaelen’s hands was none of those. It was older. Deeper. It was the absolute, silent coldness of the primordial void before creation existed.
"What... what are you?" Malakor’s telepathic voice cracked with an emotion he had not felt in millennia: pure, unadulterated terror. "A mortal cannot wield origin-level spatial code!"
"You speak too much for a parasite," Kaelen whispered softly.
Kaelen didn’t take a stance. He simply took a single step forward into empty air.
SLICING WHISPER—
There was no flashy arc of light, no explosive shockwave, and no loud roar. Kaelen appeared fifty paces behind Malakor, smoothly snapping the Void Blade back into its dark scabbard with a sharp, resonant click.
CLICK.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Then, space itself split open.
SKRRRRRRAASH!
A silent wave of pitch-black dimensional tearing expanded from Malakor’s center. The giant, twelve-foot obsidian armor, along with his massive Tier-SSS double-headed scythe, was instantly clean-cleaved into hundreds of geometric cubes.
The dark matter plate, which possessed ninety-percent resistance to all physical and elemental strikes, offered no more resistance than warm butter against Kaelen’s edge.
"AAARRRRGH!"
Malakor’s terrifying death shriek echoed through the cavern as his physical vessel crumbled into glowing crimson dust.
GLING !
---
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION!]
TARGET ELIMINATED: Abyssal Sentinel General—Malakor (Tier-SSS)
EXP RECEIVED: 1,200,000!
LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP!
---
"Impossible..." Ignis stammered from behind the holy barrier, his broadsword drooping as his jaw hit the floor. "He... he sliced a Tier-SSS boss into literal building blocks in half a second?!"
"Focus, Ignis!" Tsubaki called out, his eyes sharp despite his awe. "Look at the central array! It’s not over!"
With Malakor’s death, the ancient fail-safe of the inverted pyramid triggered automatically. The three remaining conduits flared with a dangerous, unstable crimson radiance, pulsing violently as a deafening siren echoed through the system interface.
---
[CRITICAL SYSTEM EMERGENCY!]
OPERATOR DECEASED! Emergency protocol activated!
Void gate array is overcharging!
TIME TO SELF-DESTRUCT EXPLOSION: 00:01:45!
EXPECTED BLAST RADIUS: Entire Sector 0!
---
Dammit!" Ren cursed, his fingers moving across his wrist-mounted console at blur speed. "Malakor tied the portal’s stability to his core! Now that he’s dead, the extracted energy is backing up! If those conduits explode, the spatial collapse will wipe out Sector 0 and collapse the entire lower floor of the game!"
"Can you override it?!" Lyra asked, her hands glowing bright gold as she maintained her defensive stance.
"Not alone! The energy is flowing through three separate channels simultaneously!" Ren shouted over the rising hum of the reactor. "I need Conduits Two, Three, and Four severed within sixty seconds, or we’re all atomic dust!"
"Tell us what to do, tech guy!" Ignis roared, flames surging around his body as he gripped his claymore with both hands.
Ren threw three glowing blue tracking markers onto their UI map. "Ignis, take Conduit Two on the left! Use your heaviest physical strike to break the mana regulator at the base! Tsubaki, Conduit Three on the right—slice the shadow tether, maintaining the spatial tether! I’ll hack Conduit Four’s core directly from here!"
"Understood!" Tsubaki replied smoothly, disappearing into a blur of dark motion.
"Leave the left side to me!" Ignis bellowed, sprinting toward Conduit Two like a runaway locomotive.
"Lyra!" Ren added, looking back at the priestess. "The residual energy leakage is going to flood the plaza with toxic Void static while we work! We need you to keep the corruption off us!"
Lyra touched the glowing twin-sun crest on the back of her right hand, feeling the warm, steady heartbeat of her sister, Elena, connecting to her soul from miles away.
"I won’t let a single drop of corruption touch any of you," Lyra said with absolute confidence.
She raised her golden staff high, closing her eyes as she tapped directly into the infinite reservoir of divine mana granted by her sister.
"Grand Sacred Art: Sanctuary of the Sun Sister!"
BOOOOM!
A blinding dome of immaculate, pure white and golden light expanded from Lyra’s staff, sweeping across the entire four-hundred-meter plaza. The toxic violet static lapping against the stone evaporated instantly upon touching the golden light. A soothing aura washed over Tsubaki, Ignis, and Ren, granting them complete immunity to environmental debuffs and boosting their movement speed by fifty percent.
---
[BUFF APPLIED!]
[Sanctuary of the Sun Sister]
EFFECT: Absolute Immunity to Void Corruption! Movement Speed +50%! Cast Speed +30%!
---
System hack initiated!" Ren yelled, slamming his gauntlet onto the central console of Conduit Four. Lines of glowing green code rushed down his arms, invading the ancient red runes of the machine. "Bypassing firewalls... 40%... 70%... Overriding central valve!"
On the left side of the plaza, Ignis leaped twenty feet into the air above Conduit Two, his claymore engulfed in a pillar of white-hot dragon flames.
"Eat this, you ugly machine!" Ignis roared, descending like a meteor. "Dragon Fire Art: Mountain Breaker!"
BOOOOOM!
Ignis’s flaming blade slammed directly into the base of Conduit Two. The heavy metal casing shattered under the sheer brute force, sending molten sparks and broken cogs flying into the air as the red energy stream flickered and died.
---
[ARRAY UPDATE!]
CONDUIT 02: DESTROYED!
COUNTDOWN: 00:00:32!
---
Simultaneously, on the right side, Tsubaki reappeared right beside Conduit Three. His eyes were cold, his breathing perfectly synchronized with his blade.
"Shadow Style: Phantom Thread Cut," Tsubaki whispered.
His katana left its sheath for a split second. Three thin, invisible lines of spatial force sliced through the air, severing the dark shadow tethers holding Conduit Three’s regulator in place. The conduit collapsed under its own weight, grinding to a halt.
GLING !
---
[ARRAY UPDATE!]
CONDUIT 03: DESTROYED!
COUNTDOWN: 00:00:14!
---
"Done!" Ren screamed, slamming his palm onto his console as the final line of code turned bright green. "Conduit Four overridden and purged!"
SHUUUUUUUUU...
The terrifying red glow pulsing from the inverted pyramid suddenly faded. The deafening emergency sirens died down, replaced by the soft, sputtering hum of a dying engine. The swirling vortex of dark matter beneath the structure slowed to a gentle halt, its purple light dissolving into harmless ambient particles.
---
[CRITICAL SYSTEM NOTICE!]
Void gate array deactivated!
Self-destruct sequence canceled!
SECTOR 0 SPATIAL FABRIC: STABILIZED!
---
"We... we did it!" Ignis gasped, dropping his claymore onto the stone and collapsing onto his rear, panting heavily. "Holy crap, that was much too close!"
Tsubaki sheathed his sword with a quiet sigh of relief, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "Good work, Ren."
"Don’t thank me, thank Lyra’s barrier," Ren said, collapsing against his console with a weak grin. "Without that divine shield, the static would have melted my brain mid-hack."
Lyra lowered her staff, her breathing slightly soft, but her eyes were glowing with happiness. She looked at her right hand, where the twin-sun crest slowly faded back beneath her skin. ’Thank you, Elena,’ she thought softly. ’We are safe now.’
While the party caught their breath, Kaelen walked slowly toward the center of the deactivated pyramid.
The collapsed core of the machine was glowing with a strange, deep violet orb—a condensed crystal containing the pure spatial data Malakor had harvested from the world’s ley lines.
Kaelen reached out and picked up the dark crystal. The moment his fingers touched the orb, a surge of ancient system notifications flooded his vision.
---
[UNIQUE ITEM ACQUIRED!]
ITEM: Core of the Abyssal Gate (Tier EX)
EFFECT: Contains pure spatial origin code.
SPECIAL EVENT TRIGGERED: Sovereign Memory Fragment Unlocked.
---
As the crystal dissolved into Kaelen’s palm, a vivid vision flashed before his eyes for a split second: a massive, golden throne floating above a shattered multiverse, surrounded by thousands of kneeling Sentinels—and at the center of it all stood a figure bearing Kaelen’s exact face, holding the absolute key to the System itself.
Kaelen’s dark eyes narrowed slightly as the vision vanished.
"So," Kaelen murmured softly to himself, a cold, dangerous smile gracing his features. "The Death Game isn’t a game at all. It’s a trial of reclamation."
He turned back to his party, his dark mantle fluttering in the fresh, clean air that was finally returning to Sector 0.
"Rest up, everyone," Kaelen announced, his commanding voice echoing across the clear plaza. "Sector 0 is secured. Our real conquest begins now."
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This game is really interesting