Declan stood perfectly still in the center of the massive glass crater. The dark red blood shield swirled around his body, keeping him completely untouched by the intense heat radiating from the melted ground.

He looked up at the sky.

The Apex Eradicator hovered a few hundred feet in the air. The massive Level 100 System Purge Entity was completely silent.

It had just dumped its ultimate attack. Hundreds of super heated anti matter lasers had rained down on Sector 7, completely vaporizing the entire city block outside the Iron Bastion. It was a cheap move designed by the developers to wipe the entire map clean and erase his character file for good.

But it failed.

Declan was still here. He had used his mutated Emergency Backup Code to instantly revive with zero penalties. Right after that, his Sanguine Engine heart had immediately triggered an absurd over heal shield to protect his physical body from the residual heat.

The Eradicator was stuck.

The towering machine of shifting server blocks and heavy artillery cannons was not moving. The bright red optical lens that served as its face was completely dim. Thick clouds of white steam billowed out of its massive cooling vents, hissing loudly as the rain hit the hot metal.

The boss was suffering from an animation lock. It had exhausted all of its digital mana to cast that massive server wipe, and now the system mechanics forced it into a temporary cooldown state. It could not move. It could not attack.

It was completely wide open.

Declan rested the massive dark matter shaft of his plus 40 Eclipse Severance halberd on his shoulder. He looked at the fifty million health points floating above the machine in glaring red text.

"I could chop you to pieces," Declan muttered, his deep Warlord voice echoing across the silent, smoking crater. "But cutting through fifty million HP with melee attacks is going to take way too long. I have a city to run."

He did not want to stand out here in the toxic rain all day. He wanted massive burst damage. He wanted to delete this thing in one hit and go back inside to drink his bad coffee.

Declan simply opened his hand. He willed the plus 40 Eclipse Severance back into his digital inventory. The terrifying dark matter halberd vanished into a swirl of blue pixels, leaving him completely unarmed.

Up on the high stone wall of the Iron Bastion, Commander Richter gasped.

"What is he doing?!" the Level 70 Vanguard yelled, gripping the stone battlements so hard his armored gloves creaked. "The boss is stunned! He needs to attack right now! Why did he put his weapon away?!"

Sloane and Kendra stood next to him. They did not answer. They just watched the Warlord in the black coat with absolute trust. They had seen him do this too many times. They knew Declan never did anything without a highly efficient, highly violent reason.

Down in the crater, Declan tapped his administrative interface with his mind.

’System,’ Declan commanded. ’Equip the Orbital Ion Reflector. Target lock on the big guy.’

The air in front of Declan violently distorted. It groaned and shrieked as the game physics engine struggled to render the item he was pulling out of his storage.

A massive, twenty foot long barrel made of glowing blue glass and dark steel materialized directly into his hands. It hit his grip with a heavy, metallic thud.

It was the Sovereign tier corporate asset he had stolen from Kato, the Guild Master of the Neon Syndicate. It was a siege weapon designed to be mounted on a heavy tank or a reinforced bunker.

It was absolutely not designed to be held by a single player.

But Declan base Strength was sitting at an absurdly high level. His sixty percent real world synchronization rate meant his muscles had the physical density of solid titanium. He held the massive multi ton cannon like it was a plastic toy.

The blue energy coils wrapped around the heavy barrel instantly flared to life. They hummed with a terrifying, high pitched whine that drowned out the sound of the rain.

"Let us see how you like true damage," Declan smiled a cold, empty smile.

He didn’t need to wait for a cooldown. His Boundless Enhancement talent completely ignored the weapon thermal limits and firing restrictions.

Declan planted his plus 10 Spiked Striders firmly into the melted glass floor. He leaned back slightly, bracing his heavy frame against the incoming recoil.

He pulled the heavy trigger.

BOOM!

There was no physical projectile. There was no fireball or ice spear.

A continuous, blinding beam of pure white deletion code erupted from the massive barrel. It was easily fifty feet wide. It tore through the dark, rainy sky like a localized supernova.

The sheer force of the recoil pushed Declan backward. His spiked boots dug deep trenches into the solid glass as he skidded back a full ten feet before his massive physical weight finally stopped him.

The sound was absolute insanity. It sounded like a massive jet engine screaming right next to his ears.

The white beam slammed directly into the center of the Apex Eradicator main chassis.

The Level 100 boss did not have a chance to dodge. It was still locked in its cooldown animation.

The deletion code hit the machine thick red energy shields. The shields didn’t even flicker. They didn’t try to absorb the hit. They were instantly vaporized!

The beam punched straight through the defensive barriers and slammed into the heavy black iron armor plates of the boss.

A massive wall of red damage numbers exploded into the sky. They scrolled so fast that the system UI literally began to lag.

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

"Oh my god," Nova whispered from the city walls. The elite hacker dropped to her knees, her icy blue eyes wide with pure horror. "That is a continuous stream of true damage. He is bypassing the boss entire defense stat."

Richter was completely speechless. The veteran corporate commander just stared at the blinding pillar of light connecting the guy in the trench coat to the Level 100 god in the sky.

The Apex Eradicator finally broke out of its animation lock. The machine shrieked!

It was a horrible, metallic grinding sound of pure digital agony. The massive server blocks making up its body began to violently warp and melt under the intense heat of the deletion beam.

Declan didn’t stop firing. He just held the trigger down.

His massive Ascendant tier mana pool fueled the weapon easily. He had over fifteen thousand raw mana points to burn, and he was perfectly fine with spending all of them right now to finish this fight.

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

The boss health bar plummeted. It fell from fifty million down to forty. Then thirty. Then twenty.

The sheer amount of data being destroyed in the sky was causing the environment to break. The dark clouds above the city turned a bright, glaring white. The toxic rain completely stopped, instantly evaporated by the ambient heat of the laser.

The Apex Eradicator desperately tried to move. It fired its heavy thrusters, trying to slide to the left to get out of the beam path.

Declan just casually adjusted his aim. He dragged the heavy twenty foot barrel to the left, his boots grinding against the glass. He kept the massive beam locked dead center on the machine red optical lens.

"You don’t get to run away," Declan said casually over the roaring noise. "You dropped a nuke on my city. Now you take your punishment."

The deletion code melted right through the boss right arm. The massive appendage, holding a heavy artillery cannon, was cleanly severed from the main body.

It dropped out of the sky and crashed into the ruined streets below, instantly dissolving into millions of useless blue pixels before it even settled into the dirt.

[Target Health: 15,000,000 / 50,000,000]

The Eradicator was rapidly falling apart. The pristine corporate paint job was scorched completely black. Its internal wiring sparked wildly, sending showers of green electricity raining down on the city block.

"Keep going!" Sloane cheered from the wall, entirely forgetting her fear. She pumped her fist in the air. "Melt that oversized toaster, Boss!"

Declan checked his mana bar. He was down to about four thousand points. The continuous firing of a Sovereign tier siege weapon was incredibly taxing on his reserves.

But it was enough. The boss was in the critical red zone.

[True Damage: Minus 1,500,000 HP]

[Target Health: 5,000,000 / 50,000,000]

The Level 100 Purge Entity let out one final, desperate screech. It knew it could not survive another three seconds of this massive damage output. It stopped trying to move entirely.

The massive red optical lens on its face suddenly stopped glowing. It turned a bright, panicked yellow.

Declan frowned. He eased his finger off the trigger. The blinding white beam instantly cut off, leaving the sky ringing with a heavy, unnatural silence.

The massive blue glass barrel of the Orbital Ion Reflector smoked heavily in his hands.

Declan looked up at the broken, smoking ruin of the Apex Eradicator. The boss was barely holding itself together in the sky. Its health bar was sitting at a pathetic five million points.

But the machine wasn’t falling. It wasn’t dead yet.

A new, highly urgent system prompt popped up in Declan vision. It flashed with a glaring yellow light that demanded his immediate attention.

[Warning: Target has initiated Emergency Data Upload.]

[Status: Fleeing Combat Zone.]

"An emergency upload?" Declan muttered. His dark eyes narrowed in pure annoyance. "You have got to be kidding me."

The Apex Paradigm had actually programmed a retreat mechanic into their ultimate boss monster.