Chapter 65: [65] : Slicing the Void, Spacetime Laceration

The Abyssal Herald did not hesitate. The Level 55 Entity threw its massive six fingered hand forward.

The sphere of dark matter resting in its palm exploded outward. It didn’t shoot out like a normal fireball or a magic missile. It expanded into a massive and towering wave of pure disintegrating void energy that took up the entire width of the subway cavern.

The wave rushed forward like a tsunami of black ink. Where the dark matter touched the fleshy walls of the temple, the pulsing red muscle didn’t burn or melt. It simply ceased to exist. The bone pillars holding up the ceiling were instantly erased, leaving empty gaps of nothingness behind.

It was a total wipe mechanic. A massive area attack designed to completely delete any player caught in its path. There was no dodging it. There was no blocking it with a high defense stat.

Declan didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t activate Void Blink to teleport behind it.

He just stood perfectly still in the center of the bone platform. His pitch black Predator’s Coat fluttered wildly from the sheer vacuum pressure of the incoming wave.

He gripped the heavy shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance with both hands. The blade was already humming with a chaotic static energy that literally tore tiny black holes in the air around it.

He waited until the towering wave of dark matter was exactly three feet away from his face. He could feel the deletion code pulling at the digital fabric of his avatar.

Then, he swung.

He didn’t swing hard. He didn’t need to trigger the massive gravity well or the weight increase. He just brought the blade down in a clean and smooth vertical arc right down the middle of the dark matter wave.

The Spacetime Laceration trait activated effortlessly.

The sound was completely weird. It didn’t sound like a weapon clashing against magic. It sounded exactly like someone ripping a massive sheet of thick canvas perfectly in half.

The jagged blade sliced directly through the center of the deletion wave. The game’s code literally parted around the edge of the halberd. The dark matter split into two separate halves, rushing harmlessly past Declan on his left and right sides.

The split waves crashed into the far end of the cavern. It instantly erased a massive chunk of the wall and left a giant hole of empty black void behind.

Declan stood completely untouched in the middle of the platform. He rested the flat side of the halberd against his shoulder.

"You missed," Declan noted casually.

The Abyssal Herald froze. Hundreds of glowing red eyes widened across its floating geometric blocks. The Entity actually backed up, its black pyramids and silver rings spinning frantically in an uncoordinated rhythm.

"Error," the Herald’s voice echoed in Declan’s mind.

The telepathic projection was completely stripped of its cold divine authority. It just sounded like a panicked machine throwing out warning alerts.

"Action impossible. Conceptual deletion wave cannot be blocked. Target mass must equal zero."

"I didn’t block it," Declan said. He took a slow step forward. "I just cut the coordinate plane it was traveling on. Try again."

The Herald panicked. It didn’t use a slow and massive wave this time. It unleashed a frantic barrage of targeted attacks.

Dozens of the floating red eyes covering its body suddenly flared with blinding light. A split second later, a hail of highly concentrated deletion lasers shot across the room. They crisscrossed in a deadly grid, aiming to cut Declan into a hundred tiny square pieces.

Declan sighed. "Void Blink."

The world went pitch black for a fraction of a millisecond. He completely bypassed the laser grid. He teleported fifteen meters forward and reappeared directly in the center of the Herald’s personal space.

He materialized right underneath the massive floating structure of eyes and metal.

The Herald shrieked. It was a horrible metallic grinding sound that vibrated the bone floor. The Entity tried to retreat and pulled its geometric blocks backward to open up distance.

But it was way too slow. Declan’s base Agility was hovering around 90. He moved like a blur of dark leather.

Declan stepped into the Entity’s guard. He raised the +40 Eclipse Severance high above his head and brought it down in a vicious horizontal sweep.

He aimed right for the central core holding the floating shapes together.

The blade didn’t meet any resistance. It didn’t bounce off a conceptual armor shield. It didn’t calculate a massive critical hit number.

The Spacetime Laceration trait simply deleted the space the Herald was occupying.

The jagged and static filled edge passed cleanly through the center of the massive boss. It didn’t leave a bloody cut. It left a massive and glowing tear in the fabric of reality itself. A jagged line of raw green binary code floated in the air where the blade had just traveled. It completely severed the top half of the Herald from the bottom half.

The monster froze completely.

All the spinning silver rings and black pyramids instantly stopped moving. The hundreds of red eyes blinked rapidly, throwing up tiny glitching error symbols.

"System critical," the Herald gurgled out loud. It didn’t use telepathy this time. Its actual voice box sounded like a broken speaker. "Code severed. Reconnection failed."

The two halves of the massive Entity slowly drifted apart, completely disconnected from the game’s physics engine.

Then, the deletion kicked in.

The Herald didn’t shatter into a massive explosion of blood and gore. It didn’t put up a final fight. The jagged tear in reality literally sucked the monster’s code inward. The geometric shapes crumpled like tin foil being crushed in a fist.

The Entity let out one final and deafening screech of pure digital agony before it was violently compressed into a single point of light and erased from the server.

[Spire Master: Abyssal Herald Defeated!]

↳ Level: 55

↳ Experience Points Gained: 12,000,000

Declan’s vision flooded with an absolute sea of golden light. The level up chimes hammered in his head so fast they blurred into one long continuous ring. He didn’t even bother checking his new level. He knew it was absurd.

He looked down at the bone platform.

Where the Level 55 boss had just been floating, there was only a single item left behind. It was a pulsing dark purple crystal shaped like a jagged square. It radiated a heavy and suffocating aura.

Declan knelt down and picked it up. It felt like holding a live car battery.

[Item Retrieved: Abyssal Core]

Before he could even pull up the item description, the entire subway cavern began to shake violently.

The fleshy walls of the temple groaned. Massive chunks of the pulsing red muscle started turning gray and rotting away at incredible speed. The giant human thigh bones holding up the ceiling cracked loudly.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

The dungeon was collapsing. The Abyssal Herald was the only thing anchoring this corrupted zone to the server. With the boss dead, the game was actively deleting the room.

A massive chunk of the bone ceiling completely caved in and crashed down onto the platform just a few feet away from Declan. The entire temple was caving in on itself.

Declan didn’t panic. He had what he came for.

He pulled up his system interface, tapped the party chat, and hit the manual disconnect button.

The collapsing flesh temple, the falling rocks, and the deafening noise instantly vanished. The world dissolved into a blinding white flash.