Chapter 97: [97] : Tearing Down the Sky, Nullified Authority

The sky above Sector 7 was pitch black and freezing cold.

A second ago, a massive sun made of white-hot plasma had been falling toward the city. It was an ultimate attack from a Level 90 alien invader. It was supposed to vaporize the Iron Bastion, melt the energy dome, and turn three thousand players into a puddle of boiling sludge.

But it didn’t.

Declan had just pointed his finger at it. He used a cheap, Scavenged-tier water shield spell that he had mutated to plus fifty using a completely absurd amount of Origin Points. The resulting skill, Oceanic Void, acted like a cosmic vacuum cleaner. It just sucked the entire miniature sun into a tiny black marble of water and then vanished.

Now, the intense, baking heat was completely gone. It was replaced by a biting, winter chill that made the air feel thin and sharp.

Down in the courtyard of the Iron Bastion, thousands of players were huddled on the stone pavement. They were shivering from the sudden drop in temperature. They looked up at the sky in absolute, stunned silence. They had covered their heads, expecting to be incinerated. Instead, they were just really cold.

High up in the air, floating exactly fifty feet away from Declan, the Saint of Embers was frozen in shock.

Korr, the Level 90 alien player, stared at his empty hand. The fiery aura that constantly rolled off his dark, volcanic glass armor sputtered and died. The area of effect from Declan’s spell had completely drained the ambient thermal energy in the airspace.

"Error," the alien gasped out loud. His telepathic projection actually shattered into spoken words. He sounded like a furious, confused old man. "That... that is mathematically impossible! Where did the energy go?! That was a Zenith-tier cast!"

"I deleted it," Declan said smoothly.

He floated perfectly still in the freezing air. He wasn’t using a flying spell. His sixty percent real-world synchronization rate, combined with his Abyssal Sovereign class, meant he could just stand on the atmosphere if he wanted to.

He brushed a speck of gray ash off the shoulder of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.

"You deleted it," Korr repeated. The alien’s voice was shaking with rage. The bright orange fire leaking from the eye slits of his dragon-shaped helmet flared up again. "You cannot delete a Level 90 skill! The system hierarchy does not allow a native anomaly to override my command inputs! You are cheating!"

Declan rolled his eyes. He really hated dealing with gamers who whined about game balance.

"Patch notes just dropped," Declan called out casually. "Your build is obsolete. You should probably log out before you lose your gear."

"I am a Saint of the Outer Sectors!" Korr roared. His voice shifted back into the heavy, telepathic broadcast that echoed inside the minds of everyone in the city below. "I have conquered three dozen worlds for Apex Paradigm! I will not be mocked by a glitch in a dirty coat!"

Korr didn’t try to summon another sun. He realized that throwing massive area-of-effect spells at this guy was a waste of mana. He needed to lock him down and crush him.

The alien player threw both of his massive, armored hands forward.

[Target Hostile: Saint of Embers is casting.]

[Warning: Level 90 Defensive and Trapping Spells incoming.]

"Burn and be bound!" Korr shouted.

Three massive glowing magic circles appeared directly in front of the alien. They stacked on top of each other, forming a thick, impenetrable wall of defensive magic.

The first layer was a swirling shield of solid obsidian rock. The second layer was a roaring wall of golden fire. The third layer was a complex geometric grid of glowing red runes designed to completely disable teleportation and movement skills.

Korr was an experienced veteran. He knew how to secure his position. He dropped a spatial lock to stop Declan from using Void Blink, and then he put up two layers of max-level physical and magical defense.

"Now," Korr sneered from safely behind his barriers. "Let us see you delete that, native trash!"

Declan didn’t look impressed. He just looked annoyed.

He raised his right hand. The air distorted violently, ripping open to reveal a flash of green binary code. The heavy, dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd dropped perfectly into his grip.

The razor-thin blade made of the night sky hummed with a chaotic, static energy. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the axe head instantly began sucking in the freezing air around it.

"You guys always hide behind shields," Declan sighed.

He didn’t bother using Void Blink. The system was currently throwing red warning boxes in his vision, telling him that spatial movement was locked by the enemy’s rune grid. Declan could have forced it, but he didn’t feel like burning the stamina.

Instead, he just kicked off the empty air.

His +10 Spiked Striders cracked against the atmosphere like he was jumping off a solid concrete wall. His base Agility was sitting at 90, heavily multiplied by his class stats. He crossed the fifty-foot gap in a fraction of a millisecond.

To the players watching from the ground, Declan was just a blur of black leather that suddenly appeared right in front of the alien’s massive glowing barriers.

"Fool!" Korr laughed loudly from behind his shields. "You cannot break the Aegis of the Sun God with a physical weapon! The recoil will shatter your arms into dust!"

"I’m not going to break it," Declan said. His voice was calm and right in the alien’s ear.

Declan swung the massive halberd horizontally.

He didn’t swing it hard. He didn’t activate the Gravity Well trait to crush the shield. He didn’t even put his back into it. He just dragged the dark blade across the space in front of him like he was painting a line on a canvas.

The Spacetime Laceration trait activated automatically.

The system mechanics for the +40 Eclipse Severance were completely broken. The weapon did not calculate physical damage numbers. The edge of the blade ignored all physical, magical, and conceptual durability.

The dark blade passed through the glowing red rune grid. It passed through the roaring wall of golden fire. It passed through the solid obsidian shield.

There was no sound of metal hitting rock. There was no explosion of clashing magic.

There was just the distinct, wet sound of thick canvas tearing perfectly in half.

The blade ignored the defensive properties of the Level 90 skills entirely. It simply severed the spatial coordinates that the shields were occupying.

Korr’s confident laugh died in his throat.

The three massive layers of absolute defense froze. A jagged line of green binary code appeared horizontally across the center of the shields. A split second later, the top half of the magical barriers slowly slid backward, completely disconnected from the bottom half.

The shields didn’t shatter. They just fell apart into harmless chunks of digital data that faded into the freezing air.

Declan stepped right through the gap. He was now standing less than two feet away from the towering, nine-foot-tall alien.

Korr’s glowing eyes went wide with pure, unfiltered terror. He tried to raise his massive right arm to punch Declan. He tried to activate a close-quarters combat skill.

He was way too slow.

Declan didn’t even stop his swing. He just let the momentum of the halberd carry the blade forward in a smooth, continuous arc.

The razor-thin edge of the night sky met Korr’s right shoulder. The thick, heavily reinforced volcanic glass armor of the Saint of Embers was supposed to be indestructible. It was forged from high-tier drops from dozens of conquered planets.

The halberd went through it like a hot knife through warm butter.

Schwing!

The blade exited cleanly from the alien’s armpit.

For exactly one second, nothing happened. The system was furiously trying to calculate how a Level 70 player had just completely bypassed the defense rating of a Level 90 Entity.

Then, the server gave up and accepted the code overwrite.

[Critical Hit! Physical Durability Ignored.]

[Target Severed.]

Korr let out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek!

His massive right arm, still clad in thick volcanic armor, slid cleanly off his shoulder. It tumbled through the air, completely separated from his body.

A massive geyser of bright golden blood erupted from the clean stump. It sprayed wildly into the cold air, raining down like a shower of liquid gold.

The heavy, armored arm fell for thousands of feet. It crashed directly into the transparent black energy dome of the Iron Bastion down below. The impact sounded like a bomb going off, but the barrier easily deflected it. The severed limb slid down the side of the dome and crashed into the muddy wasteland outside the city walls.

Up in the sky, Korr stumbled backward. He clutched his bleeding, severed shoulder with his remaining hand. His telepathic voice was entirely gone, replaced by raw, guttural screaming.

"My arm!" Korr howled, staring at the golden blood pouring between his fingers. "What is that weapon?! That is not a programmed item!"

Declan rested the flat side of the heavy dark matter halberd casually against his shoulder. His pitch-black coat was completely spotless, perfectly repelling the alien’s golden blood.

He looked at the crying, panicked Level 90 boss.

"I told you," Declan smiled coldly, his dark eyes entirely devoid of mercy. "Your build is obsolete."