Chapter 101: [101] : Primal Overwrite, Collateral Damage

Declan materialized out of the dark void.

His heavy Spiked Striders hit the ground with a solid crunch.

He looked around.

The environment was completely different from Sector 4.

The sky was not burning red or sickly purple. It was a chaotic mess of fractured static.

Half the trees in the area were rendering upside down.

The ground kept shifting between solid dirt and floating gray polygons.

A system prompt popped up flickering with error codes.

[Entered Area: The Shattered Expanse]

[Warning: Level 65 Hazard Zone. Severe code corruption detected.]

"Level 65," Declan noted casually.

He brushed a speck of dust off his black Predator’s Coat. "Perfect."

He did not care about the glitched environment.

He was following the residual spatial trail left by the corporate assassin.

The glowing trail of gray light led straight into a massive crater up ahead.

Declan walked forward. He did not bother trying to use stealth.

Before he could reach the edge of the crater the ground in front of him violently erupted.

A massive geyser of corrupted blue pixels shot into the air.

A monster pulled itself out of the digital hole.

It did not look like an animal. It looked like a walking pile of scrambled server data.

It had three jagged arms a torso made of twisted metal wire and a head that kept rapidly shifting between a wolf skull and a blank error screen.

[Target: Abyssal Glitch Entity]

[Level: 65]

[HP: 250,000 / 250,000]

The Glitch Entity let out a horrific screech that sounded like an old dial-up modem crashing.

It raised its three jagged arms and lunged right at Declan.

Declan did not even slow his walking pace.

He just reached his right hand out.

The air warped and screamed.

The heavy dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance dropped perfectly into his grip.

He did not swing hard. He did not use the massive gravity well trait.

He just casually dragged the razor-thin blade across the space in front of him.

The Spacetime Laceration trait activated instantly.

The blade did not hit the monster’s physical hit box.

It simply deleted the coordinate plane the creature was occupying.

There was no clashing of metal. There was just the wet sound of tearing canvas.

The Glitch Entity froze mid-lunge.

A perfect black line appeared across its chaotic body.

A second later the two halves slid apart and instantly dissolved into a massive cloud of blue digital dust.

[Level 65 Abyssal Glitch Entity Defeated!]

[Origin Points +3,500]

Declan stepped right through the falling blue pixels.

He walked up to the loot drop.

Sitting in the dirt were two sleek silver rectangular drives.

They glowed with high-tier corporate security coding.

[Item Retrieved: Advanced Data Drive x2]

"Vendor trash," Declan muttered.

He threw them into his infinite digital inventory. He wanted the assassin’s gear.

He reached the edge of the crater and looked down.

Morgan was down there.

The corporate assassin in the skin-tight black tactical suit was kneeling in the dirt.

Her high-tech stealth gear was sparking wildly.

But she was not hiding. She was violently clawing at her own helmet.

She ripped the optical visor off her head and threw it at the crater wall.

Her face was pale covered in sweat and her eyes were completely bloodshot.

The veins on her neck bulged out like thick ropes.

Declan frowned.

He looked above her head.

A massive glaring red system debuff was actively flashing over her health bar.

[Warning: Target infected with Neural Frenzy.]

[Status: Severe system virus. Target’s logic core completely overridden. Physical stats temporarily scaled to match the highest threat entity in the immediate vicinity.]

"Oh," Declan said softly. "That’s not good."

Morgan’s head snapped up.

Her bloodshot eyes locked onto Declan standing at the edge of the crater.

She did not look like a calculating professional killer anymore. She looked like a rabid animal.

The virus was pulling her stats up to match his.

It was using him as the benchmark.

And Declan was a Level 70 Abyssal Sovereign with completely broken base stats.

Morgan let out a guttural feral scream.

The ground beneath her boots shattered as she launched herself directly at him.

She crossed the fifty-foot gap in a fraction of a millisecond.

She moved exactly as fast as he did!

Declan raised the massive shaft of his halberd to block.

Morgan did not use a weapon.

She slammed her bare fists directly into the dark matter polearm. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

CLANG!

The kinetic impact was absolutely terrifying.

It sounded like two freight trains colliding head-on.

The shockwave blew the surrounding glitched trees completely flat.

Declan was actually pushed backward!

His boots dug deep trenches into the dirt as he skidded away from the crater.

"Okay, you’re strong," Declan grunted.

He could not just swing the Eclipse Severance at her.

If he hit her with the Spacetime Laceration it would not just deal damage.

It would literally delete her avatar from the server.

He did not want to erase her. He just wanted to loot her.

He willed the halberd away. It vanished into blue pixels.

Morgan did not give him a second to breathe.

The virus completely possessed her mind.

She lunged again tackling him right around the waist.

Declan dropped his center of gravity.

He locked his arms around her back and used her own momentum to flip her over his shoulder.

He slammed her back-first into the hard ground.

The dirt cratered around them.

Morgan did not even flinch.

She ignored the pain entirely.

She twisted her legs wrapping them around his arm and violently jerked her hips to throw him off balance.

It was an incredibly gritty and chaotic physical brawl.

There was no flashy magic. There were no fireballs or ice shields.

It was just two heavily synced players with god-tier physical stats tearing up the landscape with their bare hands.

Declan threw a heavy right hook.

Morgan caught his fist with her palm.

The sheer force of the block cracked the bones in her hand but the virus instantly forced her to ignore it.

She drove her knee straight into his ribs.

Declan’s +10 Predator’s Coat absorbed the worst of it but the impact still knocked the wind out of him.

"Stay down!" Declan barked.

He grabbed her by the tactical collar and slammed her back into the mud.

She snarled biting down hard on his forearm.

Her teeth could not pierce his Abyssal skin but she refused to let go.

She thrashed wildly scratching kicking and fighting like a cornered beast.

He could not knock her out.

The system virus would not let her lose consciousness.

It would force her body to keep fighting until her stamina reached zero or the debuff timer ran out.

Declan realized what he had to do.

He had to burn the virus out of her.

He shifted his weight completely pinning her to the muddy ground.

He used his massive base strength to lock her arms down by her sides.

He pressed his heavy frame directly over hers refusing to give her an inch of leverage.

Morgan thrashed violently beneath him.

She screamed and bucked her hips desperately trying to throw him off.

It was a highly intimate totally system-forced wrestling match.

Declan just kept his face completely blank.

He absorbed every wild headbutt and frantic knee strike.

He just held her there letting her burn every single ounce of her stamina against his immovable defense.

The brawl devolved into a grueling endurance test.

They rolled through the dirt. They crashed into broken rocks.

They were both covered entirely in mud and sweat.

Hours passed.

The glitched sky above them flickered endlessly.

Slowly Morgan’s frantic thrashing started to weaken.

Her movements grew sluggish.

Her feral screams turned into exhausted gasps for air.

The red debuff icon over her head started to blink rapidly.

Finally with one last weak shove against his chest her eyes rolled back.

The Neural Frenzy timer hit zero.

The virus burned out.

She went completely limp in the mud totally unconscious.

Declan let out a heavy sigh.

He rolled off her and lay back on the ruined ground.

His stamina bar was heavily depleted.

His coat was covered in mud.

’Worst boss fight ever!’ Declan smiled bitterly as he slumped back.

Three hours later Morgan gasped and her eyes snapped open.

She sat up violently.

Her whole body screamed in agony.

Her muscles felt like they had been run through a meat grinder.

She looked down at herself.

Her pristine corporate tactical suit was ruined torn and completely caked in thick mud.

She looked up.

Declan was sitting on a flat rock a few feet away.

He was perfectly clean.

His black coat did not have a single speck of dirt on it.

He was casually scrolling through his glowing system interface.

Morgan’s face instantly flushed a bright furious red.

The memories of the virus came flooding back.

She remembered exactly what had happened.

She remembered the feral wrestling match.

She remembered being completely pinned to the ground for hours.

She scrambled backward pulling her knees to her chest.

She looked incredibly defensive and utterly humiliated.

"You... What did you do?!" Morgan stammered her voice raspy and dry.

Declan did not look up from his screen.

He just swiped to the next page of the auction house.

"I saved your life from a system virus," Declan said.

His voice was completely cold and unfazed.

"You tried to bite my arm off for three hours. It was very annoying."

He finally closed the interface.

He looked directly at her.

"You owe me a toll," Declan demanded smoothly. "Pay up in Origin Points or I leave you here for the glitch monsters."

"Also, you have a lot of explaining to do"