The highly expensive silver dust slipped right through Declan’s thick fingers. It completely scattered in the cold toxic wind before vanishing into the dark puddle of contaminated rain near his boots.

He had just crushed two emergency corporate log-out drives. He had casually destroyed high-tier developer items worth millions of real world dollars.

He didn’t even blink. He simply wiped his hand on his pants.

"What did you just do?!" Commander Richter screamed.

His voice was entirely stripped of his usual calm military tone. The veteran mercenary sounded completely unhinged. He grabbed his own helmet while staring at the empty air where the drives used to be.

Declan just looked at him. His dark eyes swirled with thick corrupted purple energy.

"I don’t run from my own property," Declan said coldly.

He turned his back on the Level 70 Vanguard. He looked up at the massive glowing red optical lens hovering high above the Iron Bastion.

The machine was slowly descending from the dark clouds, pushing the toxic smog away with its sheer physical mass. The gravitational pressure of the Apex Eradicator was making the air feel incredibly heavy, almost like trying to breathe underwater.

Nova stood frozen near the edge of the heavy iron wall. The elite corporate hacker stared at the silver dust on the ground. Then she slowly looked up at the Warlord in the black Predator’s Coat.

Her icy blue eyes were wide open. Her jaw practically dropped as she stared at Declan as though he had run mad! She had completely forgotten about her ruined cybernetic suit and the lingering pain in her ribs.

Nova was an independent contractor. She worked for the highest bidder and trusted absolutely no one. In her world, every single player would backstab their own guild members for a piece of high-tier gear or a free escape route. It was just how the corporate game worked.

She had fully expected Declan to take the drives. She expected him to grab his friends, use his broken teleportation skills, and run to a secure bunker. She expected him to leave the three thousand refugees in the courtyard to die.

But he didn’t.

He crushed the multi-million dollar escape tickets without a single second of hesitation. He threw away a guaranteed survival pass just to stay here and protect a city full of random low-level strangers. Strangers who couldn’t even pay him back.

Nova realized something huge right then. She wasn’t looking at a game glitch. She wasn’t looking at a lucky hacker who just found a few system exploits to get rich.

The terrifying absolute confidence radiating from his posture was suffocating. He didn’t look like a player trapped in a death game. He didn’t look like a guy facing a Level 100 server wipe. He looked exactly like a king defending his castle from an annoying pest.

Her entire view of him completely shifted. The Warlord wasn’t just a dangerous anomaly anymore. He was a genuine invincible sovereign. For the first time in her entire gaming career, Nova actually felt safe standing behind someone else.

"You can stay here and panic," Declan stated smoothly. He rolled his shoulders.

The dense mythical alloy bones inside his body popped loudly, sounding like snapping branches.

He casually pulled the massive +40 Eclipse Severance halberd from his digital inventory. The air warped aggressively. The dark matter shaft dropped heavily into his right hand. The razor-thin blade made entirely of the night sky hummed with a hungry static energy.

"I am going to go execute it myself," Declan added.

"You can’t execute a server wipe!" Richter yelled, waving his heavy armored arms in frustration. "It doesn’t have a normal health bar! It’s an administrative tool! It’s just going to drop on the city and delete the code!"

Declan ignored him. He rested the heavy halberd on his shoulder. He liked it when people told him what he couldn’t do.

A loud frantic burst of static hissed over the city’s communication channel. Bram’s gruff voice echoed directly into Declan’s ear.

"Boss!" the old Artificer yelled. The sound of heavy hammering and panicking players echoed in the background. "The sub-core is failing! The raw mana crystals can’t output enough power to hold the shield against that kind of mass! If that giant machine touches the dome, the barrier shatters!"

"I know," Declan replied calmly while tapping his earpiece.

"The automated turrets can’t get a lock on it either!" Bram continued, his voice tight with extreme stress. "The system doesn’t register the Eradicator as a monster. It registers it as a weather event. The guns won’t fire! I can’t force the targeting logic to see it!"

"Tell the turrets to stand down," Declan ordered. He didn’t sound worried at all. "Reroute all the remaining power from the weapons directly into the shield. Give me as much time as you can."

"You got it, boss!" Bram shouted back.

Declan heard heavy rushed footsteps running up the stone stairs of the battlements. He turned his head slightly.

Sloane and Kendra burst onto the wall. They looked completely exhausted and out of breath. Sloane was gripping her glowing green healing staff so tightly her knuckles were white. Kendra had her +10 Sniper Bow knocked with an arrow, her eyes darting everywhere.

They looked up and saw the massive machine hovering in the sky. Both girls froze in pure unadulterated horror.

"Declan," Sloane gasped, pointing a shaking finger at the sky. "What in the world is that?"

"Apex Paradigm sent a janitor," Declan said casually.

"It’s huge!" Kendra yelled, lowering her bow. "It’s bigger than the worm! It’s bigger than the whole city!"

"It’s just a lot of floating metal," Declan replied. He turned fully to face his party members.

His Abyssal Sovereign aura flared slightly. The heavy comforting weight of his stats pushed back the oppressive pressure of the Eradicator, shielding his friends from the system’s dread debuff.

Sloane and Kendra instantly relaxed a little bit. The raw authority radiating from him grounded them. He always acted like everything was just a minor inconvenience.

"Quartermaster," Declan said, his voice dropping to a serious commanding tone.

"Yes, boss?" Sloane swallowed hard, standing up straighter.

"Get back down to the courtyard. Keep the refugees completely away from the East Gate. I want everyone packed into the central keep," Declan ordered. "If the shield breaks, the kinetic shockwave is going to tear up the streets. Keep them safe."

"What about you?" Sloane asked, her eyes filled with worry. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"I’ll handle the big guy," Declan smiled a dark empty smile.

"Declan, please be careful," Kendra whispered. "That thing looks like it deletes planets."

"That’s exactly what it does," Richter muttered from the side. The Vanguard commander looked like he was attending his own funeral. "We are all going to die here. Every single one of us."

"Richter," Declan snapped. "If you’re going to cry, go hide in the hospital wing with the patients. If you’re going to fight, hold your gun and wait for my signal."

Richter gritted his teeth, but he didn’t argue. He raised his heavy blue railgun, his hands shaking slightly.

Declan looked back up at the sky. The dark clouds were completely gone now. The entire atmosphere above Sector 7 was a glaring, violent, and bloody red.

The Apex Eradicator was dropping lower. It was easily the size of a massive commercial skyscraper. It was a chaotic terrifying mess of shifting server blocks, heavy artillery cannons, and thick red energy shields. It had no face. It just had a giant glowing red optical lens that stared directly down at the Iron Bastion.

The machine emitted a low heavy electronic hum. The sound vibrated the stone bricks of the wall beneath Declan’s boots. It rattled the weapons in the players’ hands.

The system UI for every normal player in the city started glitching. Small red error codes popped up in the corners of their vision. The game engine was literally struggling to exist in the same space as the Purge Entity.

Declan didn’t get any error codes. His sixty percent real-world synchronization rate and his Ascendant-tier class easily overpowered the system interference. His vision was perfectly clear.

He cracked his neck again. He rolled his shoulders, feeling his muscles respond perfectly.

He opened his internal system interface. He checked his biological state to make sure he was ready for a heavy hit.

[Host Information]

↳ Health: 6,600,000 / 6,600,000

↳ Bonus Shield: 300,000

↳ Stamina: 100 / 100

His health was fully maxed out thanks to the broken +20 Desolation Armor Set. He had an extra chunk of HP from the Sovereign Neural Crown sitting invisibly on his head. His Sanguine Engine heart was pumping perfectly, ready to convert any incoming damage into a massive over-heal blood shield.

He was absolutely ready. He had the stats of a walking apocalypse.

He gripped the dark matter shaft of the Eclipse Severance halberd with both hands. He didn’t feel afraid. He just felt an intense overwhelming urge to break the megacorp’s newest toy into tiny pieces.

Suddenly, a massive golden chime rang out. It echoed across the entire server.

A giant text box unrolled across the red sky, completely blocking out the Eradicator for a split second. The system was formally announcing the execution order.

Declan narrowed his eyes. It was time to look at the math.