The glowing blue holographic screen popped up right in front of his face. It illuminated the dark leather of his chair and the heavy iron walls of the penthouse.

Declan looked at the filtered inventory list. He had been extremely busy over the last few days. He hadn’t just farmed standard monsters in the mud. He had actively hunted down the biggest, baddest threats on the server.

And every single time he killed a major boss, he threw their core into his digital storage.

He tapped the screen, pulling the items out into the real physical space of the room.

Five massive objects materialized and dropped onto the floor with heavy, solid thuds. They rolled slightly on the stone before coming to a stop.

Declan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked at his highly illegal collection. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The first was the core from Gargantua, the Rot-Walker. It was a pulsating, sickly green sphere covered in tiny rotting vines. It smelled heavily like a toxic swamp and old garbage.

The second was the core from the Blood-Crazed Wendigo. It was a jagged, sharp piece of dark red crystal that actively leaked digital blood onto the floor, hissing softly.

The third was the core from Malthus, the First Apostle of Rot. It was a perfectly smooth, white-hot orb that hummed with pure, divine energy that felt heavy in the room.

The fourth was the core from the Abyssal Herald. It was a chaotic cluster of floating, geometric black pyramids and silver rings that completely defied gravity, spinning in a tight circle.

And the fifth was the massive, glowing green engine block he had ripped out of the Level 85 System Purge General right before deleting it at the North Gate.

A normal player would consume these cores one by one over the course of several months. They would take the minor stat boosts, deal with the extreme physical pain of the data injection, and slowly build up their real-world synchronization rate safely.

"Normal is boring," Declan stated flatly.

He didn’t want minor stat boosts. He didn’t want to slowly acclimate his real-world body to the Grid’s physics over a long period of time. He wanted a single, massive upgrade that would permanently turn his physical vessel into an unstoppable force.

He needed to combine them.

"System," Declan commanded. "Initiate crafting menu. Target all five boss cores. Begin fusion process."

The blue interface instantly flashed an angry, glaring red. The system chimes screamed in his ears like a broken fire alarm.

[CRITICAL ERROR!]

[Action Denied. Target items possess conflicting elemental and conceptual parameters.]

[Warning: Attempting to fuse Entity-class cores will result in catastrophic data collapse. Items will be permanently destroyed. Extreme explosive hazard detected.]

"I really need to find a way to mute you," Declan sighed, completely ignoring the massive red text blocking his view.

The game engine was throwing a massive fit. It was operating on standard logic.

You couldn’t mix rotting swamp magic with divine Spire energy and Abyssal dark matter. The codes would actively fight each other until they exploded and wiped out the entire room.

But Declan’s SSS-Rank talent didn’t care about standard logic.

His dark eyes flared with deep, swirling purple energy. He tapped into his Abyssal Sovereign administrative authority, pulling on the raw power he had accumulated.

"Override," Declan growled, his voice dropping into that heavy, room-shaking bass. "Apply Boundless Enhancement. Force the fusion."

The talent surged forward like a speeding freight train crashing through a wooden fence. The red warning boxes shattered into millions of tiny digital pixels that rained down harmlessly.

A blinding, intense golden light erupted from the floor.

The five massive boss cores were violently dragged together by the sheer force of Declan’s hacked skill.

The green swamp vines wrapped tightly around the bloody red crystal. The divine white orb smashed directly into the geometric black pyramids.

The sound was horrifying. It sounded like a massive car crusher violently compressing tons of solid steel into a tiny box.

The air in the penthouse warped and distorted, creating a mini-vacuum that pulled the heavy velvet curtains tight against the windows and sent loose papers flying.

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement Activated. Safety protocols bypassed.]

[Forcing Code Integration...]

[Fusion Successful.]

The blinding gold light faded, replaced by a deep, pulsing, and suffocating dark blue aura.

Declan sat back in his chair. He looked at the new item resting on the stone floor.

It was no longer five separate cores. It was a single, massive object about the size of a car engine. It was perfectly smooth, made of a dark, shimmering blue metal that looked exactly like the surface of a deep ocean.

Thick, glowing silver veins pulsed across its surface, pumping raw, unadulterated energy in a rhythmic heartbeat.

It didn’t just sit there. It hovered a few inches off the ground, completely ignoring gravity.

Declan pulled up the item scanner.

[Item Recognized: Ascendant Origin Drive]

↳ Tier: Divine Anomaly

↳ Description: A highly unstable and illegal fusion of multiple Entity-class data cores. Contains enough raw dimensional mass to fully overwrite a real-world physical vessel.

Declan smirked. "Perfect. Now, let’s make it broken."

He wasn’t going to eat it raw. He was going to use his Origin Points to push this thing past the game’s mathematical limits. He had tens of millions of points sitting in his treasury from the Abyssal Tide wipe event.

"System. Enhance the Ascendant Origin Drive. Push it to plus twenty."

The system didn’t even bother throwing up a red warning box this time. It knew it was completely useless against his talent. The AI just processed the command with a resigned beep.

[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating Cost...]

↳ Cost for +1 to +20: 25,000,000 Origin Points.

Twenty-five million points.

It was a price tag that would make the top ten guilds on the server collectively weep. That was enough currency to buy a fully upgraded corporate army.

"Take it," Declan ordered.

The points vanished from his bank. Instantly, a column of pure, glaring white light crashed down from the ceiling, completely engulfing the dark blue engine on the floor.

The system chimes hammered rapidly, stacking on top of each other.

[Origin Drive +5... +10... +15... +20.]

[Maximum limit breached.]

[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]

The white light shifted. It turned into a color so dark and deep it physically hurt to look at. It was the color of the absolute bottom of the ocean, where no light had ever reached.

The physical shape of the drive warped. The smooth metal cracked and grew jagged, thick scales. The silver veins turned a bright, toxic purple.

The mutated item dropped heavily to the floor, cracking the solid stone beneath it with its sheer density.

Declan leaned forward and read the new, glaring gold text floating above it.

[Item Mutated: Leviathan’s Heart +20]

↳ Functionality: Upon consumption, guarantees the permanent awakening of the Abyssal Leviathan Physiology in the host’s physical vessel.

"Abyssal Leviathan Physiology," Declan whispered. The name alone sounded like a server wipe. He liked it.