Declan stared at the massive, pulsing heart of dark purple metal sitting on his floor. It was radiating a cold, heavy pressure that made the air in the penthouse feel incredibly thick and suffocating.

He knew exactly what was about to happen.

Every time he consumed a high-tier core, his body underwent a violent, agonizing biological reconstruction.

The game didn’t just give you stats. It forced your human DNA to tear itself apart and rebuild itself using the digital code of the item.

When he ate the Level 50 Spire Master core, he had coughed up blood and felt his bones splinter. It had felt like getting run over by a truck.

This was a plus 20 mutated Ascendant-tier drive fused from five different end-game bosses.

Declan didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t brace himself or take a deep breath. He just stood up from the leather chair, walked over to the hovering mass of metal, and placed his bare hands firmly on it.

"Consume," Declan commanded.

The Leviathan’s Heart didn’t shatter. It didn’t turn into a liquid. The massive engine violently imploded, turning into a concentrated beam of pure, blinding purple energy that shot directly into Declan’s chest!

"GHKK!" Declan choked.

He was instantly blasted backward. He flew across the room and slammed into the heavy iron wall. The impact dented the solid metal deeply. He collapsed onto the floor, clutching his chest as his entire digital avatar violently glitched.

The pain was absolute. It was entirely beyond human comprehension.

It felt like someone had injected boiling liquid nitrogen directly into his bone marrow. His digital vision fractured into thousands of jagged squares of static. Red critical error warnings spammed across his sight so fast they formed a solid wall of light.

[CRITICAL ALERT: Physical Vessel Overload.]

[Massive Data Injection Exceeds Mortal Parameters.]

[Initiating Biological Overwrite...]

The thick blue conductive gel boiled and hissed. The heavy industrial cables feeding power into the machine sparked wildly, throwing off showers of bright blue electricity that scorched the concrete floor.

His skin turned deathly pale. The dark, corrupted veins running down his neck and arms bulged so far outward they looked like thick black ropes. His muscles spasmed and locked, tearing the fabric of his ruined orange prison jumpsuit to absolute shreds.

The dense, mythical alloy bones he had gained shattered entirely. They didn’t break from an outside force. They broke because the new code was expanding them from the inside out, forcing them to hold more mass than physically possible.

The horrific sound of snapping and reforming bone echoed loudly in the empty warehouse, sounding like a collapsing building.

In the game, Declan gritted his teeth so hard he tasted digital blood. He dragged his nails across the stone floor of the penthouse, carving deep grooves into the rock just to ground himself through the agony.

His SSS-Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, surged forward automatically.

It acted as an aggressive internal firewall, brutally crushing the conflicting data streams and forcing his body to accept the massive mutation.

The agony lasted for three excruciating minutes.

Then, the blinding pain vanished. It was replaced instantly by a sensation of pure, cold, and infinite gravity.

The red warning boxes in his vision shattered into blue dust. The static cleared completely.

Declan lay on the floor, panting heavily. The air in the room felt different. It felt incredibly thin and fragile, as if his mere presence was too much for the physical space to handle.

He slowly pushed himself up off the ground.

He didn’t feel tired. He felt like he had just woken up from a ten-year sleep, utterly refreshed and buzzing with raw energy.

He looked down at his hands. His skin was still pale, but the dark veins were gone. His flesh looked entirely normal. But when he clenched his fist, the air actually popped from the sheer displacement of force.

A massive golden prompt floated gracefully in the center of his vision.

[Synchronization Overwrite Complete.]

Real-World Synchronization Rate Jumped to 100%.

↳ Physical Vessel Status: Abyssal Leviathan Physiology Awakened.

Declan tapped the prompt. He needed to read the exact mechanics of what he had just done to his own DNA.

[Physiology Trait 1: Infinite Mass]

↳ Grants a permanent 10x multiplier to base physical mass and all kinetic damage output. The user’s strikes carry the weight of a deep-sea trench. You cannot be moved against your will.

[Physiology Trait 2: Abyssal Scales]

↳ The user’s physical density permanently negates a flat 30% of all incoming physical, magical, and conceptual damage before armor calculations are applied.

[Physiology Trait 3: Leviathan’s Roar]

↳ The user can emit a localized EMP-wave of pure Abyssal energy. Instantly disables and destroys all mechanical, technological, and low-tier magical constructs within a one-mile radius.

Declan stared at the text. He read it twice to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

A slow, predatory smile spread across his face.

Ten times the mass. Thirty percent flat damage negation on top of his +20 Desolation Armor Set and his +20 Black Aegis riot shield. And a built-in EMP that could drop corporate gunships right out of the sky without him even throwing a punch.

He wasn’t just a player with hacked gear anymore. He was a walking extinction-level event!

He walked over to the heavy iron wall he had crashed into earlier. The thick metal was dented inward.

Declan didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t activate his Sovereign-tier skills. He just casually reached out and tapped the iron wall with his index finger.

He didn’t put any force behind it. He didn’t wind up. He just let the 10x mass multiplier of his new physiology carry the weight of the motion.

BOOM!

The sound was exactly like a tank cannon firing. The entire wall buckled violently. A massive spiderweb of cracks exploded outward from where his finger touched the metal. The iron groaned and shrieked before a huge chunk of it simply blew outward, leaving a gaping ten-foot hole in the side of the penthouse.

The cold, toxic wind of Sector 4 howled into the room.

Declan looked at his finger. He didn’t feel a thing. No recoil. No pain.

"Okay," Declan laughed, a deep and terrifying sound that vibrated the floorboards. "That is just completely unfair. I love it."

He had absolute power. He had a fully synchronized real-world body. He owned the biggest fortress on the server.

It was time to wake up. It was time to head outside and show the Apex Paradigm megacorp exactly what happened when you tried to pull the plug on a god.