Declan did not stop walking.

His heavy spiked boots crunched loudly against the melted glass of the server room floor. Every step echoed in the quiet and ruined vault.

Cipher was pressed flat against the wall. The golden boy of Sector 1 looked absolutely pathetic.

His pristine gold cybernetic armor was dented and scorched. His perfectly styled blonde hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.

He was staring at the Warlord in the pitch-black Predator’s Coat. He was staring at a guy who just ate a highly illegal server-wiping virus and got a stat buff from it.

"Stay back!" Cipher yelled as his voice cracked. He raised his hands defensively.

"I am a sponsored player! You don’t know who you’re messing with! Proud Sword Megacorp will hunt you down!"

Declan just smiled. It was a cold and empty smile that didn’t reach his dark purple-swirling eyes.

"I already wiped out one corporate army today," Declan said smoothly. "I really don’t mind making it two."

He stopped two feet away from the terrified streamer.

Three sleek white camera drones hovered nervously around Cipher’s head. Their red recording lights were blinking rapidly.

The live feed was still broadcasting to the entire global server. Millions of players were watching this happen in real-time.

Declan didn’t pull up a menu. He just focused his mind and pulled up the public chat log on his own interface. It was moving so fast it looked like a solid wall of white text.

[User_Gamer99: DID HE JUST EAT THE MALWARE?!]

[Titan_Tank: What is his physical density stat?! That is impossible!]

[ProudSword_Fan: Cipher, get out of there! Use a teleport scroll!]

[Rogue_Shadow: He can’t! He has the combat lock debuff! He’s trapped!]

Declan closed the chat. He looked at the camera drones. Then he looked back at Cipher.

"Your viewers are going to love this next part," Declan said.

"Wait! Wait, we can make a deal!" Cipher begged.

He pressed his hands against the wall trying to push himself backward but there was nowhere to go.

"I have millions of credits in my real-world bank account! I can transfer them to you right now! Just let me log out!"

"I don’t take credits," Declan replied flatly. "I take Origin Points. And I take loot."

Declan reached his right hand out. He didn’t move fast. He didn’t use his absurd base Agility. He just moved with heavy and terrifying purpose.

He grabbed the front chest plate of Cipher’s golden armor.

"Get your hands off me!" Cipher shrieked.

The streamer panicked and threw a desperate right hook. He aimed his armored fist directly at Declan’s jaw.

Declan didn’t dodge. He didn’t even blink. He just let the punch land.

"CRACK!"

It wasn’t Declan’s jaw that broke.

Cipher screamed in absolute agony. He pulled his hand back and clutched his wrist. His golden gauntlet was completely shattered.

The sheer physical density of Declan’s Abyssal Sovereign body was like a solid wall of titanium. Hitting his face was mathematically equivalent to punching a bank vault.

"My hand! My hand is broken!" Cipher sobbed as he dropped to his knees.

"Your build is garbage," Declan noted casually.

Declan tightened his grip on the golden chest plate. His Abyssal Leviathan physiology gave him a permanent twenty-times multiplier to his base physical damage. His raw physical strength was completely off the charts.

He didn’t use a skill. He just pulled.

The heavy high-tier corporate armor groaned loudly. Then it shrieked.

With a violent crunch of tearing metal, Declan ripped the entire front half of the golden chest plate right off Cipher’s body!

The reinforced cybernetic plating snapped like cheap plastic. Sparks flew everywhere as the internal wiring was forcefully severed.

Declan tossed the ruined piece of gold metal over his shoulder. It hit the floor with a heavy clatter.

Cipher gasped for air as his eyes widened with pure horror. His character avatar was exposed underneath the ruined armor.

"Please," Cipher choked out. Digital blood leaked from his broken wrist. "Don’t delete me. If you kill me while the server is locked, my real body dies. My pod will fry my brain!"

"I know," Declan said coldly.

He reached out and grabbed Cipher by the throat. He lifted the streamer entirely off the ground with one hand.

Cipher kicked his legs desperately in the air while his hands uselessly clawed at Declan’s thick unyielding arm.

Declan ignored him. He turned his head and looked directly into the lens of the nearest camera drone.

His dark eyes filled with swirling galaxies of corrupted purple mana stared right at the millions of viewers watching from behind their screens.

"Sector 1," Declan’s voice rumbled with a heavy unnatural bass. It echoed perfectly through the drone’s audio feed.

"You corporate elites think this is still a game. You think you can sit in your pristine white towers, buy high-tier gear with real money, and farm the rest of us for data."

He squeezed his hand slightly. Cipher let out a choked and gurgling gasp.

"The rules have changed," Declan stated. His voice was completely flat and utterly ruthless.

"Sector 7 belongs to me. The Iron Bastion is my property. If you send your little sponsored heroes into my territory, I won’t just break their gear."

Declan looked back at the terrified purple face of the streamer.

"I will delete them."

Declan didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t activate a massive magical spell.

He just engaged his Sanguine Engine passive trait and pushed a tiny fraction of his Abyssal mana into his right hand.

He squeezed his fingers together.

"CRUNCH!"

The sound was sharp and sickening.

Cipher’s neck snapped instantly. The physical durability of his avatar was completely overwhelmed by the raw kinetic output of the Warlord’s grip.

The streamer’s health bar which was already heavily damaged from the earlier blast instantly plummeted from the red zone all the way down to absolute zero.

[Player Cipher Defeated!]

[Target permanently erased from server registry.]

Declan let go.

Cipher’s body hit the floor and instantly exploded into a massive shower of bright blue digital pixels.

There was no physical corpse left behind. The game engine scrubbed his character file from the database entirely.

The blue pixels floated up into the air and slowly dissolved into the dim lighting of the server room.

The three camera drones instantly dropped their broadcast signals. Their lenses went dark and they clattered uselessly to the floor. The livestream was over.

Declan stood alone in the quiet room. He dusted off his hands and adjusted the collar of his black Predator’s Coat.

"I really hate streamers," Declan muttered to himself.

He looked down at the spot where Cipher had just been deleted.

Sitting perfectly clean in the middle of the digital dust were several items.

In the Grid, a player killer didn’t get standard experience points for killing another human but they did get all the loot sitting in the target’s active inventory.

And Cipher was heavily sponsored. He had a lot of loot.

Declan knelt down and tapped the glowing items to check their system tags.

There was a heavy bag of digital currency.

[Item Retrieved: 50,000 Origin Points.]

There were several high-tier health potions and mana elixirs. Declan tossed those directly into his inventory without really looking at them.

Then his eyes landed on a small sleek black drone sitting in the dirt. It wasn’t one of the camera drones. It looked like a highly advanced tactical scanner.

[Item Recognized: Vanguard Recon Drone]

↳ Tier: Epic

↳ Description: A stealth-based aerial drone. Can be deployed to map uncharted territories and track hostile entities within a fifty-mile radius. Feeds data directly into the user’s neural link.

Declan smiled. That was actually incredibly useful. With the borders dropping and the sectors merging he needed eyes in the sky that weren’t just his own shadow clones.

He willed the drone into his digital storage.

He stood up and looked around the ruined Aero Wing vault.

The massive Level 100 mechanical angel was gone. The corporate hit squad was gone. The sponsored celebrity was gone.

He had the entire developer stash to himself.

Heavy footsteps echoed from the hallway behind him.

Declan turned around. Morgan and Nova were slowly walking into the server room.

The elite corporate assassin had her combat knife drawn and her eyes frantically scanned the corners of the room for threats.

Nova the top-tier hacker looked entirely exhausted. Her new silver tactical suit was already covered in dust and she was leaning heavily against the wall for support.

They both stopped and stared at the empty space where Cipher used to be. They looked at the shattered camera drones on the floor.

"You killed him," Morgan whispered as her voice grew tight with disbelief. "You actually killed the face of Proud Sword Megacorp on a live broadcast."

"He was annoying," Declan said simply.

"Declan, they are going to put a bounty on your head so large that every mercenary guild on the planet will be hunting you," Nova said.

She pushed off the wall and slowly walked into the room. "You just declared war on Sector 1."

"I declared war on Sector 9 yesterday, and they don’t exist anymore," Declan replied smoothly. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Let them send their mercenaries. I need the Origin Points to upgrade my walls."

Nova just stared at him. She shook her head slowly. She had never met a player like this. He treated global megacorporations like they were basic farming mobs.

"You are completely insane," Nova muttered.

"I am the Warlord," Declan corrected her.

He pointed a finger toward the massive glowing data terminals at the very back of the room.

"Now do your job hacker. We didn’t walk all the way out here just to take out the trash. Open the vault."