Nova didn’t argue. She knew exactly who was in charge here.

She walked past Declan and kept a very respectful distance from his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.

She approached the massive glowing data terminal sitting at the end of the room.

The terminal was a sleek console made of white glass and blue energy lines.

It was locked behind a heavy physical iron gate that had several biometric scanners attached to it.

Morgan walked up beside Declan and crossed her arms. She looked at the heavy iron gate.

"That is a Level 80 physical lock. It requires a developer’s handprint to open. If you try to force it, the system incinerates the loot."

Declan didn’t even look at the lock. He just looked at Nova.

The hacker raised her hands. She didn’t use a physical key. She didn’t try to pry the panel open.

She tapped her wrist interface and brought up three glowing blue holographic keyboards in the air in front of her.

Her fingers flew across the digital keys at a blinding speed. Lines of green binary code reflected in her icy blue eyes.

"I am bypassing the physical requirement by looping the server’s internal logic," Nova explained rapidly.

"The system thinks the Level 100 boss is still alive and requesting a maintenance diagnostic. I just need to trick the firewall into accepting my admin signature."

"Take your time," Declan said casually.

He turned around and started looting the rest of the room. The Aero Wing wasn’t just a boss arena. It was a storage facility.

Hundreds of tall black server racks lined the walls. But they weren’t holding normal computer data.

In the Grid, physical items and digital code were the exact same thing.

Declan walked up to the nearest rack. He smashed the glass casing with his heavy spiked boot. He reached in and grabbed a stack of glowing purple ingots.

[Item Retrieved: Refined Sovereign Iron x500]

Declan smiled. This was the good stuff. Bram was going to lose his mind when he saw this.

He moved down the line. He casually shattered glass and dumped everything into his massive inventory.

Thanks to his +20 Ring of the Void-Hoarder, he had five hundred inventory slots and items placed inside weighed absolutely nothing. He was a walking cargo ship.

He looted stacks of High-Grade Mana Crystals. He looted bundles of pristine monster leather.

He found a crate full of incredibly rare alchemical herbs that looked like glowing blue seaweed.

"Got it!" Nova suddenly yelled from the back of the room.

Declan stopped looting and walked back over to the terminal.

The heavy iron gate hissed loudly. The biometric scanners flashed green and the thick metal bars slowly slid apart.

It revealed a small and heavily shielded back room.

Inside the room, resting on three pristine white pedestals, were the developer items.

These were the items that Apex Paradigm had hidden away.

These were the items that broke the game balance so badly they couldn’t risk normal players getting their hands on them.

Declan walked into the small room. He looked at the first pedestal.

Resting on the white stone was a massive glowing blue blueprint. It looked like a rolled-up piece of digital parchment humming with intense energy.

Declan picked it up.

[Item Recognized: Blueprint Sovereign-Tier Anti-Air Battery]

↳ Description: A highly advanced automated defense schematic. Requires a Master Artificer to construct. Once built, the turret automatically tracks and fires highly concentrated EMP blasts at any hostile aerial targets. Ignores evasion stats.

"Perfect," Declan muttered. He tossed the blueprint into his inventory.

His city was going to be completely untouchable from the sky.

He moved to the second pedestal.

Sitting there was a heavy rectangular metal crate. It didn’t look magical. It just looked like a standard military supply box.

Declan popped the latches and flipped the lid open.

Inside were hundreds of perfectly stacked glowing golden credit chips.

[Item Recognized: Origin Point Treasury Reserve]

↳ Value: 10,000,000 Origin Points.

Declan laughed out loud. Ten million points just sitting in a box!

The developers had literally hoarded the game’s currency to artificially control the economy of the lower sectors.

He dumped the entire crate into his digital bank. His balance rocketed upward. He was so rich the numbers were starting to lose their meaning.

He stepped up to the third and final pedestal.

This was the main prize. This was the item that the entire corporate fleet had been sent to retrieve.

Resting on the pedestal was a small sleek silver ring. It didn’t have a gemstone. It was just a perfectly smooth band of metal that seemed to absorb the light around it.

Declan picked it up. The system prompt flooded his vision.

[Item Recognized: Ring of the Void-Walker]

↳ Tier: Sovereign (Set Piece: Logic Set 2/3)

↳ Base Stats: +2,000 Agility, +1,000 Strength.

↳ Passive Trait: Spatial Dominance. The user’s teleportation skills no longer consume stamina. The user can bypass all server-mandated spatial locks and barriers.

Declan’s dark eyes widened.

He already had the first piece of the Logic Set which was the Sovereign Neural Interface on his ear that gave him zero cast time on all skills.

Now he had the second piece.

"Infinite teleports," Declan whispered. "And I can walk through any shield in the game."

He immediately slipped the silver ring onto his left index finger.

The system chimed happily. The massive stat boost flooded his physical body.

His muscles grew even denser and his reflexes sharpened to a terrifying degree. He felt so light he could probably jump over a skyscraper.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Morgan asked from the doorway. She was staring at the empty pedestals.

"I did," Declan said smoothly. He walked out of the vault.

He looked at Nova. The hacker was leaning against the terminal and looking completely drained.

"You did good work," Declan told her. He pulled up his administrative interface. He selected the Origin Point transfer menu.

He typed in a number and hit send.

Nova’s personal interface pinged loudly. She opened it and her jaw dropped.

[Transfer Complete: +2,000,000 Origin Points]

"Two million points?" Nova gasped and looked up at him in sheer shock. "That’s way more than fifteen percent of the standard haul!"

"I told you I pay my employees," Declan said casually. "Use it to fix your gear. We are going home."

He didn’t wait for them to thank him. He didn’t want to walk out of the dungeon.

"System. Activate Spatial Anchor. Target: Iron Bastion, Central Keep."

Because he now wore the Ring of the Void-Walker, the skill didn’t even drain a single point of stamina.

The massive cylinder of pure void energy crashed down from the ceiling completely swallowing all three of them. The ruined server room vanished.

A split second later, they materialized on the high stone balcony overlooking the Iron Bastion courtyard.

They were back in Sector 7.