Declan stood on the high stone balcony of the central keep. He held his tin cup of dirt-flavored coffee and watched the absolute light show happening outside his city walls.

The four Sovereign-tier Void Artillery cannons mounted on the main gates hummed with a terrifying deep vibration. They did not stop firing.

Every ten seconds, a massive beam of localized gravitational force shot out into the toxic wasteland. The beams tore through the charging horde of Abyssal monsters that had flooded in from Sector 6.

There was no epic battle. There was no desperate struggle for survival.

The monsters just marched forward and got instantly deleted.

The automated anti-air batteries lining the perimeter walls took care of anything that tried to fly over the dome. Blinding blue EMP blasts lit up the dark sky, turning high-level corrupted wyverns into showers of harmless blue pixels.

Declan’s system interface was completely flooded.

[Multiple Enemies Defeated!]

[Origin Points +30,000]

[Multiple Enemies Defeated!]

[Origin Points +45,000]

The numbers scrolled by so fast they looked like a solid blur of white text. His treasury balance was rocketing upward by the millions.

"Passive income," Declan noted happily. He took a sip of his coffee. "I love this game."

The heavy wooden doors of the balcony opened behind him.

Sloane walked out. The Quartermaster wasn’t usually one to panic, but the data she was carrying on her digital clipboards instantly elevated her stress from an ordinary 4 to a 20!

"Boss," Sloane groaned, her voice completely exhausted. "We have a massive problem."

"Did a turret break?" Declan asked without looking away from the carnage.

"No, the turrets are fine. Bram built them perfectly," Sloane sighed. "The problem is the loot. The automated defenses do not pick up the drops. The ground outside the barrier is currently covered in millions of high-tier monster cores, raw materials, and dropped weapons."

Declan raised an eyebrow. "So send the scavengers out to grab it."

"I can’t!" Sloane yelled, throwing her hands up. "The turrets are firing indiscriminately. If I send Jax and his guys out there to pick up the loot, they will get sucked into a black hole or vaporized by an EMP!"

Declan nodded slowly. She made a fair point.

The Sovereign-tier weapons did not have a friendly-fire toggle. They just deleted whatever was in their physical path.

"And if we leave the loot out there," Sloane continued, rubbing her temples. "The server will eventually run a sweep and de-spawn all of it to save memory. We are literally leaving millions of credits sitting in the mud."

’I guess we really are leaving money on the ground,’ Declan smiled bitterly as he finished his coffee. He set the tin cup down on the stone railing.

"Alright," Declan said smoothly. "Call Kendra. Tell Nova to get the car ready. We are going out."

"Wait, what?" Sloane blinked. "We are walking into that meat grinder?"

"We are not walking," Declan corrected her. "We are driving. The Abyssal Rover ignores environmental hazards. We are going to drive out there, pick up the loot, and then we are going to pay our new neighbors a visit."

Ten minutes later, the heavy iron gates of the Iron Bastion slowly ground open.

The +30 Abyssal Behemoth Rover shot out of the city like a bullet.

Declan sat in the driver’s seat. His hands were resting on his lap. His Sovereign Neural Interface was directly connected to the vehicle’s core code. He was driving the massive dark matter hover-tank entirely with his mind.

Sloane and Kendra sat in the back. Nova sat in the passenger seat, tapping rapidly on her glowing blue wrist terminal.

The heavy armored doors of the Rover completely blocked out the deafening sound of the turrets firing above them.

"Activate the vacuum," Declan commanded.

He tapped his right index finger. The +20 Ring of the Void-Hoarder gleamed with dark energy.

The Mythic ring was linked to the Rover’s intake systems. As the massive black tank hovered over the ruined mud, a strong gravitational pull swept the ground.

Thousands of glowing monster cores, shattered pieces of Abyssal armor, and rare skill books flew up into the air and got sucked directly into the Rover’s storage bays.

The system notifications pinged happily in their ears.

[Item Retrieved: Corrupted Void Core x500]

[Item Retrieved: Abyssal Bone Plating x1,200]

"This is ridiculous," Kendra muttered from the back seat. She was looking out the reinforced window at the mountains of loot flying into the car. "We are literally doing a drive-by looting."

"It is highly efficient," Nova stated coldly. The elite hacker did not look up from her screen. "The server merge is fully complete. Sector 6 and Sector 7 share a unified coordinate plane now."

Declan steered the Rover perfectly through a massive crater. He didn’t even slow down. The Void Glider trait ignored the jagged rocks entirely.

"How does Sector 6 look?" Declan asked.

"Empty," Nova replied. She pulled up a highly detailed holographic map and expanded it so everyone in the cabin could see.

The map showed the sprawling military zone of Sector 6. It was supposed to be covered in green dots representing the thousands of corporate players from Titan Heavy Industries.

Right now, there were zero green dots.

"When you deleted their Guild Master yesterday," Nova explained. "The rest of Titan Heavy Industries completely abandoned their outposts. They ran away. And since you own the only active Safe Zone in a fifty-mile radius, they probably got eaten by the Abyssal Tide on their way out."

"So nobody is home," Declan smiled.

"Nobody’s human," Nova corrected him. She tapped the map. Hundreds of massive red dots clustered around the center of Sector 6. "The monster population equalized. Since there are no players over there to fight them, the high-level Abyssal beasts have completely overrun the corporate bases."

Declan pushed the accelerator in his mind.

The massive thrusters on the back of the Rover flared with bright blue light. The heavy tank shot forward at Mach 1, tearing through the toxic smog.

They crossed the invisible border in less than a minute.

The environment changed. The muddy slums of Sector 7 disappeared. They were now driving on perfectly smooth, heavily reinforced concrete roads.

Massive white steel bunkers and towering military watchtowers lined the highway. But they were all completely ruined.

Thick, dark purple corruption vines grew over the pristine corporate buildings. The heavy blast doors of the bunkers were ripped completely off their hinges.

"Titan Heavy Industries left all their gear behind," Morgan said over the comms. The assassin was currently sitting on the roof of the Rover, using her magnetic boots to stay attached while staying in stealth. "I am seeing dozens of abandoned transport trucks and heavy weapon caches just sitting in the open."

"Mark them," Declan ordered. "We will pick them up on the way back."

Suddenly, he felt the surroundings incredibly quiet and heavy. A massive shadow fell over the highway.

A creature dropped from the top of a ruined watchtower and landed directly in the middle of the road.

It was an Abyssal Knight. It was easily fifteen feet tall, wearing thick, jagged dark matter armor. It rode a skeletal horse that breathed green fire.

[Target Information]

↳ Name: Abyssal Vanguard Knight

↳ Level: 65

↳ HP: 150,000 / 150,000

The Knight raised a massive glowing purple lance and pointed it right at the speeding Rover. It was completely blocking the road.

"Boss, we have a roadblock," Nova warned. "Level 65 Elite."

"I see it," Declan said. He didn’t slow down.

"Should I fire the plasma cannons?" Nova asked, her fingers hovering over the weapon controls.

"No, save the ammo," Declan replied casually. "Kendra. Roll your window down."

In the back seat, Kendra blinked. "What? Why?"

"You wanted to test out the new gun," Declan smiled. "Shoot the horse."

Kendra grinned. She hit the button on the door panel. The heavy armored glass slid down. The toxic wind howled into the cabin.

She shoved the massive, six-foot-long barrel of the +20 Absolute Zero Executioner out the window. The heavy sniper rifle hummed with pure, freezing energy.

She didn’t need to brace the heavy weapon. The Sovereign-tier mutation completely nullified the weight requirements.

She looked through the glowing red scope. She lined the crosshairs up directly with the chest of the skeletal horse.

"Firing," Kendra yelled over the wind.

She pulled the trigger.

The rifle didn’t bang. It shrieked.

A blinding bolt of super-cooled kinetic energy shot out of the barrel. It crossed the distance instantly.

The blue slug slammed directly into the center of the Abyssal Knight’s mount.

The impact was completely silent.

The massive Level 65 Elite monster instantly turned completely white. A thick layer of absolute zero ice covered the knight and the horse in a fraction of a millisecond.

The game’s physics engine completely stopped their movement.

Declan didn’t hit the brakes. He just kept the accelerator pinned to the floor.

The massive +30 Abyssal Rover slammed directly into the frozen statue at six hundred miles an hour!

CRASH!

The frozen monster shattered into millions of tiny ice cubes. It was completely obliterated on impact.

[Level 65 Abyssal Vanguard Knight Defeated!]

[Origin Points +5,000]

Declan turned on the windshield wipers to clear the digital frost off the glass.

"Nice shot," Declan called back.

"This gun is totally unfair!" Kendra laughed loudly, pulling the massive sniper rifle back into the cabin. "I didn’t even have to aim for a weak spot!"

"Fair fights are for losers," Declan stated. He looked at the navigation screen. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

They were approaching the very center of Sector 6.

Looming in the distance was a massive, heavily fortified dome made of thick white steel. It looked like a giant metallic turtle shell sitting in the middle of a massive crater.

"That is the main Titan Heavy Industries supply depot," Nova pointed at the screen. "That is where Atlas stored all the raw materials he taxed from the lower guilds."

Declan slowed the Rover down. The massive hover-tank drifted smoothly into the empty courtyard in front of the depot.

"Let’s go see what the rich kids left behind." Declan cracked his knuckles.