Chapter 23: [23] : The Real-World Tremor, Ripping the Steel

The transition was violent. One second Declan was sitting on clean stone inside a magical fortress, and the next second he was drowning in sensory garbage.

The heavy coffin-like lid of the dive pod hissed open.

Declan gasped for air. The air in the real world was stale.

It smelled heavily of cheap chemical cleaner, ammonia, and old sweat.

He blinked his eyes open and stared up at the flickering fluorescent lights of the underground debtor’s prison in Sector 7.

He ripped the sensory halo off his head. The small needles pulled out of his neck with a dull pinch.

He grabbed the edges of the metal pod and hoisted himself up.

His body felt incredibly strange.

He had spent five years in this prison. The food was terrible, the air was bad, and there was zero sunlight.

He didn’t think about how his body would be in the real world. He was supposed to be completely malnourished.

He was supposed to feel weak, tired, and slow.

However, he didn’t feel weak at all!

Declan swung his legs over the side of the pod and dropped to the cold concrete floor.

He landed perfectly. His balance was completely flawless. He didn’t stumble. He looked down at his bare arms.

"Wow," he whispered.

His arms were not skinny anymore. The muscles were dense, thick, and highly defined.

He clenched his right fist. He could literally hear his knuckles pop.

The grip strength felt terrifying. He felt like he could crush a baseball into powder!

His stomach let out a loud painful rumble.

The hunger hit him like a truck. It wasn’t the normal annoyance of missing lunch. It was a deep clawing starvation.

His new denser muscle mass was screaming for calories.

He turned away from the pod and looked at the prison cell.

It was tiny. Just a metal cot, a toilet in the corner, and a heavy steel door with a small food slot.

It was meal time. There was a cheap plastic packet of nutrient paste sitting inside the steel slot of the door.

Declan walked over to the door. He felt fast. His footsteps didn’t make a single sound on the concrete.

He reached out to grab the nutrient paste packet.

The steel flap covering the food slot was jammed. It was a common problem in Sector 7. The metal hinges were rusted and cheap.

Normally, Declan would have to bang on the door and ask a guard to kick the flap open.

But he was too hungry to wait.

He grabbed the edge of the steel flap with his right hand and pulled. He didn’t even pull hard. He just gave it a quick tug.

SCREEECH!

The metal shrieked. The rusted hinges didn’t just break. They completely tore out of the solid steel door.

Declan pulled his hand back totally surprised.

He was holding the heavy steel flap in his hand. He had ripped it clean off the door like it was made of wet cardboard!

He stared at the piece of metal. He squeezed his fingers.

The thick steel crumpled and bent under his grip, folding in on itself with a loud crunching sound.

The game was bleeding into reality.

His stats from the Primordial Grid were syncing with his physical body. The increased strength, the crazy agility, the raw physical density.

It wasn’t just virtual reality. The pod was physically rewriting his DNA to match his avatar!

He clenched his right hand into a fist.

His knuckles popped. The grip strength felt completely unnatural. It felt exactly like his avatar’s grip when he was holding the Carnage Cleaver.

"What the hell?" Declan whispered.

He stood there holding a jagged ten-pound piece of twisted steel like it was a piece of cardboard.

He didn’t even strain. He had just pulled.

’Okay,’ Declan breathed as his heart rate spiked. ’That is not normal.’

He tossed the twisted metal onto his cot. He looked at his hands again.

The synchronization. Thatcher the NPC had mentioned something about the Grid rewriting humanity. Sloane had mentioned her real-world nerve damage vanishing.

The game was not a simulation. The stats he was earning in the Grid were literally bleeding over into his physical DNA.

He had a base strength of 5 in the game, but even that was clearly superhuman by Earth standards.

Heavy footsteps rang down the metal walkway outside his cell.

"Hey! Keep it down in there!" a loud angry voice barked.

Declan immediately recognized the voice. It was Officer Briggs.

Briggs was a massive overweight corporate guard who loved using his stun baton on prisoners who looked at him funny.

He was a bully who enjoyed the tiny bit of power the megacorp gave him.

Briggs stopped in front of the cell door. He looked down and saw the massive jagged hole where the food slot used to be.

He didn’t care about how he got out the game, maybe he didn’t even know about the game.

He just cared about the food slot.

"What did you do to company property?!" Briggs yelled.

He saw the folded and ruined metal on the floor.

The heavy lock clicked. The main cell door slid open violently. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Briggs stepped into the room. He was holding a thick black stun baton. The tip was crackling with blue electricity.

He looked at Declan, his face red with anger.

"You think you’re funny, rat?" Briggs sneered and slapped the baton against his own palm. "You break the door, you pay for it in blood. Get on your knees."

Declan’s body almost went to his knees automatically. Muscle memory was actually crazy.

But Declan didn’t move. He stood in the center of the cell wearing his faded orange jumpsuit. He looked at Briggs.

The guard was a foot taller than him and outweighed him by a hundred pounds.

But looking at him now, Declan felt absolutely nothing. No fear. No intimidation.

Compared to a Level 15 World Boss that could regenerate its own spine, Briggs was just a loud sack of meat!

"I’m actually hungry," Declan said flatly. "Since you are here, go get me a double ration of paste."

Briggs’s eyes widened in sheer outrage. A prisoner giving him orders?

"I’m going to break your jaw!" Briggs roared.

He lunged forward and swung the heavy electrified baton directly at Declan’s face in a brutal sweeping arc.

To Declan, the swing looked incredibly slow. It was like watching a video playing at half speed.

Declan didn’t step back. He didn’t flinch.

He just casually raised his left hand.

Smack.

Declan caught the heavy baton mid-swing. His bare hand grabbed the electrified tip.

The blue electricity surged over his fingers, but it felt like nothing more than a static shock from a carpet. His new muscle density absorbed the kinetic force instantly.

Briggs froze. He tried to pull the baton back, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like the weapon was bolted to a concrete wall.

"What... what are you?" Briggs stammered. All the color drained from his face.

"I’m still finding out," Declan said smoothly.

He gripped the baton tightly and twisted his wrist.

Briggs didn’t let go in time.

CRACK!

The sound was sharp and sickening. Briggs’s wrist snapped completely backward at an unnatural angle.

The guard dropped the baton and let out a high-pitched agonizing scream, falling to his knees and clutching his ruined arm.

Declan looked down at the crying man. He casually tossed the stun baton onto the floor.

The physical strength was real. The game was real.

"Get yourself together and bring me food," Declan ordered coldly. "I have work to do."