Chapter 24: [24] : The First Purge Wave, Thorned Aegis

Declan settled back into the cold gel padding of the dive pod.

He had eaten three packets of nutrient paste that a terrified weeping Officer Briggs had desperately handed him.

His stomach was full. His real-world body was sustained.

It was time to get back in. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

He looked up at the dark ceiling of the pod.

"Initiate Dive," Declan said out loud.

The metal halo lowered. The needles pricked his neck. The blinding white light consumed his vision.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing exactly where he had logged out.

He was standing next to the massive rune-covered iron monolith in the center of the Iron Bastion.

The air was filled with a chaotic deafening roar of overlapping voices.

Declan looked toward the edge of the safe zone. The one-kilometer radius of the black energy dome was completely surrounded.

There were thousands of players pressed up against the barrier. They were screaming, banging on the translucent black shield, and begging to be let inside.

He looked up at the sky.

The normal bruised purple clouds were gone. The sky had turned a deep sickly black and glowed with toxic green lightning.

The Purge Wave had begun.

Declan quickly walked over to the main gate of the dome.

Sloane had set up a literal toll booth using a wooden desk she pulled from a ruined building.

Kendra was standing next to her with her bow drawn, looking absolutely terrified as she watched the darkness outside the dome.

"Next!" Sloane yelled over the screaming crowd.

She pointed at a panicked guy in cheap leather armor. "Ten Origin Points! Transfer them to the bastion interface now or get back to the end of the line!"

The guy frantically tapped his invisible screen. "Transferred! Please let me in!"

Sloane checked her admin panel. "Confirmed. Get inside and move out of the way."

She pressed a button on her desk. A small section of the black dome opened just long enough for the player to dive through, then snapped shut again.

The ladies were doing well, maybe he should have just stayed back, or this place might even be better than the prison.

"How is the treasury looking?" Declan asked as he walked up behind them.

Sloane jumped and startled. She spun around and let out a massive breath when she saw him.

"Declan! You made it back," Sloane said as she wiped sweat from her forehead.

"The timer just hit zero three minutes ago. The sky went black and everyone in Sector 4 completely lost their minds."

"The treasury, Quartermaster," Declan reminded her.

He probably didn’t want a welcoming party.

Sloane grinned and her capitalist side took over again.

"It’s a gold mine. We’ve processed almost two thousand players so far. The guys who didn’t have points dumped all their crafting materials into the base inventory."

"We have exactly 22,000 Origin Points sitting in the town bank."

"Good work," Declan said.

"Look!" Kendra screamed. She pointed her bow out into the ruined foggy city beyond the dome. "They’re here!"

The screaming from the players still trapped outside turned into gurgling shrieks of pure horror.

Out of the black fog, they emerged.

Flesh-Stalkers!

They didn’t look like animals. They looked like humans that had been stretched out and twisted.

Another kind of zombies stalkers.

They were seven feet tall and completely hairless with pale gray skin pulled tight over sharp bones.

Their arms dragged on the ground and ended in massive scythe-like claws. They didn’t have eyes, just giant gaping maws filled with rows of needle teeth.

[System Event: Purge Wave]

↳ Monster Profile: Flesh-Stalker

↳ Level: 20

↳ Trait: Endless Hunger.

There weren’t just a few of them. There were thousands!

They poured out of the alleyways, crawled over the roofs of the ruined buildings, and flooded the streets like a tidal wave of pale meat.

The players trapped outside didn’t stand a chance.

The Flesh-Stalkers leaped into the crowd and swung their scythe arms. Digital blood sprayed everywhere.

Low-level players were instantly deleted, their avatars dissolving into pixels before they even hit the mud.

The swarm of monsters hit the edge of the Iron Bastion’s black dome.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Hundreds of Flesh-Stalkers slammed their bodies against the barrier.

They began frantically clawing at the black energy, trying to dig their way inside to get to the players huddled in the square.

"The shield is holding," Sloane said nervously as she looked at her admin screen.

"But the base defenses are only Level 1. The walls are just basic stone logic. If they hit it enough, the durability will crack."

"Transfer all 22,000 points from the town bank to my personal inventory," Declan ordered.

Sloane didn’t ask questions. She tapped her screen. "Done."

Declan felt his balance update. He walked right up to the edge of the dome.

A Flesh-Stalker on the other side screeched and slammed its claws against the barrier right in front of his face.

Declan didn’t flinch. He placed his right hand flat against the inside of the black energy shield.

The base-building interface popped up.

’System,’ Declan said in his mind. ’Apply Boundless Enhancement to the Bastion Walls. Push it to plus twenty.’

The system chimed rapidly.

[Enhancing Base Defense: Stone Wall +1... +5...]

[Notice: Wall integrity has reached maximum safe enhancement cap. Structural collapse imminent.]

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Cap removed.]

[Stone Wall +10... +15... +20.]

A blinding white light erupted from Declan’s hand. It didn’t just cover him, it shot rapidly across the entire one-kilometer surface of the dome.

The players inside the safe zone gasped and backed away as the very fabric of their sanctuary began to physically change.

[Base Defense has reached +20.]

[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]

The smooth translucent black energy of the dome suddenly solidified. It turned into thick heavy pitch-black iron.

But it didn’t stop there. Massive jagged steel spikes grew violently out of the exterior of the dome.

Each one was five feet long and razor-sharp, turning the entire city shield into a giant iron porcupine.

[Defense Mutated: Thorned Aegis]

↳ Trait Unlocked: Absolute Reflection.

↳ Functionality: The walls automatically reflect 200% of all physical damage dealt to them back at the attacker as true damage.

Declan took a step back and lowered his hand. He smiled.

Outside the barrier, the frenzy of the Flesh-Stalkers didn’t stop. They didn’t have eyes or brains to process that the wall had just grown spikes.

A massive Level 20 Flesh-Stalker roared and threw its entire body weight into a heavy claw strike against the new iron wall.

The scythe claw hit the metal.

The Thorned Aegis trait activated instantly!

The wall didn’t take a single point of damage. Instead, the 200% damage reflection fired back at point-blank range.

The Flesh-Stalker’s arm instantly shattered into dust.

The sheer kinetic rebound blasted the monster backward and completely caved in its pale chest. It dissolved into blue pixels before it hit the ground.

All along the one-kilometer perimeter, thousands of Flesh-Stalkers threw themselves against the spiked walls.

And all along the perimeter, thousands of monsters instantly exploded into blue dust as their own massive attack stats were doubled and reflected right back into their faces.

It wasn’t a siege anymore. It was a meat grinder!

Declan turned his back to the wall of exploding monsters and looked at the thousands of terrified players staring at him.

He adjusted the collar of his black Predator’s Coat.