Chapter 39: [39] : The Truth of the Grid, The Crimson Spire

Declan sat on the edge of the dive pod in his dark warehouse.

He had wrapped his bleeding shoulder tightly with a roll of gauze he found in the truck’s emergency kit.

The wound was deep but his enhanced body was already starting to aggressively clot the blood.

He stared at the glowing Reality Shard resting in his palm.

He had to know what was going on. He needed the rules to this new reality before the megacorps or the monsters killed him for real.

Declan lay back into the gel padding of the pod.

"Initiate Dive."

The blinding white light took him.

When he opened his eyes he was standing in the center of the Iron Bastion courtyard.

The city was absolutely packed. Thousands of players were running around trading gear joining parties and looking for ways to survive. The black iron dome buzzed with energy above them.

"Boss!" Sloane jogged over from her mahogany desk. She had a glowing clipboard hovering in front of her.

"Where did you go? You just dropped offline for an hour. We had three guys try to breach the armory while you were gone." She continued.

"I handled it." Kendra said walking up behind Sloane. She tapped her +10 Sniper Bow. "Put an arrow right next to their boots. They backed off."

"Good work." Declan said. He didn’t stop walking. He moved straight past them heading for the central monolith.

"Hey what happened to your coat?" Sloane asked noticing the large tear in the left shoulder of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat. "Did you take damage?"

"Got into a street fight." Declan replied flatly. "In Sector 7."

Sloane froze. "Wait. You mean in the real world?"

Declan didn’t answer. He walked past the massive forges where Bram was hammering a piece of glowing steel.

He headed straight for a small reinforced stone vault near the back of the courtyard.

He had assigned this room to Thatcher the blind NPC diver he had rescued from the Sunken Armory.

Thatcher was sitting on a wooden stool polishing a piece of old brass. He still wore his heavy torn diving suit.

"Grid-walker." Thatcher rasped as Declan walked in. "I hear your city is thriving." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Drop the act Thatcher." Declan said. He closed the heavy iron door behind him sealing them inside the vault.

Declan opened his inventory. He materialized the Reality Shard and placed it directly onto the table in front of the blind man.

The moment the glowing crystal hit the wood Thatcher’s entire demeanor changed.

The blind NPC stopped polishing the brass. He stiffened. The chaotic purple and gold light from the shard illuminated his pale scarred face.

Thatcher slowly reached out a trembling hand and traced his fingers over the crystal.

"It has begun." Thatcher whispered.

His voice was no longer the raspy broken sound of a dungeon prisoner. It was clear deep and terribly sad.

"What is this?" Declan asked leaning against the door. "I killed a Flesh-Stalker in a real-world alley an hour ago. It dropped this. The system called it proof of the Great Convergence."

"The Primordial Grid is not a game Declan Vance." Thatcher said turning his blind eyes toward him. "It never was."

Declan crossed his arms. "I figured that out when a monster tried to bite my head off by a dumpster. So what is it?"

"It is a universal containment protocol." Thatcher explained. "A cosmic engine designed to forcibly evolve civilizations that are deemed too weak to survive what lies in the deep void. Earth is simply the newest target."

"So the megacorps didn’t build this?" Declan asked.

"Apex Paradigm found ancient alien terminal tech buried deep in the ice." Thatcher said.

"They thought they were building a virtual reality simulation to harvest data. They were just plugging humanity into the assimilation engine. The game interface is just your human brains trying to process multidimensional physics." He continued.

"And the monsters?"

"Scouring agents." Thatcher said grimly. "The Purge Wave you survived here in the tutorial zone? That was just the beginning."

"The borders between the Grid and Earth are thinning. Soon the physical world will shatter. The monsters will flood your cities. Everything you know will burn."

Declan stared at the shard. He didn’t panic. He didn’t mourn the world.

"How do I stop it?" Declan asked coldly.

"You cannot stop the Convergence." Thatcher shook his head. "It is a cosmic law. You can only survive it. You must evolve faster than the world collapses."

"How?"

"Synchronization." Thatcher pointed at Declan’s chest.

"You must force the system to download your avatar’s power entirely into your physical vessel. You need a hundred percent sync rate. You need the strength of a god in the real world."

"I am at fifteen percent." Declan stated. "Killing normal bosses barely moves the needle. I need a massive jump."

Thatcher slowly stood up from his stool.

"Then you must conquer the Spires." The old man said. "They are the pillars that anchor the Grid to your world. They hold massive concentrated reserves of dimensional energy."

"If you consume a Spire Master’s core your physical body will ascend."

Suddenly a deafening echoing chime rang out across the entire server.

It was so loud it rattled the stone walls of the vault.

A glowing red system prompt appeared directly in Declan’s vision.

[Server Event: The Crimson Spire has descended.]

[Location: Sector 4, The Shattered Plains.]

[Type: 10-Floor Raid Dungeon.]

[Restriction: Only the Top 100 Players on the server may enter.]

Declan read the prompt. A dark terrifying smile spread across his face.

"The Crimson Spire." Declan murmured.

"It is a death trap." Thatcher warned. "The Spire Master is a Level 50 Entity. It bends conceptual laws. It will not just fight you with numbers. It will attack your mind. It will attack your reality."

"Good." Declan said. He pushed off the door and turned around.

He didn’t care about Level 50 Entities. He didn’t care about the top 100 players rushing to claim the loot.

He had an SSS-Rank talent that completely ignored the game’s rules.

He was going to take that Spire and he was going to take all the power it held.

"Keep polishing your brass Thatcher." Declan said as he opened the vault door. "I have a dungeon to break."