Chapter 40: [40] : The Crimson Spire, Party Assembly

Sector 4, Iron Bastion, Main Vault.

Declan pushed the heavy iron door of the vault open and walked out into the courtyard.

The deafening system chime still echoed in his head. He looked up at the sky.

The glowing purple dome of his safe zone was fully active, but right through the transparent energy shield, he could see the sky.

It was no longer a bruised purple or a sickly black. The sky above Sector 4 was glowing with a harsh, glaring red light.

A massive holographic prompt hung in the air.

[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.

The entire city was in an absolute panic again. Thousands of players who had just survived the Flesh Stalker horde were pointing at the sky and shouting.

"Declan!"

Sloane came running across the stone courtyard. Kendra was right behind her. Both of them looked completely stressed out.

"Did you see that?" Sloane asked, pointing a shaking finger at the red text. "A ten floor raid dungeon. The system just dropped it on us right after the Purge Wave!"

"I saw it," Declan said calmly. He rested his hands in the pockets of his pitch black Predator Coat. "It sounds like exactly what we need. We are going."

Kendra stopped in her tracks and her eyes went wide. "We are going? Did you miss the last line of the prompt? It says only the top one hundred players on the server can enter. We are just normal people! We aren’t top players!"

Declan raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?"

He pulled up his system interface. He didn’t bother checking his inventory. He navigated straight to the server leaderboards.

The Grid tracked everything. It tracked monster kills, boss kills, and total experience points gained.

He swiped his hand, projecting the golden leaderboard screen into the air so Sloane and Kendra could see it.

[Global Server Leaderboard]

↳ Rank 1: Player V, Level 40

↳ Rank 2: Silas, Level 25 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

↳ Rank 3: Caldwell, Level 23

...

↳ Rank 45: Kendra, Level 18

↳ Rank 46: Sloane, Level 18

Sloane stared at the floating golden text. Her jaw dropped. "Level eighteen? When did I hit level eighteen? I was level seven yesterday!"

"You two are in my party," Declan explained smoothly. "When I killed Gargantua, the Level 15 World Boss, you got a share of the base experience. When I chopped the head off that Level 40 Wendigo in the swamp, you got a massive chunk of that experience too."

Kendra looked at her own hands in shock. "I am the forty fifth highest leveled player in the world right now? But I just shoot a wooden bow and hide behind rocks!"

"You shoot a plus ten sniper bow with infinite range," Declan corrected her. "And you do your job well. You are both in the top one hundred. Which means you are both coming with me."

"To a death trap?!" Sloane argued. "Thatcher said the Spire Master is a Level 50 Entity! You want to fight a Level 50 boss?"

"I want the core it drops," Declan said flatly. "The real world is falling apart. The physical bodies inside the dive pods are going to get eaten by monsters if we don’t hit a hundred percent synchronization. The only way to get those stats into reality is to eat the Spire core. So yes. We are going."

Sloane groaned and rubbed her face. "Fine. But I am staying in the back. Again."

"Grab whatever health potions we have left in the treasury," Declan ordered. "We leave in two minutes."

Declan walked over to the massive forges. Bram was already awake and hammering away at a piece of heavy steel.

The Level 30 Master Artificer used his new black obsidian arm to strike the metal with terrifying force.

"Hey," Bram grunted, not looking up. "The sky turned red."

"I know. Just keep building the turrets," Declan said. "I am going out to grab some things. Don’t let anyone into the city until I get back."

"Nobody gets past the spiked walls," Bram laughed harshly. "Have fun."

Two minutes later, Sloane and Kendra walked up to him. Sloane had a heavy leather satchel slung over her shoulder, clinking with glass potion bottles.

Declan didn’t want to walk all the way to the Shattered Plains. He tapped his dark silver Mythic ring, the Ring of the Void Hoarder.

"Spatial Anchor."

He targeted the general coordinates of the Shattered Plains that he pulled from the server map.

The ring flared with absolute darkness. A cylinder of pure void energy crashed down from the sky, swallowing all three of them.

A split second later, the darkness spat them out.

The air was completely different here. The wet, toxic fog of the Ashen Bog was gone. The ground was made of cracked, dry red clay.

Declan looked up.

Standing in the middle of the wasteland was the Crimson Spire.

It was a colossal tower made of dark red crystal. It was so tall it literally pierced through the dark clouds. It looked like a bloody needle stabbing into the sky.

At the base of the tower was a massive archway filled with a swirling red portal.

And standing around that portal were dozens of players.

They were not the desperate, starving newbies from Sector 4. These were the elite. The top one hundred players on the server.

They wore gleaming silver armor, glowing robes, and carried massive weapons that crackled with elemental magic.

"Look at them," Kendra whispered, shrinking behind Declan’s coat. "They look like actual armies."

Declan started walking forward. His Spiked Striders crunched loudly on the dry red clay.

The moment he got close, a group of ten heavily armored knights stepped in his way. They all wore matching white capes with a golden lion emblem on the back.

The guy in the front held a massive glowing blue shield. He looked Declan up and down. He looked at the pitch black duster, the spiked boots, and the two nervous girls hiding behind him.

"Stop right there," the knight demanded. "This area is restricted. Only the top players are allowed near the Spire entrance. Take your little party and go farm some slimes."

Declan didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down.

"Move," Declan said casually.

"Are you deaf?" the knight sneered, stepping forward and bashing his heavy shield against the ground. "My name is Leon. Guild Master of the Golden Lions. I am Rank 12 on the server. You don’t have the gear or the level to be here. Get lost before I send you back to spawn."

Declan sighed. It was always the same script.

He didn’t pull out the Carnage Cleaver. He didn’t summon the heavy Warden Halberd.

He just kept walking.

When he was two feet away from Leon’s glowing blue shield, Declan didn’t stop. He walked right into the knight.

With his fifteen percent real world synchronization and the massive stat boosts from the Abyssal Sovereign class, Declan’s physical density was absurd. He didn’t push Leon. He just walked through his space.

Leon tried to hold his ground. The moment Declan’s shoulder bumped into the massive shield, the knight was instantly thrown backward.

It looked like Leon had been hit by a speeding dump truck. He flew ten feet through the air and crashed hard into the red dirt, rolling wildly before coming to a stop.

The rest of the Golden Lions gasped and drew their swords.

"Don’t," Declan said. He didn’t look back. His voice was entirely flat and empty of emotion. "I don’t have time to sort through your dropped loot today."

The knights froze. They looked at their Guild Master groaning in the dirt, and then they looked at the guy in the black coat.

A player in a dark rogue outfit standing near the portal suddenly pointed a shaking finger at Declan.

"The black coat! The spiked boots! That is him!" the rogue yelled. "That is Player V! The guy who wiped out the Apex Hounds!"

The entire crowd of elite players instantly fell silent. The arrogant smirks vanished from their faces. They all took a collective step away from the portal, giving Declan a wide, clear path.

They had all seen the server logs. They all knew what happened to the five hundred man corporate army in the swamp.

Declan walked right up to the swirling red portal. Sloane and Kendra hurried after him, keeping their heads down.

"Much better," Declan smiled. He stepped through the red light.

[Entering the Crimson Spire]

↳ Floor 1