Chapter 53: [53] : Gathering the Vanguard, The Streets on Fire

Sector 7 was burning.

Declan stepped out into the alleyway and looked up at the sky. It was completely fractured.

Massive and jagged tears of glowing purple energy ripped through the dark smog. It revealed the cosmic void of the Primordial Grid right above the city. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the dome of the sky.

Sirens wailed from every direction. Automated police drones buzzed overhead, and their spotlights swept frantically across the ruined streets.

Every few seconds, the sharp crack of gunfire echoed off the concrete buildings. This was followed immediately by the horrific and metallic screeches of dying monsters.

The Great Convergence was in full swing.

Declan started jogging down the alley. His plus 10 Spiked Striders hit the wet pavement without making a sound.

The Frictionless Movement trait made him glide over the garbage, the broken glass, and the puddles of toxic rain like he was skating on ice.

He didn’t need to check a map. He had lived in Sector 7 his entire life before the prison. He knew exactly where the General Hospital was.

It was about two miles north, deep in the commercial district.

He rounded a corner and stepped onto a main avenue.

It was absolute chaos. Cars were piled up in massive and smoking wrecks. A city bus had crashed through the front window of a neon-lit noodle shop.

People were running in every direction. They were screaming, crying, and trampling each other in a blind panic.

And hunting them were the Flesh-Stalkers!

Dozens of the pale and eyeless monsters were crawling over the cars and scaling the sides of the brick buildings. They moved like giant twisted spiders. Their scythe-like bone arms easily sliced through car doors and lampposts.

Declan saw a Flesh-Stalker leap onto the hood of a stalled taxi. A terrified man in a business suit was trapped inside and desperately locked the doors.

The monster didn’t care. It raised its bone scythe and smashed it right through the windshield. It shattered the safety glass!

"Hey," Declan called out.

His voice wasn’t loud, but his thirty percent synchronization gave his vocal cords an unnatural and booming resonance. It cut through the screaming and the sirens instantly.

The Flesh-Stalker froze. It pulled its scythe out of the shattered windshield and turned its eyeless face toward Declan.

It hissed, and a foul spray of black sludge dripped from its needle teeth.

A floating blue system tag appeared over the monster’s head.

[Flesh-Stalker. Level 2.]

The monsters here were not as strong as the ones in the game.

Declan didn’t even break his stride. He kept walking forward at a brisk and casual pace.

"You’re in my way," Declan said.

The monster shrieked and launched itself off the hood of the taxi. It flew through the air and crossed the twenty-foot gap between them in a second. It brought both bone scythes down in a lethal crossing strike.

Declan raised his left arm. The plus 20 Black Aegis was strapped tightly to his forearm.

He didn’t brace for impact. He just casually swatted the incoming monster like it was an annoying mosquito.

The heavy titanium shield slammed into the Flesh-Stalker mid-air.

CLANG!

The Kinetic Repulsion trait triggered. A massive concussive shockwave exploded outward from the shield’s surface. The force of the blast hit the monster with the equivalent power of a speeding freight train.

The Flesh-Stalker didn’t just get knocked back. It was completely obliterated!

Its ribs shattered into dust, its spine folded in half, and its body was launched backward so fast it blurred.

It slammed into the brick wall of an electronics store and instantly dissolved into a shower of bright blue digital pixels.

[Level 2 Flesh-Stalker Defeated. Origin Points +20.]

The man in the ruined taxi stared at Declan with his mouth hanging open in sheer disbelief. He looked at the dissolving blue pixels, and then at the guy in the black tactical jacket holding a massive shield.

Declan didn’t stop to accept a thank you. He kept moving.

He reached the end of the avenue. The road ahead was blocked by a massive military barricade. Two heavy corporate armored personnel carriers were parked sideways across the street. Their mounted heavy machine guns spun wildly.

A squad of heavily armored corporate police officers were hiding behind the vehicles and fired desperately into the darkness.

"Hold the line!" a police captain screamed over a megaphone. "Concentrate fire on the big ones! Don’t let them cross the bridge!"

Declan walked up behind the barricade and looked over the armored cars.

The bridge leading to the commercial district was completely swarmed. There were easily a hundred Flesh-Stalkers crawling over the suspension cables. But that wasn’t what the cops were shooting at.

Stomping down the center of the bridge were three massive and bloated monsters. They stood ten feet tall, and their bodies were made of thick and pulsating green sludge and rotting garbage.

They looked like walking toxic waste dumps.

[Sludge-Brute. Level 8.]

The police were firing heavy caliber rounds right into the Brutes’ chests. The bullets just sank into the green slime and did absolutely nothing.

The monsters kept walking forward and absorbed the gunfire like a sponge.

One of the Sludge-Brutes raised a massive and dripping arm. It hurled a giant glob of toxic green acid directly at the police barricade.

"Incoming!" a cop yelled and dived for cover.

The acid hit the front of the armored personnel carrier. The thick military-grade steel instantly hissed and started melting away. It turned into bubbling metallic soup.

The cops broke. They dropped their rifles and started running back down the avenue, completely abandoning the checkpoint. They knew they couldn’t fight monsters that ignored bullets.

Declan stood alone behind the melting truck. He looked at the three massive Sludge-Brutes stomping toward him.

He didn’t have time for a slow and drawn-out fight. He needed to get to the hospital.

He opened his right hand. The air distorted violently, and the newly mutated plus 20 Apex Annihilator Rifle materialized in his grip. The dark metal was sleek and cold.

The blue mana chamber glowed with a lethal and humming energy.

He stepped out from behind the cover of the armored car and stood perfectly exposed in the middle of the street.

The three Sludge-Brutes saw him. They roared with a wet and gurgling sound and charged forward. The ground shook under their heavy weight.

Declan raised the rifle to his shoulder. He didn’t bother aiming down the sights. He just pulled the trigger and held it down.

The gun didn’t kick. There was zero recoil.

A continuous and blinding stream of hyper-kinetic blue energy slugs erupted from the rectangular barrel. The sound was deafening. It was a high-pitched mechanical screech that drowned out the sirens in the city.

The energy rounds slammed into the lead Sludge-Brute.

They didn’t sink into the slime like normal bullets. The pure kinetic magic triggered massive explosive reactions upon contact.

The monster’s chest completely vaporized in a massive burst of green sludge and blue light. The creature didn’t even have time to register the damage. It was instantly deleted and shattered into millions of pixels!

Declan didn’t stop firing. He just dragged the barrel to the right.

The beam of blue energy swept across the bridge like a laser cutter. It sliced through the second Sludge-Brute and cut it perfectly in half at the waist.

It swept over the horde of Flesh-Stalkers crawling on the cables. It instantly incinerated dozens of them in a chain reaction of exploding pixels.

The third Brute tried to throw another ball of acid. Declan adjusted his aim and blasted the monster’s arm clean off. Then he focused the fire directly onto its head.

The heavy blue slugs caved the monster’s skull in and dropped it to the pavement instantly.

In less than twenty seconds, the bridge was completely cleared!

[Multiple Enemies Defeated. Origin Points +850.]

Declan lowered the smoking rifle. The street was quiet again, save for the crackling of the melting armor on the police truck. He walked straight through the dissolving piles of blue pixels and crossed the bridge.

He moved like a ghost through the ruined city. Any time a low-level monster jumped out of an alleyway, he either bashed it into a wall with his shield or vaporized it with the rifle.

He didn’t slow down. He didn’t stop.

Ten minutes later, the massive and towering structure of Sector 7 General Hospital loomed in front of him.

It was a disaster zone. The glass sliding doors at the main entrance were completely shattered. Several ambulances were flipped over and burning in the drop-off lane.

The flickering emergency lights inside cast long and terrifying shadows across the blood-stained lobby floor.

Declan stepped over a ruined medical gurney and walked into the hospital.

The air inside was thick and smelled heavily of copper and antiseptic. It was totally silent.

Declan pulled up his system interface and checked the party chat.

[Player V: I’m in the lobby. Which stairwell is clear?]

A second later, Sloane replied.

[Sloane: None of them! The central stairs collapsed when the monsters chased the security team up here. The elevators are dead. Declan, hurry! Whatever is outside my door just cracked the metal frame!]

Declan closed the chat. He looked around the lobby. The main stairwell was indeed blocked by tons of fallen concrete and twisted rebar. He couldn’t walk up.

"Good thing I don’t walk," Declan muttered.

He looked up at the ceiling. He focused on the structural layout of the building in his mind. Fourth floor. Intensive Care Unit.

"Void Blink," Declan commanded.

The world went pitch black. He bypassed the concrete, the steel beams, and the first floor entirely. He materialized fifteen meters straight up and stood in the middle of a dark hallway on the second floor.

He didn’t wait for gravity to settle.

"Void Blink."

Another flash of nothingness. He appeared on the third floor. He was burning through his physical stamina, but his new Ascendant-tier stats meant he had a massive pool to draw from.

He looked up at the ceiling again. One more jump.

"Void Blink."

He materialized perfectly in the middle of the fourth-floor corridor.

The moment he appeared, the noise hit him. It was a deafening and rhythmic pounding sound. It sounded like someone dropping a wrecking ball onto a steel plate over and over again!

Declan raised his rifle and jogged down the flickering hallway toward the Intensive Care Unit.

He rounded the corner and saw the problem.

Standing in front of the heavy double doors of the ICU was a monster that made the Flesh-Stalkers look like household pets.

It was massive. It was easily eight feet tall and so wide it took up the entire width of the corridor. Its skin was a sickly and bruised red color, stretched tight over bulging unnatural muscles.

Its arms were disproportionately huge and ended in massive fleshy fists the size of cinder blocks. It didn’t have a neck.

Its tiny and stupid head just sat right on top of its shoulders. It featured a gaping mouth full of jagged broken teeth.

[Target Information]

↳ Name: Gore-Hulk

↳ Level: 12 (Elite)

↳ HP: 3,500 / 3,500

The Gore-Hulk roared with a wet and sloppy sound. It raised both of its massive fists into the air and brought them down violently against the heavy steel doors of the ICU.

BAM!

The metal shrieked and bent inward. The heavy barricade that Sloane had built on the other side was failing. Another two hits, and the doors were going to completely give way.

Declan didn’t yell to get its attention. He just raised his plus 20 Apex Annihilator Rifle. He aimed it directly at the back of the monster’s thick skull and pulled the trigger.