Chapter 55: [55] : The Paradigm Threat, Corporate Oligarch

High above the burning streets of Metropolis, the Apex Paradigm Headquarters remained completely untouched.

The towering spire of white glass and polished steel pierced the dark clouds. It looked exactly like a monument to absolute control.

Inside the main server observation room, the atmosphere was freezing cold.

Director Sterling stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore a perfectly tailored gray suit. Not a single hair on his head was out of place. He stared at the massive holographic globe projecting in the center of the room.

The globe displayed the real-time status of the Primordial Grid. Most of it was glowing with a healthy blue light.

However, Sector 4 was flashing a massive and glaring red error code.

"Alpha Team is offline." A nervous technician spoke. He was sitting at a glowing console with his hands shaking over the keyboard. "Sir, all twelve biometric signals just flatlined. They were wiped out in less than a minute."

Sterling did not blink. He just stared at the red patch on the globe.

"They were heavily armed." Sterling said. His voice was completely flat and empty of any emotion. "They had armor-piercing rounds. They were trained to execute rogue elements quietly. How did a single debtor in a prison jumpsuit kill them?"

The technician swallowed hard. He pulled up a new screen. Lines of jagged data scrolled across the projection.

"It is his synchronization rate, Director." The technician stammered. "The system is reading a massive anomaly. Player V... Declan Vance... his physical body has achieved thirty percent synchronization with his Grid avatar."

Sterling narrowed his eyes. "Thirty percent. That should be biologically impossible. The human nervous system cannot handle that much raw dimensional data without exploding."

"He consumed a Spire Master core." The tech explained frantically. "The system logs show he killed the First Apostle of Rot. The core forced a physical vessel overwrite. He is not just playing the game anymore, sir. He is pulling the game physics into reality."

Sterling finally turned away from the globe.

Apex Paradigm had spent trillions of dollars uncovering the alien terminal tech in the ice. They built the VR pods to slowly harvest the dimensional energy. They were going to control the next stage of human evolution. They were going to monopolize reality itself.

A single rogue player holding a thirty percent sync rate was not just an annoyance. It was an absolute existential threat to their monopoly.

"Declare him a Bioterrorist Anomaly." Sterling ordered coldly. "Shut down all public feeds regarding Sector 7. Cut the city power grid completely."

"Sir?" The tech asked. "There are millions of civilians in that sector. If we cut the power, the local defense turrets go offline. The low-level monsters will slaughter everyone."

"I do not care about the livestock." Sterling snapped. "I care about the anomaly. Dispatch the automated heavy bomber drones. Send the entire fleet. I want that industrial district completely leveled. Erase the block."

"Yes, Director."

Far away from the clean corporate towers, Sector 7 was drowning in blood and rain.

Declan stood inside the Intensive Care Unit of the General Hospital. The emergency backup lights cast long flickering shadows against the white tiled walls.

Sloane was looking at him with pure desperate hope. She stood next to her sister hospital bed. Mia was pale, unconscious, and hooked up to a massive life support ventilator.

"I am going to touch the bed." Declan said. "I am going to put her, the life support machines, and you entirely into my digital inventory. Time freezes inside the storage space. Then, I will blink us straight into the Bastion."

"Do it." Sloane agreed instantly. "Get us out of here."

Declan walked up to the side of the hospital bed and reached out his right hand. The dark silver Ring of the Void-Hoarder gleamed on his index finger. He tapped into his system interface and willed the bed into his digital storage.

A blue light washed over the medical equipment.

Suddenly, a harsh red warning box hijacked his vision.

[System Error]

↳ Target possesses an active soul signature.

↳ Living entities with untethered neural links cannot be stored in spatial inventory.

[Storage Denied]

The blue light fizzled out and vanished. The bed did not move at all. Mia remained completely still.

Declan frowned and dropped his hand. "Well. That plan sucks."

"What happened?" Sloane panicked. She gripped the metal rail of the bed tightly. "Why did it not work?"

"The game hates me." Declan sighed and cracked his neck. "It will not let me store living people. The system says her soul signature prevents the spatial freeze."

"So what do we do?" Sloane asked. Tears welled up in her eyes again. "The backup generator only has a few hours left. We cannot carry a hospital bed through a warzone!"

"Watch me." Declan said calmly.

He did not waste time complaining about the rules. He just broke them.

Declan reached down and grabbed the thick power cables connecting the ventilator to the wall. He violently ripped them out of the sockets. Sparks showered the floor. The machine instantly switched to its internal battery backup. A loud rhythmic beeping started echoing in the room.

"The battery only lasts twenty minutes!" Sloane yelled.

"Then we make it a fast trip." Declan said.

He walked to the foot of the heavy metal hospital bed. He grabbed the thick steel frame with both hands. He did not even bend his knees. He just pulled upward.

With his thirty percent real-world synchronization, his base Strength was sitting at an absurd level. The heavy hospital bed, the massive ventilator, and the patient on top of it lifted off the floor like they were made of styrofoam.

Sloane jaw dropped. She watched Declan casually hold the entire medical setup waist-high.

"Grab your med-kit." Declan ordered. "We are taking the stairs."

They rushed out of the ICU. The hallway was a total disaster zone. The ruined body of the Gore-Hulk was still dissolving into blue pixels near the broken wall. Declan carried the hospital bed down the corridor without breaking a sweat. His mutated muscles did not even strain.

They reached the emergency stairwell. The concrete stairs were narrow and covered in debris.

"I will go first." Sloane said. She pulled a heavy flashlight from her bag.

They moved fast. Declan carefully navigated the tight corners. He kept the bed perfectly level so the tubes and wires would not disconnect from Mia arms. They descended four flights of stairs in less than three minutes.

They kicked the ground floor doors open and stepped into the hospital loading bay.

It was a massive concrete garage. Several ambulances were parked in the dark. Most of them were smashed or burning. But sitting in the far corner was a heavy corporate medical transport. It was a massive six-wheeled armored truck used to safely transport high-paying executives.

"Open the back." Declan said.

Sloane ran forward and yanked the heavy rear doors open. Declan carefully slid the hospital bed inside and locked the wheels into the floor tracks.

"Stay with her." Declan said. He slammed the doors shut.

He walked around to the driver side. The armored door was locked. Declan just punched the reinforced glass window. His dense knuckles shattered the bulletproof glass instantly. He reached inside, popped the lock, and climbed into the driver seat.

He ripped the plastic casing off the steering column. He found the ignition wires. He grabbed them with his bare fingers and pumped a tiny fraction of his raw mana into the copper.

The heavy armored engine roared to life.

Declan slammed his foot on the gas. The massive truck lurched forward and smashed right through the closed garage doors of the loading bay. They exploded out into the rainy toxic night of Sector 7.

"Hold on back there!" Declan yelled over his shoulder.

He whipped the heavy steering wheel to the right. The six-wheeled transport drifted heavily on the wet pavement. It crushed a rusted sedan out of the way.

The streets were an absolute nightmare. Fires burned in the alleyways. Packs of Level 1 Flesh-Stalkers were swarming over abandoned cars and screaming into the dark.

Declan did not slow down. He just ran them over.

The heavy steel grill of the armored transport slammed into the monsters at eighty miles an hour. Digital blood and blue pixels sprayed across the cracked windshield like rain. The truck bounced over the dissolving corpses and kept accelerating.

Suddenly, a high-pitched mechanical whine pierced the air. It sounded like a massive jet engine screaming right above them.

Declan looked up through the windshield.

Dropping out of the dark smog-choked sky were six Apex Paradigm automated bomber drones. They looked like massive sleek flying wings made of black metal. Red targeting lasers shot down from their underbellies. They swept across the ruined streets.

Three of the red lasers instantly locked onto the hood of the ambulance.

"Incoming!" Declan yelled.

He violently jerked the steering wheel to the left. The heavy truck swerved hard. Its massive tires squealed against the wet concrete.

A fraction of a second later, the drones opened fire.

Heavy gatling guns mounted on the drones spun to life. A deafening roar of high-caliber gunfire tore up the street. A line of massive explosions walked right past the passenger side of the ambulance. It ripped the asphalt into chunks and completely vaporized a row of parked cars.

"What is that?!" Sloane screamed from the back. The entire truck shook violently.

"Corporate pest control." Declan said. "They really want me dead."

He pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The heavy engine screamed. They tore down the main avenue heading straight for the abandoned industrial district.

The drones banked sharply in the sky and swooped down for another pass. The red lasers tracked the speeding ambulance perfectly.

Declan knew the armor on this truck was thick, but it would not hold up against concentrated military drone fire. He needed to get them inside his warehouse.

He checked the dashboard screen. They were three blocks away.

"System." Declan said in his mind. "Equip the Black Aegis."

The heavy mutated titanium riot shield materialized directly onto his left forearm. He kept his right hand on the steering wheel. He rolled down the shattered window on his side.

The drones fired again.

A hail of heavy armor-piercing bullets rained down from the sky. They were aimed perfectly at the driver side door.

Declan shoved his left arm out the window and angled the +20 Black Aegis upward.

The heavy caliber rounds slammed into the matte-black metal. The shield did not dent. It did not break. The Kinetic Repulsion trait triggered instantly.

A massive shockwave exploded upward from the shield surface. It hit the incoming barrage of bullets and reflected the kinetic force right back at the sky.

The invisible wall of force slammed into the lead drone. The sleek flying machine crumpled like a tin can and violently exploded in a massive ball of orange fire!

"One down." Declan smirked.

He did not pull his arm back inside. He kept the shield angled out the window. He used the constant barrage of enemy fire to trigger rapid-fire shockwaves that kept the other drones at bay.

The rusted corrugated iron walls of his warehouse appeared at the end of the street.

"Brace for impact!" Declan yelled.

He did not bother using the brakes. He just aimed the massive armored truck right at the heavy steel sliding door of the building.

They crashed through the metal door like it was made of paper. The ambulance skidded across the dusty concrete floor of the dark warehouse and finally slammed into a dead stop right next to the stolen corporate dive pod.

Declan kicked his door open and jumped out.

The sky outside the massive hole in the wall was glowing bright orange. The remaining five bomber drones were hovering directly over the building.

Their underbellies opened up. Heavy glowing missiles dropped from their racks.

Apex Paradigm was not just shooting bullets anymore. They were going to completely level the entire block.