Chapter 57: [57] : Martial Law in the Grid, Absolute Obedience

The gel padding of the dive pod felt freezing cold against Declan skin. He did not care. He laid back and pulled the heavy sensory halo down over his head. The thick needles bit sharply into his neck.

"Initiate Dive." Declan commanded.

The blinding white light consumed his vision. It ripped his consciousness out of the physical world and threw it directly back into the Primordial Grid.

He materialized in Sector 4. The transition was instant.

The moment his boots hit the ground, the smell of burning flesh and toxic mud filled his lungs. The deafening sounds of slaughter echoed from every direction.

Declan opened his eyes. The Iron Bastion was completely gone.

The towering black iron monolith he had planted in the center of the square was missing. The glowing purple dome that kept the toxic green fog of the Ashen Bog away had vanished. The massive spiked walls of the Thorned Aegis were nowhere to be seen.

All that remained was the smooth paving stones he had built. They were now covered in digital blood and screaming players.

The sky above was pitch black. It was torn open by the violent red lightning of the Purge Wave.

Thousands of Level 20 Flesh-Stalkers were swarming the square. They leaped through the ruined buildings. Their scythe-like claws swung mercilessly into the panicked crowds of low-level players. Blue pixels exploded into the air every single second as avatars were violently deleted from the server.

It was absolute terrifying chaos.

Declan stood in the middle of the massacre. His pitch-black coat fluttered in the toxic wind. He did not pull out a weapon. He just pulled up his party interface to locate Bram.

A glowing green waypoint appeared on his minimap. He was about two hundred yards away. He was backed up against the heavy iron furnaces of the crafting zone.

"Void Blink."

Declan vanished. He bypassed a massive horde of screeching monsters and teleported directly onto the roof of a ruined building near the forges. He looked down.

Bram, the Level 30 Master Artificer, was backed into a corner.

The old NPC swung his heavy blacksmith hammer with his black obsidian arm, crushing the skull of any Flesh-Stalker that got too close.

But the monsters weren’t the only problem.

A mob of about fifty furious players had surrounded the forge. They weren’t fighting the monsters. They were fighting Bram!

The mob surged forward and raised their weapons. They were going to tear her apart before the monsters even reached them.

Declan knew exactly why they hadn’t logged out. The real world was currently a warzone.

Most of these players had a synchronization rate of zero. If they disconnected now, they would wake up as weak, slow humans trapped in their pods while monsters tore their apartment buildings apart. The Grid was a death trap, but reality was worse. They were trapped.

And their fear had completely mutated into blind, desperate rage.

"Give us the points back!" a large warrior in dented iron armor screamed. He pointed his heavy broadsword right at Bram’s face. "Your boss took our money! He promised us a safe zone! Where is the dome?!"

"I do not control the core!" Bram grunted, smashing a Flesh-Stalker into blue pixels. "The Grid-walker took it!"

"You’re his blacksmith!" another player yelled, stepping forward. "Open his treasury Give us teleport scrolls right now or we kill you ourselves!"

Declan eyes turned cold.

He did not yell to get their attention. He did not try to reason with a panicked mob.

"Void Blink."

Declan teleported from the roof and materialized directly between the angry mob and Bram. His heavy boots hit the stone floor without a sound.

The large warrior in the front did not even have time to react. He just saw a blur of a black trench coat appear out of thin air.

Declan raised his right hand. He did not summon his massive halberd. He did not need to. He just tapped into his Abyssal Sovereign stats and grabbed the blade of the warrior broadsword with his bare fingers.

The warrior tried to pull the sword back. It did not move an inch. It was like the blade was bolted to a concrete wall.

"You have a complaint?" Declan asked. His voice was quiet, but it carried a heavy terrifying resonance that made the entire mob freeze.

"Player V!" The warrior gasped. His eyes went wide with panic. "You... you dropped the shield! You set us up!"

"I took the shield." Declan corrected him smoothly. "Because I own it. Now let go of the sword."

The warrior gritted his teeth. "No! You owe us our points!"

Declan sighed. "Absolute Execution."

He did not use a weapon. He just channeled the mutated skill directly through his bare hands. The dark purple energy of the execution trait flared around his fingers.

Declan violently twisted his wrist. He snapped the broadsword steel blade in half. He stepped directly into the warrior guard and drove the jagged piece of broken metal straight through the man iron chest plate.

The system registered the massive level gap and the critical hit. The concept of durability was instantly deleted.

The warrior eyes rolled back. His health bar instantly dropped from full to zero. He did not even scream. He just exploded into a shower of bright blue pixels. He left his broken armor clattering against the stone floor.

The mob of fifty players shrieked and scrambled backward in pure horror. They dropped their cheap weapons and held their hands up.

"Anybody else want a refund?" Declan asked and dropped the bloody piece of metal.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

Declan turned around and looked at his blacksmith. "Bram. Tell me you built the backup."

"I am a Master Artificer," Bram yelled over the screeching of the Flesh-Stalkers closing in behind the mob. The old man reached onto his heavy iron workbench and grabbed a device.

It looked like a massive glowing red battery covered in complex silver runes. It hummed with intense magical energy.

"A localized sub-core!" Bram grunted and tossed the heavy machine to Declan. "It runs off the raw mana crystals you looted. It does not have the permanent terrain-altering power of a Sovereign core, but it will project a barrier!"

Declan caught the heavy sub-core with one hand.

He turned around and slammed the device directly into the stone pavement. He poured a chunk of his points into the machine to jump-start the ignition.

The silver runes on the battery flared blindingly bright.

A massive dome of sheer red energy exploded outward from the device. It swept across the courtyard and expanded into a five-hundred-meter radius.

The red barrier slammed into the hordes of Flesh-Stalkers. It did not just push them back. The intense magical heat of the shield instantly incinerated any monster caught on the perimeter. Thousands of gray zombies shrieked and melted into ash as the safe zone violently re-established itself.

The dark toxic fog was pushed away. The air inside the red dome cleared up.

The surviving players collapsed onto the ground. They wept and gasped for air. They were safe.

Declan stood in the center of the courtyard. He looked at the terrified exhausted crowd of survivors. There were maybe two thousand left out of the original three thousand.

He jumped up and planted his boots firmly on top of Bram heavy iron anvil so everyone could see him.

"Listen to me!" Declan magically amplified voice boomed across the entire enclosed city.

Every single face turned to look at the Warlord in the black coat.

"The tutorial is over." Declan announced coldly. "The megacorps lied to you. This is not a game. If you die here, your real body dies. The monsters outside this dome are currently flooding the streets of your real-world cities."

Panicked whispers broke out across the crowd. People started pulling up their system interfaces. They realized the logout buttons were completely gone.

"Quiet!" Declan barked. The sheer authority in his voice silenced them instantly.

"Apex Paradigm cannot save you. The governments cannot save you. I am the only thing standing between you and absolute deletion." Declan pointed to the glowing red dome above them.

"This barrier runs on my money and my materials. Therefore, this is my city. There is no democracy here. There are no refunds."

Declan looked down at the players huddled near the forge.

"From this moment on, Sector 4 operates under Martial Law. You live in my Bastion, you work for my Bastion. You will take the weapons we forge. You will walk out into that swamp. And you will farm monsters. You will bring the loot directly to my Quartermaster."

A player in the back raised a trembling hand. "And if we refuse?"

Declan smiled. It was a dark terrifying expression.

"If you steal from me, if you hide loot, or if you refuse to fight," Declan said softly, but his voice carried perfectly. "I will not kill you. I will just teleport you ten feet outside this barrier and let the Flesh-Stalkers eat you alive."

Declan crossed his arms. "Now. Pick up your weapons and get to work."

The players did not argue. They did not complain. They scrambled to their feet, grabbing their swords and bows, and fell into perfect obedient lines.

The Eclipse Legion was officially born.