Chapter 58: [58]: The Cult of the Machine God, War Declaration

The digital version of the Iron Bastion was running like a well-oiled machine. Even if it looked a lot rougher than it used to.

It had been three days since Declan returned to the Grid and established absolute martial law in Sector 4. The panic of the Purge Wave had finally settled down into a grim and exhausting routine.

Players woke up, grabbed their scavenged iron swords, and walked out into the toxic mud of the Ashen Bog. Their only goal was to kill monsters.

They brought the dropped loot and raw materials back to the drop-off crates. They paid their daily tax to stay inside the shield and went to sleep on the hard stone floors of the courtyard.

It was not a luxury resort, but nobody was complaining.

Outside the glowing red energy dome generated by Bram’s sub-core, millions of Flesh-Stalkers were still roaming the ruined digital world.

Inside the dome, people got to keep their avatars alive and their real-world brains from getting fried by their dive pods.

Declan stood on a heavy iron scaffolding near the center of the camp. He looked down at his makeshift city.

He was entirely alone when it came to his original party. Sloane and Kendra were completely safe back on Earth.

They were currently managing the massive and fully realized Earth Sanctum that he had dropped right into the middle of Sector 7’s slums.

Down by the main gate of the red energy dome, a sudden commotion broke out. Players were shouting and backing away from the entrance.

Declan casually stepped off the high iron scaffolding. He did not bother looking for a ladder.

He dropped forty feet with his pitch-black Predator’s Coat billowing behind him.

His +10 Spiked Striders hit the cobblestone pavement with a heavy and solid crunch. The Kinetic Dampener trait absorbed the entire massive impact. He did not even bend his knees.

The surrounding players flinched and immediately parted to let him through. They all knew exactly who the guy in the black coat was.

He walked over to the entrance. Five players had just stumbled through the energy barrier.

They looked absolutely terrible.

These guys were part of the official mining team of the Bastion. Declan had sent a group of forty players out to a nearby canyon to mine raw iron ore for the turrets of Bram.

Only five had come back.

Their armor was completely shredded. One guy was missing an arm entirely, and his health bar was blinking a dangerous red while hovering right near zero.

Another player was dragging a half-empty wooden cart of iron ore. He was sobbing uncontrollably and leaving a trail of digital blood on the stones.

"What happened?" Declan asked. His voice was flat and calm. "Did you pull a boss?"

The leader of the mining team fell to his knees. He was a tall and heavily built guy who normally carried a huge iron broadsword.

Right now, his weapon was gone, and he was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"It wasn’t a boss," the player gasped. He coughed up bright blue pixels. "It was players. They ambushed us in the canyon."

Declan narrowed his dark eyes.

"Player Killers? I thought I made the rules incredibly clear. Anyone hunting players in my zone gets deleted."

"They aren’t normal PKers," the miner stammered. His eyes were wide with pure and unfiltered terror.

"They didn’t just want our loot. They didn’t even ask for our Origin Points. They wanted us. They called themselves the Zealots of the Wire."

Declan raised an eyebrow. "Zealots? Like a cult?"

"Yes!" The miner grabbed the edge of a nearby wooden crate to pull himself up.

"They were wearing these weird robes made of ripped cables and server wires. Their leader, this guy named Ezekiel... he is totally insane."

"He was preaching about how the Grid is a divine entity. He said the monsters are angels sent to purge the weak code."

Declan crossed his arms. "So they are roleplaying. That doesn’t explain how five guys with trash-tier gear wiped out thirty-five of my miners."

"They didn’t use normal gear," the injured player whispered.

He looked over his shoulder as if he expected the cultists to walk right through the shield.

"Ezekiel grabbed my friend Marcus. He didn’t just stab him. He shoved a glowing black crystal right into the chest of Marcus."

The miner swallowed hard.

"Marcus started screaming. But his avatar didn’t dissolve into pixels when his health dropped. It twisted. His body mutated right in front of us."

The other surviving miners looked down at the ground and shivered violently.

"Ezekiel sacrificed him," the leader continued with his voice breaking. "He used the avatar of Marcus as a portal to summon something else. A demon. A literal Abyssal demon."

"It wiped out the rest of the team in ten seconds. Our swords just bounced right off it. We barely made it out."

A heavy silence fell over the gate area. Dozens of players had stopped to listen. Cold panic was quickly spreading through the crowd.

Abyssal demons. That was not standard game lore. That sounded like high-level endgame content, and it was happening right here in the tutorial sector.

Declan opened his system interface and checked the region map. The canyon the miners had gone to was a vital supply route.

If this Ezekiel guy was camping there and summoning demons, the iron supply of the Iron Bastion was completely severed.

He couldn’t build turrets. He couldn’t fortify the base.

"Bram!" Declan yelled out.

The rhythmic hammering at the forge instantly stopped. The burly old NPC walked over with his heavy boots thudding against the stone.

He wiped grease from his forehead with a dirty rag. "What is it, boss? I am in the middle of calibrating the targeting sensors for the south wall."

"We have cultists summoning Abyssal demons in our mining routes," Declan said. "Tell me everything you know about them."

The face of Bram went completely pale. Even the grizzled Level 30 Master Artificer looked genuinely scared.

"Abyssal demons?" Bram whispered as his mechanical obsidian fingers twitched.

"Grid-walker, you do not want to mess with those things. They do not operate on normal damage logic."

"Standard iron and steel weapons deal zero damage to an Abyssal entity. They just absorb physical kinetic energy."

Declan looked at his digital inventory. He thought about his +20 Carnage Cleaver and his massive +30 Warden’s Halberd.

Both of his primary weapons were physical damage dealers.

"So you are telling me I cannot just hit them really hard?"

"No," Bram shook his head firmly. "To kill an Abyssal demon, you need weapons forged from Void-Ore."

"It is a highly volatile and incredibly rare metal that naturally disrupts dark magic and Abyssal code."

"Without it, you are just throwing yourself at a brick wall. Your heavy halberd will just feed them more kinetic energy."

Declan sighed. "Of course. There is always a stupid crafting requirement. I cannot just bypass the plot."

"Where do I get Void-Ore?"

Bram pointed a thick and calloused finger toward the southern edge of the safe zone. It was far past the Ashen Bog.

"Sector 5. The Bone-Ash Wastes. It is an extreme environmental hazard zone. The ore only spawns deep inside the active magma vents."

"Alright," Declan said while cracking his neck. He closed his system interface and looked back at the terrified miner.

"You said Ezekiel took the rest of your team?"

"Yeah," the player nodded weakly. "He didn’t kill them all. He chained them up. He said he was going to use them to summon a Herald."

"He said the Iron Bastion is a glitch that needs to be erased."

"He called my city a glitch?" Declan asked. A slow and dark smile spread across his face.

The players standing nearby immediately took a few steps back. They had seen that smile before.

It was the same look Declan had right before he dropped a localized black hole on a thousand corporate soldiers.

Declan looked at the miners. "Go to the medical station. The system will patch you up for free. Take a break." 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"What are you going to do?" the miner asked while clutching his bleeding arm.

"I am going to declare a war of extermination," Declan replied casually.

"Nobody disrupts my supply chains. Nobody steals my miners. And nobody calls my city a glitch."

He turned and started walking toward the edge of the red barrier. He didn’t care about their religion. He didn’t care about their weird wire robes.

Ezekiel was standing between him and his raw iron ore. In a game of survival, stealing the crafting materials of a man was a capital offense.

"I will be back," Declan called out over his shoulder to Bram. "I just need to pick up some new rocks."