Chapter 63: [63] : The Unholy Alliance, Kneel to Code

Ezekiel stopped chanting.

The cult leader slowly turned around. His expressionless gaze stared back at Declan across the massive bone platform.

His face was a horrific mess. It looked like someone had thrown a toaster into a blender and glued the pieces to his skull.

Half of it was normal human skin that was pale and sweaty. But the other half was completely replaced by jagged black metal plates and glowing purple wires that dug directly into his jaw.

His left eye was a mechanical robotic lens that twitched erratically. It zoomed in and out with a sharp clicking sound.

Ezekiel stared at Declan.

He looked at the pitch-black Predator Coat and the massive swirling red Blood Shield protecting him. He also noticed the bloody mutated cleaver held loosely in his hand.

"Player V," Ezekiel whispered.

His voice was a grating metallic rasp that sounded like two rusty pipes scraping together.

"The anomaly. You actually walked right into the holy temple."

"Your temple smells like a garbage dump," Declan said casually.

He stepped further onto the bone platform. He completely ignored the fact that he was standing in the middle of a literal boss room.

He rested the flat side of the Carnage Cleaver against his shoulder.

"I am here to give you a very simple final notice. Stop attacking my miners and stop blocking my supply roads. Or I delete your entire guild right now."

Ezekiel threw his head back and let out a horrible screeching laugh.

It sounded exactly like grinding gears in a broken machine.

"You think you have power because you built a wall?" Ezekiel sneered. He pointed a trembling half-metal finger at Declan.

"You think your little Iron Bastion matters? The Great Convergence is already here! The megacorps are blind but I see the truth. The Grid is not a game. It is a divine cleansing!"

"Yeah, yeah. I heard the exact same speech from your minions out in the canyon," Declan sighed.

He rolled his eyes in pure annoyance.

"It was boring the first time. Can we skip the villain monologue and go straight to the part where I hit you?"

"You cannot hit a god!" Ezekiel screamed. His mechanical eye was spinning wildly.

He reached into his heavy robes and raised a glowing black crystal high into the air.

The crystal pulsed with a thick and suffocating dark energy.

"I have offered the souls of a hundred players to the deep code! I have opened the gateway! Come forth, Herald! Cleanse this virus from the system!"

Ezekiel slammed the sharp edge of the black crystal directly into his own chest.

Declan frowned and gripped his cleaver a little tighter.

’Is he going to blow up like those suicide bombers in the canyon?’ Declan thought as he braced himself for the shockwave of true damage.

But Ezekiel did not explode.

Instead, he screamed in pure agony as the dark crystal literally tore through his avatar code.

His body did not take damage. It began to violently stretch and tear apart like a digital image being stretched across a screen.

The air directly above the bone platform ripped open.

It sounded like a massive sheet of canvas tearing in half. A massive swirling black vortex formed in the center of the room.

A hand reached out of the dark vortex.

It was not a human hand. It was massive and easily six feet long from the wrist to the fingertips.

The skin was the color of bruised obsidian. It was completely smooth and terrifyingly thick.

It had six long and multi-jointed fingers that bent in ways fingers were not supposed to bend.

Each finger ended in a long glowing purple claw.

The hand grabbed the invisible edge of the portal and pulled.

A monstrous figure stepped out of the void and onto the bone platform.

The heavy impact of its landing shook the entire fleshy cavern.

The moment the creature arrived, the entire room seemed to shrink. The air grew incredibly heavy and freezing cold.

The walls of the cavern were made of pulsing red muscle but they actually shrank backward. It was as if the room itself was terrified of what just walked in.

The system interface in Declan’s vision started freaking out.

It threw up massive red error codes as it struggled to even render the creature’s massive data package.

It was easily twenty feet tall. But it did not have a normal body.

It did not have a head or legs or a chest.

It looked like a towering mass of floating geometric shapes. Massive black pyramids, rapidly spinning silver rings, and sharp metallic cubes floated around a central core.

They were all held together by raw crackling arcs of dark purple energy.

And covering every single flat surface of those spinning shapes were eyes.

Hundreds of glowing and unblinking red eyes were staring in every direction.

A golden system tag finally managed to render above the floating mass.

[Target Information]

↳ Name: Abyssal Herald

↳ Level: 55

↳ Status: Dimensional Entity

↳ HP: ??? / ???

Level 55.

Declan stared at the massive floating structure of eyes and metal. He did not blink.

He just did the math in his head. This thing was a full five levels higher than the Spire Master he had killed back in the Crimson Spire.

And the system could not even calculate its health pool.

Ezekiel fell to his hands and knees. He pressed his half-metal face flat against the dirty bone floor.

"My lord!" he wept. His voice was shaking with absolute fanaticism.

"The Herald has arrived! Purge the unbeliever! Cleanse the server!"

The Abyssal Herald did not look at Ezekiel.

Hundreds of glowing red eyes swiveled on their geometric blocks simultaneously and locked directly onto Declan.

When the Herald spoke, it did not use sound. There was no booming voice in the room.

The words simply materialized directly inside Declan’s mind. They were heavy, cold, and incredibly oppressive.

"You carry the scent of a Spire Master. You have consumed core data. You are a native of this farm, yet you walk with the weight of an Ascendant."

Declan grimaced and tapped the side of his head. He hated telepathy.

It felt like someone was poking his brain with a cold needle.

"I try to stay active," Declan replied smoothly out loud.

He did not drop his casual posture. He did not show a single ounce of fear or intimidation.

The geometric shapes of the Herald spun slowly.

The purple energy crackled and sent sparks dancing across the bone platform.

"Earth is designated for harvest. Your species is fuel for the Abyss. But you are unique. Your physical vessel has assimilated the code perfectly. You have bypassed the intended limits."

The Herald drifted a few feet closer.

The oppressive aura rolling off the Level 55 Entity pushed physically against Declan’s Blood Shield.

The thick red barrier of over-healed health rippled violently under the pressure but it held firm.

"I offer you a function, native. The Abyss requires managers for the newly acquired sectors. Kneel before me. Surrender your administrative rights to the Iron Bastion. You shall be appointed as an Overseer. You will live while the rest of your world is rendered into ash." The Herald continued.

Declan raised an eyebrow.

’A job offer?’

The monsters were invading Earth and deleting cities. Yet the boss of the monsters wanted to hire him as middle management.

"I already have a job," Declan said. "I am self-employed."

Ezekiel gasped from the floor.

He lifted his head and his mechanical eye was spinning in sheer outrage.

"My lord!" Ezekiel screamed as he pointed at Declan. "He is a virus! He refuses the holy code! He must be deleted! Why are you offering him a place in the new world?!"

"Silence, tool," the Herald commanded in Declan’s mind.

The massive floating obsidian hand with the six fingers raised up.

It didn’t cast a massive spell. It didn’t wind up for a huge attack. It just casually flicked a finger.

A tiny bolt of pure and concentrated dark matter shot out from the purple claw.

It crossed the platform in a millisecond and hit Ezekiel squarely in the side of the head.

The cult leader did not even get a chance to scream. His health bar was instantly deleted.

His avatar was erased on the spot.

He didn’t turn into bright blue pixels like a normal player. The dark matter just dissolved him into a disgusting puddle of bubbling black sludge on the bone floor.

Declan looked at the puddle of sludge. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"Well," Declan noted flatly. "There goes your employee of the month."

The Herald ignored the dead cultist entirely. The massive structure of spinning pyramids and rings looked back at Declan.

"The offer is absolute. Kneel and become a god of this dead world. Refuse and your code will be unwritten from the server entirely."

Declan let out a long heavy breath.

He looked at the massive twenty-foot-tall monster. He looked at the hundreds of red eyes staring down at him.

He did not pull out a magic spell book. He did not step back.

He reached into his digital inventory.

The +20 Carnage Cleaver vanished from his hand in a swirl of blue light.

The cleaver was great for taking down groups of low-level mobs. But against a Level 55 Dimensional Entity with a question mark for a health bar, a machete was not going to cut it.

He needed to break the physics engine again.

The air in front of his right hand distorted heavily. The system threw up a quick warning about physical mass.

Declan instantly ignored it.

The +30 Warden’s Halberd dropped directly into his grip.

The heavy dark matter shaft absorbed the dim light of the fleshy room.

The massive blunt axe head rested easily in his hands.

And sitting directly in the center of the blade was a tiny black hole that spun rapidly.

The moment the weapon appeared, the gravitational pull immediately started sucking the toxic green fog and the loose bone fragments on the floor right into the blade.

The heavy oppressive aura of the Abyssal Herald was instantly pushed back by the sheer physical mass of the +30 Relic weapon.

Declan rested the massive heavy iron weapon casually on his right shoulder.

A dark purple energy flared in his dark eyes.

They were entirely empty of fear or respect.

"I do not share power," Declan said softly.

His deep voice echoed loudly in the fleshy chamber.

"And I do not kneel to code."