Chapter 74: [74] : The Orbital Strike, Weaponizing Gravity

The digital interface of the Global Auction House flickered wildly.

The server was struggling to render the UI while simultaneously handling the massive Abyssal Tide event outside.

Declan ignored the lag. He had exactly eight seconds before the Dune Leviathan’s spinning teeth crashed into the Iron Bastion’s energy dome.

He needed an Area of Effect attack. Something with enough raw destructive power to vaporize a mountain instantly.

He looked at his treasury balance.

[Origin Points: 1,850,000]

He had plenty of currency. The problem was finding the right item.

High-level spell books were incredibly rare, and guilds usually hoarded them. The few that were listed on the market right now were basic elemental attacks. A Firestorm or a Blizzard spell wasn’t going to stop a monster that size. It would just make the worm slightly warm or slightly cold before it ate them.

Declan quickly typed a word in the search bar. Gravity.

He hit filter and sorted by lowest price.

He didn’t care about the base stats. He didn’t care if the spell was meant for a Level 5 player. His Boundless Enhancement talent didn’t scale off base stats. It completely rewrote the item’s conceptual rules. He just needed the right concept.

The screen populated with a dozen items. Most of them were trash-tier rings that slightly increased carrying capacity.

Then, right at the bottom of the list, he saw it.

[Skill Book: Gravity Well]

↳ Type: Active Spell

↳ Tier: Scavenged

↳ Description: Consume 50 Mana to create a small localized gravity puddle on the ground. Slows the movement speed of small enemies by 10 percent for five seconds. Mostly used to catch fleeing rats.

↳ Buyout Price: 15 Origin Points.

It was a complete joke of a spell. It was the kind of garbage a low-level mage threw away because it took up inventory space.

"Perfect," Declan smiled.

He slammed his finger against the buyout button.

[Item Purchased. Origin Points: 15 subtracted.]

The cheap, gray-colored book materialized in his hand. He didn’t waste a single millisecond and pressed the book flat against his chest.

The book shattered into a burst of gray light that sank directly into his skin. The basic magical formula downloaded into his neural link.

[Skill Learned: Gravity Well Level 1]

Declan looked up.

The Dune Leviathan was halfway down. Its massive maw was wide open, completely blocking out the sky. The sheer wind pressure from its descent was already making the red energy dome above the courtyard ripple and groan.

Players were screaming. Some were huddled on the ground and covering their heads, while others were just staring up in absolute frozen terror.

"System," Declan commanded in his mind. "Open enhancement menu. Target: Gravity Well. Push it to plus thirty."

He didn’t hesitate. He knew the cost for upgrading a Scavenged tier skill to +30 was going to be massive. The exponential scaling was designed to bankrupt players and break their items.

He didn’t care.

[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating cost...]

[Warning: Point requirement exceeds standard player limits.]

↳ Cost for +1 to +30: 1,500,000 Origin Points.

A million and a half points. It was an astronomical fortune.

"Take it," Declan ordered.

The points instantly vanished from his treasury.

The reaction was violently immediate. A blinding, searing white light erupted from Declan’s chest. It was so bright it cast sharp, dark shadows across the entire courtyard, cutting through the dim red glow of the barrier.

The system alarms triggered in his head. They didn’t just chime. They screamed like a failing heart monitor!

[CRITICAL ERROR!]

[Skill density exceeding spatial limits!]

[Immediate skill shatter imminent! Severe neural corruption guaranteed!]

The headache hit him like a physical blow. It felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through his forehead. The game engine was actively fighting him and trying to delete the spell before it broke the server’s parameters.

Declan gritted his teeth. Blood dripped from his nose.

"Override," he growled.

His SSS-Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, kicked in. It didn’t negotiate with the system. It took a sledgehammer to the core code and smashed it to pieces.

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement overriding error.]

[Safety protocols bypassed. Cap removed.]

The red warning boxes shattered into digital dust. The pain in his head vanished, replaced by an overwhelming, terrifying sensation of pure cosmic weight resting in the palms of his hands.

The system text flashed in a blinding, brilliant purple.

[Gravity Well +30.]

[Triggering Ultimate Conceptual Mutation...]

The original spell was designed to make a tiny puddle on the ground to slow down rats. The new spell was something entirely different.

The text floating in Declan’s vision updated.

[Skill Mutated: Meteoritic Pull]

↳ Type: Active Spell (Sovereign Tier)

↳ Description: The user locks onto a massive celestial body or piece of orbital debris in the server’s simulated atmosphere. The skill generates an absolute gravitational tether between the user’s target and the celestial object, forcing a localized, catastrophic collision.

↳ Range: Infinite.

↳ Warning: This is an extinction-level event. Collateral damage is guaranteed.

Declan let out a sharp, dark laugh.

"Extinction level event," he whispered. "Exactly what the doctor ordered."

He looked up. The Dune Leviathan was right on top of them. The massive spinning stone teeth were less than fifty feet away from the red energy dome. The sound of the grinding rocks was deafening.

It was going to crush the shield in two seconds.

Declan didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t raise a shield.

He just pointed his right index finger straight up at the sky, aiming directly at the center of the giant worm’s descending body.

"Target locked," Declan said calmly.

He tapped into his massive mana pool and pulled the trigger on the mutated skill.

"Meteoritic Pull."

A beam of pure, pitch-black void energy shot out from his finger. It didn’t deal damage. It completely bypassed the Leviathan’s thick armor, shooting straight through the monster’s body and continuing upward into the dark, stormy clouds of the server’s atmosphere.

For exactly one second, absolutely nothing happened.

The Dune Leviathan kept falling. The players kept screaming.

Then, the sky tore open.