Chapter 76: [76] : The Ascension Directive, Entering the Void

Golden text hovered in the dark sky, casting a warm light over the ruined courtyard of the Iron Bastion.

Declan stared at the massive server wide announcement. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pitch black Predator’s Coat.

A dark and bloodthirsty smirk spread across his face. The reflection of the golden letters shone brightly in his pitch black eyes.

He didn’t feel fear or hesitation. He just felt hungry for more points!

Heavy metallic footsteps crunched against the glass covered pavement behind him.

Declan turned his head. Bram, the Level 30 Master Artificer, was walking toward him.

The old NPC’s jaw dropped wide open!

He looked from the massive crater of melted orange glass outside the city walls, up to the golden text in the sky, and then finally at Declan.

"Boss," Bram breathed heavily, his obsidian prosthetic arm twitching at his side. "You just deleted a Zenith tier World Boss. And now the server is screaming about a Mortal Cap."

"It has been a very productive day," Declan agreed.

He pulled up his system interface. He needed to check his actual stats before doing anything else.

The massive dump of experience points from the Dune Leviathan had given him a ridiculous amount of raw power. He had completely ignored his stat points during the frantic fights.

It was time to spend them!

[Biological State]

↳ Level: 60 (Mortal Cap Reached)

[System Resources]

↳ Stat Points Available: 400

Declan looked at the number.

Four hundred points! Normal players got five points every time they leveled up.

They had to carefully balance them between Strength, Agility, Vitality, and Intelligence. If they messed up their build, their character was ruined.

But Declan didn’t need to balance anything. He had the Sanguine Engine mutated heart keeping him alive and the Abyssal Sovereign class giving him massive base multipliers.

"System," Declan commanded in his mind. "Put two hundred points into Strength. Put two hundred points into Agility."

He confirmed the allocation.

The change was instantaneous and violent!

Declan let out a sharp grunt. He grabbed his chest as a massive surge of raw digital code flooded his avatar.

His muscles didn’t bulge outward like a bodybuilder. Instead, they condensed. The physical density of his body skyrocketed!

His bones groaned, hardening into something that felt like solid titanium. The sheer physical weight of his own body felt different. He felt like a coiled spring made of industrial steel.

He rolled his shoulders. The air literally popped around his joints.

Bram took a cautious step back. "You look like you are going to explode."

"I am perfectly fine," Declan smiled.

He looked down at his hands. He opened and closed his fists.

The speed at which his fingers moved was absurd. With his new base Agility, plus his Eclipse Sovereign multipliers, plus the +20 from his Mythic ring, he was moving faster than the game engine could smoothly render.

His hand actually left a faint blurry afterimage in the air!

He closed his stat screen. The golden prompt in the sky was still flashing, waiting for his response.

[Ascension Trial Unlocked.]

[Do you wish to enter the trial? Warning: This is a solo instance. Party members cannot assist. Death in the Ascension Trial results in permanent avatar deletion and severe real world neural trauma.]

Declan didn’t even blink at the warning. He had already pulled a World Boss core into reality and survived the overwrite.

But Bram’s face turned completely pale.

"Grid walker, do not accept that," Bram warned, his gruff voice tight with genuine fear. "The Ascension Trial is a myth. It is a purge mechanic. The system uses it to trap anomalies who grow too fast and delete them. No one comes back."

"I have to go, Bram," Declan said smoothly.

"Why? You own this city! You wiped out an Abyssal Tide!" Bram argued, pointing at the shattered desert outside. "You have enough power."

"It’s not enough," Declan stated. His eyes grew cold and serious.

"Thatcher told me the truth about this game. The Grid is bleeding into the real world. My physical body back on Earth is only sitting at a forty five percent synchronization rate. As long as I am capped at Level 60, my real world stats are locked."

Declan looked up at the golden letters. "If I want to pull my full inventory into reality, if I want the power to completely crush the megacorps and protect my people on the outside, I can’t be a mortal anymore. I need Ascendant status. I have to break the game’s ceiling."

Bram swallowed hard. The old mechanist understood. Declan wasn’t just playing for loot. He was fighting a war on two fronts.

"It’s a solo trial," Declan said, his dark coat fluttering in the wind. "Keep the forges running while I am gone. The players inside this dome work for us now. Organize them. Build the turrets. If anything gets close to the barrier, shoot it."

He didn’t wait for Bram to reply. Declan looked at the system prompt and mentally clicked Accept.

"Initiating transfer," the cold and mechanical voice of the system echoed in his head.

The world didn’t fade to black like his Void Blink. It shattered!

The Iron Bastion, the ruined courtyard, the terrified players, and Bram all broke apart into millions of tiny glass shards.

Declan felt a violent yank on his navel, like a massive invisible hook had grabbed him and pulled him straight up into the sky.

He was launched through a tunnel of swirling white light and chaotic digital code. The speed was nauseating.

Then, he stopped.

Gravity slammed back into him. His +10 Spiked Striders hit a solid surface with a heavy crunch.

Declan stood up straight and looked around.

He was no longer in Sector 4. He wasn’t in the Ashlands, the Weeping Thicket, or the ruined slums of Sector 7.

He was standing in a void.

There was no sky, no ground, no horizon. It was just an endless and suffocating expanse of pure black nothingness.

The only light came from the structure he was standing on.

It was a staircase!

Massive and pristine blocks of glowing white marble formed a spiraling staircase that stretched endlessly upward into the dark void.

The stairs were wide, easily fifty feet across, with no handrails. Just a terrifying drop into the abyss on either side.

A new blue system prompt materialized in front of his face.

[Welcome to the Celestial Staircase.]

[Trial Objective: Ascend.]

[Rules of Ascension: The challenger must climb one hundred steps to prove their vessel is worthy of holding divine data. There are no safe zones. Natural health and stamina regeneration are disabled. Outside healing items are disabled.]

Declan read the rules. "Walk up some stairs without taking a potion. Sounds like a gym workout."

The system text flickered. The blue light turned into a harsh and glaring red.

[Scanning Challenger...]

[Error. Error. Error.]

Declan sighed. "Here we go again."

[Anomaly Detected.]

[Challenger possesses unauthorized SSS Rank Talent: Boundless Enhancement.]

[Challenger possesses glitched conceptual weaponry.]

[Challenger threat level upgraded from Standard to Extreme Hazard.]

[Adjusting Trial Parameters to match Anomaly...]

The entire white marble staircase groaned. The glowing light coming from the stone dimmed, turning a harsh and sickly gray.

[Trial Parameters Updated. Hostile environment scaled by 10,000%. Prepare for immediate neural resistance.]

"Ten thousand percent," Declan muttered. He crossed his arms over his black coat. "You developers really hold a grudge."

He looked up the massive spiral staircase. He couldn’t even see the top. It just vanished into the dark void.

"Let’s see what you got," Declan said.

He took his first step forward. His heavy spiked boot landed on the second marble block.

He fully expected a massive monster to jump out. He expected a dragon, or a mech, or a swarm of those Abyssal demons Ezekiel liked so much.

He kept his hand near his digital inventory, ready to pull out the +40 Eclipse Severance and chop the staircase in half.

But no monster appeared. There was no fire, no ice, no poison gas.

Instead, the attack happened entirely inside his head!

The moment his weight shifted onto the second step, the void attacked his mind.

It was not a headache. It was not the sharp and splitting pain he felt when he forced the system to enhance items past their limit.

This was a crushing and overwhelming spiritual pressure!

Declan dropped to one knee instantly. His hands flew to the sides of his head.

It felt like someone had just dropped a commercial bank vault directly onto his brain.

A massive and deafening roar of white noise blasted through his ears, completely drowning out his own thoughts.

[Warning: Severe Mental Trauma Detected.]

[Sanity integrity dropping.]

The system was trying to lobotomize him!

It wasn’t attacking his massive health pool. It completely bypassed his physical defense, his armor, and his high Agility. It was attacking the very concept of his consciousness.

The system was flooding his neural link with raw and unformatted junk data. It was trying to overload his brain and force a permanent disconnect.

Declan gritted his teeth. Blood started dripping from his nose, splashing onto the pristine white marble.

"Nice try," Declan grunted.

He forced his head up. His dark eyes glared into the empty black void. "But I’m not leaving."

He planted his hands on his knees and slowly, painfully, pushed himself back up to his feet. He took a deep breath.

He was going to climb this tower. He was going to reach step one hundred. And he was going to take everything the system had.

He lifted his foot and stepped onto the third marble block.

The pressure doubled!

Declan stumbled, but he didn’t fall. He just smiled, wiped the blood from his lip, and kept walking.