Chapter 22: [22] : Establishing the Sanctum, The Iron Bastion
Sector 4-Blight was exactly as miserable as they had left it.
The air smelled like wet trash and rusted metal, and the sky remained a bruised sickly purple color.
Ruined gothic buildings loomed in the thick fog with their shattered windows looking like empty eye sockets.
With a soft pop of displaced air, Declan, Sloane, and Kendra materialized in the middle of a ruined city square.
Kendra stumbled forward and grabbed her knees while panting heavily.
Her face was pale. Teleporting halfway across the map in a fraction of a second using a mutated void ring was not a pleasant experience for a normal player!
Sloane handled it a little better. She just groaned and leaned against a crumbled stone fountain.
"I hate that spell," Sloane muttered as she rubbed her temples. "It feels like my brain gets put in a blender and poured back into my skull."
"You get used to it," Declan said calmly.
He didn't feel dizzy at all. The +20 Agility and +10 Intelligence from his new Mythic ring made his avatar's body handle the spatial jump perfectly.
He looked around the square. It was empty. The weak Level 1 monsters that usually roamed this area were nowhere to be seen.
The area was quiet, but it wasn't a peaceful quiet. It was the kind of quiet that happened right before a bomb went off.
Declan opened his system interface and checked the global timer.
[Notice: The Purge Wave will initiate in exactly 2 hours and 14 minutes.]
"We don't have much time," Declan said. He closed the menu and looked at the two girls. "The server wipe is coming. We need to set up the safe zone."
He reached into his digital inventory. A heavy thud resounded in the quiet square as he pulled out the Sanctum Core.
The massive block of perfectly smooth black obsidian pulsed with a deep purple energy. It felt warm in his hands, almost like it had a heartbeat.
Kendra looked at the rock with wide eyes. "That's it? That's the item that dropped from the World Boss?"
"Yeah, That is the deed to our new property," Declan smiled.
He looked down at the muddy cobblestone ground. The system provided a few floating holographic prompts the moment he pulled the core out of his inventory.
[Sanctum Core Detected in active inventory.]
[Would you like to establish a permanent Safe Zone at your current coordinates?]
[Warning: Once planted, the Sanctum Core cannot be moved. The surrounding terrain will be permanently altered.]
Declan didn't hesitate. "Yes."
The system reacted instantly.
[Please drive the core into the earth.]
Declan raised the heavy obsidian block high above his head and slammed it straight down into the muddy cobblestones.
The moment the black stone touched the ground, the earth violently shook!
"Whoa!" Kendra shrieked as she fell backward onto her hands and knees.
Sloane grabbed the edge of the ruined fountain to keep from falling over. "Earthquake! Brace yourselves!"
Declan stood perfectly still. His Spiked Striders gripped the shaking ground easily.
The Sanctum Core began to sink into the mud on its own.
As it sank, glowing purple lines spread out from it and traced a massive circular pattern across the ruined square.
The lines moved incredibly fast, crawling up the sides of the broken buildings, slicing through the rotting trees, and expanding outward into the fog.
A deafening hum filled the air. It sounded like a massive generator powering up.
Then, the ground ripped open.
A towering monolith of pure black iron erupted from the spot where Declan had planted the core.
It shot up ten feet, then twenty, then fifty feet into the air! It was a massive intimidating pillar covered in glowing purple runes.
From the top of the monolith, a sheer dome of transparent black energy exploded outward.
The dome expanded in a massive wave. It blew the toxic fog away instantly.
It pushed past the ruined buildings, past the alleyways, and expanded until it covered a massive one-kilometer radius.
Where the black energy dome settled, the air inside became instantly pure and breathable.
The ruined buildings inside the radius began to physically shift.
The crumbling stone walls reinforced themselves with dark iron. The muddy ground smoothed out into solid clean paving stones.
System notifications flooded Declan's vision.
[Sanctum Core Planted.]
[Terrain successfully assimilated.]
[Safe Zone Created: The Iron Bastion.]
[Owner: Player V (Hidden Alias)]
"Wow," Kendra whispered as she stared at the massive black dome that now covered the sky above them. "It actually worked. We have a city."
Declan looked at the massive iron monolith in the center of the square.
A new holographic interface was hovering directly in front of it. It was completely different from his normal player menu. It was an administrative dashboard.
He walked up to the monolith and tapped the glowing screen.
[Iron Bastion Management Panel]
Current Population: 3
↳ Defenses: Level 1 (Basic Stone Walls)
↳ Treasury: 0 Origin Points
↳ Entry Tax: Unset
A new, massive holographic interface popped up in front of Declan. It was completely different from his normal player menu. This was a base management screen.
[The Iron Bastion]
↳ Zone Radius: 1 Kilometer
↳ Base Defense: Stone Wall (Level 1)
↳ Shield Integrity: 10,000 / 10,000
↳ Owner: Declan Vance
↳ Faction: None
[Administrative Controls:]
↳ Toggle Entry Access (Open / Restricted / Locked)
↳ Set Zone Tax (Disabled)
↳ Base Upgrades (Requires Origin Points)
↳ Ban/Kick Player
Declan scrolled through the menu. He noticed the 'Base Upgrades' section. He tapped it.
A list of options appeared. He could upgrade the walls, add automated turrets, build forges, and set up healing stations.
But every single upgrade cost Origin Points. And they were not cheap.
Just Upgrading the basic stone wall to Level 2 cost five thousand Origin Points.
He checked his balance. He had much points after his fight with the world boss but he had barely enough to spend on any of those upgrades.
"Okay," Declan muttered to himself. "I have shelter. Now I need the money."
He could build NPC shops, upgrade the walls, hire automated guards, and set local laws. But everything cost Origin Points.
"I am not playing a city builder simulator," Declan muttered. He hated micromanaging menus. He turned around and looked at Sloane.
"Quartermaster," Declan called out.
Sloane jogged over while still looking around at the transformed buildings in awe. "Yeah boss? What's up?" And why did you call me that?"
"Oh.., you said you were an ER nurse, so i thought you were good at dealing with terrible people and organizing chaos." Declan asked.
"Yeah. I was an ER nurse," she replied smoothly, still looking at the monolith. "Why?"
"I am giving you administrative access to the Iron Bastion," Declan said.
He tapped a few buttons on the monolith and linked Sloane's player ID to the core. "You are now the city manager. You run the logistics."
Sloane blinked. A new gold menu popped up in front of her face. Her jaw dropped!
[Sub-Admin Rights Granted to Player: Sloane.]
"Wait, really? You're just giving me control over the only safe zone in the sector?"
"I am giving you the boring paperwork," Declan corrected her. "Your first job is to set the entry tax."
"The Purge Wave is hitting in two hours. Every surviving player in Sector 4 is going to come running here when the monsters start spawning. They want to live, they pay."
Sloane's eyes lit up with a dangerous capitalist gleam. She cracked her knuckles. "Oh, I like this job. How much are we charging?"
"Ten Origin Points per person to walk through the gate," Declan said.
"If they don't have points, they hand over raw materials. Iron, wood, monster cores. Anything we can use to upgrade the walls."
And one more thing," Declan added, pointing at her admin interface. "Use the city's spatial recall function to pull that blind diver, Thatcher, out of the Sunken Armory and put him in one of the secure vaults. He's useful."
Kendra walked up and looked nervous. "Ten points? That's a lot for newbies. What if they can't pay?"
"Then they stay outside and fight the Flesh-Stalkers," Sloane said ruthlessly, already tapping away at her new admin screen.
"Declan didn't solo a World Boss so we could run a charity. Ten points is cheap for keeping your brain from getting fried."
Declan nodded in approval. Sloane understood the assignment.
Declan was busy scrolling through the auction house when a red warning box hijacked his vision.
[System Alert: Vital signs critical in physical vessel. Extreme nutrient deficiency detected.]
[Forced Log-Out initiated to prevent host expiration.]
"Wait, what?" Declan frowned. "Cancel that. What is going on?"
[Override Denied. Safety Protocol Beta engaged.]
The glowing purple lights of the Iron Bastion flickered and died.
The world dissolved into a blinding white flash followed immediately by the suffocating darkness of reality.
Declan gasped. His eyes snapped open.
The smell hit him first. It was a disgusting mix of stale sweat, moldy concrete, and chemical cleaner.
It was the undeniable stench of Sector 7's debtor's prison.
He was lying on his back in the cold gel-lined dive pod. The mechanical halo around his head clicked loudly and released its grip.
The clamps on his wrists and ankles hissed and snapped open.
-----x-----
Chapter 23: [23] : The Real-World Tremor, Ripping the Steel
The transition was violent. One second Declan was sitting on clean stone inside a magical fortress, and the next second he was drowning in sensory garbage.
The heavy coffin-like lid of the dive pod hissed open.
Declan gasped for air. The air in the real world was stale.
It smelled heavily of cheap chemical cleaner, ammonia, and old sweat.
He blinked his eyes open and stared up at the flickering fluorescent lights of the underground debtor's prison in Sector 7.
He ripped the sensory halo off his head. The small needles pulled out of his neck with a dull pinch.
He grabbed the edges of the metal pod and hoisted himself up.
His body felt incredibly strange.
He had spent five years in this prison. The food was terrible, the air was bad, and there was zero sunlight.
He didn't think about how his body would be in the real world. He was supposed to be completely malnourished.
He was supposed to feel weak, tired, and slow.
However, he didn't feel weak at all!
Declan swung his legs over the side of the pod and dropped to the cold concrete floor.
He landed perfectly. His balance was completely flawless. He didn't stumble. He looked down at his bare arms.
"Wow," he whispered.
His arms were not skinny anymore. The muscles were dense, thick, and highly defined.
He clenched his right fist. He could literally hear his knuckles pop.
The grip strength felt terrifying. He felt like he could crush a baseball into powder!
His stomach let out a loud painful rumble.
The hunger hit him like a truck. It wasn't the normal annoyance of missing lunch. It was a deep clawing starvation.
His new denser muscle mass was screaming for calories.
He turned away from the pod and looked at the prison cell.
It was tiny. Just a metal cot, a toilet in the corner, and a heavy steel door with a small food slot.
It was meal time. There was a cheap plastic packet of nutrient paste sitting inside the steel slot of the door.
Declan walked over to the door. He felt fast. His footsteps didn't make a single sound on the concrete.
He reached out to grab the nutrient paste packet.
The steel flap covering the food slot was jammed. It was a common problem in Sector 7. The metal hinges were rusted and cheap.
Normally, Declan would have to bang on the door and ask a guard to kick the flap open.
But he was too hungry to wait.
He grabbed the edge of the steel flap with his right hand and pulled. He didn't even pull hard. He just gave it a quick tug.
SCREEECH!
The metal shrieked. The rusted hinges didn't just break. They completely tore out of the solid steel door.
Declan pulled his hand back totally surprised.
He was holding the heavy steel flap in his hand. He had ripped it clean off the door like it was made of wet cardboard!
He stared at the piece of metal. He squeezed his fingers.
The thick steel crumpled and bent under his grip, folding in on itself with a loud crunching sound.
The game was bleeding into reality.
His stats from the Primordial Grid were syncing with his physical body. The increased strength, the crazy agility, the raw physical density.
It wasn't just virtual reality. The pod was physically rewriting his DNA to match his avatar!
He clenched his right hand into a fist.
His knuckles popped. The grip strength felt completely unnatural. It felt exactly like his avatar's grip when he was holding the Carnage Cleaver.
"What the hell?" Declan whispered.
He stood there holding a jagged ten-pound piece of twisted steel like it was a piece of cardboard.
He didn't even strain. He had just pulled.
'Okay,' Declan breathed as his heart rate spiked. 'That is not normal.'
He tossed the twisted metal onto his cot. He looked at his hands again.
The synchronization. Thatcher the NPC had mentioned something about the Grid rewriting humanity. Sloane had mentioned her real-world nerve damage vanishing.
The game was not a simulation. The stats he was earning in the Grid were literally bleeding over into his physical DNA.
He had a base strength of 5 in the game, but even that was clearly superhuman by Earth standards.
Heavy footsteps rang down the metal walkway outside his cell.
"Hey! Keep it down in there!" a loud angry voice barked.
Declan immediately recognized the voice. It was Officer Briggs.
Briggs was a massive overweight corporate guard who loved using his stun baton on prisoners who looked at him funny.
He was a bully who enjoyed the tiny bit of power the megacorp gave him.
Briggs stopped in front of the cell door. He looked down and saw the massive jagged hole where the food slot used to be.
He didn't care about how he got out the game, maybe he didn't even know about the game.
He just cared about the food slot.
"What did you do to company property?!" Briggs yelled.
He saw the folded and ruined metal on the floor.
The heavy lock clicked. The main cell door slid open violently.
Briggs stepped into the room. He was holding a thick black stun baton. The tip was crackling with blue electricity.
He looked at Declan, his face red with anger.
"You think you're funny, rat?" Briggs sneered and slapped the baton against his own palm. "You break the door, you pay for it in blood. Get on your knees."
Declan's body almost went to his knees automatically. Muscle memory was actually crazy.
But Declan didn't move. He stood in the center of the cell wearing his faded orange jumpsuit. He looked at Briggs.
The guard was a foot taller than him and outweighed him by a hundred pounds.
But looking at him now, Declan felt absolutely nothing. No fear. No intimidation.
Compared to a Level 15 World Boss that could regenerate its own spine, Briggs was just a loud sack of meat!
"I'm actually hungry," Declan said flatly. "Since you are here, go get me a double ration of paste."
Briggs's eyes widened in sheer outrage. A prisoner giving him orders?
"I'm going to break your jaw!" Briggs roared.
He lunged forward and swung the heavy electrified baton directly at Declan's face in a brutal sweeping arc.
To Declan, the swing looked incredibly slow. It was like watching a video playing at half speed.
Declan didn't step back. He didn't flinch.
He just casually raised his left hand.
Smack.
Declan caught the heavy baton mid-swing. His bare hand grabbed the electrified tip.
The blue electricity surged over his fingers, but it felt like nothing more than a static shock from a carpet. His new muscle density absorbed the kinetic force instantly.
Briggs froze. He tried to pull the baton back, but it wouldn't budge. It was like the weapon was bolted to a concrete wall.
"What... what are you?" Briggs stammered. All the color drained from his face.
"I'm still finding out," Declan said smoothly.
He gripped the baton tightly and twisted his wrist.
Briggs didn't let go in time.
CRACK!
The sound was sharp and sickening. Briggs's wrist snapped completely backward at an unnatural angle.
The guard dropped the baton and let out a high-pitched agonizing scream, falling to his knees and clutching his ruined arm.
Declan looked down at the crying man. He casually tossed the stun baton onto the floor.
The physical strength was real. The game was real.
"Get yourself together and bring me food," Declan ordered coldly. "I have work to do."
-----x-----
Chapter 24: [24] : The First Purge Wave, Thorned Aegis
Declan settled back into the cold gel padding of the dive pod.
He had eaten three packets of nutrient paste that a terrified weeping Officer Briggs had desperately handed him.
His stomach was full. His real-world body was sustained.
It was time to get back in.
He looked up at the dark ceiling of the pod.
"Initiate Dive," Declan said out loud.
The metal halo lowered. The needles pricked his neck. The blinding white light consumed his vision.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing exactly where he had logged out.
He was standing next to the massive rune-covered iron monolith in the center of the Iron Bastion.
The air was filled with a chaotic deafening roar of overlapping voices.
Declan looked toward the edge of the safe zone. The one-kilometer radius of the black energy dome was completely surrounded.
There were thousands of players pressed up against the barrier. They were screaming, banging on the translucent black shield, and begging to be let inside.
He looked up at the sky.
The normal bruised purple clouds were gone. The sky had turned a deep sickly black and glowed with toxic green lightning.
The Purge Wave had begun.
Declan quickly walked over to the main gate of the dome.
Sloane had set up a literal toll booth using a wooden desk she pulled from a ruined building.
Kendra was standing next to her with her bow drawn, looking absolutely terrified as she watched the darkness outside the dome.
"Next!" Sloane yelled over the screaming crowd.
She pointed at a panicked guy in cheap leather armor. "Ten Origin Points! Transfer them to the bastion interface now or get back to the end of the line!"
The guy frantically tapped his invisible screen. "Transferred! Please let me in!"
Sloane checked her admin panel. "Confirmed. Get inside and move out of the way."
She pressed a button on her desk. A small section of the black dome opened just long enough for the player to dive through, then snapped shut again.
The ladies were doing well, maybe he should have just stayed back, or this place might even be better than the prison.
"How is the treasury looking?" Declan asked as he walked up behind them.
Sloane jumped and startled. She spun around and let out a massive breath when she saw him.
"Declan! You made it back," Sloane said as she wiped sweat from her forehead.
"The timer just hit zero three minutes ago. The sky went black and everyone in Sector 4 completely lost their minds."
"The treasury, Quartermaster," Declan reminded her.
He probably didn't want a welcoming party.
Sloane grinned and her capitalist side took over again.
"It's a gold mine. We've processed almost two thousand players so far. The guys who didn't have points dumped all their crafting materials into the base inventory."
"We have exactly 22,000 Origin Points sitting in the town bank."
"Good work," Declan said.
"Look!" Kendra screamed. She pointed her bow out into the ruined foggy city beyond the dome. "They're here!"
The screaming from the players still trapped outside turned into gurgling shrieks of pure horror.
Out of the black fog, they emerged.
Flesh-Stalkers!
They didn't look like animals. They looked like humans that had been stretched out and twisted.
Another kind of zombies stalkers.
They were seven feet tall and completely hairless with pale gray skin pulled tight over sharp bones.
Their arms dragged on the ground and ended in massive scythe-like claws. They didn't have eyes, just giant gaping maws filled with rows of needle teeth.
[System Event: Purge Wave]
↳ Monster Profile: Flesh-Stalker
↳ Level: 20
↳ Trait: Endless Hunger.
There weren't just a few of them. There were thousands!
They poured out of the alleyways, crawled over the roofs of the ruined buildings, and flooded the streets like a tidal wave of pale meat.
The players trapped outside didn't stand a chance.
The Flesh-Stalkers leaped into the crowd and swung their scythe arms. Digital blood sprayed everywhere.
Low-level players were instantly deleted, their avatars dissolving into pixels before they even hit the mud.
The swarm of monsters hit the edge of the Iron Bastion's black dome.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Hundreds of Flesh-Stalkers slammed their bodies against the barrier.
They began frantically clawing at the black energy, trying to dig their way inside to get to the players huddled in the square.
"The shield is holding," Sloane said nervously as she looked at her admin screen.
"But the base defenses are only Level 1. The walls are just basic stone logic. If they hit it enough, the durability will crack."
"Transfer all 22,000 points from the town bank to my personal inventory," Declan ordered.
Sloane didn't ask questions. She tapped her screen. "Done."
Declan felt his balance update. He walked right up to the edge of the dome.
A Flesh-Stalker on the other side screeched and slammed its claws against the barrier right in front of his face.
Declan didn't flinch. He placed his right hand flat against the inside of the black energy shield.
The base-building interface popped up.
'System,' Declan said in his mind. 'Apply Boundless Enhancement to the Bastion Walls. Push it to plus twenty.'
The system chimed rapidly.
[Enhancing Base Defense: Stone Wall +1... +5...]
[Notice: Wall integrity has reached maximum safe enhancement cap. Structural collapse imminent.]
[Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Cap removed.]
[Stone Wall +10... +15... +20.]
A blinding white light erupted from Declan's hand. It didn't just cover him, it shot rapidly across the entire one-kilometer surface of the dome.
The players inside the safe zone gasped and backed away as the very fabric of their sanctuary began to physically change.
[Base Defense has reached +20.]
[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]
The smooth translucent black energy of the dome suddenly solidified. It turned into thick heavy pitch-black iron.
But it didn't stop there. Massive jagged steel spikes grew violently out of the exterior of the dome.
Each one was five feet long and razor-sharp, turning the entire city shield into a giant iron porcupine.
[Defense Mutated: Thorned Aegis]
↳ Trait Unlocked: Absolute Reflection.
↳ Functionality: The walls automatically reflect 200% of all physical damage dealt to them back at the attacker as true damage.
Declan took a step back and lowered his hand. He smiled.
Outside the barrier, the frenzy of the Flesh-Stalkers didn't stop. They didn't have eyes or brains to process that the wall had just grown spikes.
A massive Level 20 Flesh-Stalker roared and threw its entire body weight into a heavy claw strike against the new iron wall.
The scythe claw hit the metal.
The Thorned Aegis trait activated instantly!
The wall didn't take a single point of damage. Instead, the 200% damage reflection fired back at point-blank range.
The Flesh-Stalker's arm instantly shattered into dust.
The sheer kinetic rebound blasted the monster backward and completely caved in its pale chest. It dissolved into blue pixels before it hit the ground.
All along the one-kilometer perimeter, thousands of Flesh-Stalkers threw themselves against the spiked walls.
And all along the perimeter, thousands of monsters instantly exploded into blue dust as their own massive attack stats were doubled and reflected right back into their faces.
It wasn't a siege anymore. It was a meat grinder!
Declan turned his back to the wall of exploding monsters and looked at the thousands of terrified players staring at him.
He adjusted the collar of his black Predator's Coat.