Chapter 82: [82] : Mutating the Core, The Abyssal Sovereign

The white beam shot out from the glowing finger of the Seraph. It lacked the crackle of lightning or the roar of flames like a normal magic attack. Instead, it resembled a barcode of rapidly shifting numbers tearing the air apart.

Declan stood perfectly still on the polished glass platform.

His ninety-eight remaining shadow clones immediately jumped into action to protect him. They blurred forward, creating a solid wall of dark matter and black leather in front of their Warlord. They raised their heavy shadow halberds to block the incoming attack.

It did not matter.

The white beam slammed into the first clone and deleted it instantly. The dark matter turned white, dissolved into a string of text characters, and vanished. The beam didn’t even slow down. It punched through the second clone, then the third, then the fourth. It tore through the immortal Legion like a hot knife through butter.

"Okay, this is big a problem," Declan muttered.

He didn’t try to use Void Blink. He didn’t try to run away.

The Law of Eradication of the system was not a physical projectile. It was a targeted server command. It was literally the game engine trying to highlight his character file and hit the delete key. If he teleported across the room, the beam would instantly update its coordinates and follow him. A player cannot dodge a server wipe.

But a player can overwrite it.

"System," Declan commanded in his mind as his dark eyes locked onto the approaching beam of white death. "Open the character profile. Target the Class Core."

The familiar glowing blue interface popped up right in front of his face.

It flickered wildly. The heavy administrative pressure from the Level 80 Seraph messed with his local menus. The system actively tried to force his interface closed. It did not want him messing with the code while he was scheduled for deletion.

Declan gritted his teeth and forced the menu to stay open with pure willpower.

He navigated to his equipped class.

[Current Class: Eclipse Sovereign]

[Tier: Ascendant]

[Status: Locked. Cannot be modified during combat.]

"Watch me," Declan growled.

He glanced at his treasury balance. Thanks to the massive farm he had running back at the Iron Bastion and the millions of points he earned from the Abyssal Tide event, his bank account was completely absurd. He had millions of Origin Points just sitting there doing absolutely nothing.

It was time to spend the budget.

"Apply Boundless Enhancement to the Eclipse Sovereign Class Core," Declan ordered. "Do it right now."

The system interface turned a glaring, angry red.

[CRITICAL WARNING!]

[Classes are fundamental core files. They cannot be enhanced with Origin Points. Action denied.]

"My talent says otherwise," Declan smiled coldly. "Push it through. Burn the points."

His SSS Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, surged forward. It did not care about the safety protocols of the game. It did not care about fundamental core files. It was a digital bulldozer that existed solely to break the rules.

The red warning boxes shattered into thousands of tiny digital fragments.

A blinding, intense white light erupted directly from Declan’s chest. It was not coming from a weapon this time. It was coming from his actual avatar’s soul.

[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating cost...]

[Warning: Point requirement exceeds all known parameters for Class evolution.]

↳ Cost per level: 5,000,000 Origin Points.

Five million points just for one level! It was a completely ridiculous price tag. A normal player would have to farm for ten years just to click the button once.

"Take it all!" Declan yelled over the sound of the approaching deletion beam. "Push it to the absolute limit!"

The points drained from his bank instantly. Millions of Origin Points vanished in a fraction of a second.

The chimes in his head didn’t ring happily. They sounded like a fire alarm going off inside a sinking submarine. The game engine was screaming in pure panic.

[Class Core +1... +3... +5...]

The white light shining from his chest turned a deep, bruised purple.

Declan fell to one knee. The pain was completely overwhelming. It felt like someone had cracked his ribcage open and poured boiling battery acid directly onto his heart. The system aggressively rewrote the deepest layers of his avatar’s code.

The deletion beam was only twenty feet away now. It sliced through his shadow clones effortlessly. Fifty clones gone. Sixty clones gone.

"Keep going!" Declan roared, slamming his fist against the glass floor. The impact shattered the perfect reflection beneath him.

[Class Core +7... +9... +10.]

[Triggering Ultimate Conceptual Mutation...]

The purple light shifted again. It turned pitch black. A suffocating aura of pure, unadulterated darkness exploded outward from Declan’s body.

The ninety-eight shadow clones did not just stand there anymore. The ones that hadn’t been deleted yet suddenly melted into puddles of black ink on the floor. They rushed toward Declan, sliding across the glass like water flowing down a drain. The shadows crawled up his boots, up his legs, and absorbed directly into his Predator’s Coat.

His clothes changed. The black tactical gear grew thicker and heavier. Dark, glowing purple runes carved themselves into the leather fabric.

His physical body changed. He grew a few inches taller. His shoulders broadened. The dark veins under his pale skin pulsed with a terrifying new rhythm. He didn’t just look like a strong player anymore. He looked like an actual boss monster.

The system text in his vision flashed in brilliant, blinding gold.

[Mutation Successful.]

[Class Evolved: Abyssal Sovereign]

↳ Tier: Divine Anomaly

↳ Functionality: The user is now recognized as a physical manifestation of the Void. All previous class stat multipliers are doubled. The user is entirely immune to system-level deletion commands, root bans, and administrative overrides.

[Level Cap Removed.]

[Ascension Attained.]

Declan stood up slowly. The pain in his chest vanished completely. It was replaced by a feeling of absolute, terrifying power. He felt incredibly light, yet he knew he carried the physical density of a collapsing star.

He looked up.

The white deletion beam finally broke through the last of the shadow energy. The Law of Eradication slammed directly into Declan’s chest.

There was no massive explosion. There was no kinetic shockwave.

The beam hit his dark coat and simply stopped.

The rapidly shifting numbers of the deletion code sparked against his chest for a second. The white light tried to find the file named Player V to delete it. But that file didn’t exist in the standard registry anymore. Declan’s new class tier placed his administrative authority higher than the attack itself.

To the system, the Seraph was trying to delete an undeletable root folder.

The white beam fizzled out with a pathetic little popping sound. It dissolved into harmless white sparks that drifted down to the glass floor.

Declan dusted off his shoulder where the beam had hit him. He didn’t have a single scratch. His health bar hadn’t moved a single point.

He could not be deleted.

He looked across the massive empty room at the floating angel of light.

"Access denied," Declan smiled. His dark eyes gleamed with a horrific purple energy. "You really need better antivirus software."