Chapter 84: [84] : 60% Synchronization, The Walking Cataclysm

The massive white server room of the Celestial Staircase was completely silent.

Where the Level 80 Seraph had just been lying, there was now only a single item resting on the polished glass floor. It wasn’t a weapon or a piece of armor.

It was a perfectly smooth, glowing white orb. It looked like a miniature star trapped inside a sphere of glass. It pulsed with a heavy, rhythmic warmth that Declan could feel from five feet away.

He walked over and knelt down. He picked it up.

[Item Retrieved: Ascendant Core]

↳ Tier: Sovereign (Entity Class)

↳ Description: The condensed administrative power of a Spire Protocol. Consuming this core will force a massive data overwrite on the user’s physical vessel, permanently altering their reality synchronization. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

↳ Warning: Extreme neural trauma guaranteed. Only users with the Abyssal Sovereign class may survive the integration.

Declan stared at the glowing white orb in his hand.

This was the end of the tutorial. This was the final key. He had already consumed the Apostle’s Core back in Sector 4, which brought his real world synchronization to 30 percent. That had given him enough raw physical density to punch a steel beam in half and ignore corporate bullets.

But 45 percent wasn’t enough to summon his massive weapons. It wasn’t enough to use his reality breaking skills without the game engine throwing a tantrum.

He needed more. He needed to be the boss in both worlds.

"Bottoms up," Declan muttered.

He didn’t hesitate. He raised the glowing white orb to his mouth and took a bite.

It didn’t shatter like the dark crystal had. It dissolved instantly on his tongue. It tasted like pure, freezing cold ozone. The liquid energy rushed down his throat and exploded in his chest.

Instantly, the entire white server room vanished.

Declan didn’t even get to see the system prompts. His vision was violently ripped away. He felt like he was being sucked backward through a massive vacuum tube at a million miles an hour. The transition was so brutal his digital avatar literally dispersed into pixels before the server could properly log him out.

His eyes snapped open in the real world.

He was lying flat on his back inside the stolen corporate dive pod in his Sector 7 warehouse.

The pain hit him a second later.

"Argh!" Declan roared. His back arched off the gel padding.

This wasn’t the dull ache of the previous overwrite. This was absolute, catastrophic biological reconstruction. Every single cell in his body felt like it was being held over an open flame.

The system text forcefully booted up directly into his actual optic nerves, projecting glowing gold letters into the dark, rusted warehouse.

[CRITICAL ALERT: Ascendant Data Injection Detected.]

[Forcing Physical Vessel Overwrite.]

[Synchronization Rate Jumped to 60%.]

His body physically could not contain the energy.

The heavy metal coffin of the dive pod began to shake violently. The thick industrial cables feeding power into the machine sparked and caught fire. The blue conductive gel inside the pod started boiling, hissing wildly as it turned to steam.

Declan’s hands gripped the reinforced steel edges of the pod. His new, insanely dense muscles contracted.

With a deafening screech of tearing metal, Declan literally ripped the sides of the dive pod apart!

The machine exploded outward. Metal shrapnel and boiling gel blasted across the empty warehouse. The heavy lid blew clean off its hinges and smashed into the concrete ceiling above.

Declan stood up from the smoking wreckage.

He stepped out onto the cold concrete floor. He was breathing heavily, but the pain was already gone. It was replaced by a terrifying, boundless energy that hummed constantly beneath his skin.

He looked down at himself.

He was still wearing the sleek, matte black tactical jacket he had stolen from the corporate mercenary earlier. But his physical body had changed entirely.

His skin was now incredibly pale, almost completely devoid of natural human color. The veins running down his arms and neck were no longer just faintly glowing. They were pitch black, highly visible, and coursed with raw, dark purple mana.

He walked over to a shattered piece of metal on the floor and looked at his reflection.

His eyes were totally gone. The whites and the irises were replaced by deep, swirling pools of black void energy. He looked exactly like his Abyssal Sovereign avatar.

"Sixty percent," Declan whispered. His voice was so deep and resonant that the concrete floor actually vibrated when he spoke.

He needed to test the limits.

He raised his right hand. He didn’t use a terminal. He didn’t use a VR headset. He just looked at the empty air of the real world warehouse and focused his mind.

The air instantly distorted. It didn’t glitch. It didn’t throw up a warning about item mass.

The massive, dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd dropped perfectly into his grip!

The razor thin blade hummed happily. The tiny black hole spinning in the center of the axe head immediately started pulling the ambient dust of the warehouse into it. He was holding a physics breaking super weapon in reality, and his body didn’t even strain under the weight.

"Perfect," Declan smiled, resting the halberd on his shoulder.

But he wasn’t done.

He tapped into his massive stamina pool. He didn’t need a game interface to cast skills anymore. It was just muscle memory now.

"Legion," Declan commanded out loud.

The dark shadows cast by his boots suddenly expanded. They pooled out across the concrete floor like spilled ink. The shadows bubbled and hissed.

A second later, ten figures rose from the floor.

They were exact copies of him, made entirely of dense, swirling dark matter. They held shadowy replicas of his halberd. Their purple eyes glowed brightly in the dark warehouse.

He could summon his immortal army on Earth.

Declan Vance was no longer just a hacker playing a VR game. He was a walking cataclysm.

He looked at the rusted steel doors of the warehouse. Outside, Sector 7 was burning. The megacorps were scrambling to contain the monster invasion.

Declan cracked his neck. "Let’s go take over the world."