Chapter 110: [110] : Sector Invasion, Bypassing the Frontline

The courtyard of the Iron Bastion was completely silent.

Three thousand players were staring at Declan. They had all seen the global broadcast. They knew what it meant. The Warlord had just declared a server-wide war against the most toxic and heavily armed guild on the planet.

Sloane ran up to the base of the monolith. Kendra followed right behind her while clutching her +10 Sniper Bow tightly.

"Declan, what are you doing?" Sloane asked and her voice was frantic. "You just painted a massive target on our backs! Kato has forty thousand players in the Neon Syndicate! They control the entirety of Sector 9!"

"I am aware of their numbers," Declan said smoothly. He walked down the stone steps of the keep.

"We need to organize an army!" Kendra yelled. She turned around and looked at the crowd of players holding rusted swords and wooden shields. "We need to march! We need to set up a frontline at the border! If they have guns, we need to dig trenches!"

Declan laughed. It was a cold and dismissive sound.

Seems likes he needed to remind them about himself.

"March?" Declan asked and raised an eyebrow. "Trenches? I am not playing a World War One simulator. Walking is for peasants."

Sloane grabbed her hair in frustration. "Then how are you going to fight them?! You can’t just walk into Sector 9 alone! They will shoot you a million times!"

"I am not going alone," Declan replied.

He stopped in the middle of the courtyard. He casually put his hands into the pockets of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.

"Legion," Declan commanded.

He tapped into his massive Ascendant-tier mana pool. He spent the five hundred mana required for his ultimate skill.

Instantly, the shadows stretching across the stone pavement rebelled against physics.

The dark ink-like pools of shade beneath the players’ feet violently snapped toward the center of the courtyard. They pooled around Declan and started bubbling and hissing like boiling tar.

Then the shadows stood up.

One hundred figures rose from the ground. They materialized in perfect and silent synchronization.

They were exact copies of Declan. They wore the exact same long high-collared trench coat. They wore the heavy Spiked Striders. But they had no faces and no skin and no human features.

They were made entirely of dense swirling pitch-black dark matter. The only source of light on their bodies were their eyes which glowed with a violent corrupted purple energy.

And in their right hands, every single shadow clone held a massive shadowy replica of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd.

The clones stood in perfect military formation around Declan. They did not breathe. They did not speak. They just radiated a heavy suffocating aura of pure destruction.

The players in the courtyard gasped and backed away in sheer terror.

Sloane’s jaw dropped. She stared at the immortal army of dark matter demons. "What... what is that?"

"My workforce," Declan smiled.

He didn’t need to recruit normal players. He didn’t need guys with rusted swords dying on a frontline. His Eclipse Clones possessed one hundred percent of his base stats and passive skills.

He had an army of one hundred Abyssal Sovereigns.

Declan raised his right hand. The dark silver Ring of the Void-Hoarder gleamed on his index finger.

He didn’t need to march to Sector 9. He didn’t need to fight through Kato’s border guards or cross the ruined highways. He had Miller’s death log. The video file came with a system tag that logged the exact spatial coordinates of the attack.

He had a tether point.

"System," Declan commanded in his mind. "Activate Spatial Anchor. Target coordinates: Sector 9, Neon Syndicate Central Hub."

The Mythic ring flared with blinding dark energy.

"Wait!" Sloane yelled. "You’re just going to teleport directly into their base?!"

"Saves time," Declan said casually.

The ring released a massive cylinder of pure void energy. It crashed down from the sky and completely swallowed Declan and his one hundred shadow clones.

There was no sound. There was no wind.

In a fraction of a millisecond, the Warlord and his dark army simply ceased to exist in Sector 7.

Sector 9 was a completely different world.

While Sector 7 was a ruined gothic slum full of toxic mud, Sector 9 was a high-tech cyberpunk paradise. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The Neon Syndicate Headquarters was a towering skyscraper made of sleek black glass and chrome. The lobby was massive. Bright pink and neon green LED strips lined the polished floor. Holographic dancers projected from the ceiling and played loud thumping electronic music.

It looked like a billionaire’s nightclub.

And right now the lobby was heavily guarded.

The Neon Syndicate knew Player V had declared war. Kato had ordered the entire building locked down.

Dozens of elite players paced around the lobby. They wore heavily customized leather jackets with glowing wires running down the sleeves. They carried high-tier plasma rifles and heavy energy swords.

They were laughing and joking.

"Can you believe this Warlord guy?" a guard with a pink mohawk sneered. He leaned against a polished chrome pillar. "He thinks he can delete us. He probably doesn’t even know what a plasma gun is."

"He’s going to march his little army of scrubs right into our turrets," another guard laughed while checking the magazine of his rifle. "It’s going to be a bloodbath."

Suddenly the electronic music started glitching out.

The pink and green neon lights flickered wildly. The holographic dancers warped into jagged static and vanished.

The air in the center of the massive lobby completely shattered.

A giant cylinder of pitch-black void energy slammed into the polished floor. The temperature in the room instantly dropped to freezing.

The void energy cleared.

Standing perfectly still in the center of the cyberpunk lobby was Declan. His black coat absorbed the neon light around him.

And surrounding him in a tight terrifying circle were one hundred towering shadow demons holding massive dark matter halberds.

The guards in the lobby froze. Their jokes died in their throats. Their eyes went wide with absolute horror.

Nobody bypassed the security doors. Nobody teleported directly into the guild headquarters!

"Nice place," Declan noted casually. He looked around at the sleek chrome walls. "A little too bright for my taste."

"Intruder!" the guard with the pink mohawk screamed. "He’s inside the lobby! Open fire!"

Before anyone could pull a trigger, the elevator doors at the back of the lobby chimed loudly.

The heavy steel doors slid open.

A player stepped out. He was tall and lean and wore a sleek form-fitting silver cybernetic suit. His face was hidden behind a smooth metallic visor with a single glowing red optic slit in the center.

He held two long curved katanas that hummed with blue electricity.

[Name: Ryker]

[Level: 65]

[Class: Cyber-Ninja]

Ryker was Kato’s second in command. He was the chief executioner of the Neon Syndicate.

He slowly walked out of the elevator. His boots clicked softly against the floor. The other guards immediately backed away and gave him space.

Ryker stopped ten feet away from Declan’s wall of shadow clones. He tilted his helmeted head and analyzed the Warlord.

"So. You actually showed up," Ryker’s voice was synthetically altered. It sounded smooth and highly arrogant. "I thought you would cower in your little dome."

"I told Kato I was coming," Declan said smoothly. He didn’t pull out a weapon. He just kept his hands in his pockets.

"You made a massive miscalculation, Player V," Ryker sneered. He spun his electric katanas in his hands. "You think because you killed a few big monsters, you can walk into a modern sector? This isn’t the dark ages."

Ryker pointed one of his swords at Declan.

"You brought swords to a gunfight," Ryker mocked. "My squad is going to fill you with so many plasma holes, the server won’t even be able to render your corpse."

Declan looked at the glowing electric swords. He looked at the fifty guards aiming rifles at him.

He let out a low and dark laugh.

"I didn’t bring swords," Declan smiled. His pitch-black eyes gleamed with raw Abyssal power. "I brought a delete button."