novelraw Chapter 85: [85]The Soul Curse Assassination, Syndicate’s Desperation
Chapter 85: [85]The Soul Curse Assassination, Syndicate’s Desperation
’I am finished! I really am finished this time!’ Pierce smiled bitterly as he slammed his fist on the table.
The map was a complete disaster.
The White City was currently locked down by a Mythic tier barrier he could not breach. His private army of a thousand elite mercenaries had been casually buried alive in a sea of liquefied concrete.
Just an hour ago his connection to the Demon Duke’s summoning portal had been violently and permanently severed.
The heavy steel doors of the command center hissed open.
First Minister Felix stumbled into the room. His luxurious political robes were torn to shreds and his physical avatar was still glitching heavily from the forced spatial extraction. He collapsed to his knees and gasped for air.
"He deleted it." Felix choked out, his voice trembling with raw unfiltered terror. "The Architect. He didn’t just break the summoning circle Pierce. He fundamentally unwrote the localized physics engine."
Felix paused to catch his breath and continued.
"He stood inside a Tier 6 Abyssal rift and snapped his fingers. The Duke’s projection was vaporized instantly. The man is not a player. He is a walking anomaly!"
Pierce slammed his heavy armored fist onto the holographic console.
The reinforced metal crumpled under the sheer kinetic force of his Level 50 stats. However, the display of physical power felt entirely hollow to him right now.
"He is a glitch!" Pierce roared loudly, making his voice crack. "He is a Level 1 commoner who stumbled upon an administrative backdoor! He cannot hold the entire city forever!"
Pierce glared at the broken console as his chest moved along with his heavy breathing.
"The Overlords demand their tribute! If I do not deliver the planet’s core, they will delete this entire sector and us with it!"
"Physical confrontation is statistically impossible." A new chillingly calm voice echoed from the shadows of the bunker.
Stepping into the dim light of the war room was a tall unnervingly thin man draped in tattered ash gray robes.
His skin was incredibly pale and his eyes were entirely black without any irises or pupils. He carried no weapons, no heavy shields, and no glowing staves.
Wrapped tightly around his right hand were heavy rusted iron chains that pulsed with a sickening necrotic purple energy.
This was Charles. The Soul Curse Priest.
He was the Syndicate’s ultimate executioner. A man who had completely abandoned the standard kinetic and magical damage scaling of the game in favor of dark abyssal hexes.
"Your vanguards rely on physical impact. Your mages rely on elemental combustion." Charles hissed, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across a tombstone.
"The Architect has proven he can rewrite those parameters. He owns the physics engine. Therefore, we do not attack his physical rendering."
Pierce narrowed his eyes. His arrogant facade was desperately trying to reassert itself.
"And what do you suggest Priest? He possesses a Mythic tier shield and a healer who can restore entirely severed data streams. You cannot breach that perimeter."
"I do not need to breach the perimeter." Charles smiled. It was a horrifying skin stretching expression.
He raised his chained right hand. The necrotic purple energy flared up, casting long twisted shadows across the bunker walls.
"His base stats are locked at 9999 for Strength and Agility. He is a physical god. But no player in the history of the Spire invests in the Spirit attribute."
Charles chuckled darkly. "It governs soul resistance and latent psychological defense. It is a dump stat. A useless metric for frontline combatants."
Felix looked up from the floor with his glitching eyes widening. "You intend to use the Cursed Hand."
"I intend to initiate a long range spiritual execution." Charles confirmed as he stepped toward the center of the room.
He began to draw a chaotic jagged circle of purple runes on the steel floor using his own digital blood.
"The curse bypasses physical barriers. It bypasses elemental immunity. It latches directly onto the target’s neural link and forces a catastrophic system feedback loop."
Charles finished drawing the circle and looked up. "If his Spirit stat is below the threshold, his soul will violently shatter from the inside out. He will simply cease to exist."
Pierce watched the Priest prepare the ritual. A cruel vindictive sneer slowly returned to his face.
"Do it. Burn the Architect out of the system. I want to hear him scream."
Back in the White City, Vahn Ryker was standing in the center of the Sovereign Bank penthouse. He was carefully examining the glowing green Prime Seed resting on the glass table.
Hana was happily logging the artifact’s data into her logistics terminal. Meanwhile Kora lay upside down on the sofa aggressively chewing on a discarded iron gauntlet.
Sia stood by the door perfectly still. Aria was lingering near Vahn. The sweet scent of cherry blossoms filled the air as she passively maintained her restorative buffs over the team.
It was a moment of quiet highly optimized peace.
And then the ambient mana in the room violently inverted.
Vahn didn’t gasp. He didn’t flinch. He simply stopped moving. His deep purple eyes narrowed as the temperature in the penthouse plummeted to absolute zero.
The pristine golden sky outside the reinforced windows instantly blackened. It was replaced by a swirling sickly green and purple miasma that completely blotted out the light.
"Commander?" Sia asked, her Vanguard instincts instantly flaring as she raised her shield. "I am detecting a massive localized hostility spike but there is no physical rendering. The radar is blank."
"Vahn!" Aria cried out as she stepped directly into his personal space. Her emerald eyes were wide with sudden absolute terror.
Manifesting directly out of the shadows behind Vahn was a massive spectral hand composed of rotting necrotic energy.
It possessed no physical mass and easily phased through the heavy material of his combat jacket. The ghostly fingers plunged directly into the center of his chest and aggressively gripped his heart.
It was the Soul Curse.
Aria didn’t hesitate. She slammed her staff into the floor. A blinding wave of pink gold healing magic erupted from her form.
She threw her arms around Vahn’s waist desperately trying to force her restorative code into his mana pathways to combat the dark intrusion.
"I have got you! I can purge the debuff! Just hold on!"
"Stand down Aria." Vahn commanded softly.
His voice wasn’t strained. It wasn’t laced with pain. He sounded entirely profoundly bored.
Aria froze and looked up at him in absolute confusion.
"Vahn, it is a Spirit hex! It is bypassing your physical immunities! It is trying to forcefully delete your neural link!"
"I am aware of its parameters." Vahn replied. A faint deeply amused smile touched his lips.
He didn’t pull away from her embrace. He found the sheer protective panic in her eyes to be incredibly endearing.
"But the Syndicate fundamentally misunderstood the math. They assumed I neglected my secondary attributes."
Vahn raised his right hand and casually swiped his fingers through the freezing air. His master interface materialized and projected a crisp blue holographic display into the center of the room.
He expanded his raw attribute parameters for the entire team to see.
[Host Information]
↳ Name: Vahn Ryker
↳ Life form: Human
[Attributes]
↳ Strength: 9999
↳ Agility: 9999
↳ Intelligence: 9999
↳ Endurance: 9999
↳ Spirit: 9999
Aria stared at the glowing numbers. Her jaw dropped slightly.
The absolute absurdity of the data finally registered in her mind. Vahn wasn’t just a physical powerhouse.
His forced hundred million EXP mutations had elevated every single aspect of his foundational code to the absolute limit of the game’s engine.
"They initiated a Spirit check against a system anomaly." Vahn chuckled, looking down at the spectral hand still uselessly gripping his chest. "That is highly inefficient."