novelraw Chapter 86: [86]Spirit Attributes Battle, The Backfiring Hex
Chapter 86: [86]Spirit Attributes Battle, The Backfiring Hex
The spectral necrotic hand of the Soul Curse violently tightened its grip inside Vahn Ryker’s chest.
To the Syndicate assassin casting the ritual miles away, the spell was functioning perfectly. The dark magic was attempting to forcefully rip Vahn’s neural link from his physical avatar.
This was a process designed to instantly execute any player who lacked the requisite Spirit defense to anchor their soul to the physical plane.
But inside the penthouse of the Sovereign Bank, the horrifying assassination attempt looked like a cheap parlor trick.
Vahn stood perfectly still with his posture entirely relaxed. Aria was still clinging to him with her emerald eyes wide as she stared at the glowing holographic interface displaying his 9999 Spirit stat.
The dark energy of the curse hissed and sparked against Vahn’s chest. It hopelessly tried to fracture a foundational code that was denser than the bedrock of the planet itself.
"It is not doing anything." Hana observed from the dining table.
The System Key tilted her head. She watched the spectral hand struggle with the detached curiosity of someone watching a bug hit a windshield.
"Is it supposed to be doing something Brother? Because right now it just looks like you are wearing a very ugly glowing purple broach."
"It is attempting to initiate a critical data wipe Hana." Vahn explained smoothly. He raised his hand to casually examine the spectral wrist protruding from his jacket.
He didn’t sound like a man under attack. He sounded like a software engineer diagnosing a minor bug in a line of code.
"The assassin is pouring massive amounts of latent mana into the tether trying to force a mathematical override. He believes if he pushes hard enough, the system will eventually yield."
"That is statistically impossible." Sia Vance noted, remaining flawlessly at attention by the door.
The Vanguard didn’t even bother raising her Mythic shield.
"With your current Spirit attribute, the enemy would require a mana pool exceeding ten million points simply to register a single point of damage. The attack is entirely obsolete."
"Precisely Sia." Vahn nodded and a sharp predatory smile broke across his face.
He looked down at Aria. The Priestess was still pressed against him. The sweet scent of cherry blossoms actively warred with the acrid smell of the necrotic curse.
She was breathing heavily. The adrenaline of the sudden ambush was slowly fading into a profound exasperated relief.
"You can let go now Priestess." Vahn teased gently, his deep purple eyes gleaming with amusement.
"Unless of course you find the presence of a lethal assassination hex to be a compelling reason for prolonged physical contact. I am perfectly fine with either option."
Aria gasped and her face instantly turned a brilliant catastrophic shade of crimson.
She forcefully pushed herself away from his chest and nearly tripped over the hem of her Crimson Lotus Vestments.
"I what?! I was simply establishing a localized restorative anchor in the event of systemic failure!" She stammered.
"Stop making my tactical medical interventions sound like a desperate embrace! You are infuriatingly smug for a man currently being haunted!"
"I am simply highly optimized." Vahn chuckled. The sound vibrated warmly in the dark room.
He turned his attention back to the spectral hand. The amusement vanished from his eyes and was instantly replaced by the terrifying cold authority of the System Administrator.
The Verdant Chronos Sight engaged. Brilliant azure and emerald circuits flared to life across his irises.
The physical reality of the room broke down. It revealed the glowing pulsing purple tether that connected the curse directly back to the caster in the Syndicate’s bunker.
"The problem with long range spiritual execution spells," Vahn stated, his voice dropping into a lethal absolute resonance. "Is that they require a two way connection."
He paused deliberately.
"The assassin opened a direct data channel to my core. Which means I have a direct data channel to his."
Vahn didn’t draw the Soul Bound Shadow Blade. He didn’t need a weapon to manipulate an open data stream.
He simply raised his right hand and grabbed the spectral wrist of the Cursed Hand.
To a normal player, grabbing a curse was physically impossible. But with the Force of the Void passive trait active, Vahn’s physical interactions bypassed standard environmental rendering.
His fingers locked around the incorporeal dark magic with the crushing undeniable force of a steel vise.
’System.’ Vahn commanded internally while tapping into his massive hoarded reservoir of unallocated experience points.
’Target Hostile Spiritual Tether. Initiate EXP Siphoning. Reverse the flow of the localized feedback loop. Forcefully inject one million experience points of raw unformatted data directly into the caster’s neural link.’
[System Ability]
↳ Administrator Permission Granted
↳ Reversing tether polarity
Vahn squeezed his fist.
The spectral hand violently shrieked. The sickly purple energy didn’t just shatter. It rapidly inverted and turned into a blinding searing gold.
Vahn used his absolute dominance over the system to turn the assassination tool into a conduit. He forcefully shoved a catastrophic amount of raw data back down the pipeline.
Miles away in the heavily fortified bunker of the Sovereign Elite, Charles the Soul Curse Priest let out a horrific blood curdling scream.
The dark jagged runes he had painted on the floor instantly ignited with blinding golden light. The Cursed Hand artifact he was channeling violently overheated and melted into his flesh.
Charles hadn’t invested in Endurance or Strength. His frail heavily specialized avatar was entirely incapable of processing the sheer god like volume of raw experience points Vahn had just forcefully uploaded into his brain.
"My code!" Charles shrieked.
His eyes burned with intense golden fire as his physical rendering began to aggressively tear itself apart.
"It is burning! He is burning my code!"
Pierce Valerius backed away in absolute horror as his ultimate assassin convulsed on the floor.
Charles didn’t just die. The forced data injection caused a catastrophic neural overload.
The Priest violently shattered into a geyser of chaotic glowing pixels. He was instantly and permanently deleted from the Spire’s registry.
The golden energy in the bunker quickly faded. It left nothing behind but the scorch marks on the steel floor and the lingering smell of ozone.
Back in the White City, the spectral hand gripping Vahn’s chest dissolved into harmless white mist.
The heavy dark clouds outside the penthouse immediately cleared. It returned the sky to its pristine golden hue.
Vahn dusted off his jacket and casually swiped away his holographic interface.
He looked at his team. He was entirely unbothered by the fact that he had just weaponized an assassination attempt to obliterate an elite player from five miles away.
"The Syndicate’s network is thoroughly compromised." Vahn announced while turning back toward the glowing green Prime Seed resting on the table.
He offered Aria a faint reassuring smile.
"It seems my spiritual infrastructure is quite robust Priestess. The Alpha is entirely out of options. Now we prepare to shatter the rest of his fortress."