Chapter 157: The Architect of Death
Chapter 157: Chapter 157: The Architect of Death
Chapter 157: The Architect of Death
24 Hours Ago.
The luxurious VIP suite provided by Cassian Stillbane was dead silent.
Draven Mordis sat alone on the edge of the plush velvet sofa. The rest of the Eclipse Hunters were resting in the adjoining rooms after successfully clearing the Blood Crucible qualification trials.
Draven closed his eyes and opened his System interface. He needed to review his combat logs after his brutal week spent inside the Tomb of the Assassin.
The moment the blue screen materialized, it did not just open. It exploded.
A cascading waterfall of hundreds of unread notifications flooded his vision. The sheer volume of text almost blinded him.
Draven frowned. He quickly scrolled through the timestamps. His pitch-black eyes widened slightly behind his mask.
"Right! I forgot about this," Draven whispered into the quiet room.
"The outside world skipped an entire month. Did the system count it as me spending 30 days even though not much time had passed while clearing that Tomb?"
He realized he was looking at thirty days of backlogged passive daily Sign-ins, four missed Weekly Rewards, and a massive Monthly Reward. The Tomb’s extreme time dilation had essentially tricked the System’s internal clock into owing him a massive fortune of unclaimed resources.
A cold, calculating smile touched Draven’s lips.
’If I can find another time-dilation dungeon, I can abuse this,’ Draven thought.
’I can step inside for a few days and passively farm months’ worth of high-tier rewards. It is an infinite glitch.’
Before the thought could even finish crossing his mind, the calming blue interface violently flickered. The screen turned a harsh, blaring red.
[WARNING: Critical System Anomaly Detected.]
[Error: Passive temporal overlap exceeds defined parameters.]
[Flagging Time-Dilation Exploit as a Bug...]
[Downloading Patch...]
[Patch Applied Successfully. Future time-dilation zones will no longer generate overlapping passive rewards. The loophole has been permanently closed.]
Draven blinked. He let out a dry, genuine chuckle.
"Of course," Draven muttered, shaking his head.
"The universe refuses to make it easy. Fair enough. I will take what I can get."
He began claiming the massive backlog. As the final reward deposited into his inventory, the red screen flashed one more time, shifting from a bug patch into an emergency military format.
[Protocol: Correction Initiated.]
[Directive 07: Prevent the Spatial Collapse.]
[Objective: The Fifth Elder of the Eternal Eclipse intends to sacrifice millions to open a King-Level rift. Target: Tharzek Noctis (Level 200 Anomaly).]
[Task: Execute the Target.]
Draven stared at the floating red text. A Level 200 Cult Elder was going to attack Bastion Six tomorrow.
He immediately pulled up his own stats. He ran the simulations in his head. The answer was bleak.
If he walked out onto a plaza and fought a Level 200 anomaly in a fair, head-to-head duel, his SSS-Rank Vector Manipulation would hold out for exactly twenty seconds before his mana core completely ruptured. It was suicide.
"I cannot fight him directly," Draven concluded quietly.
"I need to cripple him first. And the system always provides whenever it wants me to perform the best!"
He opened his newly acquired inventory. He looked at the Monthly Reward the System had just handed him.
[S-Rank Blueprint: The Mana-Siphon Grid]
[Details: A localized geographical trap array. Requires manual placement of runic Anchor Nodes across a wide perimeter. Once armed, the Grid generates an invisible anti-magic vacuum dome.]
[Effect 1: Instantly drains all ambient elemental magic, suppressing targets trapped inside by 50% of their total power.]
[Effect 2: Siphons the kinetic and magical energy of the battlefield, funneling the stolen power directly into the Host’s mana core.]
It was the perfect counter. The Elder relied on an oppressive domain of rotting magic.
If Draven could trap the priest inside this Grid, the vacuum would completely shatter the Elder’s magic and drag him down into a manageable, physical brawl, while giving Draven the infinite mana required to cast his ultimate time-stop.
But there was a massive problem. Setting up the Grid required planting heavy physical nodes across a massive area. The Elder would sense his mana the moment he tried to build it.
Draven scrolled down to his backlogged Weekly Rewards.
[Relic: Aetherium Core Battery]
[Skill Book: Supreme Concealment Runes]
[Consumable: Mind-Split Elixir]
Draven looked at the three items. The pieces of the puzzle perfectly snapped together in his mind. He stood up from the velvet sofa.
"Eclipse Hunters," Draven spoke into his comms earpiece.
"Report to my quarters immediately. We have a war to plan."
Ten minutes later, the squad stood around the central glass table. Draven laid the blueprint out in front of them.
"A Level 200 anomaly is coming to the central plaza tomorrow," Draven stated bluntly, ignoring the shocked gasps from Lucien and Reina.
"We are going to trap him inside this geometry."
Draven looked at Aegon and Bram.
"The Elder is too strong. If he senses me building this trap, he will erase me. So, you have to be the bait. When the monsters breach the plaza, you have to hold the line. You have to survive the massacre and keep his attention completely focused on you, long enough for me to secretly plant these nodes."
Aegon gripped his spear. Bram crossed his heavy arms. They knew exactly what their Captain was asking them to do. He was asking them to walk into a meat grinder.
"Understood, Captain," Aegon nodded, his eyes burning with absolute trust.
---
Present Day. The Plaza.
The screams of the dying Vanguard Knights echoed through the dark, purple sky.
The mutated bone-beast that used to be Cassian Stillbane spun like a tornado. Its massive bone scythes cleaved through heavy steel armor, painting the cracked pavement in a thick layer of fresh blood.
High above, Tharzek Noctis floated in the air, laughing as the Lord Commander’s men were butchered.
The Elder’s senses were perfectly tuned. He could feel the despair of the soldiers. He could feel Gunther’s agonizing paralysis.
But the Level 200 Elder could not feel the ghost moving directly beneath him.
Draven Mordis sprinted through the bloody carnage.
He was moving at blinding speeds. The [Blank Canvas] was doing it’s job! To the Elder and the beast, Draven simply did not exist.
Draven ducked under a flying piece of concrete. A Vanguard Knight was cleanly bisected just three feet to his left. Blood sprayed across Draven’s featureless white mask.
’I need to hurry up! This is going to be a long day!’
He did not flinch. He did not draw his weapons to save the dying soldier.
He had swallowed the [Mind-Split Elixir] thirty seconds ago. His brain was completely overclocked.
He was experiencing the battlefield in two separate consciousnesses.
One half of his mind was listening to Aegon and Bram’s desperate comms, tracking the beast’s movements.
The other half was ruthlessly calculating advanced spatial geometry.
Draven slid behind a shattered marble pillar. He slammed a heavy, metallic Anchor Node into the stone base.
Click.
Node four was locked.
Draven looked out at the slaughter. Every time a Knight died, it bought Draven another precious second of distraction.
He hated watching humans die at the hands of monsters, but a Commander had to make the hard trades. If he engaged the beast now, the trap would fail, the Elder would wipe them all out, and the Bastion would fall.
’This is not a Fairy Tale! Neither was my previous World!’
He surged forward again, an invisible shadow weaving through the apocalypse.
He vaulted over a pile of broken barricades, planting the fifth node. He scaled the side of a ruined medical tent, locking the sixth node into the brickwork.
The geometric pattern was almost complete.
"Keep moving, Aegon!" Bram shouted through the comms, his voice strained with pure exertion as he blocked the beast’s tail with a massive rock slab.
BOOM!
The physical stone shattered. Bram was thrown backward. Aegon was swatted out of the air. The Eclipse Hunters were down.
Draven sprinted toward the dead center of the plaza. He held the seventh and final Anchor Node in his gloved hand.
He watched Gunther force himself up from the ground. He watched the massive Lord Commander embrace the horrifying bone-beast, offering his tragic forgiveness.
"Do it!" Gunther roared.
Aegon thrust his dark spear forward, piercing the beast’s heart and Gunther’s side simultaneously. The beast let out a quiet gasp and died.
Draven slid to a perfect stop directly behind the fallen Commander.
Click.
Draven slammed the final Anchor Node directly into the bloody concrete.
High above, Tharzek Noctis shrieked in fury at the death of his mutated pet. The Elder gathered a massive wave of rotting entropy, preparing his Level 200 Edict to erase Aegon, Bram, and Gunther from existence.
Draven dropped the [Blank Canvas].
He stepped out into the open, his black uniform and white mask suddenly appearing on the bloody plaza.
"Leave the Block to me, Commander!!" Draven declared, his voice ringing with undeniable certainty.
Tharzek Noctis sneered at the masked boy. He threw the destructive wave of rotting magic downward, intending to turn the human into dust.
Draven did not cast a shield. He did not need to.
He reached out with his mind, connecting his mana to the [Aetherium Core Battery] hidden far away in the VIP suite. The battery sent a massive, untraceable spark of energy down to the plaza.
The [Mana-Siphon Grid] activated.
An invisible, flawless geometric dome erupted over the entire square.
The gray wave of the Elder’s rotting Edict slammed into the airspace above Draven. It didn’t explode. It didn’t push back.
It simply shattered like fragile glass.
The Grid’s anti-magic vacuum violently sucked the Level 200 spell into nothingness. The dark clouds above the city were instantly shredded.
Tharzek Noctis gasped. For the first time in a century, the ancient priest felt cold terror. His connection to the ambient leylines was entirely severed.
His oppressive, god-like aura plummeted, forcibly cut in half by the brutal geographical trap.
Down on the ground, Draven took a deep breath.
The stolen magic of the Edict, combined with the residual kinetic energy of the beast’s rampage, funneled directly into the Anchor Nodes.
The raw power surged through the pavement and blasted straight into Draven’s mana core.
Draven’s pitch-black eyes glowed with a terrifying, blinding light.
The sheer volume of mana now coursing through his veins was ungodly. The level gap had just been violently erased.
Draven looked up at the floating, panicked Cultist.
The execution had officially begun.