Chapter 311: The Bootleg Invasion, Hacked Stats

*BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEP!*

The rhythmic chirping abruptly escalated into a frantic, deafening siren. The crude machine sitting on the crates next to the shack began to violently shake, sparking wildly as it aggressively spat out a long, continuous stream of receipt paper.

"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me," Sebastian swore, dropping his fork onto the plate with a loud *CLANG*.

Wraith was off the crates in a microsecond, his daggers drawn, melting instantly into the shadows of the nearby trees. Valerie dropped her ledger, her corporate demeanor evaporating as she grabbed the rusted iron pipe leaning against the table.

Sebastian sprinted over to the shack, snatching the spooling receipt paper as the machine smoked and hissed.

`[CRITICAL WARNING: Multiple Dimensional Ruptures Detected.]`

`[Biological Heat Signatures: 500+]`

`[Threat Level: A Whole Fucking Army.]`

"Galleon, I really need you to change the threat level designations," Sebastian yelled over his shoulder, reading the glowing green text.

"I code with my heart, Boss!" Galleon shouted back, grabbing a heavy sledgehammer from the grill area.

*KRA-THOOOOOM!*

The sky above the lake didn’t just tear open. It violently shattered.

Instead of a single, jagged portal, five massive, swirling rifts of violent crimson and bruised-purple light ripped across the twilight sky. The sheer atmospheric displacement was catastrophic. A localized hurricane of displaced air blasted across the shoreline, tearing the leaves from the trees and kicking up a massive cloud of dust and sand.

"Get down!" Sebastian roared, throwing his arm over Valerie and dragging her behind the sturdy wooden wall of the toll booth.

*SPLASH! CRASH! THUD!*

Massive, rusted iron dropships and crude, armored barges began plummeting out of the rifts. They didn’t crash wildly like the Elven galleon. These vessels engaged heavy, sputtering plasma thrusters, slowing their descent just enough to slam heavily into the shallow waters and the muddy banks of the lake.

The side ramps of the dropships slammed down into the mud.

*CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.*

Hundreds of heavily armored figures began marching out of the ships. They were an organized, brutal-looking coalition of Outer Warlords and their scav-armies. They wore mismatched, spiked plate armor heavily augmented with glowing, bootleg magical conduits. They carried massive warhammers, repeating crossbows, and heavy iron shields.

Standing at the front of the invasion force, walking down the central ramp of the largest dropship, was a man who looked like he had been bred in a slaughterhouse.

He was nearly seven feet tall, clad in pitch-black, jagged plate armor that seemed to absorb the fading evening light. He wielded a colossal, two-handed greatsword that dripped with a foul, glowing red acid. His face was hidden behind a heavy iron visor shaped like a screaming skull.

"Earth," the armored giant spoke. His voice was magically amplified, booming across the lake and rattling the wooden planks of the toll booth. "The rumored paradise. The world without rules. I am Warlord Kael. And I claim this territory in the name of the Iron Coalition!"

Sebastian peeked out from behind the shack, his face set in a mask of pure, unadulterated annoyance. "Do these guys take a class on how to sound like an arrogant prick, or does it just come naturally with the spiked armor?"

"Look at what they’re carrying," Valerie whispered urgently, pointing past the Warlord.

Behind Kael, four massive, heavily mutated brutes were lugging heavy iron boxes out of the ships. The boxes were identical to the one Wraith had found the day before—stuffed with glowing red crystals, rusted wiring, and car batteries.

They weren’t just bringing one bootleg server anchor. They were bringing a network.

*THUD! THUD! THUD!*

The brutes slammed the four iron boxes down into the mud, spacing them out evenly across the shoreline.

"Activate the domain!" Kael roared, raising his greatsword high into the air.

*BZZZZZT!*

The four bootleg anchors violently hummed to life. Massive, jagged red holographic fields erupted from the boxes, linking together in a grid that instantly blanketed the entire shoreline, the lake, and the front gates of Sanctuary in a sinister, bloody light.

Galleon’s smoking Scrap-Scanner on the crates went absolutely berserk, aggressively printing out another long string of green text. Sebastian tore it off and read it.

`[Bootleg Server Network Online.]`

`[Warlord Domain Established: The Crimson Slaughter.]`

`[Applying Illegal Buff: +500% Physical Damage to Allies.]`

`[Applying Illegal Buff: +300% Movement Speed to Allies.]`

`[Applying Status Effect: Overwhelming Dread to Enemies.]`

"They’re hacking," Sebastian said flatly, dropping the receipt paper into the dirt. "They literally brought pirated software to a fistfight."

The air around the invading army visibly distorted as the bootleg buffs took effect. The scavengers roared, their muscles bulging unnaturally against their armor. Their eyes glowed with a frantic, chemically induced red light. They were moving with jittery, hyper-fast twitches, completely breaking the natural laws of physics that Sebastian had fought so hard to establish.

"Sovereign!" Aelion yelled, cowering behind the unfinished stone wall with his Elves. "Their magical density is suffocating! The dread aura... we cannot move!"

"Just keep your heads down, sparkles," Sebastian grunted, stepping out from behind the wooden shack.

He reached over his shoulder and slowly, deliberately drew his heavy iron broadsword from its scabbard. The metal scraped loudly against the leather. He didn’t have a glowing UI. He didn’t have a 10,000x multiplier to artificially enhance his strikes. He was just a guy with insanely dense bones, a sharp piece of metal, and a ruined dinner.

"Seattle," Valerie warned, gripping her iron pipe tightly. "They have a five-hundred percent damage buff. If they hit you, it’s going to hurt."

"Good," Sebastian growled, his silver-tinged eyes locking onto Warlord Kael. "It’s been three weeks. I was starting to get bored."

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the comforting, heavy weight of his biological steel muscles coiling tight. He stepped out onto the dirt road, standing directly in the path of the five-hundred-man army.

"Hey, tin can!" Sebastian yelled, pointing the tip of his iron broadsword directly at Kael. "You’re parked in a loading zone! Move the ships, or I’m having them towed!"

Warlord Kael slowly turned his skull-visored head, staring at the lone man in sweatpants and a t-shirt. The Warlord let out a deep, booming laugh that echoed across the bloody red domain.

"Kill the peasant," Kael ordered casually, flicking his wrist. "And burn the town to ash."

—-

The vanguard of the Iron Coalition didn’t just charge; they blurred.

Fueled by the +300% movement speed buff from their bootleg server anchors, thirty heavily armored scavengers practically teleported across the muddy shoreline. They closed the fifty-yard gap to the toll booth shack in a fraction of a second, their heavy boots kicking up massive sprays of wet dirt.

"Die, glitch!" a scavenger roared, his eyes glowing with frantic red light.

He swung a massive, two-handed warhammer directly at Sebastian’s chest. Because of the +500% physical damage buff, the air around the hammer visibly warped, screaming with artificially injected kinetic force.

Sebastian didn’t try to block it directly. He knew the basic laws of leverage. If he caught a mathematically impossible amount of force head-on, it would shatter his iron sword and break his wrists.

He pivoted on his heel, dropping his right shoulder and spinning entirely out of the hammer’s path.

*KRA-BOOM!*

The scavenger’s warhammer missed Sebastian by an inch and slammed into the wooden toll booth shack. The impact was utterly catastrophic. The shack didn’t just break; it completely exploded into a cloud of splinters and twisted corrugated steel, leaving a crater in the dirt road.

"My fucking toll booth!" Sebastian yelled.

Before the scavenger could recover from the massive over-swing, Sebastian stepped inside his guard. He didn’t use a flashy skill. He drove the heavy, rusted pommel of his broadsword directly upward, smashing it into the underside of the man’s steel jaw.

*CRUNCH!*

The scavenger’s jaw completely shattered. But because the man was buffed by the domain, he didn’t instantly go down. He stumbled backward, spitting blood and teeth, and blindly swung a heavy iron gauntlet.

*CLANG!*

The backhand clipped Sebastian’s left shoulder.

"FUCK!" Sebastian roared, sliding two feet backward in the dirt.

The hit felt like getting struck by a speeding dump truck. A sharp, searing bolt of pure agony shot down his arm. He could feel a hairline fracture form in his humerus. Hot, red blood trickled down his bicep where the armor spikes had bitten through his t-shirt.

The Warlord’s hacked stats were real. They were artificially increasing their output without needing the biological density to back it up.

"Okay. You want to play with numbers?" Sebastian snarled, rolling his throbbing shoulder. "Let’s see how your joints handle base reality."

Three more scavengers rushed him, thrusting heavy iron spears.

Sebastian parried the first spear with a brutal, downward swipe of his broadsword, burying his blade into the dirt. He didn’t pull it out. Instead, he lunged forward with his bare hands. He grabbed the wooden shaft of the second spear, using the scavenger’s own ridiculous, +300% forward momentum against him.