Chapter 89: Market Crash

Chapter 89: Chapter 89: Market Crash

The morning sun was out over Genesis City, but most of it couldn’t get through the thick gray clouds. What did get through was tinted blue by the Aegis Wards, the dome-shaped shield that covered the entire city.

Inside the TIG War Room, Aris Thorne stood at the tactical table with her tablet in hand. She hadn’t slept at all last night. Her finger hovered over a red button on the screen.

"The packages are ready," Aris said, pushing her glasses up. "The Abyssal ledger has been translated, verified, and encrypted. I have direct lines open to the Awakened Association, every major news network, and the top fifty independent Guild Masters in the world."

Donald stood by the window with a cup of coffee. Behind him, Nyx was asleep on the sofa, curled up and snoring lightly.

"Send it," Donald said.

Aris pressed the button.

For ten seconds, nothing happened.

Then the wall of monitors at the back of the War Room lit up all at once. Every news channel cut away from its morning programming, and the same red banner appeared on all of them.

BREAKING NEWS.

On the center screen, a news anchor stared at the tablet in her hands. She looked like she had only just read it herself.

"We are interrupting our broadcast for an unprecedented data leak," she said, stumbling over the words. "A verified magical ledger has just been released worldwide. It contains proof that the Dragonheart Guild and its chief Emissary, Julian Vane, have been receiving direct payments and military supplies from a Demon King."

The screen switched to a close-up of the ledger’s last page. At the bottom was a signature burned into the paper in black fire.

Azgalor.

"The Awakened Association has issued an emergency warrant for Julian Vane’s arrest," the anchor continued, her voice getting higher. "Dragonheart stock is in free fall. Trading has been suspended, but early reports say the Guild has lost sixty percent of its net worth in the last five minutes."

Aris smiled. It was the smile of someone who had just closed a very good deal.

"Julian Vane is finished," she said. "He can’t show his face in the Capital, and the demons will kill him for losing their factory. He’s completely liquidated."

Donald took a sip of his coffee.

That was it. The corporate war was over, and he had won.

He waited for the System to congratulate him. It usually did.

But instead, the golden text in the corner of his vision turned red and started flashing.

[WARNING: Catastrophic Spatial Anomaly Detected.]

[Location: 2 miles outside Genesis City limits.]

[Threat Level: Extinction.]

The coffee mug cracked in Donald’s grip and broke apart. Hot coffee ran down his wrist.

He ignored it and turned to the window. His eyes turned gold as [Valuation Eye] activated, and his sight pushed past the skyline to the wasteland beyond the city.

Outside the blue dome, the sky was splitting open.

This was no regular dungeon gate. It was a jagged tear in the air, at least a mile wide, with purple lightning crawling along its edges. The pressure coming off it was so heavy that the Aegis Wards started humming loud enough to hear from inside the building.

The steel doors of the War Room slid open.

Evelyn ran in, her black hair a mess behind her. She already had her combat armor on, but her hands were empty.

"Tell me Garrick is done with my sword," she said, staring at the rift.

"He needs two more days."

The answer came from the corner of the room. A second ago, that corner had been empty. Now Sylvia was stepping up out of the shadow there, both of her B-Rank daggers already drawn. Her violet eyes were fixed on the window.

"You’ll have to punch them, Evie," Sylvia said.

Evelyn cracked her knuckles. "I can do that."

"Aris," Donald said. His voice was calm. "Sound the city alarms. Mobilize the Vanguard Barracks. I want all four hundred Awakeners on the northern wall in ten minutes. Nobody steps outside the shield."

Aris slammed her hand on the console. A second later, the city sirens started up, a long wailing sound that carried through every street in Genesis City.

Donald walked back to the tactical table. The holographic map zoomed in on the wasteland outside the barrier.

The rift was pouring out red dots. Hundreds, then thousands.

Donald focused on the map, and [Valuation Eye] started tagging them.

[Orc Legionnaire — Lv. 40 — x22,000]

[Void Knight — Lv. 55 — x9,000]

[Siege Golem — Lv. 60 — x400]

[Gargoyle — Lv. 35 — x17,000]

The Orcs came out first in heavy armor, packed shoulder to shoulder. Behind them walked the Void Knights, tall figures in black plate with closed helms. Then came the Siege Golems, huge bodies of jagged iron, each one dragging a battering ram nearly as long as itself. Above them all, the Gargoyles came out in flocks so thick that the ground under them went dark.

And in the center of the army, a chariot floated a few feet above the ground, pulled by four Hellhounds with their bodies on fire.

The demon standing on it was taller than any of the Void Knights. He wore black armor, with a helm shaped into a crown, and his eyes were nothing but burning hellfire. The Level 85 Warlord they had fought before would have only reached his chest.

[Target: Azgalor, The Iron Sovereign]

[Class: Demon King]

[Level: ??? (100+)]

[Valuation: Unable to calculate.]

"He didn’t send a hit squad," Sylvia said quietly. "He brought his whole army."

"He’s angry we took his money," Donald said.

Azgalor raised a black greatsword over his head. The whole Abyssal Legion roared back at him, loud enough to rattle the reinforced glass of the TIG tower. Then the army started running across the wasteland, straight at the blue dome.

Evelyn stepped up to the table. Her blue eyes were wide, and Donald couldn’t tell if she was scared or excited. Probably both.

"That’s about fifty thousand of them," she said. "The shield stops magic, but those golems are hauling rams. If four hundred of those start hitting the barrier at once, it’s going to crack."

"I know," Donald said.

He didn’t head for the elevator. He didn’t run for the front lines.

Instead, he tapped his master ring against the console and opened a tab he had never used before.

[Defensive Grid]

[System Asset: ’Archangel’ Orbital Strike Array (S-Rank)]

[Status: Fully Charged]

[Beam Diameter: Adjustable (10–50 yards)]

[Duration: 5 seconds]

[Awaiting Target Designation...]

"Let’s see what seven million credits buys these days," Donald muttered.

He looked at Azgalor’s tag one more time.

[Valuation: Unable to calculate.]

The System couldn’t even put a number on him. A direct hit might kill him. It also might not. And if it didn’t, Donald would have wasted his strongest weapon on one target while forty-nine thousand demons kept running at his walls.

He wasn’t taking that bet.

The Golems were the real problem. They were the only ones who could break the shield. And Azgalor had made a mistake when he ordered the charge. The Orcs were the fastest, so they had pulled ahead, and the slow Golems had ended up in the middle of the army, with the Void Knights packed in tight around them.

Donald dragged a red targeting box over that spot. He set the beam to its full fifty yards and lined it up on the thickest cluster of Golems.

"Fire."

[Coordinates Locked.]

[Firing Archangel Array...]

High above the clouds, the golden ring of machinery built into the top of the shield began to spin. Its runes lit up one after another as it pulled power straight from the S-Rank celestial core in the TIG basement.

Down on the wasteland, the army was halfway to the walls when the sky above them turned white.

Azgalor looked up. For the first time, the fire in his eyes flickered.

The beam came down from the stratosphere in a straight column of white-gold light, fifty yards wide, and hit the center of the Abyssal Legion.

There was no explosion. Whatever it touched just stopped existing.

The Siege Golems went first. Their iron bodies glowed red, then white, then turned to liquid and ran into the ground. The rams melted with them. The Void Knights around them didn’t even get their shields up. Their armor melted onto them, and then they were ash.

But Donald wasn’t done.

The Array’s duration was five seconds. The System had said nothing about the beam having to stay in one place.

He pressed two fingers on the targeting box and dragged it.

The beam followed his hand.

It swept forward across the battlefield, carving a straight trench through the Golem column. Every Golem walking in line behind the first group vanished, one after another. Orcs on either side of its path caught fire just from being near it.

One second. Two. Three.

Then a red dot on the map shot upward from the chariot. Azgalor had jumped.

The Demon King landed in front of his Hellhounds and stabbed his greatsword into the ground. A dome of black fire burst up around him and the chariot.

Donald pulled the beam toward him. Not to kill him. Just to see what he could do.

The edge of the beam hit the black dome, and the two powers ground against each other with a loud, screeching hiss. Two of the Hellhounds sticking out past the dome burned away. But the dome held.

Four seconds.

So that was the answer. Donald dragged the beam off the Demon King and swept it back across the infantry, cutting through the Orcs that had bunched up in panic.

Five.

The light faded.

The heat it left behind rose straight up in a blast of hot air, and it threw the Gargoyles flying overhead into each other. Hundreds of them fell out of the sky with their wings burning.

Then the battlefield went quiet.

Donald looked at the holographic map. Through the middle of the red mass of enemy dots, there was now a long, wide gap. The ground along it had turned into smooth black glass.

[Archangel Array has entered cooldown (72 Hours).]

[Enemies eliminated: 15,382]

[Siege Golems remaining: 11]

[Notice: Base Defense kills do not grant individual Experience Points.]

Eleven. Out of four hundred.

Evelyn let out a long whistle. "Remind me to never make you mad."

"You can make me mad," Donald said. "Just don’t build an army."

Out on the glass, Azgalor pulled his greatsword out of the ground, and the black dome came down. He looked at the trench running through his army. Then up at the clouds the beam had come from. Then straight at the TIG tower in the middle of the city.

Even from two miles away, Donald knew the Demon King was looking at him.

Azgalor didn’t order a retreat. He raised his sword again.

"KILL THEM ALL!"

His voice carried across the whole wasteland, boosted by magic. Even the city sirens couldn’t drown it out.

The thirty-five thousand demons still standing roared back. The fear on their faces turned to rage, and they charged again, running across the glass toward the city walls.

Donald stepped away from the table and headed for the elevator. As he walked, he slid his left arm into the Abyssal Impact gauntlet and tightened the straps.

Nyx woke up, jumped off the sofa, and flew across the room to land on his shoulder.

"The Array thinned them out," Donald said. "Now we clean up what’s left."

He pressed the elevator button.

"Evie. Sylvia. Let’s go welcome them to Genesis City."