Chapter 73: BATTLE OF THE SWAMP (10)

The Sun Shrines surrounding Aurelius’ tiny patch of dry land instantly turned to dust. The territorial shield collapsed. The invisible barrier vanished. And for the first time in his existence, the Golden King was forced to breathe the choking, soot-filled air of Bastion. He coughed violently, falling to his hands and knees in the mud.

“No…” Aurelius choked out, clawing at his throat as the divine power bled out of him like a severed artery. “I am Rank 9… I am the Sun…”

But the System did not care about titles. It only cared about the math. And Aurelius’ account was overdrawn.

Above him, the fabric of reality shattered with a CRACK.

The sky itself seemed to tear open, revealing the raw, unrendered void of the System’s backend.

From the tear, massive, heavy chains materialized. They weren’t made of iron or magic, they were forged of pure, glowing red code cascading streams of hexadecimal symbols and jagged, hostile runes.

The first chain shot downward like a harpoon, plunging directly through Aurelius’ golden breastplate and erupting out his back.

Aurelius unleashed a horrific, agonizing shriek.

SHLICK. SHLICK. SHLICK.

Four more chains of raw code erupted from the earth beneath him, completely bypassing his physical defenses. They hooked brutally through his shoulders, his wrists, and his throat, hoisting the Rank 9 God into the air like a slaughtered pig on a meat hook.

“Stop! STOP!” Aurelius gurgled, thrashing wildly against the chains. Every movement caused the code to burn through his flesh like white-hot wire. “I have DP! I have wealth! I will buy—”

[ INITIATING DIVINE CORE ERASURE. ]

The lines of code spun violently, physically shredding his avatar. The golden armor was stripped away in chunks of corrupting static. Then his skin, and his muscle.

Aurelius convulsed, his eyes burning with blinding white light as the chains dug directly into his Divine Core, which was the very soul of his existence. His final scream was soundless, a frequency of pure, unadulterated agony that vibrated the toxic mud below. He was being forcibly unwritten from the universe.

Up in the Void, Red stood silently. He watched the execution without a single flinch, his violet eyes reflecting the red glow of the System’s deletion protocol.

Red opened the [ GLOBAL SECTOR RANKINGS ] tab in his peripheral vision.

– Rank 8: The Iron Sovereign

– Rank 9: Aurelius (The Golden King)

– Rank 10: The Weaver of Tides

Down in the swamp, the red chains pulled taut. With a sickening, digital crunch, Aurelius’ core shattered. His body violently fragmented into black-and-red polygons, dissolving into dead static that immediately evaporated into the smog.

He left absolutely nothing behind. Not even ashes.

Simultaneously, on Red’s screen, the name Aurelius violently glitched. The text turned a dead, corrupted gray, hissed with static, and was instantly deleted from the board.

The list shifted upward. The Golden King was permanently delisted.

Red dismissed the screen with a flick of his spectral wrist.

’So losing all followers also warrants death…?” Red wondered. “I thought he would de-rank or face some kind of penalty, but I didn’t expect this. The game is too strict with its rules. Well… good riddance.’

“Bankruptcy is a painful process,” Red murmured, adjusting his suit jacket. He looked down at the Omni-Web map, where the massive, undefended city of the Sun Spire sat miles away, ripe for the taking.

“Krug,” Red commanded, leaning back in his throne of shadows.

[ Lord? ]

“We have won our first big war. This will go down in the history of Bastion for years to come. Make sure the tale is recorded and everyone is credited and rewarded. Also, prepare a small army to march west. We are going to claim the Sun Spire.“

In the deep, echoing caverns of the Stone Mother, Gorr sat heavily on her granite throne. She had the global leaderboard open, her glowing stone eyes fixed on the Rank 3 slot.

She was waiting for the name ’Rubedo’ to turn gray.

“That idiot! I warned him. I told him to apologize. You don’t fight sixteen thousand demigods with mud and sticks. I even tried to become his vassal, but that rotting druid ruined everything!”

Miles away, in the smoldering, ash-choked ruins of the southern woods, the Rotting Druid watched the same screen. He was weeping sap, mourning his burned followers. He hated Aurelius for the fire, but he hated Red more for hanging up the phone. He wanted to see the arrogant anomaly deleted.

Suddenly, a blinding red light pulsed across every interface in the Sector.

It was a [ GLOBAL SYSTEM OVERRIDE ].

The leaderboard shuddered violently. Gorr leaned forward, her stone jaw dropping. The Druid stopped weeping, his remaining leaves shivering in absolute terror.

It wasn’t Rank 3 that flickered.

– Rank 8: The Iron Sovereign

– Rank 9: Aurelius (The Golden King) [ ASSET LIQUIDATED: ACCOUNT DELETED ]

– Rank 10: The Weaver of Tides

The name dissolved into static and vanished. The entire list shifted upward to fill the void.

Gorr’s massive hand trembled, dropping the quartz she was crushing. It shattered loudly on the cave floor. “By the core of the earth…” she whispered, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. “He… he ate him. The swamp rat ate the Sun.”

In the ashes of his forest, the Rotting Druid stared at the blank space where Aurelius used to be. He remembered Red’s cold, absolute voice just hours prior: ’I already have a plan for the southern flank. And it doesn’t involve bailing you out of a bad investment.’

The Druid fell to his knees in the ash. He realized, with a suffocating wave of dread, that the Golden King had never been the apex predator of this Sector. The apex predator wore a suit, sat in the dark, and did math.

Up in the Void, Red’s interface was having a total meltdown.

It was filled with a blinding cascade of gold, purple, and crimson notifications, chiming so fast they blended into a single continuous tone of victory.

Red simply adjusted his spectral tie, his violet eyes reflecting the flood of data.

[ SECTOR ANOMALY DETECTED. PROCESSING COMBAT LOGS… ]

“Take your time, System,” Red murmured smoothly. “The audit is going to be extensive.”

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