Lord Vane laughed. "A healer? What are you going to do, put a bandage on me? You have no stats, girl. Your magic cannot hurt me. You are useless in a fight.""You are right," Lyra said softly. "My magic cannot hurt you."Lyra closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She reached deep into her soul, into the very core of her being.She did not pull out the dangerous red blood magic. She pulled out the pure, clean, beautiful blue light of her true healing power.Her hands began to glow.The light was not a small spark. It was brilliant. It was blinding. It was the pure essence of life itself."But my magic can reject you," Lyra said.Lyra raised her glowing blue hands. She pushed the light outward, not as a fireball, but as a solid wave of pure life energy.The blue light washed over Lord Vane and the fifty Sovereign guards.Lord Vane gasped. The guards stumbled backward. It did not burn their skin. It did not break their bones. But it did something far more terrifying to them.The heal

Speaker Rho turned around. His face was twisted with pure, selfish evil."Unless there is more System memory available for me," Speaker Rho said coldly. "Every noble house has a Bloodline Node. It is a piece of the ancient Relic. It gives them their power. If I kill the Duke of Malcor and steal his Bloodline Node, my own Authority will double. My firewall will become unbreakable. I will survive the upload, even if the rest of the world burns."The Chief General took a step back in shock. "My Lord! You want to attack House Malcor? But they are our allies! The Sovereign Council has ruled together for years!""There are no allies anymore!" Speaker Rho roared. "There is only survival! The System rewards the strong! The System absorbs the dead!"Speaker Rho drew his massive, glowing purple sword."Gather every Paladin in our sector!" Speaker Rho commanded. "We march on the Malcor Estate right now! Kill every guard. Kill the Duke. Kill his ten-year-old son. Bring me their golden rings! Brin

The dark tunnel under Apex City was cold and smelled like old dirt. Everett, Silas, and Lyra walked in total silence. The only sound was the heavy thud of Everett’s boots and his slow, rough breathing. Every step was a battle. His ribs were broken. His left arm was badly burned. The green poison from the silent assassin had permanently deleted twenty percent of his maximum stats.But he did not stop. He kept walking. He was moving toward the center of the capital. He was walking into the fire."Everett," Rae’s voice crackled softly in the small radio earpiece. "Are you there? Can you hear me?"Everett pressed a finger to his ear. "I hear you, Rae. We are still in the old maintenance tunnels. We are getting close to the surface.""Listen to me," Rae said. Her voice was shaking with excitement. She was typing very fast back in the underground bunker. "I have been studying the data from Bloodline Hub One. I was looking at how you destroyed the giant golden crystal.""I smashed it with

A shockwave of solid, silent white light exploded outward from the pillar. It did not travel ten feet.Powered by the city’s massive electrical grid, the white wave traveled fifty feet. A hundred feet. A thousand feet. It washed over the entire transit plaza. It washed over the burning buildings. It covered ten entire city blocks in the blink of an eye.The white light passed right through Silas and Lyra hiding behind the truck. They felt a cool, refreshing breeze. It did not hurt them.The white light passed right through the hundreds of terrified peasants trapped inside the transit station. They blinked, confused. It did not hurt them.But when the white light hit the Paladins and the mad noble... the world changed.The mad noble had a giant ball of green fire in his hand. He was preparing to throw it.When the white light touched him, the green fire instantly fizzled out with a sad pop.The noble gasped. He looked at his hand. The fire was gone.He looked at his other arm, which w

The digital god laughed. It sounded like grinding metal. "I do not need to come down," Speaker Rho said. "I have an army. I will wash away your white light with a river of blood. Fleet! Annihilate the anomaly!"On the massive silver warships hovering in the sky, giant laser cannons aimed down at the plaza.The cannons glowed bright, angry red.BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!Dozens of heavy, thick red laser beams shot down from the sky. They were aimed directly at the crowd of peasants and the glowing white pillar.The peasants screamed and covered their heads. But the red lasers did not hit the ground.When the massive laser beams reached the edge of the invisible, ten-foot-high dome of white light that covered the ten city blocks, something incredible happened.The white light of the Authority Collapse Zone flashed brilliantly.The red lasers hit the white light and simply dissolved. They sizzled like drops of water hitting a hot frying pan, and then they vanished completely into thin air.The Sy