'A-a C Rank Ascended!'

Standing on the roof where he just spectated the successful assassination of a D Rank Ascended NetRunner, Leon's eyes widened in horror as he stared at the tall Synth in a black and red military attire floating in front of Ren Nora.

'It's over!' He felt despair.

His worst fears were just realized!

When he finally received the interface notification briefing him about the objective of his Trial, Leon was stunned when he saw the part that indicated that he may likely encounter C Rank entities.

Since then, despair gripped him as he simply couldn't fathom a way to survive an encounter with a C Rank entity not to talk of multiple, and finally his worst fears came to reality.

He stared at the tall Synth with a terrified gaze. 'How is this army of rebels supposed to survive against an army led by a C Rank Ascended?'

But as he stared at the sky at the powerhouses floating in the sky, Leon could not help but notice an incongruity. 'How is he so calm in the face of a C Rank Ascended?'

Through his invisible C-5 drones that he already hid in the sky, Leon was able to eavesdrop on the conversation between the towering Synth and Ren Nora.

"How dare you murder my soldier?"

Through the footage of the C-5 drone, Leon noticed that Ren Nora didn't answer as instead, his lips curled up into a big smile then he instructed loudly with a cold look on his face.

"Unleash the Purgatory!"

'Purgatory?' Leon blinked. 'What's that?'

He didn't have to wait long, it came almost instantaneously.

BZZZZT!

The entirety of Iron Reef suddenly hummed with powerful radioactive energy like a Dragon just awoke from a slumber.

Thick green pillars of ADE snaked into the sky like slithering serpents!

And then, this thick neon green ADE converged, drawing on the power of the city's aerial defense grid as it projected what looked like an illusory electronic circuit into the atmosphere above Iron Reef.

The sky turned into a giant complicated neural electronic circuit.

Leon was shocked. 'What is this?'

'What is this sensation?' His skin became numb.

Standing on the roof, Leon shuddered as he felt the electrons in the atmosphere ignite, entering an excited state. He felt the flesh under his skin squirm in the face of the electron storm.

He felt like he was in the danger zone of a high tension transformer.

Leon didn't understand exactly what just happened, but he had a hunch. 'Is this illusory electronic circuit connected to the psionic network?'

His guess was close to the truth.

For a long time as he rose to power, growing his faction of rebels, as the leader Ren Nora always worried about the Omnicore Federation.

He was always plotting and planning, he always thought of new ways to fight the Federation Army and help more of his soldiers survive in the event of an ultimate battle to the death.

One of his greatest fears was the day he would finally be forced to fight against a C Rank Ascended.

The day Director-Prime Epsilon finally decided to take him serious enough.

'What will we do if we ever run into a C Rank Ascended of the Federation?'

Ren Nora had a simple belief and ideology that knowledge is power. With knowledge, power becomes easy to express.

At D Rank, Ren Nora didn't have the ability to hack the Omnicore Federations' main database to get information that he wanted, but he was able to briefly hack into the database of the Geneforge Clans without being detected.

Through that sneaky little firewall bypass, he learned about the behemoths and the true rulers of the world.

He learned that there were only 7 C Rank Ascended in the world, and that the Federation had 3, the Synth Order had 2, while the Geneforge Clans had 2, making them the strongest powers in the world.

He learned that the 2 leaders of the Geneforge Clans were both C Rank Genetic Vanguards of the Gene Augur Class.

He learned that of the 2 leaders of the Synth Order, 1 was a C Rank Master Mechanist of the Technician Specialization, the only C Rank Mechanist in the world and the only female C Rank Ascended in the world.

He learned that the 2nd leader of the Synth Order was a C Rank Data Phantasm NetRunner of the Cyber Saint Specialization, the only C Rank Cyber Saint in the world, a true Sanctified Core.

And he also learned that of the 3 leaders of the Omnicore Federation, one of them was a C Rank Data Phantasm NetRunner of the Mindbreaker Specialization, another was a C Rank Reality Sculptor of the Quantum Shaper Class, a practitioner of the Chrono Master Specialization.

The only being he couldn't learn about was the Director-Prime Epsilon, even the Geneforge Clans didn't know much about him.

With all this hacked knowledge, Ren Nora built and led his army of rebels, devising new strategies to fight the Federation Army.

With that knowledge, he built this city.

All of that thinking and plotting led to today.

There's a reason why despite not having the power of factions like the Geneforge Clans nor the technology of the Synth Order, a rebel army of ragtag Ascended managed to survive the Federation's pressure for so long.

The rebel army have built a reputation for the marauding attack style of their NetRunners that counters the Federation's overwhelming firepower style.

Iron Reef survived because during major battles against the Federation Army, it's not just flight vessels and warships that fights for the rebel army, their NetRunners also join the fight.

Unlike other Classes at E Rank, E Rank NetRunners have the ability to affect battlefields of this scale simply because of their unrestricted mobility in the right circumstances.

All they needed was neural interfaces to act as teleportation nodes.

And in the entire world, Ren Nora's rebel army has the highest concentration of NetRunners by far.

There were thousands of NetRunners in Iron Reef!

Ren Nora constructed Iron Reef's defense grid around this NetRunner superiority. The core of the city defense grid was not the thousands of turrets installed around the city, the core function of the defense grid is Purgatory.

Ren Nora managed to create Purgatory after devising an ambitious idea and secretly seeking help from the Synth Order to realize his idea.

Unlike other city defense grids, Purgatory only has one function.

Purgatory's sole function is to project a city-wide circuit with the neural capacity to connect an entire city directly to the psionic network, overlapping the cyber world with reality.

In this unique state when the cyber world overlaps with reality, the laws of reality are inverted and physics is partially invalidated.

Inside Purgatory, the connectivity of NetRunners to the psionic network is massively enhanced, amplifying the psionic network-related powers of NetRunners within the range of the circuit and rendering network isolation impossible.

This also amplifies the psionic network-related powers of a C Rank NetRunner, but this is relative based on Class Specialization.

For NetRunners of the Mindbreaker Specialization, this power amplification is marginal, not much different from D Rank NetRunners because most of their powers were related to attacking and manipulating the mind.

The ones who truly receive the greatest boon from Purgatory are NetRunners of the Code Phantom Specialization because literally all their powers are connected to the psionic network.

And this is a Specialization where Ren Nora is the authority figure among all NetRunners in the world.

This was what gave Ren Nora the confidence to directly face an enemy C Rank Ascended in battle, this was his home ground.

With Purgatory active, Ren Nora had the confidence to run rings around any C Rank Ascended simply because they couldn't catch him.

Inside Purgatory, he was uncatchable.

He was a Flea.

And inside Purgatory, the modest rebel army of the Freegrid Collective was one of the most menacing armies in the entire world in battle.

Purgatory was Ren Nora's trump card, and this was the first time that he was debuting it in battle.

The C Rank NetRunner of the Omnicore Federation had no preparations for it. Afterall, he had never seen something like this before.

Inside Purgatory, NetRunner movement is unhinged because they no longer need interfaces and smartphones to teleport and hop about.

When the cyber world overlaps with reality, reality becomes the psionic network, the world becomes a psionic reality.

Every nook and cranny of Iron Reef becomes an interface, granting NetRunners an overwhelming advantage in the city.

This was Ren Nora's trump card, this was Iron Reef's home advantage.

BZZZZT!

The moment Purgatory was projected, the thousands of NetRunners in Iron Reef finally made their move.

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

The world turned into a neon green canvas!

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