Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!
Chapter 435 - 435: Liquid Assets: $770.292 Trillion

Parker turned to his wife, Maya, who was casually leaning against a piece of debris while texting on her phone as though New York hadn't just been blasted to cosmic rubble and wasn't currently facing divine annihilation. Her royal composure remained utterly unshaken by the apocalyptic events unfolding around them—after all, when you'd witnessed the birth and death of universes, terrestrial conflicts tended to feel like neighborhood disputes.

She looked up from her phone and smiled at him with the kind of warmth that could melt glaciers or restart dead stars, depending on her mood. "Need something, love?"

"Come with me," Parker said, extending his hand toward her. "You too, Seoryeon."

Maya pocketed her phone and glided over to him with the fluid grace that marked her as royalty among cosmic entities.

Seoryeon stepped closer as well, her tablet still in hand, curiosity evident in her dark eyes despite her carefully maintained corporate composure.

With Manhattan now safely isolated within Ere's shadow dimension, the devastated city existed in a pocket reality where cosmic battles couldn't accidentally erase what remained of human civilization. Even with everything destroyed above ground, the underlying infrastructure—the true skeleton of the city—remained accessible and, more importantly, purchasable.

System notifications chimed directly in Parker's mind with the distinctive harmony of cosmic transactions being completed:

[Ding! Major city acquisition complete!]

[New York City metropolitan area successfully purchased!]

[Master can proceed to the core!]

[Ding! Total expenditure: $47 trillion for complete municipal acquisition!]

[Ding! 10x Cashback Card activated!]

[Ding! Received: $470 trillion!]

[Current liquid assets: $770.292 trillion!]

[Ding! Mission completed!]

[Real estate empire worth $100 billion requirement surpassed with $47 trillion acquisition!]

[Ding! Milestone achieved: You've surpassed and became the richest person on earth!]

[Master can now share the Infinity Equivalent Exchange Concept with allies! 5 slots available!]

Parker chuckled softly at the final notification. Did he need to do everything on his own now? No—he could finally delegate some of the cosmic heavy lifting to trusted allies.

At that exact moment, Seoryeon's tablet erupted with alerts completely independent of anything she'd witnessed Parker doing.

Her normally pristine corporate composure cracked as notification after notification flooded her screen—acquisition orders, property transfers, infrastructure purchases, all flowing through Sophisticated Space at lightning speed. Her eyes widened as she processed the sheer scale of transactions occurring in real-time, the numbers appearing faster than her mind could catalog them.

"What the hell—" she began, her voice barely above a whisper as she stared at the $47 trillion worth of purchases being channeled through her company. "This is impossible. These numbers—Parker, what is Sophisticated Space actually doing?"

Parker's smile was enigmatic as he glanced at her overwhelmed expression. "Housing what I buy. That's the whole purpose of Sophisticated Space, Seoryeon. To own the Earth."

The casual way he said it—as though discussing weekend plans rather than planetary acquisition—sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with cosmic forces and everything to do with the sudden understanding that she wasn't just the CEO of a real estate company.

She was the administrative head of a mechanism designed for global ownership.

"Perfect," Parker murmured, his mental notifications finally completing their cosmic symphony. "Time for the hardest thing I've done on Earth so far."

Seoryeon raised an eyebrow, her senses detecting the shift in his being. "Which would be?"

"Going to the Core," Parker replied, his voice carrying undertones that made reality itself pause to listen.

Seoryeon's corporate composure finally cracked completely. "A... Core? As in a planetary core? You're not seriously planning to—"

"Not just any core," Parker interrupted, his ancient eyes gleaming with anticipation and something approaching reverence. "The Prime Core. The central nexus that doesn't just govern this New York, but serves as the anchor point for every iteration of New York that exists across all connected Earth multiverses."

Maya's expression remained calm as she turned to address Seoryeon, who was still processing the implications. "The Prime Core is the ultimate prize," she explained to the bewildered CEO with the patient tone of someone who had witnessed this across multiple lifetimes. "Every cosmic entity, every pantheon, every force that seeks multiversal control—they all want access to it. That's why it should be the most heavily defended item in existence."

"Exactly," Parker confirmed, his power already probing downward through layers of reality that existed beyond mere physical depth. "This Earth—this specific reality—is the Mother Earth, the Prime World from which all parallel versions branch. And buried beneath Manhattan is the Core that maintains the quantum entanglement between this New York and every other New York across infinite parallel Earths."

Seoryeon's tablet slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers as the implications hit her. "You're saying that every Earth that has a New York... they're all connected through what's beneath us?"

"Every variation," Parker nodded grimly. "The New York where the British never left. The one where it's called New Amsterdam. The reality where it's an underwater city. The dimension where it exists as a floating sky metropolis. The timeline where it never existed at all—even those absent spaces are defined by their connection to this Prime Core."

Maya squeezed his hand tighter, her royal blood recognizing the cosmic significance of what he was proposing. "Those things are defended by entities that predate the concept of existence itself. Parker, if you're wrong about having jurisdiction—"

"I know exactly what defends Prime Cores," he said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of eons. "Which is why this is going to be the hardest thing I've attempted since arriving in this reality. But with New York officially mine—not just this version, but the Prime iteration that serves as the template for all others—I have a Existential ownership jurisdiction over the nexus point that governs the multiversal network. That's why they wanted me to own the cities before I go to the cores."

The air around them began to vibrate as Parker's consciousness expanded, probing not just downward through physical matter but sideways through dimensional barriers, searching for the nexus point that existed simultaneously across infinite realities while remaining anchored to this specific coordinate in Prime spacetime.

His senses detected the subtle fluctuations that indicated active connections to countless parallel Earths, each one maintaining its own version of New York through quantum entanglement with the Core beneath their feet.

Above them, Hercules and the Street Rat continued their battle, completely unaware of the true scale of existence beneath their feet.

They fought with universe-shaking power over what they believed was control of a single city, never realizing that Parker was preparing to claim the original template from which all cities of its kind derived their fundamental existence—the multiversal network that kept infinite realities connected and stable.

Maya's voice carried undertones of cosmic concern. "If you gain control of the Prime New York Core, every version of New York across all connected realities becomes yours. That's not just power, Parker—that's responsibility for billions of parallel timelines. This city becomes yours to protect across infinite realities."

"I know," Parker replied simply, his smile sharp as winter wind as he prepared to descend into depths where reality kept its most fundamental secrets. "Which is exactly why it needs to be done. I'm no hero, love, but I'm still the Prince of Existence and watching millions die and later all multiverses? Sorry, anybody can call me soft but it's something I can't do."