Started with a 10,000x Multiplier in a Game World

The narrow stone bridge was completely clear.

Dante didn’t wait for Pip to finish vacuuming up the massive shower of Dark Demon loot.

The twenty-four-hour event timer was ticking. The sheer volume of combat data his squad was generating was inevitably going to attract the administrative attention of the system.

He wanted to claim the final reward and exit the instance before the Zenith Protocol threw another localized anomaly at them.

He walked to the very end of the stone bridge.

The path ended abruptly. It dropped off directly into the massive bubbling lake of white-hot magma.

There was no final archway. There was no towering set of double doors leading to a boss room.

"Dead end," Casanova noted. He stepped carefully to the edge and looked down at the liquid fire. "Did we take a wrong turn?"

"The map says the objective is directly ahead," Nyx reported. She tapped her datapad and adjusted her dark glasses. "But the coordinates are reading at a negative elevation."

Dante looked down at the magma.

In a standard game, falling into lava was an instant-death mechanic.

It was a solid environmental boundary designed to keep players on the designated path.

But the Zenith Protocol was built on complex and interwoven systemic rules.

If you possessed the right passives, the environment wasn’t a barrier. It was just a different type of terrain.

"The boss is under the lake," Dante deduced.

He turned back to the squad. "Everyone stay here. Aura, keep the [Ultimate Guardian Halo] active on the bridge. I am going down."

"Boss, you cannot swim in lava!" Mei protested and gripped her frying pan tightly. "You will melt before you even hit the bottom!"

"I will not," Dante said.

He unclipped the massive heavy fabric of the [Mantle of the Void-Dragon].

"Hold this," Dante told Sera. He tossed the Saint Destroyer-tier cloak to the studio head.

Sera caught it and staggered slightly under the incredible cosmic weight of the item.

He didn’t want the long fabric snagging on submerged rocks or obscuring his vision in the magma.

He didn’t need the [Source of Recovery] passive of the cloak for this.

He tapped his system interface and navigated to his [Aetherial Nectar] buff.

The permanent immunity to negative status effects included extreme environmental hazards.

The magma wouldn’t inflict the Burn debuff. This meant he wouldn’t take the massive ticking percentage-based damage over time.

And his raw physical defense was sitting at over ten thousand points. It was more than enough to mitigate the baseline kinetic heat of the liquid rock.

"I will be right back," Dante said.

He didn’t use a flashy diving skill. He just stepped off the edge of the stone bridge.

He plummeted thirty feet and hit the surface of the magma lake.

The impact wasn’t a splash. It was a heavy violent crunch as his iron boots broke the crust of the cooling slag.

The thick white-hot liquid closed over his head instantly.

Dante didn’t burn.

His [Aetherial Nectar] immunity flared with a bright persistent silver light. It completely isolated his avatar from the extreme thermal radiation.

He couldn’t breathe. But the oxygen mechanics of the Zenith Protocol only applied a slow ticking damage penalty after two minutes of submersion. He had plenty of time.

He sank rapidly through the dense glowing liquid.

The magma was incredibly thick and restricted his movement speed heavily. But his sheer localized weight pulled him downward.

The bright orange light of the surface slowly faded. It was replaced by a deep, oppressive, and sludgy red.

Dante sank for a full thirty seconds. He dropped hundreds of feet into the subterranean lake.

Finally, his iron boots hit solid stone.

He had reached the bottom.

He activated [Dragon’s Insight].

The visual transition cleared the blinding red glare of the magma. It replaced it with the sharp analytical grid of blue and red data streams.

He wasn’t standing in an empty pit.

The bottom of the magma lake was a massive sprawling cavern.

It was perfectly insulated by ancient glowing magical runes carved into the obsidian floor.

The runes actively pushed the liquid magma away to create a massive localized air pocket in the absolute depths of the volcano.

Dante walked slowly across the obsidian floor. He stepped out of the thick magma wall and into the clear superheated air of the cavern.

He didn’t draw a weapon. He needed to find the egg first.

He spotted it immediately.

Resting in the exact center of the cavern sitting atop a raised pedestal of pure polished diamond was the objective.

It was a massive egg easily five feet tall.

It didn’t pulse with bright vibrant celestial energy like the one in Pet Blossom Valley.

The shell was forged from dark iridescent red crystal. It was heavily cracked and glowed with a deep furious internal heat.

[Item Identified: Fire Roc Egg]

[Tier: Celestial (Unhatched)]

[Description: A highly volatile unhatched Celestial companion. The essence of the Fire Roc slumbers within.]

Dante smiled. "Found it."

He took a step toward the pedestal.

His Intuition stat didn’t ping. It completely and utterly flatlined.

The air in the massive cavern didn’t just get heavy. It solidified.

Dante froze.

The overwhelming cosmic weight pressing down on his avatar was absolute.

It was heavier than Lady Carmilla. It was heavier than Alysia.

It felt like the system itself was trying to physically crush him into the obsidian floor.

He looked past the diamond pedestal.

Coiled entirely around the back half of the massive cavern perfectly blending into the dark stone and shadows was a massive serpentine shape.

It wasn’t a dragon. It wasn’t a drake.

It was a Leviathan.

The beast was impossibly large. Its body was as thick as a modern skyscraper.

Its scales were forged from dark cooling magma, but they didn’t glow with red heat.

The scales pulsed with a sickly bruised aggressively toxic purple light.

[Zone Boss Spawn: Scarlet Magma Leviathan]

[Tier: Celestial]

[Level: 80]

[HP: 50,000,000 / 50,000,000]

Dante stared at the health pool.

Fifty million.

It was an astronomical system-breaking number.

It was ten times larger than the Ascended Wyrm he had bypassed with the illusion scroll. It was a boss designed for an eighty-man max-level endgame raid.

But it wasn’t the health pool that made the blood of Dante run cold.

It was the purple light.

Dante activated [Dragon’s Insight] to focus deeply on the massive coiled beast.

The systemic data streams overlying the Leviathan weren’t the standard red of a hostile monster.

They were corrupted.

Thick jagged black code visibly leaked from the scales of the beast and actively deteriorated the localized environment of the cavern.

[Anomaly Detected.]

[Entity Status: Void-Blight Infected.]

[Warning: The target possesses systemic corruption. All standard physical and magical mitigation is permanently set to 95%. Target ignores all localized True Damage and defense-penetration passives.]

Dante slowly took a step back.

The Void-Blight. The same corruption that had mutated the beasts in the Wyrmrest Caverns.

But this wasn’t a low-level pig or a spider. The corruption had actively infected a Level 80 Celestial boss.

And the system warning was absolute.

Ninety-five percent physical and magical mitigation.

And it ignored True Damage.

[Voidsever] was completely useless.

The 100% armor-piercing passive wouldn’t work on the corrupted code.

Even if Dante stacked all his [Asura Vanguard] buffs and hit the beast with a mathematically absurd 300,000 damage critical strike, the 95% mitigation would reduce it to a pathetic 15,000 damage.

Against a fifty-million health pool, he would break his sword before he even scratched ten percent.

The Leviathan didn’t roar.

It slowly and methodically uncoiled its massive body.

The sheer physical movement caused the entire cavern to violently tremble. The obsidian floor cracked under the immense weight.

Its head was a massive eyeless wedge of jagged armor and glowing purple tumors. It turned directly toward Dante.

[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Devouring Void]

The Leviathan opened its massive jaws. It didn’t breathe fire or plasma.

It inhaled.

A localized black hole erupted inside its mouth. It generated an immense inescapable gravitational pull that completely dwarfed the pull of Gluttony.

Dante didn’t try to fight the gravity. He couldn’t kill it. He couldn’t parry a black hole.

He didn’t run away.

Dante triggered [Meteor Stride].

He didn’t aim for the exit tunnel leading back up to the magma lake.

He teleported directly forward. He materialized perfectly on the diamond pedestal right next to the massive cracked red egg.

The gravitational pull of the Leviathan was dragging everything in the cavern toward its open jaws.

Massive chunks of obsidian ripped from the floor and flew past Dante to disappear into the void.

Dante grabbed the heavy Celestial egg with both arms.

He didn’t try to put it in his inventory.

Combat mechanics often locked high-tier quest items out of localized storage to prevent players from simply stealing them and logging off.

He hugged the massive egg to his chest.

"I have got the package," Dante yelled. His voice was completely lost in the roaring vacuum.

He turned his back on the Leviathan and looked straight up at the ceiling of the cavern.

He triggered [Meteor Stride] again.

He vanished in a flash of white-hot light. He teleported straight up directly into the thick glowing wall of magma surrounding the air pocket.

He materialized inside the liquid fire completely submerged. He instantly took massive environmental damage.

[-15,000 HP!]

He was outside of the protective dome of Aura.

Without his [Mantle of the Void-Dragon], he didn’t have the 50% damage reduction or the [Source of Recovery] passive.

The raw unmitigated heat of the deep magma instantly stripped a massive chunk of his health.

He didn’t care.

He kicked his iron boots and swam upward as fast as his massive Strength stat allowed. He fought the dense sluggish gravity of the liquid rock.

Behind him deep in the cavern below, the Leviathan roared.

The sound wasn’t a standard digital audio file.

It was a localized systemic error. It was a deafening screech of corrupted code that physically hurt the ears of Dante even through the magma.

The beast was furious. The anomaly had stolen its prize.

The entire magma lake began to violently surge upward.

Dante burst through the surface of the lake. He erupted from the liquid fire in a shower of white-hot slag.

He landed heavily on the narrow stone bridge completely exhausted. His health bar was sitting at a critical 4,000 HP.

He dropped the massive red egg onto the stone floor.

"Dante!" Lila screamed and rushed forward. She completely ignored the intense heat radiating from his armor.

Aura instantly pulsed. She dropped a massive [Resurgence Wave] that topped his health back to full.

"Did you get it?" Casanova asked and peered nervously over the shoulder of Dante at the egg.

"I got it," Dante said and scrambled to his feet.

He grabbed his [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] from Sera and quickly clipped it around his neck. He sighed in relief as the massive passives re-engaged.

"Great! Let us port out!" Mei cheered.

"We cannot port out," Dante said and drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

He didn’t look relieved. He looked incredibly tense.

"The boss room is locked until the entity is defeated. The emergency talismans will not work while we hold the egg."

"Then we fight it," Garrick announced bravely and raised his rusty shield.

"Garrick," Dante said softly and pointed his sword at the bubbling violently churning magma lake. "You cannot tank this."

The lake erupted.

The massive skyscraper-sized body of the Scarlet Magma Leviathan ripped through the surface of the liquid fire.

The sheer physical displacement sent massive tidal waves of magma crashing against the cavern walls.

The beast towered over the narrow stone bridge. Its eyeless tumor-covered head loomed high above the squad.

[Zone Boss Engaged: Scarlet Magma Leviathan (Void-Blighted)]

[HP: 70,000,000 / 70,000,000]

The squad stared up at the impossible health bar. They were completely paralyzed by the scale of the threat.

"Seventy million?" Sera whispered, and her datapad slipped from her fingers. "Dante, the math... we literally cannot deal that much damage before it wipes us."

"I know," Dante said. He stood firmly at the front of the bridge and stared up at the corrupted god.

He reached into his infinite inventory.

He didn’t pull out a sword. He didn’t pull out a shield.

He pulled out the massive heavy dark parchment scroll sealed with a brilliant white wax emblem. The artifact he had looted from Ryujin.

"Raw stats will not win this fight," Dante stated, and his red eyes narrowed.

He raised the Saint Destroyer-tier artifact high above his head and aimed it directly at the towering Void-Blighted Leviathan.

"Let us level the playing field."

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