The jagged black blade of Voidsever sank into the skull of the sleeping Leviathan.
There was no physical resistance.
The 100% armor-piercing passive of the primordial greatsword completely ignored the heavily armored and magma-forged scales of the Celestial boss.
The blade stopped when the hilt met the bone.
For exactly one fraction of a millisecond, the massive subterranean cavern was absolutely and terrifyingly silent.
The bubbling magma lake stopped moving. The atmospheric heat distortion froze in place.
Then, the math executed.
Dante didn’t hit the boss for its compressed health pool.
The [All Lives Are Equal Scroll] had reduced the stats of the boss to match those of Dante to make it vulnerable.
But it didn’t change the actual raw numbers Dante was outputting with his stacked Asura buffs and the [Doom’s Echo] multiplier.
He hit the boss for the full unmitigated potential of his current build.
The damage number that popped up above the head of the Leviathan wasn’t just glitched red static.
The text physically expanded, and the font grew so incredibly massive that it obscured the entire cavern ceiling.
[-70,000,000! TRUE DEATH! OVERKILL!]
Seventy million points of raw True Damage.
The Magma Leviathan didn’t wake up from [Calamity - Sloth]. It didn’t roar in pain or thrash against the stone bridge.
The fifty-foot-long Level 80 Celestial Beast was instantaneously and violently atomized.
It didn’t shatter into chunks of rock and cooling magma.
The sheer overwhelming volume of mathematical destruction completely unraveled the underlying digital code of the entity.
The massive beast turned into a fine glittering cloud of silver and dark purple ash that drifted silently down into the bubbling magma lake below.
The thirty-second timer on the [All Lives Are Equal Scroll] expired.
The boss didn’t snap back to its original stats. It was already dead.
The golden invulnerability frames faded from the avatar of Dante.
He stood on the edge of the narrow stone bridge, and his health sat at a dangerously fragile 10% from the [Blood Sacrifice].
He slowly pulled Voidsever back and rested the massive black blade on his shoulder.
The pitch-black storm swirling inside the crossguard socket of the weapon hummed aggressively and was completely satisfied.
Aura hovered safely behind the rusted shield of Garrick and instantly pulsed her [Resurgence Wave].
The massive percentage-based heal washed over Dante. It completely refilled his health bar back to 25,500 HP to negate the massive risk he had just taken.
Dante let out a long heavy breath and dismissed the cursed sword back into his wrist.
He turned around to face his squad.
The twelve-man party was completely silent.
They were standing near the entrance archway. They stared at the empty space on the bridge where the massive fifty-foot boss had been sleeping a second ago.
"Okay," Casanova finally broke the silence. His voice trembled slightly. "I know we hit it really hard, but I do not think my punches did that."
"Seventy million," Nyx whispered. She actively took off her dark glasses to stare at the fading damage text in the sky.
She was frantically tapping her datapad to try to process the combat logs.
"He just hit a damage cap that should not be mathematically possible without a full forty-man raid group utilizing synchronized siege weaponry."
"He is not a player," Sera stated flatly and adjusted her merchant robes.
"He is a extinction event. Remind me to never ever argue with him about auction prices."
Garrick was completely oblivious to the sheer scale of the mathematical anomaly he had just witnessed. He lowered his rusty kite shield and gave Dante a massive thumbs-up.
"Great swing, buddy!" Garrick beamed enthusiastically. "We really showed that wyrm who is boss!"
"Yeah, we did," Dante smiled slightly and walked back toward the squad.
He didn’t need to explain the mechanics of [Doom’s Echo] or the [Asura Vanguard] class. Let them think it was just a really good sword swing. It maintained the necessary aura of invincibility.
"Alright," Dante said and clapped his dark purple gauntlets together.
"The boss is dead. The timer is expired. Let us see what a Level 80 Celestial drops when it gets deleted."
He turned back toward the bridge.
The massive glittering cloud of silver and purple ash was still settling over the magma lake.
But in the center of the stone walkway, resting exactly where the head of the Leviathan had been, was the loot pile.
Because of his [Zenith Incarnate] title, the 100% drop rate guaranteed an absolute mountain of high-tier assets.
The bridge was completely covered in massive glowing scales, thousands of gold coins, and incredibly rare glowing purple crafting materials.
Pip didn’t need to be told twice.
The tiny red dragon shot out of the tunic of Mei like a bullet. He frantically dived into the pile of gold coins and aggressively stuffed them into his inventory.
"Mine! All mine!" Pip shrieked happily and did a little dance on a pile of Celestial-tier scales.
Dante walked over to the loot.
He activated his [Band of the Void-Walker] and began vacuuming the generic materials and currency into his infinite inventory. He cleared the pile to reveal the unique boss drops.
Sitting at the very bottom of the pile were two distinct glowing items.
The first was a massive intricately carved block of solid white marble.
It looked like a cornerstone for a massive building. It glowed with a faint authoritative golden light that felt remarkably similar to the [Guild Creation Token].
Dante picked it up and easily managed the weight with his massive Strength stat.
[Item Appraised: Citadel Foundation Stone]
[Tier: Divine Emperor]
[Type: Settlement Construction Asset]
[Description: The fundamental building block of a true empire. When deployed in an open-world zone, this stone instantly generates the structural foundations for a massive player-owned Tier-3 City. Grants the owner administrative authority over the resulting settlement.]
Dante stared at the prompt.
A player-owned city.
The [Guild Creation Token] granted a guildhall. It was a large heavily fortified building.
But a Tier-3 City was an entirely different scale.
It meant walls, merchant districts, residential zones, and NPC guards.
It meant Dante could literally build a rival to Ironhold or Aethelgardia to establish a permanent unassailable geographic stronghold for Aegis Vanguard.
"Sera is going to lose her mind," Dante muttered and tossed the massive stone into his void ring. He would give it to her later and let her handle the logistics of city planning.
He knelt down and picked up the second item.
It wasn’t a weapon or a piece of armor.
It was a small jagged shard of dark metal. It looked remarkably similar to the rusted broken hilt of a sword. But it didn’t radiate any magical or elemental aura.
It felt completely dead and heavy with an unnatural absolute silence.
Dante frowned. His Intuition stat wasn’t pinging with danger, but it was heavily drawn to the shard.
He tapped his appraisal skill.
The system interface hitched violently. The blue text box glitched, sparked with static, and struggled to process the identity of the item.
[System Error: Asset Classification Not Found.]
[Item Recognized: Zenith Protocol Admin Key (Shattered)]
[Tier: ???]
[Description: A fragment of the core architecture of the system. Severely damaged. Functionality unknown.]
Dante stood up slowly and stared at the jagged piece of metal in his hand.
An Admin Key.
It didn’t have stats. It didn’t provide a passive buff.
It was a literal physical piece of the underlying code of the Zenith Protocol. It was dropped by a boss infected with the Void-Blight.
"The system is breaking," Dante realized, and a cold chill ran down his spine.
The Void-Blight wasn’t just a corrupted monster faction. It wasn’t a standard game hazard like poison or fire.
It was a manifestation of actual systemic decay.
The Zenith Protocol, the cosmic engine running the cyclical war, was actively fracturing. The corrupted bosses were eating the administrative code of the system.
He remembered the warning of the Blade-Saint in the Hall of Origins. The system was accelerating its timetable because the outer boundaries were failing.
"Dante?" Lila called out from the edge of the bridge. She noticed his tense posture. "Did it drop something bad?"
Dante quickly shoved the shattered Admin Key into the deepest most isolated pocket of his infinite inventory. He didn’t want the squad panicking about the fundamental collapse of reality just yet.
"No," Dante lied smoothly and turned around with a smile. "Just a lot of heavy rocks. We are good."
He walked back off the stone bridge to rejoin the squad near the entrance tunnel.
"Alright," Dante said and clapped his gauntlets together. "The boss is dead. The loot is secured. The event timer is almost up. We have officially cleared Fire ROC’s Last Wish."
"Wait!" Aria squeaked and stepped forward from the back of the group.
She was clutching her small woven basket tightly against her chest. "Mr. Hero, what about the egg?"
Dante paused.
He had completely forgotten about the massive dark red [Fire ROC Egg] he had grabbed from the pedestal before the Leviathan woke up.
It was currently sitting safely inside his void ring and had been bypassed during the chaotic execution sequence.
"Right," Dante said and opened his inventory.
He pulled the massive five-foot-tall egg out and set it gently on the floor.
The dark iridescent red crystal shell pulsed with a deep furious internal heat.
"Is it safe?" Casanova asked and eyed the massive egg suspiciously.
"The last time we touched one of these, it hatched a very loud very fast bird that tried to eat us."
"It is a Celestial pet," Sera noted and stepped closer.
"It requires a massive influx of ambient mana to finalize the incubation process. The magma in this room should be enough to trigger it."
Dante looked at the egg.
The [Fire Roc’s Last Wish] quest had specifically asked him to save the unborn daughter from the Leviathan.
He had killed the boss, but he still needed to hatch the egg to formally complete the lore objective.
"Let us see what is inside," Dante said and stepped back to give the egg room.
The massive red crystal egg began to violently vibrate against the obsidian floor.
The internal heat spiked aggressively, and the dark red glow shifted to a blinding brilliant crimson.
A web of jagged cracks appeared across the surface of the shell.
"Get ready," Dante warned the squad. He rested his hand on his sword just in case the newborn decided it woke up hungry.
The egg violently shattered.
A massive burst of dark red fire and black smoke erupted from the shell and completely obscured the newborn creature.
The squad waited for the smoke to clear. They expected a majestic glowing bird of celestial fire.
The smoke faded.
Sitting in the center of the shattered shell wasn’t a majestic fire roc.
It was a small incredibly ugly featherless bird.
It looked like a freshly hatched oversized chicken covered in dark sticky gray sludge.
But it wasn’t the appearance of the bird that made the Intuition stat of Dante flare.
It was the aura radiating from the newborn.
The bird wasn’t glowing with celestial light. It was actively dripping with thick aggressive pulsating purple energy.
[Entity Identified: Fire Roc Hatchling]
[Status: Void-Blight Infected]
"Oh no," Nyx whispered and took a rapid step backward.
Because the egg had been sitting next to the Void-Blighted Leviathan for so long, the ambient corruption had seeped through the shell. The newborn Celestial pet was infected.
The ugly sludgy bird didn’t chirp.
It let out a horrifying distorted screech of corrupted code. Its tiny eyes burned with toxic purple light.
It didn’t look for its mother.
It aggressively snapped its jagged beak and instantly lunged toward the closest source of life energy.
It lunged directly at Aria.
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