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

The three Guild Masters broke away from the routing, panicked mass of their own armies.

They didn’t charge blindly into the fray. They were veteran players, intimately familiar with the brutal mechanics of the Zenith Protocol.

They understood positioning, aggro manipulation, and the crucial importance of synchronized burst damage.

Silas, riding his silver-armored warhorse, took the direct frontal approach.

Gawain spurred his golden mount to the left, his massive warhammer radiating a blinding, holy light.

Ryujin, moving with terrifying speed in his crimson samurai armor, flanked hard to the right, his katana sparking with volatile lightning.

They formed a perfect, collapsing triangle around Dante.

Dante stood in the center of a massive, bloody trench he had carved into the gorge floor.

He had just finished atomizing a squad of Black Dragon rogues, his health bar completely topped off by the 20% lifesteal of [Blood-Lust Stance].

He felt the sudden shift in the threat environment.

The chaotic, disorganized panic of the routing army faded slightly, replaced by the sharp, highly concentrated intent of three endgame players.

Dante didn’t turn his head. He didn’t need to. His 100 points of Intuition tracked their incoming trajectories flawlessly.

"Finally," Dante murmured, resting the jagged black blade of [Voidsever] against his shoulder. "The bosses decided to show up."

He didn’t activate [Phantom Waltz]. He didn’t want to use his invulnerability frames to dodge their initial assault. He needed to break them systematically.

"Now!" Silas roared over the din of the surrounding army.

The three Guild Masters didn’t hesitate. They didn’t engage in a slow, feeling-out process.

They instantly triggered their highest-tier, longest-cooldown ultimate skills, fully intending to completely vaporize Dante’s zero-defense avatar in a single, overlapping frame.

Gawain struck first.

The massive Paladin didn’t swing his hammer. He leaped from his warhorse, launching himself thirty feet into the air.

[Ultimate Skill Executed: Judgment of the Sun]

Gawain brought the massive golden warhammer down with devastating, unmitigated kinetic force.

A blinding pillar of holy fire erupted from the hammer’s head, aimed directly at Dante’s skull.

The attack was designed to deal massive physical damage and inflict a hard, un-cleansable stun.

Dante didn’t dodge. He didn’t try to outrun the blast radius.

He gripped [Voidsever] with both hands, planting his iron boots firmly in the bloody dirt, and swung the primordial greatsword straight up to meet the falling Paladin.

[Skill Executed: Aegis Deflection]

The golden hexagonal shield flared into existence exactly 0.2 seconds before Gawain’s hammer connected.

CLANG!

The concussive shockwave of the perfect parry shattered the ground beneath Dante, blowing the routing army backward.

The unblockable ultimate attack hit the invincible shield and was completely, violently rejected.

The 500% reflection multiplier triggered instantly.

The massive wave of kinetic force slammed directly back into Gawain while the Paladin was still suspended mid-air.

"What?!" Gawain gasped, his golden armor buckling inward.

The massive reflection damage chunked Gawain’s heavily armored health pool by sixty percent in a single frame.

The Paladin was violently launched backward, skipping across the dirt and crashing heavily into a discarded siege ballista.

Gawain was out of the fight, struggling to recover from the massive concussive blow.

But Ryujin was already moving.

The Sakura Nation leader capitalized on the distraction perfectly. He utilized a high-tier stealth dash, completely bypassing Dante’s peripheral vision. He materialized exactly three feet to Dante’s right.

[Ultimate Skill Executed: Thunder-God’s Severance]

Ryujin swung his katana. The blade wasn’t just fast; it was a literal bolt of lightning.

The attack was designed to bypass standard parry windows by striking multiple times in a fraction of a millisecond.

Dante couldn’t use [Aegis Deflection] again so quickly.

He didn’t try.

Dante triggered [Velocity Paradox].

He didn’t use the skill to run away. He just used the primary passive.

His avatar became entirely intangible.

Ryujin’s lightning-fast katana passed straight through Dante’s dark purple armor, connecting with absolutely nothing but digital air.

The Guild Master stumbled forward, his momentum completely unresisted by the expected physical impact.

"Intangibility?!" Ryujin shrieked in absolute horror, realizing his ultimate skill had completely missed.

Dante dropped the intangibility early.

He didn’t swing [Voidsever]. He didn’t need the true damage for this.

He simply reached out with his dark purple gauntlet, grabbed Ryujin by the throat, and squeezed.

The 200% simulated pain feedback of the [Aura of Despair] triggered instantly.

Ryujin didn’t let out a stoic samurai grunt. He screamed. It was a high-pitched, incredibly undignified shriek of genuine, localized agony that echoed clearly across the silent gorge.

Dante didn’t execute him. He just casually threw the screaming Guild Master thirty feet away, tossing him like a discarded toy.

Ryujin crashed into the dirt, entirely paralyzed by the overwhelming pain feedback, completely unable to stand up.

Two Guild Masters neutralized in less than three seconds.

Dante turned his attention to the front.

Silas was charging.

The Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy hadn’t stopped moving when Gawain and Ryujin attacked.

He had used their ultimate skills entirely as a distraction, fully anticipating that Dante would focus his combat logic on mitigating the massive flashy attacks.

Silas didn’t swing his massive silver broadsword.

He had learned from his mistakes. He knew Dante could parry physical strikes with devastating results, and he knew Dante possessed intangibility frames. He needed an attack that bypassed both.

As Silas closed the final ten feet, he dropped his broadsword entirely.

He reached into his pristine silver armor and pulled out a small, incredibly unremarkable, rusted iron dagger.

Dante’s Intuition stat flared violently.

It wasn’t a standard weapon. The blade of the dagger was dripping with a thick, viscous, dark green sludge that smelled heavily of rotting meat.

[Item Identified: Dagger of the Plague-Bringer]

[Tier: Dark Demon]

[Passive: Inflicts a guaranteed, un-cleansable poison that deals 10% Maximum HP as True Damage every second. Bypasses all standard immunities.]

"Die," Silas hissed, lunging forward with terrifying, desperate speed.

He didn’t aim for a critical hit. He didn’t aim for the neck or the chest. He just aimed for contact.

Dante triggered [Blink Step], attempting to teleport backward to create distance.

He was a fraction of a millisecond too late.

The rusted dagger didn’t pierce the dark purple plating of the [Carapace of the Void-Devourer]. It didn’t need to.

The dark green sludge scraped against the edge of Dante’s gauntlet as he teleported.

The contact was microscopic, but it was enough.

Dante materialized twenty feet away.

The system interface violently flashed a harsh, aggressive green.

[Debuff Applied: Plague-Bringer’s Rot]

[Warning: Un-cleansable True Damage DoT active.]

Dante immediately felt the impact of the curse. It felt like his digital veins were turning to liquid lead.

He checked his health bar.

He was currently sitting at 25,500 HP, the maximum capacity of his health pool after the [Blood Sacrifice] reduction.

[-2,550 HP]

The poison ticked. Ten percent of his maximum health, deleted instantly as unmitigated true damage.

He had ten seconds before the poison completely zeroed out his avatar.

"Aura!" Dante called out instinctively.

Silence.

He looked up. The massive white dome of the [Holy Forbidden Suppression Array] was still active, blanketing the gorge in restrictive celestial energy.

Aura was completely suppressed. Her [Resurgence Wave] couldn’t heal the damage, and her passive cleanse couldn’t wipe the curse.

He checked his [Source of Recovery] cloak passive. The cloak halved incoming physical and magical damage, but the poison was classified as environmental True Damage. The cloak was useless against the DoT.

The poison ticked again.

[-2,550 HP]

Silas stood across the gorge, watching the damage numbers pop up above Dante’s head.

The Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy let out a massive, hysterical laugh of pure relief and triumph.

"I got you!" Silas cheered, raising his arms. "I finally got you! You don’t have your heals! You don’t have your shields! You’re going to rot to death in the dirt, and I am going to claim the server!"

The surviving members of the allied army, watching from a safe distance, slowly stopped retreating. They saw the green damage numbers ticking over the anomaly’s head. They saw Silas standing victorious.

"He’s poisoned!" a rogue yelled. "The Guild Master poisoned him!"

Dante stood completely still.

The poison ticked for a third time.

[-2,550 HP]

He was rapidly bleeding out. He couldn’t out-heal it. He couldn’t cleanse it.

Dante slowly lowered [Voidsever]. He didn’t drop the sword, but he rested the tip of the massive black blade against the bloody dirt.

He looked across the gorge at Silas.

Silas was smiling. It was the same smug, arrogant, self-satisfied smile the Guild Master had worn when he drove the dagger into Dante’s back in the boss room of Aethelgard.

It was the smile of a man who firmly believed he had outsmarted the system and secured absolute victory.

Dante didn’t panic. He didn’t trigger a desperate, massive AoE attack to try and take the army down with him.

He just smiled back.

It was a cold, terrifyingly calm expression that didn’t reach his glowing red eyes.

"You got me," Dante admitted, his voice carrying clearly across the silent gorge. "You managed to land a hit. I’ll give you credit for that, Silas. It was a good play."

Silas’s smile faltered slightly. The absolute lack of fear in Dante’s voice was incredibly unsettling.

"You have six seconds to live, Dan," Silas stated, pointing a finger at him. "Drop the bravado."

"I have six seconds," Dante agreed smoothly. "But you seem to be forgetting something."

Dante raised his left hand.

"I don’t play by your rules anymore," Dante said softly.

He opened his system interface, navigating to the pet tab. He couldn’t summon Aura, but he didn’t need healing.

He needed an executioner.

"Erebus," Dante commanded.

He didn’t summon the Half-Soul Celestial physically. He didn’t need her to stand in the gorge and point her finger.

He accessed the absolute, lore-breaking passive abilities he had inherited through their Master-Servant contract.

[Skill Activated: Death’s Duel]

The system interface completely glitched out. The red text of the poison warning was violently overwritten by a blinding, pitch-black notification that pulsed with intense, primordial authority.

[Active Skill Triggered: Death’s Duel]

[Target Locked: Silas (Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy)]

The air in the gorge didn’t just warp. Reality shattered.

The massive white dome of the [Holy Forbidden Suppression Array] didn’t matter. The physical distance between Dante and Silas didn’t matter.

The thousands of players standing around them completely ceased to exist.

A massive, perfectly circular, completely enclosed dome of pitch-black energy erupted from the ground, entirely isolating Dante and Silas.

Silas gasped, his eyes wide in absolute horror as the gorge, his army, and the sky completely vanished, replaced by an empty, localized void of absolute darkness.

"What is this?!" Silas screamed, spinning around, frantically slamming his fists against the impenetrable black barrier. "What did you do?!"

Dante stood ten feet away from Silas inside the dark dome.

The poison ticked again.

[-2,550 HP]

Dante ignored the damage. He slowly raised [Voidsever], gripping the dark bone hilt with both hands.

"I locked the door, Silas," Dante said quietly, his red eyes burning in the dark.

The system interface flashed the final parameters of the skill.

[Effect 1: User burns 50% of Maximum HP.]

[Effect 2: Grants a flat 100% damage boost.]

[Effect 3: Every successful strike lands a 1% chance to inflict True Death (Instant Kill), regardless of the target’s HP or immunities.]

[Condition: Duel ends when one participant dies. No outside interference permitted.]

Dante’s health bar instantly halved, dropping dangerously low. The poison was still ticking. He was functionally sitting at death’s door.

But his attack power spiked again. And more importantly, he was holding a weapon that mathematically guaranteed a 1% instant-death execution on every single hit, heavily modified by his Max Luck stat.

"You have six seconds to kill me," Dante whispered, stepping forward. "Let’s see if you can survive the timer."

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