Chapter 25 : Level Up From Killing Mythic Bosses
The sky above the northern barricade did not rain water; it rained glass.
The white-fire vortex turning directly over the three-mile boundary line of the Ashen Citadel was so intensely hot that it melted the atmospheric dust into a glittering shower of microscopic quartz shards. Leon Graves stood in the center of the dark avenue, his physical form entirely blanketed by the heavy gray layers of the fog. His twin rings of deep violet pupils were locked onto the descending entity, his Perception attribute humming like a high-voltage wire as it calculated the impossible geometry of the incoming mythic boss.
It had no solid flesh, no green orc hide, and no slate-gray gargoyle skin.
The Void-Stalker Remnant looked like an irregular, twelve-foot-tall tear in the fabric of the universe itself. Its outline was an unstable, shifting silhouette of absolute white fire that swallowed the surrounding shadows, its long, multi-jointed arms ending in claws carved from pure, condensed starlight. It did not breathe, it did not roar, yet its very presence radiated a constant, crushing vibration that caused the iron rails beneath Leon’s boots to hum with high-frequency tension.
[Mythic Entity ’Void-Stalker Remnant’ has breached the Tier-2 Boundary.]
[The local status buffs of your territory are experiencing a 50% suppression effect.][Warning: The target’s attacks possess ’Conceptual Piercing’ properties.]
Leon did not flinch. He did not waste a millisecond checking his mana pool or his health bar. He knew exactly what Conceptual Piercing meant from his past life—it meant his Chitinous Plating defensive armor and his hardened skin attributes would mean absolutely nothing if those starlight claws managed to touch his flesh. The attack would pass straight through his physical defense values to slice his soul core directly.
To survive a mythic executioner during the first day of the Incursion, he had to play completely outside the logic of the system.
The Remnant moved.
It did not glide or sprint; it simply ceased to exist at the edge of the avenue and materialized directly in front of Leon’s face. The transition was so instantaneous that the air pressure exploded outward with a loud crack, the twin claws of pure starlight cutting downward in a diagonal cross meant to reduce Leon’s body to fine white ash.
Leon did not attempt to slide back or raise his matte-black blade to parry the strike.
"[Activating Skill: Void Intercept]"
The entire universe grayed out into absolute static in less than a fraction of a millisecond. The white-fire claws of the Remnant passed straight through his chest cavity, finding absolutely no resistance inside his phase-shifted form. For three short seconds, Leon Graves was a ghost hidden inside a parallel fold of the cosmos, completely immune to the destruction unraveling across the avenue.
But he did not use those three seconds to run away.
He walked smoothly through the monster’s shifting white frame, stepping cleanly behind its irregular, floating spine line before the three-second timer could hit zero. The micro-second his physical mass materialized back into the current dimension, he unleashed the full, unrestricted raw power of his advanced monarch path.
"[Calamity Domain: Absolute. Compression]"
The forty-foot circle of starlight-swallowing darkness exploded from beneath his heels. The moment the white fire of the Remnant’s lower trailing mass touched the boundary of the domain, the universal laws of Finality took absolute hold. The brilliant white flames did not just dim; they began to rot, shifting from a pristine solar white into a sickly, decaying shade of ash-violet.
The monster let out a high-pitched, harmonic screech that vibrated straight through Leon’s skull, its Level 25 cosmic attributes violently dropping by forty percent under the combined weight of his evolved territory and the passive Ashen Fog.
Leon did not hesitate. He gripped the hilt of the newly upgraded Abyssal Stinger with both hands, channeling every single ounce of his stored mana straight into the black steel blade until the weapon flared with a dense, suffocating violet aura.
"[Calamity Tide — Point-Blank Convergence]"
He drove the dark blade straight into the center of the creature’s irregular white-fire spine.
BOOM.
A massive explosion of focused necrotic energy violently imploned inside the core of the mythic boss. The white fire did not blow outward; it collapsed inward, the SSS-rank decay attribute systematically eating away at the entity’s stellar framework, turning its condensed starlight into a heavy mountain of gray, weightless ash that poured onto the cracked tarmac.
The titan thrashed in a frantic circle, its multi-jointed arms swinging blindly through the dark mist, but Leon’s Agility stat kept him moving ahead of its trajectory. He danced through the blind spots of the failing monster, driving his dagger into its white mass three more times in rapid succession.
Squilch. Squilch. Squilch.
With one final, glass-shattering harmonic shriek, the Level 25 divine executioner collapsed completely. The white flames vanished into nothingness, leaving behind a massive pile of gray sand that filled the entire width of the intersection, and a single, blinding silver box pulsing with an absolute cosmic light.
[Mythic Calamity Boss ’Void-Stalker
Remnant’ has been completely annihilated!]
[Total Experience Points gained: 15,000 EXP.]
[Level Cap Broken! You have achieved Level 18.]
[Absolute Extraction Activated...]
Strength +8
Agility +10
Constitution +8
Mana +12
[You have successfully extracted the Mythic Talent: ]
Leon Graves stood alone in the quiet intersection, his charcoal duster coat slowly settling around his leather boots. A massive, violent torrent of liquid cosmic energy rushed through his limbs, his chest expanding as the stolen attribute points settled deep into his bones. His pupils dissolved entirely, leaving behind two vibrant rings of deep violet light that glowed like dying suns inside the shadow of his hood.
He walked over to the silver box—the Mythic Clearance Casket—his bare fingers wrapping around the cold metal lock as a slow, cold smile cut across his pale face. He had broken the system’s executioner, hoarded a mythic talent before the first day could close, and his name on the global leaderboards was about to force the gods themselves to reconsider the rules of their survival game.