Chapter 212: The Rout
The black dome was completely silent.
Silas stood frozen and stared at the walls of the localized arena.
He slammed his fists against the dark energy again, but it felt like hitting solid steel.
He couldn’t see his army. He couldn’t see the canyon.
The [Holy Forbidden Suppression Array] was gone. It was entirely overwritten by the primordial magic of the duel.
He was trapped.
Silas slowly turned around to face Dante.
The Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy tried to maintain his confident sneer. But his eyes darted frantically and tracked the green poison numbers still ticking above the head of Dante.
[-2,550 HP]
"You are dying, Dan," Silas stated, and his voice cracked slightly. He backed away and kept his distance.
"You burned half your health to trap us in here, and the poison is still active. I do not even have to fight you. I just have to wait five seconds."
Dante didn’t stop walking forward.
His health was critically low.
The [Death’s Duel] activation cost had dropped him to a mere fraction of his total health pool.
The un-cleansable poison from the dagger of Silas was rapidly eating away the rest. He had exactly three seconds before his avatar zeroed out.
"You are right," Dante agreed softly. The dark purple plating of his armor shifted as he raised [Voidsever]. "I do not have much time."
He didn’t activate [Phantom Dash]. He didn’t want to rely on the stunning sonic boom. He needed raw aggressive speed.
Dante triggered [Velocity Paradox].
He didn’t use the skill to pass through walls. He used the massive 5,000% movement speed multiplier to close the gap instantly.
He crossed the ten feet separating them in a blur of white-hot light.
Silas gasped and frantically tried to draw his silver broadsword to block.
He was a high-level player with decent reaction times, but he couldn’t track a target moving at fifty times normal speed.
Dante materialized directly in front of Silas and swung the massive black blade in a brutal rapid flurry of horizontal strikes.
He wasn’t aiming for massive charged executions.
He wasn’t trying to burst down the health bar of Silas with raw damage. He was trying to trigger the math.
[Passive Activated: Absolute Severance. 100% Armor Ignored.]
The first strike hit.
Clang.
The pristine silver armor of Silas sparked violently as the jagged black blade sheared through the metal.
The damage number popped up. It was a massive guaranteed critical hit bolstered by the 100% damage boost from the duel parameters.
[-45,000! Critical Hit!]
But Silas was a Guild Master. He had invested heavily in his base health pool and passive mitigation.
The strike hurt, but it didn’t kill him.
The system rapidly rolled the dice on the [Death’s Duel] passive.
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
The 1% execution chance didn’t trigger on the first hit.
Dante didn’t pause. He spun the blade and chained a second strike directly into the chest piece of Silas.
[-45,000! Critical Hit!]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
The poison ticked above the head of Dante.
[-2,550 HP]
Two seconds remaining.
Silas screamed and swung his broadsword in a desperate panicked arc to try to force Dante to back away. "Get away from me!"
Dante didn’t dodge. He didn’t care about the incoming damage.
He triggered [Aegis Deflection] and perfectly parried the panicked swing of Silas.
The golden shield flashed, completely absorbed the kinetic force, and threw the Guild Master off balance.
Dante used the opening.
Strike three. Strike four. Strike five.
He battered Silas relentlessly, and the massive black sword moved like a blur.
He didn’t give Silas a chance to recover, breathe, or cast a defensive skill.
[-45,000! Critical Hit!]
[-45,000! Critical Hit!]
[-45,000! Critical Hit!]
The health bar of Silas was plummeting rapidly, but he was still alive.
He had popped a high-tier health potion right before the duel started. The regenerative effects were keeping him just above the execution threshold.
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
"It is not triggering!" Silas laughed hysterically and spit digital blood.
He saw the health bar of Dante flashing red. "You are out of time, Dan!"
The poison ticked again.
[-2,550 HP]
One second remaining.
The health of Dante was sitting at exactly one hit point. The next tick of the poison would kill him.
He was completely out of options, out of time, and out of health.
Dante didn’t panic. He just smiled.
It was a terrifying cold absolute expression of localized murder.
He didn’t stop swinging.
He unleashed a final desperate flurry of strikes and pushed his [Asura’s Heart] attack speed to the absolute limit.
Strike ten. Strike eleven. Strike twelve. Strike thirteen.
The heavy black blade slammed into the armor of Silas over and over again. It shredded the silver plating and carved deep gashes into the avatar of the Guild Master.
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
[Instant Death Check: Failed.]
Dante pulled Voidsever back for the fourteenth strike.
It was a simple downward vertical chop. Nothing special. No massive spatial fractures or fiery explosions.
Just a piece of jagged black metal hitting silver armor.
The blade connected with the shoulder pauldron of Silas.
The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol suddenly hitched.
Dante had 100 points in his hidden Luck stat.
The [Zenith Incarnate] title heavily and massively skewed the mathematical probability of all RNG mechanics in his favor.
The cosmic dice rolled one final time.
[Instant Death Check: SUCCESS.]
The system interface didn’t flash red or gold. The entire visual spectrum of the dark arena inverted.
The black walls of the dome turned a blinding pure white.
Dante didn’t hit Silas for a numerical damage value.
The system simply executed a deletion command.
Silas didn’t stagger. He didn’t roar in pain.
The Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy froze completely, and his eyes were wide in absolute unfiltered horror.
He looked down at the black sword resting against his shoulder.
He looked at his health bar which was still sitting comfortably at forty percent.
The health bar vanished instantly.
A single, clean, and perfectly formatted line of bright red text appeared above the head of Silas.
[-TRUE DEATH!]
There was no explosion of blue and silver polygons. There was no dramatic shower of dropped loot.
The massive heavily armed Guild Master was instantaneously and flawlessly atomized.
His physical model turned gray and crumbled into incredibly fine digitized dust that drifted silently to the floor of the arena.
Silas was dead.
[Target Eliminated: Silas (Guild Master of Vanguard’s Legacy)]
[Duel Concluded. Winner: Dan.]
The black dome surrounding them violently shattered and dissolved into harmless smoke.
The roaring noise of the battlefield outside rushed back in and hit Dante like a physical wave.
The sky above was the bright bruised purple of the Sky Demon Forest partially obscured by the massive white dome of the suppression array.
Dante stood in the center of the muddy crater and was completely alone.
The poison ticked one final time.
[-2,550 HP! FATAL DAMAGE!]
The health bar of Dante hit zero.
The Zenith Protocol prepared to send the lethal disconnect signal to his real-world capsule.
But the system was interrupted.
A blinding and incredibly bright wave of pure localized cosmic energy washed over the avatar of Dante.
[Passive Activated: Fire Roc’s Nirvana]
[User resurrected at 100% Maximum HP and Mana.]
The ultimate one-time-use auto-resurrection passive he had earned from the Fire Roc completely negated the True Death.
Dante didn’t fall to the ground. He didn’t respawn at the Outpost.
He snapped back to reality instantly and stood in the exact same spot.
The green poison icon vanished from his interface and was completely cleansed by the resurrection protocol.
His health bar shot back up to a massive 25,500 HP. His stamina and mana were completely full.
He was perfectly healthy.
Dante slowly lowered [Voidsever] and let the massive black blade rest against the muddy ground.
He let out a long slow breath and felt the heavy aggressive adrenaline of the duel finally fade from his neural link.
He looked at the small pile of gray dust that used to be Silas.
"I told you," Dante whispered. "I do not play by your rules."
He turned around.
The remaining allied army was standing in absolute paralyzed silence.
They had watched Dante get swallowed by the black dome.
They had watched him emerge seconds later completely unharmed while their primary commander was reduced to ash.
Gawain stood near the front line, and his golden warhammer drooped slightly.
The Paladin Guild Master stared at the empty space where Silas had just been standing. He didn’t speak.
He couldn’t process the sheer scale of the mathematical anomaly standing in front of him.
Ryujin lay in the dirt recovering from the stun and stared at Dante in complete unadulterated terror.
"He... he killed Silas," Ryujin stammered and scrambled backward away from the crater. "He deleted him."
Dante didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t raise his hand to cast a spell.
He just looked at the army.
He let the [Aura of Despair] passively wash over them.
The heavy suffocating pressure of the Asura class combined with the psychological terror of watching their leader get flawlessly executed in a one-on-one duel completely broke their resolve.
"Run," Dante suggested softly.
The allied army didn’t need any more encouragement.
The fragile desperate alliance completely shattered.
The tens of thousands of players didn’t try to hold a formation.
They dropped their weapons, abandoned their siege engines, and scrambled frantically to escape the canyon.
They trampled each other in their panic completely desperate to get away from the anomaly before he decided to lock them in a black dome next.
Dante watched them go.
He didn’t chase them. He didn’t use [Starfall] to wipe the retreating mass.
He dismissed [Voidsever] back into his wrist, and the black smoke retreated into the brand.
He turned and looked up at the high plateau.
Lila, Mei, Casanova, Sera, Nyx, and Garrick were standing near the edge of the cliff and looking down at him.
They were completely unharmed having safely weathered the brief assault by the stealth squad of Ryujin.
Aura floated happily down from the cliff and nuzzled against the cheek of Dante. Her silver light was fully restored now that the suppression array was rapidly fading with the retreat of the casters.
Dante smiled. It was a genuine tired expression.
The siege was over. The armies were routed. The biggest threat to his guild was permanently deleted from the server.
He had won.