Chapter 93: [94] The Harvester of Minds, Void Cultists
Isolde’s blank, robotic eyes scanned the towering bone walls. "Architectural analysis indicates a randomized layout. Standard mapping algorithms are failing. We will have to navigate through active hostile engagement."
"Good," Levi smirked, spinning his Sovereign’s Deathknell scythe in his hand. "I prefer the direct route anyway."
They walked down the main corridor. The ground was made of polished white bone dust that crunched slightly under Levi’s gold-tier Hollow’s Treads. After taking two left turns through the winding maze, the corridor opened up into a wider, circular chamber.
Floating in the center of the room, conducting some kind of dark ritual around a pile of glowing purple ashes, were three figures wrapped in tattered, void-black robes. They didn’t hold weapons. Their hands literally crackled with dark, shifting magical energy.
Levi pulled out an Inspect scroll from his quick-belt and crushed it. The system threw the red text into his UI.
[Void Cultist]
[Level: 60 | Elite]
[HP: 60,000 | ATK: 3,800 Magic | DEF: 600]
"Level sixty magic casters," Levi noted, his eyes narrowing at the stat block. "I absolutely hate magic damage. It’s basically cheating."
He was Level 49. The Cultists were Level 60. That eleven-level gap meant the game was going to enforce a brutal 55% Level Suppression penalty on his physical attacks.
’One thousand, three hundred and forty-four Final Damage per basic strike,’ Levi calculated. ’Against sixty thousand health. Not terrible, but not a one-shot either.’
Then he looked at their offensive stats. They had 3,800 Magic Attack.
In Starfall, physical defense stats did absolutely nothing to mitigate magic damage. Levi’s 384 Defense was completely irrelevant here. If one of those Cultists threw a Void Bolt at him, it would hit for the full 3,800 damage.
But Levi wasn’t a normal player. He touched the Diamond-tier [Heart of the Chained] necklace resting on his chest. The item granted a permanent, unconditional 50% Damage Reduction from all sources, including magic.
3,800 cut perfectly in half meant he was taking 1,900 damage per hit.
With his 6,780 Max HP pool, he could easily eat three back-to-back magic blasts before he had to worry about dying. But he had a much better safety net now.
"Time to test the new toy," Levi grinned.
He didn’t try to sneak up on them. He intentionally dragged the blade of his scythe across the bone floor. The screeching sound instantly alerted the three Void Cultists. They turned their hooded heads toward him, their hands glowing with volatile purple magic.
"Platinum Ward of the Abyss!" Levi shouted.
He felt a massive 500 Mana drain from his pool. The air around him completely froze. A thick, swirling vortex of pitch-black abyssal matter erupted from the floor, wrapping around his avatar like a localized black hole. The shield locked into place.
Thanks to the Platinum skill scaling off 1,000% of his Intelligence stat plus a flat 5,000 Base HP, the shield boasted exactly 7,110 HP.
The three Cultists didn’t wait. They raised their hands and unleashed a synchronized volley of Void Bolts. Three massive spheres of dark purple magic shot across the room, tracking Levi perfectly.
Levi didn’t even try to dodge.
The three magic bolts slammed directly into the abyssal black hole surrounding him.
[-1,900] [-1,900] [-1,900]
The 7,110 HP shield absorbed all three blasts flawlessly, dropping down to 1,410 HP. The black vortex rippled but held steady. His actual health bar didn’t drop by a single point.
"My turn," Levi said.
"Hollow’s Traverse!"
His body dissolved into a tunnel of dark light. He completely bypassed the physical space of the room, blinking straight through the fading purple magic of their attack, and reappeared directly in the dead center of the three Cultists.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
The Sovereign’s Deathknell erupted in a blinding, dark-gold aura. He ripped the heavy blade in a massive ten-meter-wide cone that smashed into all three enemies.
[-5,246] [-5,246] [-5,246]
The heavy red numbers exploded over the Cultists’ heads. They shrieked, their casting animations violently interrupted by the hit-stun. The Gold-tier skill’s debuff popped up, a broken shield icon shredding another 20% of their remaining armor.
With their defense shredded and their lower 60,000 HP pools already chunked, Levi went completely wild.
His 1,191 Speed turned him into a glitching black shadow. He dashed between the three casters, unleashing a relentless blender of basic physical attacks. He was landing strikes faster than the Cultists could physically raise their hands to cast another spell.
[-1,344] [-1,344] [-1,344] [-1,344]
The scythe’s 10% Lifesteal triggered, instantly patching the tiny bit of mana drain from his Siphon Aura. The 5 DMG/sec true damage bleed ticked down their health bars.
He battered all three Cultists simultaneously, using wide, horizontal swings to catch multiple hitboxes.
30,000. 20,000. 15,000.
Levi watched the red bars melt. The second their health dipped to exactly 12,000 HP, the 20% execution threshold was met.
"Soul Harvest."
Fifty Mana vanished. The pitch-black spectral guillotine materialized in the air and slammed down, decapitating the first Cultist.
[Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
His Hollow’s Traverse refunded its cost instantly. Levi blinked two feet to the right, appearing behind the second Cultist.
"Soul Harvest."
Execute. Blink. Execute.
It took him less than three seconds to chain the executions. The three Level 60 Elites violently shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons, filling the bone chamber with the sound of breaking glass.
Levi dropped to one knee, letting his scythe rest against the floor, and toggled off his Siphon Aura to preserve his mana pool.
Three dense, blindingly bright crimson auras ripped out of the empty space. They shot across the room and slammed into his chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered 3 times.]
[Gained +90 INT permanently!]
Levi gasped as the raw Intelligence flooded his system. Plus ninety INT from a single pull.
He immediately pulled up his status menu to check the implications. His previous Intelligence was 211. Adding the +90 from the plunder pushed it straight to 301.
His Max Mana instantly expanded to a massive 3,060 Mana.
But that wasn’t the broken part. For his new Platinum Ward of the Abyss. The dark-matter shield scaled off 1,000% of his Intelligence.
His shield capacity just jumped from 7,110 to a staggering 8,010 HP.
"Oh, this is a beautiful loop," Levi laughed, staring at the numbers. "The more mages I execute, the higher my Intelligence scales. The higher my Intelligence scales, the fatter my shield gets. I can infinitely scale my own invincibility by harvesting these guys."
He closed the menu. The massive XP drop finally registered in his progression bar.
[System Notification: Slain 3x Level 60 Elite Void Cultists. Gained 33,000,000 XP.]
He was currently Level 49. The 33 million XP hit his bar, pushing him closer to the 100 million threshold, but he didn’t level up.
He stood up, grabbing his scythe, and looked back at Isolde. She was floating near the corridor entrance, her staff completely lowered.
"You didn’t even have to fire a single shot," Levi grinned.
"Your offensive and defensive parameters successfully neutralized the hostiles within optimal timeframes," Isolde stated flatly. "My artillery support was mathematically unnecessary."
"Exactly," Levi said, turning back toward the dark, winding bone corridors of the labyrinth. "Let’s see what else this maze has to offer. I need more stats."
—
Levi and Isolde pushed deeper into the Ashen Labyrinth. The narrow, winding corridors of fused bone felt claustrophobic, but Levi’s 1,191 Speed made navigating the maze a breeze. He practically glided over the polished bone dust covering the floor, leaving a faint black afterimage behind his boots.
After ten minutes of walking, the walls suddenly widened, opening up into a massive, sprawling chamber.
It was an ossuary. The floor wasn’t just covered in dust; it was buried under thousands of skulls and shattered ribcages. The ceiling arched high above them, supported by pillars made of fused spines.
Patrolling the bone-littered floor were two absolute monstrosities. They were the final variant of the Midnight Continent’s elites, and they were designed purely to act as walking brick walls.
They stood twenty feet tall. Their bodies were composed of thick, mutated muscle covered entirely in heavy, rusted iron vault doors acting as armor plating. They carried weapons that looked like massive, solid stone pillars ripped directly out of a castle’s foundation.
Levi crushed an Inspect scroll in his palm.
[Abyssal Goliath]
[Level: 60 | Elite]
[HP: 250,000 | ATK: 5,000 | DEF: 3,000]
Levi stared at the red text hovering over the giants. He let out a long, slow whistle.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand health," Levi muttered. "Five thousand attack. Three thousand defense. They are literally just giant tanks."
He didn’t bother moving forward yet. He stood at the entrance to the ossuary and ran the combat math.
He was Level 49. The 11-level gap meant he was facing a 55% Level Suppression penalty.