Chapter 89: [90]: Plundering the Night, The Speed Threshold
The deep, web-covered canyon became their new hunting ground. Levi and Isolde fell into a brutal, highly efficient rhythm. The strategy was simple: Isolde dropped her localized gravity snares to paralyze the hyper-fast Shadow-Weavers, and Levi stepped in to act as the executioner.
"Next target," Levi barked, shaking digital purple blood off the blade of his Sovereign’s Deathknell.
"Target acquired," Isolde stated flatly. She raised her basic wooden staff and slammed it into the black glass floor.
A glowing red circular field instantly expanded beneath a Shadow-Weaver clinging to the canyon wall. The monster shrieked as its speed was artificially yanked from 600 down to a pathetic 100. It peeled off the wall and hit the floor with a heavy thud.
Levi didn’t even use a mobility skill. His on-foot Speed was sitting at 411. He just sprinted. He blurred across the canyon, covering twenty yards in a fraction of a second, and arrived right in the monster’s face before it could even stand up.
He swung the Gold-tier scythe in a ruthless, sweeping arc.
Because the target was snared, evasion was completely out of the equation. Levi’s 2,352 Total Attack slammed into the monster’s armor. Even with the 80% Level Suppression penalty for the sixteen-level gap deleting a massive chunk of his damage, his basic physical strikes were still chunking the beast for over 340 Final Damage a hit.
He didn’t just swing once. He rained down blows, triggering his 10% Lifesteal to keep his health permanently locked at 6,480.
Isolde added her artillery from the backline. A blinding pulse of white light slammed into the Shadow-Weaver.
[-5,000 True Damage]
The monster’s 70,000 HP health bar melted. 30,000. 20,000. 14,000.
Exactly twenty percent.
"Soul Harvest."
[System Notification: Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Before the polygons settled, the thick crimson aura of the harvest ripped out of the spot and slammed into Levi’s chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[You have plundered 8% of its AGI stat.]
[Gained +60 AGI permanently!]
Levi let out a sharp laugh as the raw speed forced its way into his avatar. He felt lighter. The air resistance against his Obsidian Carapace armor practically vanished.
"That’s two," Levi said, cracking his neck. "We need more volume."
He set a strict quota. He needed to dramatically boost his Speed to survive whatever nightmare was waiting inside the Midnight Spire. They spent the next two hours hunting down exactly six more Shadow-Weaver Assassins.
The combat loop was a flawless machine. Gravity snare, physical hack-and-slash, True Damage blast, execution. Every single execution fed him another +60 Agility.
When the eighth Weaver overall finally shattered into pixels, his total Agility crossed a massive threshold.
His permanent Agility spiked to exactly 811.
His derived Speed stat hit an entirely broken 831.
Levi took a step forward and accidentally crossed ten yards in the blink of an eye. The VR engine actually hitched, throwing a tiny bit of screen-tearing into his peripheral vision as the server struggled to render his character model moving that fast.
"Okay, this is getting ridiculous," Levi grinned.
But he wasn’t done. He wanted to maximize the XP and stat yield of this specific run before heading deeper.
"Stay here," Levi told Isolde. "I’m going fishing."
He didn’t wait for her to respond. He sprinted out of the canyon and back out onto the open, polished obsidian plains. He was moving so fast he didn’t even need his Behemoth mount. The landscape completely blurred.
He found a massive patrol of five Obsidian Dreadknights riding their skeletal warhorses.
Levi didn’t bother sneaking. He just ran straight through their formation, intentionally clipping one of the horses with his scythe to draw aggro.
All five Level 60 Elites turned their glowing blue eye slits toward him. They roared and charged.
"Catch me if you can," Levi mocked.
He didn’t use Hollow’s Traverse. He just turned around and ran back toward the canyon, physically dragging the five massive knights behind him. The skeletal horses were fast, but against 831 Speed, they looked like they were stuck in mud.
Levi dragged them straight into the canyon.
Isolde raised her wooden staff, ready to drop a gravity snare.
"No!" Levi shouted, sprinting past her. "Save your mana! I don’t need your help for these slow idiots!"
Levi spun on his heel, his boots skidding across the black glass floor. He let the five heavy knights surround him. They all raised their massive, jagged greatswords and brought them down in a synchronized overhead crush.
He just effortlessly sidestepped. He moved so fast that his character model left a faint, black afterimage. The five greatswords smashed into the empty glass exactly where he had just been standing.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
The scythe erupted in dark gold light. He ripped the blade in a massive cone, hitting all five knights and applying the 20% defense shred.
Then, he went to work. He didn’t need Isolde’s True Damage. He just dashed between the skeletal horses, his scythe a complete blur. Because his attack speed was tied to his Agility, he was landing six or seven basic strikes every single second. He carved into their armor, keeping the 5 DMG/sec bleed ticking on all five targets simultaneously.
It was a slow, grueling process to chew through 100,000 HP per knight using basic attacks through a suppression penalty, but Levi couldn’t be touched. He was a ghost. He danced around their sweeping blades, literally running circles around their massive hitboxes.
After ten minutes of relentless, high-speed hacking, the health bars of all five knights dipped into the red.
20,000 HP. The twenty percent threshold.
"Soul Harvest."
[Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Levi transported to the second knight, and executed it. He chained the teleport and execution five times in two seconds. It looked like a fireworks display of dark magic and golden light.
All five Dreadknights shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons simultaneously.
Five dense crimson auras ripped out of the empty space and slammed into his chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered 5 times.]
[Gained +225 STR permanently!]
Levi let out a massive, exhausted laugh. But before he could even check his new Strength stat, the server dumped the accumulated experience points.
He had just killed seven Level 60 Shadow-Weavers and five Level 60 Dreadknights. The game applied the maximum underdog multiplier for the massive level gap.
7 Weavers at 18,000,000 XP each. 5 Dreadknights at 18,000,000 XP each.
That was 216,000,000 Experience Points dumped into his log at the exact same second.
The sky above the canyon violently exploded with golden progression light. The pillar crashed down on him, completely blinding his UI.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 45.]
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 46.]
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 47.]
The light finally faded. Levi stood in the middle of the canyon, completely out of breath but entirely restored by the triple level-up. All the simulated physical fatigue in his muscles was wiped clean.
"Three levels," Levi breathed, shaking his head in disbelief.
He opened his status menu.
He had exactly 16,500,000 XP carrying over into the Level 48 bar.