Chapter 99: The Blood-Stained Walls, The Tally
She was still on her hands and knees. Her untextured gray cloak had stopped glitching, returning to its normal, flat appearance. But her hands were trembling. The Anomaly code inside her was desperately trying to re-establish control after she forced it to crash the server.
Levi reached down, grabbed her arm, and pulled her to her feet.
Isolde looked up at him. Her gray eyes were wide. "The fear was illogical," she said quietly. Her voice didn’t broadcast into his head this time; she actually spoke using the game’s proximity audio. "It consumed eighty-four percent of my processing power. I... I did not want your avatar to be deleted, Levi."
Levi smiled, using his thumb to wipe a smudge of virtual ash off her cheek.
"You basically crashed the entire game engine because you got scared," Levi chuckled. "That’s the most human thing you’ve done all week. That means you’re alive."
Isolde blinked, processing the statement. The trembling in her hands slowly stopped. "Operational efficiency is returning to normal levels."
"Sure it is," Levi said, shaking his head. "Just take a minute. I need to clean up this mess anyway."
Levi spent the next hour systematically walking back and forth across the massive bone coliseum. The fifteen Elites had dropped an absolute fortune. He ignored the useless common gear and vacuumed up the raw silver and gold coins, pushing his domain wallet back up slightly.
He didn’t care much about the money right now. He cared about the math. He was a methodical harvester, and he needed to know exactly where he stood before they hit the final stretch of the labyrinth.
He opened his progression log and pulled up his plunder tally.
"Okay, let’s see what we still need," Levi muttered, scrolling through his kills.
- Dreadknights killed: 39. (Need 11 more for the quota).
- Shadow-Weavers killed: 16. (Need 4 more).
- Abyssal Goliaths killed: 5. (Need 5 more).
- Void Cultists killed: 10. (Target Reached).
"We are perfectly on track," Levi said, closing the menu.
He had set a strict limit of fifty kills per Elite variant to maximize his base stats before fighting the Night King. He only needed a handful more of the Goliaths and Weavers, and he could easily find the remaining Dreadknights on the way up the Spire.
"Ready?" Levi asked, looking back at Isolde.
She nodded, her basic wooden staff resting at her side. "Affirmative."
They walked out of the coliseum and back into the narrow, winding bone corridors of the Ashen Labyrinth.
For the next two days in the real world, Levi turned the rest of the maze into an absolute joke.
At Level 52, the suppression penalty against the Level 60 Elites had dropped down to exactly 40%. It was the lowest penalty he had faced on the entire continent so far. With his new 5,532 Attack and his massive 18,180 Max HP, the monsters in the labyrinth were no longer a lethal threat. They were just walking stat packs.
He didn’t even need Isolde to drop her gravity snares or use her True Damage blasts anymore.
When a pair of Shadow-Weaver Assassins dropped from the ceiling, Levi just blurred into motion. His 1,491 Speed made him significantly faster than the assassins’ 600 Speed. He effortlessly sidestepped their dagger thrusts and swatted them out of the air with his Platinum scythe.
His basic attacks hit them for over 2,500 damage per swing through the 40% suppression wall. He carved them to pieces, hitting the 20% execution threshold in seconds, and dropped the spectral guillotines on their necks.
When a group of three Abyssal Goliaths blocked a hallway, Levi just face-tanked them. He popped his 10,110 HP [Platinum Ward of the Abyss], let them smash their stone pillars into the shield, and watched them take massive chunks of True Damage from the reflection passive. He followed up with a single Hollow’s Guillotine, easily out-healing any chip damage with his 25% Lifesteal.
The desperate survival horror of the early Midnight Continent was completely gone. Levi was actively bullying the endgame mobs.
He methodically isolated and executed the remaining targets for his quota.
Four more Shadow-Weavers. Dead.
Five more Abyssal Goliaths. Dead.
He systematically massacred them, absorbing the dense crimson auras one by one. The physical toll of the grind was still present in the real world, but the constant dopamine hit of his stats inflating kept his brain perfectly engaged.
He held off on finishing the Dreadknight quota, specifically saving the last eleven for the Spire ascent so he could level up mid-climb.
After two days of relentless, high-speed slaughter, he executed the final Goliath.
The massive chunk of XP from the nine Elites finally pushed his progression bar over the edge.
[System Notification: Slain 9x Level 60 Elites. Gained 72,000,000 XP.]
The golden pillar of progression light crashed through the bone ceiling. It washed over Levi, erasing the soreness in his real-world shoulders and completely topping off his health and mana pools.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 53.]
Levi leaned his Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse against the bone wall and opened his status menu.
He now had 9,500,000 XP carrying over into his next bar, which required an annoying 140,000,000 XP to fill.
He had 5 new free stat points. He dumped them all into Agility to keep his attack speed scaling ahead of the mobs.
His previous Agility was 1,471. He added the +240 AGI from plundering the last four Weavers, plus the 5 free stat points. His permanent Agility hit exactly 1,716.
His derived Speed stat took that 1,716, added the 20 flat Speed from his Hollow’s Treads, and hit a staggering 1,736 Speed.
Next was his Vitality. His previous VIT was 904. He added the massive +400 from plundering the last five Goliaths. His new permanent Vitality was 1,304.
His Max HP exploded to exactly 26,180 HP.
His base Defense followed. 1,304 Vitality plus the 50 Defense from his mantle pushed it to exactly 1,354 Defense.
Levi stared at his character sheet. Twenty-six thousand health. Thirteen hundred defense. Five thousand attack.
"I’m ready," Levi said, closing the menu.
He picked up his scythe. The corridor ahead widened, revealing a massive set of open double doors that led directly out of the Ashen Labyrinth. Through the doorway, he could see the swirling black clouds and the sheer, towering cliffside that led to the Midnight Spire.
He turned to Isolde. She was floating an inch off the bone dust, her staff resting comfortably at her side.
"Let’s go kill a king," Levi smirked.
**
The final stretch of the Ashen Labyrinth didn’t look like a maze anymore. The twisting, claustrophobic corridors of fused bone abruptly ended, dumping Levi and Isolde into a massive, rectangular chamber.
It was easily a mile long. The ceiling stretched so high into the darkness it was completely invisible. But what filled the room was impossible to ignore.
Swinging back and forth across the entire width of the hall were massive, razor-sharp blades. They didn’t look like they were made of iron or steel. The pendulums were forged out of pure, condensed dark matter. They left trails of pitch-black energy in the air, humming with a low, aggressive frequency that made Levi’s teeth rattle inside his NerveDive helmet.
Levi stopped right at the edge of the room. He reached down, picked up a loose piece of bone from the floor, and casually tossed it into the path of the nearest swinging blade.
The bone didn’t shatter. The second the dark matter touched it, the bone was completely deleted from the game’s rendering engine. It just ceased to exist.
Levi pulled up an Inspect scroll and crushed it, targeting the nearest blade.
[Environmental Hazard: Dark Matter Pendulum]
[Damage: 50,000 True Damage on impact.]
"Fifty thousand True Damage," Levi read aloud, letting out a dry, humorless laugh. "That’s an instant wipe. Even with my twenty-six thousand health pool, that thing touches my toe and I’m back at the respawn point."
Isolde stepped up next to him. Her robotic, blank eyes tracked the swinging blades. They weren’t moving in a synchronized rhythm. Some swung incredibly fast, pausing at the top of their arcs, while others dropped slowly before violently accelerating at the bottom.
"The blade velocity algorithms are randomized," Isolde stated flatly. Her voice broadcasted directly into his audio feed. "Standard evasion mechanics are mathematically insufficient. A player requires a baseline Agility rating equivalent to Level 80 to process the collision gaps in real-time."
"Good thing I don’t have standard evasion," Levi smirked.
He didn’t just have high Agility. He had a massive 1,736 Speed stat. He was moving at speeds the game engine wasn’t even designed to handle properly for another thirty levels.
But there was a problem. He looked over at Isolde.
She had an absolutely massive, Anomaly-bloated health pool, but her physical evasion stats were basically zero. She moved at the default walking speed of a beginner mage.