Chapter 95: Forging the Eclipse, The Platinum Weapon
"Finally," Levi grinned.
He pulled a heavy, glowing silver weapon from the loot pile. It was a [Silver-Tier Dreadknight Scythe]. He opened his inventory and checked his stock. He now had exactly three identical copies of the weapon. That was all he needed for a catalyst.
Before he could even start crafting, the dense crimson aura of the harvest ripped out of the dead knight’s corpse and slammed into his chest. It was the tenth aura he had absorbed in the last few hours.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[You have plundered 8% of its core stat.]
[Gained +45 STR permanently!]
Because he had killed ten of them, that was a total of 450 Strength plundered across the entire grind. He felt his virtual muscles tighten, a massive surge of raw power flooding his avatar.
Right after the stats registered, the delayed experience points hit his progression bar.
[System Notification: Slain 10x Level 60 Elite Obsidian Dreadknights. Gained 110,000,000 XP.]
The golden pillar of progression light crashed down through the bone ceiling. It washed over Levi, instantly clearing away his physical fatigue and refilling his health and mana pools.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 50.]
Levi let out a long breath and dismissed the notifications. His previous XP was sitting at 82.5 million out of the 100 million needed. The massive 110 million XP drop easily paid the cost, leaving him with 92,500,000 XP carrying over into the Level 51 bar.
He opened his status menu and quickly assigned his 5 new free stat points directly to Strength to keep his scaling up.
"Alright, stats are good. Now for the real upgrade," Levi said.
He looked around the bone corridor and spotted a safe, quiet dead-end. He walked over and dragged his finger through the air, opening the [Boundless Fusion] interface. The three glowing golden slots materialized in front of him.
He unequiped his Gold-tier Sovereign’s Deathknell. The weapon materialized into a physical item token in his hand. He placed it directly into the center catalyst slot. Then, he dragged the three [Silver-Tier Dreadknight Scythes] into the surrounding fusion slots.
The system immediately threw a massive, flashing red warning across his screen.
[CRITICAL WARNING: Fusing a Gold-tier weapon with lower-tier materials to achieve a Platinum upgrade requires an unstable fusion catalyst. A raw currency fee of 25,000 Gold Coins is required. There is a 40% chance of total item destruction. Proceed?]
Levi froze. His hand hovered over the accept button.
"Forty percent chance of item destruction," Levi read aloud, his jaw clenching.
If the fusion failed, he would lose his Gold scythe. He would be entirely unarmed in the middle of a Level 60 dungeon. That was a guaranteed death sentence. But he checked his Domain wallet. His 5% auction house tax had been quietly farming the server all day while he was grinding. His balance had naturally replenished well past the 25,000 mark. He had the money, but the RNG was a massive gamble.
"I really hate rolling the dice," Levi muttered.
Isolde stepped up beside him. Her plain gray cloak didn’t rustle. She looked at the flashing red warning prompt, then looked at Levi.
"Random Number Generation is just a mathematical variable," Isolde stated flatly.
She reached out and placed her pixelated hand directly over the holographic anvil. Her eyes flashed with green hexadecimal code. Her Anomaly host program forcibly injected itself into the game’s crafting engine.
The red warning text on the screen violently glitched. The numbers scrambled for a fraction of a second before locking into place.
[System Override: Fusion Success Rate locked to 100%.]
Levi stared at the screen, then looked at Isolde. She calmly lowered her hand.
"I adjusted the probability matrix. You may proceed," Isolde said.
"I am definitely giving you a raise," Levi laughed. He slammed the accept button and paid the 25,000 Gold fee.
The fusion process triggered instantly. A blinding, pure white light exploded inside the dead-end corridor, casting sharp shadows against the bone walls. The three silver scythes and his gold weapon melted into a singularity of pure, concentrated dark matter. The digital grinding sound echoed like a massive iron vault slamming shut.
The singularity stabilized, stretched out, and solidified. The blinding light faded, dropping a completely new weapon into Levi’s hands.
It was terrifying. The haft was made of polished black metal, and the massive, curved blade looked like it was forged from a solar eclipse—pitch black in the center, radiating a bleeding white light along the razor-sharp edge.
[Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse]
[Rarity: Platinum]
[ATK: 500]
[Passive 1: Attacks ignore 30% of target DEF.]
[Passive 2: 25% Lifesteal on all physical damage dealt.]
"Five hundred base attack," Levi whispered, staring at the tooltip. "And twenty-five percent lifesteal. This is completely broken."
He equipped the new scythe. The dark aura of his Herald class instantly wrapped around the weapon, violently reacting with the white light of the blade.
He opened his status sheet to run the new offensive math.
His permanent Strength hit exactly 1,830.
He added the massive 500 Attack from the Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse, bringing the raw number to 4,160.
Finally, the 20% class passive from the Herald of the Hollow applied.
pushed his total, permanent Attack to a staggering 4,992.
"Almost five thousand attack," Levi smirked, dismissing his UI with a swipe. He gave the scythe a practice swing. The air in the corridor actually split, creating a loud vacuum sound as the blade cut through the game’s physics engine.
He turned around and looked at Isolde.
"Alright," Levi said, resting the massive Platinum scythe on his shoulder. "The weapon bottleneck is fixed. Let’s go test this thing on something squishy."
***
Levi needed to test the Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse, and he knew exactly what he wanted to hunt.
His physical stats were completely insane, but his Intelligence was lagging behind. Since his [Platinum Ward of the Abyss] shield scaled directly off his INT stat, he needed to aggressively bloat his mana and shield capacity before they reached the Midnight Spire. He needed to harvest magic casters.
They navigated the twisting bone corridors of the labyrinth until the walls opened up into a massive, circular ritual chamber.
The floor was carved with glowing purple runes. Standing in a circle around a floating dark crystal were exactly seven figures wrapped in tattered black robes. Their hands crackled with volatile void magic.
[Void Cultist]
[Level: 50]
[HP: 60,000 | ATK: 3,800 Magic | DEF: 600]
"Seven Level 50 mages," Levi said, stopping at the edge of the chamber. "Perfect target practice."
He didn’t rush in.
The Midnight Continent was a Level 50-70 zone, but these specific Elite variants inside the labyrinth were scaled up. The UI updated their nameplates. They were Level 60 Elites.
Levi was Level 50. That was exactly a ten-level gap. The system was going to enforce a 50% Level Suppression penalty.
’Alright, let’s break down the armor,’ Levi calculated rapidly. ’Cultist Defense is 600. My new Platinum scythe ignores 30% of that. Thirty percent of 600 is 180. That drops their effective Defense down to 420.’
He checked his brand-new Total Attack. 4,992.
’Two thousand, two hundred and eighty-six Final Damage per basic strike,’ Levi grinned.
He checked the math for his heavy nuke.
"Eighty-five hundred damage on a single skill cast," Levi muttered. "Yeah, this weapon is an absolute joke."
He didn’t bother casting his massive Platinum Ward. He just turned on his [Siphon Aura], draining 2 Mana a second, and sprinted straight into the ritual chamber.
His 1,191 Speed made him a glitching black blur. The seven Void Cultists didn’t even have time to turn around before Levi was standing directly in the center of their circle.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!" Levi roared.
He dumped 100 Mana. The Platinum Scythe erupted in a blinding mixture of dark-gold energy and pure white light. He twisted his hips and ripped the heavy blade around in a massive, ten-meter circular sweep.
The attack slammed into all seven Cultists simultaneously.
[-8,526] [-8,526] [-8,526] [-8,526] [-8,526] [-8,526] [-8,526]
The massive red numbers exploded into the air. The Cultists shrieked, violently staggering backward as more than ten percent of their health bars vanished in a single frame.
But the damage wasn’t the most broken part of the interaction.
Levi’s new Platinum weapon had a 25% Lifesteal passive on all physical damage dealt. He just hit seven targets for 8,526 damage each. That was 59,682 total damage dealt.
A massive, bright green number popped up over Levi’s head.
[+14,920]
He instantly healed for nearly fifteen thousand health. His maximum health pool was only 9,980. He was massively over-healing his entire health bar in a single swing.
"I literally cannot die while I’m attacking," Levi laughed out loud. "This is immortality."
The Cultists recovered from the hit-stun. Their AI realized they were being overwhelmed in melee combat. They raised their glowing hands in perfect unison and began chanting.