Chapter 68: [68]: The Keep Under Siege, Abyssal Gargoyles
Levi dropped from the fifty-foot stone wall like a black meteor.
The wind roared in his NerveDive helmet as he plummeted toward the volcanic dirt outside his keep’s gates. Below him, the Level 35 Abyssal Gargoyles were swarming his NPC guards, their jagged claws tearing into the metal armor.
Levi didn’t panic. He just ran the math in his head while in mid-air.
He was Level 28. The Gargoyles were Level 35. That was exactly a seven-level gap. The game’s Level Suppression mechanic was going to punish him with a 35% damage reduction penalty. It was an annoying handicap, but compared to the 85% wall he dealt with against the World Boss, 35% was basically a light breeze.
’Alright, let’s process the armor,’ Levi thought as the ground rushed up to meet him. ’Gargoyle Defense is 400. My Gold-tier scythe naturally ignores 20% of that. Twenty percent of 400 is 80. That drops their effective Defense down to 320.’
He checked his permanent, unbuffed Total Attack. Thanks to his Diamond-tier necklace, it was sitting at a monstrous 964.
After subtracting the Gargoyle’s Defense and applying the 35% suppression penalty, the system rounded his raw damage per swing down to exactly 418.
’Four hundred and eighteen Final Damage per basic strike,’ Levi calculated. ’And they have twenty-five thousand health.’
He hit the ground. The sheer kinetic force of his 336 Speed landing on the dirt created a massive shockwave, kicking up a cloud of gray ash and forcing the closest Gargoyles to stagger backward.
Levi didn’t even bend his knees to absorb the impact. He just stood up straight and looked at the nearest monster.
He needed to check the defensive math before he went wild. The Gargoyle recovered from the stagger, let out a screech that sounded like grinding rocks, and swiped its massive stone claw directly at Levi’s chest.
Levi deliberately didn’t dodge. He just stood there and let the monster hit him.
The heavy stone claw smashed into his Obsidian Carapace armor.
The VR pain engine barely registered it. It felt like someone had lightly shoved him. He watched the numbers process instantly.
The Gargoyle had 900 Attack. Levi’s current Defense was 283, meant the attack was supposed to deal 617 incoming damage.
But Levi was wearing the Heart of the Chained. The Diamond-tier necklace granted a permanent, unconditional 50% Damage Reduction passive.
A tiny red number floated above Levi’s head.
[-308]
Levi actually laughed out loud. He looked at his massive 5,160 Max HP pool. Taking 308 damage was an absolute joke. He could stand here and let these endgame invasion mobs hit him over sixteen times before he even had to worry about dying. And that wasn’t even factoring in his healing.
"Okay, math checks out," Levi said, tightening his grip on his scythe. "You guys are officially just farm material."
Levi opened his menu and toggled on [Siphon Aura]. The green light wrapped around his boots, draining 2 Mana every second while passively feeding him 15 HP per second.
He didn’t bother using his [Hollow’s Ward] shield. He wanted to save his massive 2,060 Mana pool purely for offense.
The Gargoyles swarmed him, abandoning the NPC guards to focus on the higher threat. Five of them lunged at him from different angles.
Levi’s Agility was 316. His derived Speed was 336. To Levi, the Level 35 Gargoyles looked like they were moving in slow motion. He effortlessly swayed his torso, dodging a claw swipe by an inch, then ducked completely under a biting lunge.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!" Levi shouted.
He dumped 100 Mana. The Sovereign’s Deathknell erupted in a blinding mixture of dark shadow and gold light. He ripped the blade upward in a massive, ten-meter-wide cone that smashed directly into the clustered pack of Gargoyles.
The Hollow’s Guillotine multiplied his Attack by 3.5, subtracting the effective Defense and applying the 35% suppression penaltydropped the final skill damage to exactly 1,985!
[-1,985] [-1,985] [-1,985] [-1,985] [-1,985]
The heavy red numbers exploded into the air. The five Gargoyles shrieked in pain as the Gold-tier skill staggered them. The broken shield icon popped up over their heads, shredding another 20% of their remaining defense.
Levi didn’t give them a second to recover. He blurred into motion, unleashing an absolute blender of basic physical attacks.
Because his swing timer was so incredibly fast with his Speed, he was landing four or five strikes a second. He carved into the stone skin of the Gargoyles.
[-418] [-418] [-418] [-418]
Every single hit triggered the 10% Lifesteal from his weapon, instantly feeding 41 HP back into his pool. The single 308 damage hit he took earlier was completely erased in less than two seconds. He was permanently locked at full health.
The scythe’s passive bleed triggered across all five targets. The tiny teardrop icons ticked for 5 true damage a second.
He targeted the first Gargoyle and relentlessly battered its health bar down. 20,000. 10,000. 5,000.
The second the health bar dipped below 5,000 HP, it crossed the 20% threshold.
"Soul Harvest."
The pitch-black spectral guillotine materialized in the sky and slammed straight down, cleanly decapitating the stone monster.
[Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
His Phantom Step icon flashed green. He reappeared next to a wounded target, slashed it twice to drop it below 5,000 HP, and dumped another 50 Mana.
"Soul Harvest."
[Target Executed. Cooldowns reset.]
He blinked again. Teleported across the courtyard entrance. Unleashed another Guillotine to shred a new pack’s armor. Slashed. Executed. Blinked.
Levi turned the front gates of his domain into an absolute slaughterhouse. He was a glitching shadow, teleporting from target to target in a flawless, infinitely sustainable combat loop. His 2,060 Mana pool was so massive that he didn’t even have to look at his mana potions. He just chained executions endlessly.
The XP yield was staggering. Because he was fighting an invasion event force that was seven levels higher than him, the game was showering him with underdog multipliers.
[System Notification: Slain 1x Level 35 Abyssal Gargoyle. Gained 40,000 XP.]
Forty thousand experience points per kill.
"I’m going to max out before this event is even over," Levi laughed, spinning his scythe and decapitating another monster.
He spent the next two hours treating the Abyssal Incursion like his own personal hyperbolic time chamber. The Gargoyles just kept dropping out of the black clouds, and Levi just kept feeding them to his scythe. He didn’t take a single break. He didn’t let a single monster touch his iron gates. He massacred hundreds of them.
The mountain of dropped silver coins, rare stone crafting materials, and junk armor stacked up on the dirt outside the keep.
Finally, he executed a Gargoyle, and the massive XP drop flooded his progression bar.
A blinding, glorious golden pillar of light crashed down from the dark sky. The light washed over his avatar, instantly clearing away the physical fatigue building up in his real-world shoulders. His health and mana pools snapped back to 100%.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 29.]
Levi stopped swinging for a fraction of a second and let out a heavy exhale.
He opened his status menu. His twelve million XP requirement was completely filled, leaving him with 1,250,000 XP carrying over into his next bar. He needed 15,000,000 XP to hit Level 30.
He had 5 new free stat points to allocate.
Because his defense and speed were already completely outclassing the Level 35 invasion mobs, he just wanted to kill them faster. He dumped all 5 stat points directly into Strength.
His Strength jumped from 332 to 337.
He ran the menu while physically side-stepping a Gargoyle claw. After doubling his Strength and adding the Sovereign’s Deathknell’s bonus, the 20% class passive multiplier pushed his permanent, unbuffed Total Attack to exactly 976!
He was incredibly close to breaking the 1,000 Attack barrier naturally.
Levi closed the menu and gripped his scythe. The black clouds above the keep were swirling faster now. The invasion wasn’t stopping, and he didn’t want it to. He stared up at the sky, waiting for the next wave of free XP to drop.