Chapter 73: [73]: The Citadel Core, The 100% Wall
Thick, heavy black smoke choked the air, making it hard to see more than fifty feet ahead.
He didn’t bother summoning the Behemoth again. His on-foot Speed was 341. He was literally moving faster than most mounts in the game. He blurred past destroyed merchant stalls, burning guild banners, and the shattered stone remains of the city’s inner defensive walls.
A few minutes later, he reached the massive steps leading up to the Citadel Core.
The Core was a giant, floating blue crystal suspended above a stone pedestal. It was the administrative anchor for the entire region. If that crystal shattered, the safe zones disappeared, and permanent death turned on.
Standing right in front of the floating crystal, winding up a massive dark-magic strike to smash it to pieces, was the invasion commander.
Levi stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up.
"Well, you definitely look like a final boss," Levi muttered.
The commander was a towering, armored nightmare. He stood twenty feet tall, wearing pitch-black jagged plate armor that seemed to absorb the light around him. He held a massive, two-handed greatsword that dripped with corrosive purple energy. Two massive, leathery wings folded behind his back, and his helmet was shaped like a roaring dragon skull.
The system threw the boss’s stat block directly into Levi’s UI.
[General Malakor]
[Level: 50 | Boss]
[HP: 800,000 | ATK: 3,500 | DEF: 1,800]
"Eight hundred thousand health," Levi read aloud, shaking his head. "Thirty-five hundred attack. And an eighteen hundred defense wall."
He just stared at the numbers. He was Level 30. General Malakor was Level 50.
That was exactly a twenty-level gap.
Twenty multiplied by five meant Levi was staring at a 100% damage reduction penalty. It didn’t matter how high his Total Attack was. It didn’t matter that he had Gold-tier weapons or SSS-Rank multipliers. The system’s math was absolute. A 100% penalty meant his damage output was mathematically reduced to zero!
If he swung his scythe right now, he would deal exactly 0 damage.
"I can’t just brute force this," Levi said, leaning the Sovereign’s Deathknell against his shoulder. "If I hit him for zero, my Lifesteal doesn’t trigger. If my Lifesteal doesn’t trigger, I die."
General Malakor stopped his wind-up animation. The massive boss turned his horned helmet around and looked down the stone steps at Levi. The monster let out a low, rumbling laugh that sounded like grinding metal.
"You are too late, mortal," Malakor’s voice echoed across the burning courtyard. "The Citadel falls today."
"Yeah, shut up," Levi said dismissively. "Give me a second. I’m doing math."
Levi opened his spatial inventory. He knew he couldn’t fight a Level 50 boss head-on. He needed to cheat. He scrolled past the massive piles of silver coins and useless gear he had looted over the last few days. He was looking for a very specific set of items he had picked up during his three-day marathon in the Undercrypt.
He found them sitting in the consumables tab.
He pulled out three identical, glowing gold flasks. They were filled with a bubbling, highly acidic green liquid.
[Flask of Vulnerability]
[Rarity: Gold]
[Effect: Reduces the target’s Defense by 50% for 1 minute.]
"Fifty percent defense shred is cute," Levi muttered, looking at the flasks in his hand. "But dropping his defense from eighteen hundred down to nine hundred doesn’t matter if my damage is still being reduced by a hundred percent. I need to break the level gap."
He swiped his hand and opened the Boundless Fusion interface.
The glowing golden slots popped up right there on the steps of the Citadel Core. Malakor was literally thirty yards away, slowly raising his purple greatsword to attack, and Levi was playing with crafting menus.
He dragged the three Gold-tier flasks into the fusion slots.
The system instantly threw a massive, aggressively flashing red warning prompt across his vision.
[CRITICAL WARNING: Fusing Gold-tier consumables into Platinum-tier requires a massive systemic overwrite. A raw currency fee of 20,000 Gold Coins is absolutely required to proceed. Do you accept?]
"Twenty grand," Levi winced. "I just made my money back from the auction house, and now I’m broke again. Fine. Take it."
He dumped 20,000 Gold into the payment slot and slammed the confirm button.
The fusion process triggered immediately. A blinding, prismatic explosion of white light lit up the dark, smoky courtyard. The three gold flasks violently dissolved. The acidic green liquid inside them started spinning like a miniature tornado, purifying and condensing until it turned into a dark, swirling purple mist trapped inside a sleek platinum glass vial.
The digital grinding noise stopped. Levi grabbed the new consumable out of the air.
[Vial of Absolute Decay]
[Rarity: Platinum]
[Effect: Reduces the target’s effective Level by 10 for exactly 5 minutes. Bypasses all boss immunities.]
"Reduces effective level by ten," Levi grinned like a madman. "That is exactly what I needed."
If Malakor’s level was artificially dropped by 10, the boss would be treated as Level 40. That meant the twenty-level gap would shrink to a ten-level gap. The 100% Level Suppression penalty would instantly drop down to 50%.
A 50% penalty was still a massive wall, but it wasn’t zero. It meant he could actually deal damage.
General Malakor didn’t wait for Levi to finish admiring his loot. The boss raised his greatsword, the purple energy flaring, and leaped down the stone steps directly toward Levi.
"Time to test this out," Levi said.
He didn’t bother using Phantom Step. He just pulled his arm back and threw the Platinum vial directly at the massive, falling boss.
The glass vial smashed into Malakor’s black chest plate.
It shattered, releasing a massive cloud of highly corrosive, thick purple mist. The mist instantly absorbed into the boss’s armor.
Malakor crashed into the stone floor, the impact shattering the courtyard stones, but the boss staggered violently. A massive, glitching debuff icon popped up over his horned helmet.
[System Notification: Target’s effective Level reduced to 40.]
[Duration: 5:00]
The Level 50 tag floating above Malakor’s head glitched and changed to Level 40.
Levi didn’t waste a single millisecond. The five-minute timer was already ticking down, and he had to chew through 800,000 health before it expired. If the timer ran out, the boss would snap back to Level 50, and Levi would be dead.
"Hollow’s Ward!" Levi shouted.
He dumped 150 Mana. The swirling, pitch-black shield of dark matter erupted around his avatar.
His Intelligence was currently sitting at 201 thanks to the Diamond-tier necklace he crafted earlier.
His dark-matter shield locked into place with a staggering 1,505 HP. It was a massive buffer.
He toggled on his [Siphon Aura].
"Alright, big guy," Levi said, gripping the Sovereign’s Deathknell with both hands. The shadowy aura of his class flared violently around the silver blade. "Let’s see how tough you are when the math is fair."
Levi kicked off the broken stone floor. With his Speed, He completely blurred out of existence. He crossed the thirty yards in less than a blink of an eye, charging straight into the boss’s hitbox.
The real fight for the server had just begun.