Chapter 105: Altar of the Hollow, Trial of the Overdrive
The 20,000 Gold vanished from his ledger.
The final fusion triggered. The entire greenhouse shook violently. The three Refined-Platinum vials didn’t just melt; they imploded. A terrifying, completely silent wave of dark energy expanded outward, sucking all the ambient purple light out of the room. The air temperature plummeted.
The singularity stabilized in the center of the UI, compressing into a single, perfectly smooth obsidian vial. The liquid inside wasn’t glowing. It looked like pure, liquid darkness.
The system chimed with a triumphant golden notification.
[Item Forged.]
Levi reached out and grabbed the vial. It felt freezing cold to the touch.
[Elixir of the Black Sun]
[Rarity: Unique Consumable]
[Effect: A legendary brew of pure abyssal energy. Required to trigger the Trial of the Overdrive.]
Levi held the black vial up. This was it. This was the key to unlocking the true power of the Herald of the Hollow class.
He slotted the Unique elixir safely into his spatial inventory, making sure it didn’t sit on his quick-belt where he could accidentally crush it.
He pulled up his status menu and dismissed the Boundless Fusion interface. He checked his stats one last time. His health was capped at 26,180. His mana was full at 5,160. His Attack was sitting at a monstrous 5,532.
He was completely broke, but he was ready.
"Alright," Levi said, turning to face the massive stone stairs leading out of the greenhouse. "The trial room is on Floor Fifty. Let’s go get my ultimate."
***
Levi stepped off the spiraling black glass staircase and onto Floor 50 of the Midnight Spire.
The room was completely empty. There were no patrolling Dreadknights, no creeping Shadow-Weavers, and no towering Goliaths. It was just a massive, circular stone chamber. The floor was perfectly smooth, and the walls were carved with giant, intricate murals.
Levi stopped to look at the artwork. It depicted a lone figure completely wrapped in a pitch-black aura, holding a scythe. The Hollow King. The figure was standing over a pile of broken, glowing white armor.
"Guess this is the place," Levi muttered, resting the heavy Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse on his shoulder.
Right in the dead center of the room sat a massive stone brazier. It was completely unlit, filled to the brim with dark, powdery ash.
Isolde glided into the room behind him. Her untextured gray cloak hovered just above the floor. She didn’t look at the murals. Her blank eyes immediately locked onto the unlit brazier in the center of the chamber.
"Scanning environmental triggers," Isolde stated, her voice broadcasting directly into Levi’s audio feed. "The central structure possesses an inactive scripted event. It requires a specific catalyst to engage."
"I know," Levi said.
He opened his spatial inventory and pulled out the small, perfectly smooth obsidian vial he had literally bankrupted himself to forge. The liquid inside looked like pure, swirling darkness.
[Elixir of the Black Sun]
Levi walked over to the massive stone brazier. The air around the center of the room felt cold and dead. He popped the cork off the obsidian vial with his thumb.
"Here goes nothing," Levi said.
He tilted the vial and poured the thick, black liquid directly into the ash.
The reaction was instantaneous. The liquid didn’t just soak into the ash; it ignited. A towering pillar of pitch-black flame violently erupted from the brazier, shooting straight up toward the high ceiling. The heat coming off the fire wasn’t hot. It was freezing cold, sucking the ambient temperature right out of the room.
A golden system notification violently flashed in the center of Levi’s UI.
[Hidden Quest Triggered: The Trial of the Overdrive.]
Before Levi could even pull his scythe off his shoulder, the system reacted. A massive, glowing barrier of dark purple energy slammed down from the ceiling in a perfect circle around the brazier.
Levi was caught dead in the center of it.
Isolde, who had been standing a few feet behind him, was violently shoved backward. The kinetic force of the barrier forming actually knocked her off her feet, sending her sliding across the smooth stone floor.
"Isolde!" Levi shouted, stepping toward the purple energy wall.
He slammed his hand against the barrier. It felt like solid, impenetrable glass. A harsh red system prompt popped up directly over the energy field.
[System Warning: This is a Solo Trial.]
[External Anomaly interference has been temporarily blocked by the Class Origin Code.]
Isolde scrambled to her feet. She didn’t look blank anymore. Her robotic demeanor completely shattered. For the first time since Levi had met her, she looked genuinely terrified.
She rushed back to the barrier and slammed both of her hands against the glowing purple glass.
"Levi!" Isolde yelled. Her voice wasn’t broadcasting in his head. She was actually shouting using the game’s proximity audio. "My override protocols are failing! I cannot breach this partition!"
Her gray eyes flashed with aggressive green hexadecimal code. The static poured out of her hands, violently attacking the purple barrier. She was trying to force a lag-spike, trying to rewrite the wall’s collision physics just like she did with her gravity snares.
But the green code just bounced off the purple energy.
[ERROR: ACCESS DENIED]
The red text floated right above her hands. The Class Origin Code was an ancient, foundational framework built deep into Starfall’s engine. It was stronger than her current Anomaly glitches. The system was completely locking her out.
"Levi, my artillery parameters cannot penetrate the barrier!" Isolde shouted, slamming her wooden staff against the wall. "Your survival probability is severely compromised!"
"It’s fine!" Levi shouted back over the roaring sound of the black flames. "Stop wasting your mana! It’s a class trial. The game wants me to do it alone. I have to do it alone."
Isolde pressed her hands flat against the barrier, her avatar glitching heavily as she stared at him. She looked completely helpless.
Levi stepped back from the wall and turned around to face the massive pillar of black fire.
"Show yourself," Levi growled, gripping the Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse with both hands.
The black flames violently parted.
Stepping out of the fire was a figure that looked exactly like Levi’s dark reflection. It was an armored humanoid completely covered in pitch-black Obsidian Carapace. It wore a dark, tattered cloak, and in its hands, it held a massive scythe that was an exact copy of Levi’s.
The only difference was the eyes. The figure’s helmet had glowing, hollow white eye slits that burned with aggressive intent.
The system threw the boss’s stat block directly into Levi’s vision.
[Echo of the Hollow]
[Level: 60 | Elite]
[HP: 300,000 | ATK: 6,000 | DEF: 2,500]
Levi stared at the red text. He let out a long, heavy breath.
"Three hundred thousand health," Levi noted, his eyes scanning the numbers. "Six thousand attack. Two thousand five hundred defense. You are basically a walking nightmare."
He was Level 54. The Echo was Level 60. That was exactly a six-level gap. 30% Level Suppression penalty.
’Alright, let’s break down the armor first,’ Levi thought, his brain working faster than the flickering flames. ’The Echo’s Defense is 2,500. My Platinum scythe ignores 30% of that. Thirty percent of 2,500 is 750. That drops the boss’s effective Defense down to exactly 1,750.’
He checked his own permanent, unbuffed Total Attack. It was sitting at a staggering 6,732.
’Three thousand, four hundred and eighty-seven Final Damage per basic strike,’ Levi calculated.
He looked at the Echo’s 300,000 HP pool. Dealing 3,400 damage a swing meant it was going to take roughly eighty-six basic attacks to kill it. With his 1,736 Speed, he could easily land that many hits in under a minute if the boss just stood there.
But this wasn’t a training dummy. This was an Elite copy of his own class.
The Echo had 6,000 Attack. Levi’s current Defense was 1,354.
Levi was wearing the Diamond-tier [Heart of the Chained] necklace, which granted a permanent 50% Damage Reduction from all sources.
4,646 cut exactly in half was 2,323 damage taken per hit.
Levi checked his health pool. He had 26,180 Max HP. He could survive exactly eleven direct hits from the Echo before he died.
"Eleven hits," Levi muttered. "That’s a massive safety net. But if this guy has the same skill kit I do, eleven hits can happen in three seconds."
He glanced over his shoulder. Isolde was standing right on the other side of the purple barrier, her hands still pressed against the energy field. Her gray eyes were completely locked onto his health bar.
"I’ve got this," Levi told her, though he knew she couldn’t help him even if she wanted to.
He turned back to the Echo. The shadow-clone didn’t bother with a villain monologue. It didn’t roar. It just lowered its scythe, the dark aura flaring around the blade, and prepared to strike.
Levi toggled on his [Siphon Aura].