Chapter 59: [59]: The Searing Crater, Lava Runner
Riding the Behemoth of the Hollow was completely ridiculous.
With a total mounted Speed of 361, Levi wasn’t just riding a horse anymore. He was piloting a glitch in the physics engine. The dark, heavily armored beast tore across the jagged rocks of the Ashen Peaks so fast that the background textures of the game literally struggled to load in on time.
The wind roaring inside his NerveDive helmet was deafening. Levi just leaned forward in the saddle, holding the heavy leather reins with one hand while resting the Gold-tier Sovereign’s Deathknell scythe on his shoulder.
He didn’t bother following the roads. He just pointed the Behemoth south and rode in a perfectly straight line. Any low-level elementals or random mobs that spawned in his path were left in the dust before their AI could even register his presence.
A few hours into the ride, the blackened, ashen landscape started to slope aggressively downward. The ambient temperature, which was already uncomfortably hot, spiked hard. A thick layer of heavy black smoke blotted out the sky, giving the entire zone a dark, claustrophobic feeling.
Levi pulled back on the reins, slowing the massive dark horse to a trot as he crested the final ridge.
He looked down. Spread out below him was the Searing Crater.
It was a massive, sprawling volcanic basin. Rivers of bright orange, bubbling magma cut through the black rock like glowing veins. At the very center of the crater sat a massive, flat platform made of dark iron, surrounded by a lake of liquid fire.
Floating dead center in the smoky sky above the platform was a giant, red holographic timer.
[World Boss Spawn: 01:00:00]
"An hour early," Levi muttered. "Perfect."
He wasn’t the only one here. The outer rim of the crater looked like a massive military staging ground. Over five thousand players had gathered, swarming the rocky cliffs. It was a complete madhouse. The top regional guilds had brought their entire rosters, desperately trying to organize raid alliances before the timer hit zero.
Levi could see the massive, floating guild banners planted in the dirt. ’Solar Lance’ on the left. ’Ironclad’ on the right.
Down in the staging area, guild leaders were screaming through the proximity chat, trying to talk over each other.
"We need more bodies!" shouted Gideon, a massive tank player who ran Ironclad. "I don’t care if you’re only Level 15! We need you for the meat grinder! Spam group invites in the zone chat right now!"
"Listen up!" yelled Ovidia, the leader of Solar Lance, standing on top of a rock to address her guild. "This is a Level 40 World Boss! Do not pretend you can tank it! We are going to use the zerg strategy. You run in, you deal whatever tiny chip damage you can, and when you die, you run straight back from the respawn point! It’s purely about attrition!"
Levi just shook his head. "Throwing thousands of players into a meat grinder because nobody actually has the math to beat the suppression penalty. Classic MMO garbage."
He didn’t stick around to listen to their pre-raid speeches. He spurred the Behemoth forward, riding straight down the rocky slope toward the crater floor.
His UI immediately started pinging like crazy. Desperate raid leaders were spamming him with random party invites the second they saw his pitch-black Obsidian Carapace armor and his elite mount. Levi swiped all of them into the trash folder without a second thought. He wasn’t going to carry a bunch of dead weight.
He reached the bottom of the slope. Standing between the staging area and the central summon platform was a massive, fifty-foot-wide river of bubbling lava.
Dozens of players were already trying to cross it to get into position. It was a miserable process. The moment a player stepped into the magma, the game’s environmental hazard system kicked in. The players were taking constant fire damage, forcing their healers to spam low-level cure spells just to keep them alive.
Worse, the lava acted as a severe terrain hazard. The players were hit with a massive 50% movement speed penalty. They looked like they were walking through thick, sticky glue, awkwardly dragging their boots through the liquid fire.
Levi didn’t slow down. He kicked his spurs into the Behemoth’s sides.
"Hey! Idiot!" a Level 16 warrior yelled from the edge of the lava river. "Don’t ride your mount in there! It’s going to instantly despawn from the environmental damage!"
Levi ignored him. His Gold-tier [Hollow’s Treads] had a passive that granted complete immunity to terrain-based slowing effects and environmental friction. And because Aethelgard’s mechanics transferred personal terrain buffs to the active mount, the Behemoth was fully immune too.
The dark horse’s heavy steel hooves slammed directly onto the surface of the lava.
Instead of sinking into the magma and taking damage, the Behemoth literally ran right across the top of the liquid fire like it was a paved highway. The 361 mounted Speed propelled them across the fifty-foot river in less than a single second. Sparks of liquid lava kicked up behind the hooves, but Levi didn’t even feel the heat.
The players wading through the magma stopped and stared in absolute, dumbfounded silence.
"Did that guy just sprint on top of the lava?" the warrior stammered.
"What the actual hell is that mount?" a mage yelled. "Hacker! Record his username!"
Levi cleared the lava river and hit the solid iron platform in the center of the crater. The heat here was intense, but his [Siphon Aura] was already toggled on. The green light wrapped around his boots, passively healing him for 15 HP a second and completely neutralizing the ambient burn damage.
He pulled back on the reins and looked at the center of the platform.
The World Boss hadn’t spawned yet, but the portal area wasn’t empty. Guarding the massive, glowing red summon circle were the boss’s personal guards.
There were a dozen of them, pacing heavily around the portal. They were Vanguard Elites. They looked like towering demons forged out of blackened steel and magma, wielding massive, two-handed hammers that slammed into the iron platform with every step.
Levi pulled out an Inspect scroll.
[Vanguard Elite]
[Level: 40 | Elite]
[HP: 50,000 | ATK: 1,500 | DEF: 800]
"Fifty thousand health," Levi noted, reading the stats. "And an eight hundred defense wall. No wonder the guilds are just standing on the rim complaining."
To a normal Level 15 or 20 player, these guards were basically unkillable gods. Their 1,500 Attack would instantly one-shot any tank on the server. The guilds’ strategy was likely to have a rogue pull them one by one, kite them across the lava, and sacrifice hundreds of players just to chip away at their 50,000 HP.
Levi didn’t have time for that. The timer in the sky said fifty-five minutes.
He needed to plump his stats one last time before the actual God showed up.
Levi dismissed the Behemoth. The massive dark horse dissolved into a pool of shadows, dropping Levi squarely onto his feet. He reached over his shoulder and unsealed the Sovereign’s Deathknell. The heavy, Gold-tier scythe pulsed with dark energy, completely unbothered by the intense heat of the crater.
He didn’t bother using a bow or a rock to pull aggro. He just walked directly toward a pack of three Vanguard Elites standing near the left edge of the portal.
Up on the crater rim, thousands of players were watching him. The massive crowd went completely silent as they realized what the solo player in black armor was doing.
"Is he crazy?" Gideon yelled, pointing down from the cliff. "He’s aggroing three of them at once! He’s going to wipe and reset their health pools before we even get into position!"
"Let him die," Ovidia sneered, crossing her arms. "Some pay-to-win idiot thinks his shiny mount makes him invincible. Watch him get flattened in one swing."
Levi ignored the distant shouts of the peanut gallery. He walked right up to the three Level 40 demons.
The Vanguard Elites stopped pacing. Their glowing, molten eyes locked onto Levi. They let out a synchronized, deafening roar that shook the iron platform and raised their massive magma-hammers.
Levi gripped his scythe with both hands, a ruthless smile spreading across his face.
"Time for the appetizer."