Chapter 61: [61]: The Descent of Valdor, The 85% Wall
The massive red holographic timer floating in the smoky sky above the Searing Crater hit exactly zero.
The numbers shattered into a burst of red static, glitching out before completely vanishing from the UI. The entire volcanic basin instantly dropped in temperature. It was a jarring, unnatural shift. The bubbling magma rivers that cut through the black rock froze solid in a fraction of a second, turning into dull, hardened obsidian.
Then came the noise. It wasn’t a roar. It sounded like thousands of massive iron chains being dragged across hollow stone, echoing from deep underground.
Levi stood on the central iron platform, his boots planted firmly as the ground began to violently shake. The iron floor in the dead center of the summon circle suddenly exploded outward. Massive chunks of metal and rock flew into the air.
Levi crossed his arms, letting a chunk of debris bounce harmlessly off his Obsidian Carapace armor.
Pulling himself from the molten earth, dragging glowing, rune-covered chains behind him, was a fifty-foot-tall obsidian titan. The boss was so massive that the game engine actually hitched for a microsecond trying to render its character model.
It had a vaguely humanoid shape, but its body was made entirely of jagged black rock and liquid fire. Thick, magical chains wrapped around its chest and arms, restricting its movements, but even bound, the sheer physical presence of the monster was suffocating.
The system threw up the boss’s stat block in massive, glowing red letters.
[Valdor The Chained]
[Level: 40 | World Boss]
[HP: 2,500,000 | ATK: 2,500 | DEF: 1,500]
"Two and a half million health," Levi said, shaking his head. "And twenty-five hundred attack. The developers were definitely on something when they coded this."
Up on the crater’s rim, the massive guild alliances completely ignored the math. They had been standing there for an hour, hyping each other up and forming massive raid groups. Over five thousand players from guilds like ’Solar Lance’ and ’Ironclad’ had gathered. To them, this was just a numbers game. You throw enough bodies at a boss, and eventually, the health bar hits zero.
Gideon, the massive Level 17 tank leading Ironclad, blew a literal war horn item. The loud, brassy sound echoed across the basin.
"This is it! Vanguard, pop your shields!" Gideon screamed in the proximity chat, his voice cracking. "DPS, stay behind the tanks! Healers, pre-cast your AoE regens! We zerg it down! Do not stop running!"
Ovidia, the leader of Solar Lance, pointed her glowing staff down at the boss. "Push forward! If you die, take the respawn penalty and run straight back! We win this through pure attrition! Charge!"
Over five thousand players scrambled down the rocky slopes. It looked like an absolute chaotic landslide of iron armor, cheap leather, and glowing magic staffs. They swarmed across the frozen magma rivers, screaming battle cries and popping useless low-level defensive buffs.
Levi just stepped back to the very edge of the iron platform, rested his Gold-tier Sovereign’s Deathknell scythe on his shoulder, and watched.
"This is going to be a bloodbath," Levi muttered.
Valdor didn’t even draw a weapon. The fifty-foot titan just slowly turned its massive, burning head to look at the army of ants rushing toward it. The boss didn’t look threatened. It looked annoyed.
The vanguard of the player army—roughly three thousand heavily armored tanks and melee fighters—reached the edge of the iron platform. They raised their shields, their healers spamming green light onto their backs.
Valdor simply raised its massive right foot and stomped the ground.
The system flagged the attack above the boss’s head.
[Magma Eruption]
A colossal shockwave of liquid fire and kinetic force expanded outward from the titan’s foot in a perfect 360-degree circle. The shockwave wasn’t just a ground effect; it was a wall of fire ten feet high, moving at the speed of a bullet.
Levi ran the math in his head the exact millisecond the attack went off.
The average Level 20 tank in this zerg rush was wearing standard Silver-tier or Bronze-tier armor. They had roughly 200 Defense on a good day. Their maximum health pools hovered around 1,500 HP if they had dumped points into Vitality.
Valdor’s base Attack was 2,500.
2,500 Attack minus 200 Defense equaled exactly 2,300 incoming damage.
The wall of fire slammed into the player vanguard.
There was no hit-stun. There was no knockback animation. The shields didn’t matter. The healing spells didn’t matter.
Three thousand massive red [-2,300] damage numbers exploded into the sky simultaneously. The server literally lagged for a full two seconds trying to process the massive visual output.
The entire front line of the guild alliance was instantly vaporized. Three thousand avatars violently shattered into blue polygons in the exact same second. The sound of glass breaking was so overwhelmingly loud that the VR audio engine peaked and temporarily muted the game sound.
Where three thousand players had just been standing, there was nothing but empty rock and a massive carpet of dropped copper coins and useless common gear.
The shockwave dissipated before it hit the backline, but the damage was already done.
The remaining two thousand players—mostly squishy mages, archers, and healers—stopped dead in their tracks. They stared at the empty space where their friends and guildmates used to be. The battle cries completely died in their throats.
"What the actual hell..." Gideon choked out. He had survived because he was standing further back, but his entire guild was gone.
"Two thousand damage through a shield wall," a rogue shrieked. "It’s a one-shot! The event is rigged!"
Panic erupted instantly. The zerg strategy completely collapsed. The remaining two thousand players turned around and started scrambling back up the crater walls, literally tripping over each other in a desperate bid to escape the boss’s aggro radius. They abandoned the raid completely.
Levi didn’t run. He stood calmly at the edge of the platform, the hot wind from the boss’s attack blowing his dark cloak back.
He looked at Valdor’s stats again.
He was Level 23. Valdor was Level 40. That was a seventeen-level gap.
In Aethelgard, that meant he was facing an 85% Level Suppression penalty. It was the exact same penalty he had just fought through against the Vanguard Elite guards.
’The boss has 1,500 Defense,’ Levi calculated methodically. ’My Gold scythe ignores 20% of that. Twenty percent of 1,500 is 300. That drops the titan’s effective Defense down to 1,200.’
He checked his current unbuffed Total Attack. It was 580.
If he tried to hit the boss right now, his 580 Attack would go up against 1,200 Defense. He would deal exactly 1 damage per swing. Even if he used his Guillotine skill to shred the armor, the 85% suppression penalty would choke his damage so hard he would be hitting for single digits. You couldn’t kill a 2.5 million HP boss with single digits.
"Math doesn’t lie," Levi said. "But math can be broken."
He dropped his left hand to his quick-use belt and pulled out the small, diamond-shaped vial he had just spent his entire fortune to fuse. The liquid inside looked like swirling, pure starlight.
[Tear of the Chained]
He didn’t hesitate. He crushed the Diamond-tier consumable in his palm.
The glass shattered. A blinding, prismatic aura instantly exploded outward, wrapping entirely around his pitch-black Obsidian Carapace armor. The system UI violently flashed green as the most broken buff in the game activated.
[Tear of the Chained activated.]
[Granted +1,000 STR.]
[ALL Level Suppression Penalties perfectly nullified.]
[Duration: 5 Minutes.]
Levi felt a terrifying, suffocating rush of raw virtual power flood his avatar’s code. The VR engine actually simulated a heavy, humming vibration in his virtual arms. The heavy Gold-tier scythe in his hand suddenly felt as light as a wooden stick.
He opened his stat sheet to run the new numbers.
His base Strength was 172. The Diamond buff added a flat 1,000, pushing it to an absurd 1,172.
Because his Base Attack was his Strength multiplied by two, 1,172 times 2 equaled exactly 2,344.
He added the flat 140 Attack from his Sovereign’s Deathknell weapon. That brought it to 2,484.
Finally, the system applied his SSS-Rank Herald of the Hollow class passive, multiplying the entire number by 1.2 because he was wielding a scythe.
His Total Attack locked in at exactly 2,980.
Nearly three thousand attack power. But the damage wasn’t even the best part. The Level Suppression penalty was gone. It was listed as 0%. Every single swing he made was going to hit Valdor for full, unmitigated value.
A holographic timer appeared in the top left corner of his vision.
[05:00]
"Five minutes," Levi smiled, a ruthless, terrifying look in his eyes.
He gripped the scythe with both hands, the dark aura of his class violently mixing with the prismatic starlight of the potion. The real raid was about to begin.