Chapter 91: [92]: Forging the Abyss
Levi stood in the dark, cramped cave carved into the side of the obsidian canyon wall. The ambient blue light from the glowing flora outside barely reached them. The air was dead silent, a sharp contrast to the constant screeching and galloping out on the plains.
He looked down at his hands. Twenty-seven glowing silver orbs clicked together like heavy glass marbles.
[Silver-Tier Core of the Aegis]
[Rarity: Silver]
[Material Effect: A highly condensed essence of defense. Used primarily in high-tier armor and shielding fusions.]
"Twenty-seven of them," Levi muttered, dropping the heavy orbs into a neat pile on the cave floor. "That’s exactly what I need. But before I blow my life savings, let’s make sure the stats actually demands it."
He swiped his hand through the air and pulled up his character sheet. The holographic numbers hovered in the dark.
His Total Attack was sitting at a monstrous 2,892. His Speed was a glitch-inducing 831. He was an absolute terror on the battlefield. When he swung his scythe, things died. It was that simple.
But then he looked at the other side of the screen. His Max HP was 6,680. His base Defense was a pathetic 379.
"This is the reality of playing a glass cannon," Levi sighed, crossing his arms and staring at the numbers.
Out there on the Midnight Continent, the Level 60 Elites were swinging for roughly 4,000 damage on a basic attack. His Diamond-tier [Heart of the Chained] necklace granted a permanent 50% Damage Reduction. That cut the 4,000 damage down to 2,000.
But even with a 50% flat reduction, taking 2,000 damage a hit was completely unsustainable. He could only survive three clean strikes before his 6,680 HP pool was completely erased. Four hits, and he was back at the respawn point with a massive XP penalty and durability loss.
One mistake. One missed dodge. One badly timed teleport because his boot slipped on the black glass. That was all it would take to die instantly.
Worse, his primary defensive skill was severely outdated.
He pulled up the tooltip for his Gold-tier [Hollow’s Ward]. The skill description read that the dark-matter shield scaled off 500% of his Intelligence stat, plus a flat 500 Base HP.
"A fifteen hundred health shield is basically paper against these things," Levi grumbled, swiping the menu away into the dark. "If an Obsidian Dreadknight hits my shield, it shatters instantly. The bleed-through damage still chunks my actual health for almost five hundred points. Against whatever endgame boss is waiting for me up in the Midnight Spire, that shield is entirely useless."
He needed a real defense. He needed a skill capable of absorbing apocalyptic levels of damage so he didn’t have to play a perfect rhythm game just to stay alive.
He checked his Domain tax wallet. Thanks to the massive volume of trading back at the Harvester’s Exchange, his balance had ticked back up.
Exactly 52,000 Gold Coins.
Fusing items up to Platinum rarity wasn’t just a matter of having the right materials. The game actively punished players by requiring massive, absurd amounts of raw currency as a catalyst fee to push past the Gold tier. He was about to empty his bank account again.
"Alright," Levi said, taking a deep breath and cracking his knuckles. "Time to build a real wall."
He opened his UI and forcefully summoned the [Boundless Fusion] interface. The three glowing golden slots materialized in the dark cave, casting a warm, humming light over the smooth obsidian floor.
Levi knelt down and grabbed the first handful of Silver-Tier Cores of the Aegis.
Step one was just the setup. He dragged the twenty-seven silver orbs into the fusion slots in batches of three. He hit the fuse button nine times in rapid succession. The interface flashed with a bright, crisp silver light. The orbs melted together, compressing and solidifying into nine larger, heavier Gold-Tier Cores that pulsed with a warm yellow energy.
"Okay. Step two," Levi said.
He placed the nine Gold-Tier Cores back into the fusion slots, again in batches of three.
The system threw up the first warning prompt.
[Warning: Fusing Gold-tier materials into Platinum-tier requires a currency fee of 5,000 Gold Coins. Proceed?]
Levi didn’t even blink. He tapped the confirm button, dumping the 5,000 Gold into the payment slot.
Three violent flashes of prismatic light lit up the dark cave. The nine gold orbs dissolved completely, turning into a blinding white energy that spun rapidly inside the interface. The digital grinding noise echoed off the cave walls. The light faded, dropping three incredibly sleek, heavy Platinum-Tier Cores into his hands. They looked like solid spheres of liquid mercury.
"Now for the final step," Levi breathed.
He opened his skill menu and un-equipped his core defensive skill, [Hollow’s Ward]. The knowledge was temporarily extracted from his avatar, materializing back into a physical, black-and-gold leather tome in his left hand.
He placed the Gold skill book directly into the center slot of the Boundless Fusion interface. Then, he placed the three Platinum-Tier Cores into the surrounding material slots.
The system UI immediately flashed a violent, aggressive crimson.
[CRITICAL WARNING: Fusing a Gold-tier Skill with Platinum-tier materials requires a supreme catalyst override. A raw currency fee of 50,000 Gold Coins is absolutely required to proceed. Do you accept?]
Levi stared at the red text. He looked at his wallet balance. He had exactly 47,000 Gold left after the previous step.
"Wait. I’m short," Levi frowned. He was 3,000 Gold short of the required fee.
Before he could even open his spatial inventory to find some junk loot to sell on the auction house, Isolde stepped up beside him. Her plain gray cloak rustled slightly.
"The game’s economy is a localized mathematical variable," Isolde stated in her flat, robotic voice.
She reached out and placed her pixelated hand directly over the holographic fusion interface. Her Anomaly code forcibly injected itself into the system’s ledger. A massive string of green zeros and glitching static cascaded down Levi’s HUD. The system registered a dummy deposit of exactly 3,000 Gold, completely bypassing the firewall and tricking the engine into thinking the payment was full.
Levi just stared at her. "You are extremely convenient to have around."
"It was mathematically necessary to maintain your survival probability," Isolde replied, lowering her hand.
Levi hit the accept button.
The fusion process was terrifying. The air inside the dark cave physically dropped in temperature. A blinding, violet light erupted from the interface, so intense that Levi actually had to throw his arm up to shield his eyes. The holographic anvil shattered into pieces. The Gold-tier skill book and the three Platinum cores collapsed inward, creating a miniature singularity of dark matter.
The digital grinding noise sounded like a massive vault door slamming shut inside his NerveDive helmet.
The dark singularity stabilized, then burst outward in a wave of completely silent, violet energy.
Floating in the center of the UI was a single, heavy skill book. It was bound in a material that looked like deep-space vacuum, completely absorbing the ambient light around it.
Levi reached out and grabbed it.
[Platinum Ward of the Abyss]
[Rarity: Platinum Skill Book]
[Effect: Consumes 500 Mana. Creates an abyssal-matter shield equal to 1,000% of the user’s Intelligence stat + 5,000 Base HP for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, 20% of all incoming physical damage is reflected back to the attacker as True Damage. Cooldown: 60 seconds.]
Levi eagerly read the tooltip, a massive, ruthless grin spreading across his face.
"One thousand percent," Levi laughed.
He selected the book and hit ’Learn’. The heavy platinum tome shattered into hundreds of violet particles that rushed directly into his chest. The knowledge of how to channel the abyssal-matter shield instantly burned itself into his avatar’s code.
He immediately pulled up his status screen to calculate his new defensive threshold.
His Intelligence stat was currently sitting at 206.
"A seven thousand hit-point shield," Levi whispered, completely stunned by his own numbers.
Combined with his 6,680 Max HP and his 50% permanent Damage Reduction from the Diamond necklace, his effective health pool against normal physical attacks during a burst phase had skyrocketed to over 27,000 theoretical HP.
He was no longer a fragile glass cannon that had to play a perfect rhythm game to survive. He was a walking, teleporting fortress.
But the real kicker was the reflection passive. While the shield held, 20% of all incoming physical damage was reflected back to the attacker as True Damage. That meant if a boss hit him with a massive attack, the boss was just going to hurt itself, bypassing all of its own armor.
The only downside was the extreme cost. The skill required 500 Mana per cast. With his Max Mana sitting at 2,110, casting this shield ate nearly a quarter of his entire fuel tank. He was going to have to manage his Siphon Aura and Phantom Step usage perfectly if he didn’t want to run dry mid-fight.
"Worth it," Levi said, closing his interface.
He turned around and walked toward the exit of the cave. Isolde followed quietly behind him.