Chapter 88: [89]: The Shadow-Weavers
Levi and Isolde left the wide, open expanse of the polished obsidian plains behind. As they pushed deeper into the inner ring of the Midnight Continent, the landscape radically shifted. The flat black glass fractured into a maze of deep, jagged canyons.
The walls of the canyons reached hundreds of feet into the dark sky, and they were completely choked with thick, glowing purple webbing.
"Spiders again?" Levi grunted in annoyance, stepping over a thick patch of silk. "I already did the spider thing back in the Undercrypt."
"Negative," Isolde stated, her robotic eyes scanning the dark cliffs above them. "These structures are woven by humanoids. Threat level is currently spiking."
Levi stopped. He had already killed 15 Obsidian Dreadknights, which netted him a massive +675 Strength overall. His ATK was sitting pretty at 2,352. But he knew from his past-life knowledge that grinding just one type of mob was a terrible idea. If he ignored his Agility and Speed scaling, eventually a boss was going to outrun him and smash his head in.
He was here looking for his second target for the arc. He needed speed.
He didn’t have to look for long.
Without a single sound, a figure dropped from the canyon wall directly above them.
It was a tall, incredibly slender humanoid wrapped entirely in tattered purple silk. It held two long, jagged daggers that dripped with dark energy. It didn’t wear heavy armor. It was built purely for assassination.
[Shadow-Weaver Assassin]
[Level: 60 | Elite]
[HP: 70,000 | ATK: 3,500 | DEF: 800 | Speed: 600]
Levi’s eyes locked onto the stat block for exactly a fraction of a second. "Speed: six hundred."
Levi’s current Speed was 351.
The math was an absolute nightmare. The Elite was practically twice as fast as him.
Before Levi could even raise his Sovereign’s Deathknell to parry, the Shadow-Weaver blurred. It crossed the ten yards between them instantly, thrusting both daggers directly at Levi’s chest.
Levi couldn’t blink away in time. The attack hit him dead center.
The VR pain engine sent a sharp, piercing shockwave straight through his virtual ribs.
[-1,575]
Levi’s health bar violently chunked down from 6,480 to 4,905.
"Okay, you’re way too fast," Levi grunted, stumbling backward from the kinetic force.
He recovered his footing and immediately swung his Gold-tier scythe in a wide, retaliatory horizontal arc.
The Shadow-Weaver didn’t even try to block. With 600 Speed, its evasion rating was astronomically high. It simply leaned backward, letting the heavy silver blade pass harmlessly over its chest.
[Miss.]
The white text floated over the Assassin’s head.
"Are you kidding me?" Levi snapped. He spun the scythe back around and launched a flurry of three basic attacks, pushing his Speed to the absolute limit.
[Miss.] [Miss.] [Miss.]
The Assassin just danced around the blade like it was a slow-motion training dummy. It ducked, swaved, and sidestepped every single strike. Levi was literally swinging at ghosts.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!" Levi yelled out in frustration.
He ripped the scythe upward, unleashing the massive ten-meter-wide cone of dark-gold energy. But the Shadow-Weaver was so fast it physically outran the casting animation. The Assassin blurred to the right, stepping entirely out of the cone’s hit-box before the damage even registered on the ground.
"I can’t hit it," Levi realized, his heart rate spiking. "If I can’t hit it, I can’t lifesteal. And if I can’t lifesteal, I’m dead."
The Assassin raised its daggers to plunge them into Levi’s back.
"Recalibrating target velocity," Isolde’s voice echoed in Levi’s head.
Isolde stepped out from the shadows near the canyon wall. She didn’t fire her usual blast of True Damage. Instead, her character model glitched with heavy green static. She raised her wooden staff high into the air and slammed the butt of it directly into the obsidian floor.
A massive, glowing red circular field instantly expanded across the entire canyon floor.
It was another rewritten Anomaly spell. A localized gravity snare.
The moment the red field touched the Shadow-Weaver’s boots, the Elite visibly staggered. The purple silk wrapping its body dragged downward, as if suddenly weighing a thousand pounds.
[System Notification: Anomaly Interference Detected.]
[Target Speed artificially restricted to 100 for 5 seconds.]
"Now!" Isolde commanded.
"Got you," Levi snarled.
With the Assassin’s speed neutralized from 600 down to a pathetic 100, Levi’s 351 Speed made him the apex predator again. He blurred forward, stepping right inside the Elite’s guard.
The Assassin had 800 Defense. His scythe ignored 20%, dropping it to 640.
His Total Attack was 2,352.
[-342]
The scythe ripped into the purple silk. The red number popped up. The Assassin shrieked in pain.
Levi didn’t stop. He unleashed an absolute blender of physical attacks. Because the target was snared, he didn’t miss a single swing. He hit it four times a second.
[-342] [-342] [-342] [-342]
His 10% Lifesteal instantly started feeding massive chunks of health back into his pool, actively patching the 1,575 damage he took on the opener.
The five-second gravity snare was ticking down rapidly. Levi didn’t have time to mess around.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
The scythe erupted in gold light and smashed directly into the Assassin’s chest. The broken shield debuff popped up, shredding 20% of its remaining armor.
With its defense shredded, Levi’s basic attacks hit even harder. Isolde immediately followed up with her standard artillery protocol, blasting the snared Assassin with a blinding pulse of white light.
[-5,000 True Damage]
Between Levi’s relentless assault and Isolde’s nuke, the Assassin’s 70,000 HP health bar melted away.
40,000. 25,000. 15,000.
The five-second gravity snare shattered. The red field vanished from the floor.
The Shadow-Weaver instantly snapped back to 600 Speed. It raised its daggers to completely obliterate Levi in a high-speed combo.
But it was too late.
Twenty percent.
"Soul Harvest."
The pitch-black spectral guillotine materialized instantly and slammed straight down. It didn’t matter how fast the Assassin was. The class execution mechanic was unavoidable once the threshold was met.
The giant blade cleanly severed the Elite’s head. The Shadow-Weaver shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons, scattering silver coins across the black glass floor.
[System Notification: Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Levi let out a heavy breath and rested his scythe. He looked over at Isolde, who was calmly lowering her wooden staff.
"Gravity snare," Levi said, shaking his head. "You are just pulling these spells out of thin air now, aren’t you?"
"I am modifying localized engine parameters to maintain your survival probability," Isolde replied flatly.
Before Levi could thank her, the dense, blinding crimson aura of the harvest ripped out of the spot where the Assassin had died. It shot across the canyon and slammed directly into his chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[Shadow-Weaver Assassin’s primary stat is AGI (3000).]
[You have plundered 5% of its core stat.]
[Gained +60 AGI permanently!]
Levi gasped as the raw speed forced its way into his avatar. Plus sixty Agility from a single kill. He felt completely weightless.
His Agility is now 391.
His derived Speed stat skyrocketed, his total on-foot Speed is a staggering 411.
"Four hundred and eleven speed," Levi smirked. "Okay. I think we just found out how we’re going to survive this zone."
He closed the menu and looked up at the deep, web-covered canyon walls. Dozens of purple eyes were staring down at them from the darkness. The rest of the Shadow-Weavers were waking up.
"Get ready to drop that red circle again, Isolde," Levi said, spinning his scythe.