Chapter 96: The Ambush in the Dark, The Coliseum of Spines
A massive, dark purple magic circle appeared on the bone floor, covering the entire room.
[Warning: Void Cultists are casting Void Eruption.]
It was a synchronized AoE nuke. Seven overlapping magic attacks hitting for 3,800 damage each would instantly vaporize his 9,980 health pool, regardless of his 50% damage reduction necklace.
Levi prepared to burn Mana to teleport out of the room.
But Isolde stepped past him.
She glided into the center of the massive purple magic circle. Her plain gray cloak fluttered slightly. She didn’t raise a shield. She simply planted the butt of her wooden staff into the floor.
The Cultists finished their chant. The Void Eruption detonated, sending a massive pillar of destructive purple magic crashing down directly onto Isolde.
Isolde’s character model glitched with green static. Because she was a God-fragment, she simply absorbed the hostile code. The purple magic swirled around her staff, compressing into a blindingly bright, pure white sphere of Anomaly energy.
She pointed the staff at the Cultists.
"Return to sender," Isolde stated flatly.
The compressed sphere exploded outward in a massive shockwave of pure True Damage.
[-20,000 True Damage]
The corrupted red text covered the screens of all seven Cultists. The sheer force of the Anomaly blast threw them against the bone walls. Their 60,000 HP health bars melted instantly. Combined with Levi’s initial Guillotine strike, the massive True Damage nuke dropped every single Cultist below the 12,000 HP mark.
Exactly twenty percent.
"My turn!" Levi yelled.
He dashed forward and went to work. "Soul Harvest!"
The pitch-black spectral guillotine dropped, decapitating the first Cultist.
[Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Levi burned 20 Mana for Hollow’s Traverse, blinking two meters to the right.
"Soul Harvest."
He chained the executions with terrifying, flawless precision. Execute. Blink. Execute. Blink. He flashed across the ritual chamber in a blur of teleports and giant spectral scythes. In less than four seconds, all seven Level 60 Elites were decapitated.
They shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons simultaneously.
Levi landed on his boots, spinning his Platinum scythe to flick the digital blood off the blade. He toggled off his Siphon Aura.
Seven blindingly bright crimson auras ripped out of the empty space and slammed directly into his chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered 7 times.]
[Void Cultist’s primary stat is INT (1,000).]
[You have plundered 3% of its core stat.]
[Gained +210 INT permanently!]
Levi let out a massive breath as the raw Intelligence flooded his system. Plus two hundred and ten INT.
He opened his status menu. His previous Intelligence was 301. Adding the +210 pushed it to exactly 511.
His Max Mana instantly, his new fuel tank hit a massive 5,160 Mana.
His shield capacity jumped from 8,010 to a staggering 10,110 HP.
The XP drop hit a second later.
[System Notification: Slain 7x Level 60 Elite Void Cultists. Gained 70,000,000 XP.]
The golden pillar of light crashed down, washing away his simulated fatigue.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 51.]
Levi checked his progression bar. The 70 million XP added to his previous 92.5 million easily cleared the 110 million threshold, leaving him with 52,500,000 XP out of the 120,000,000 needed for Level 52.
He had 5 free stat points. He dumped them into Vitality to keep his base health padding up. His VIT bumped from 494 to 499. His Max HP expanded to 10,080, and his Defense hit 549.
He closed his menu and looked at Isolde. She was standing quietly, her staff lowered.
"That was a pretty heavy hit you just absorbed," Levi said, walking over to her.
Isolde looked up at him. Her robotic eyes flickered slightly. "When your Lifesteal parameter activates, my core code stabilizes. We are currently sharing an unquantified algorithmic feedback loop."
Levi smirked, recognizing exactly what that meant. The system was starting to tether their code together.
"Good to know," Levi said, resting the massive Platinum scythe on his shoulder. "Let’s go find the next group."
**
Levi kicked a shattered ribcage out of his way as they walked deeper into the Ashen Labyrinth. The twisting corridors of fused bone were getting narrower. The air felt dead and completely stale. His 1,191 Speed made him want to just sprint through the maze, but the layout was too erratic.
"I really hate maze levels," Levi complained, dragging his Gold-tier boots across the polished bone dust. "It’s just lazy game design to pad out the playtime."
"The current layout exhibits highly intentional choke points," Isolde stated, gliding right behind him. Her untextured gray cloak hovered an inch off the floor. "Statistically, this path leads to a high-density trap."
"Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m walking into it," Levi smirked. "I need the stats."
He took another step forward. His boot came down on a slightly raised section of the bone floor.
A loud, heavy mechanical click echoed through the dead silence.
"Well, there it is," Levi said.
The entire labyrinth violently shook. The bone walls behind them didn’t just slide shut; they aggressively slammed together with a deafening crunch, completely sealing off the hallway they had just walked through. The narrow corridor ahead rapidly widened. The ceiling stretched upward into the dark, and the walls expanded out into a massive, circular arena.
The walls were made entirely of gigantic, fused spines that curved inward like a ribcage, trapping them inside a massive bone coliseum.
There were no doors. There were no exits. It was a literal kill-box.
The floor began to glow with a sickly, necrotic purple light.
Fifteen massive summoning circles erupted on the ground at the exact same time. The game wasn’t messing around. This trap was designed to completely wipe high-level raid parties before they could even reach the Midnight Spire.
Levi watched the monsters pull themselves out of the purple light.
Five towering Obsidian Dreadknights on their skeletal warhorses.
Five hyper-fast Shadow-Weaver Assassins wrapped in tattered silk.
Five absolute brick-wall Abyssal Goliaths carrying massive stone pillars.
Fifteen Level 60 Elites spawned simultaneously.
"Okay, this is actually a bit much," Levi muttered, resting the Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse on his shoulder.
He didn’t panic. He just ran the math.
He was Level 51. The enemies were Level 60. That was exactly a nine-level gap, which meant the system was going to enforce a 45% Level Suppression penalty on his damage. It was annoying, but with his 4,992 Total Attack, he could easily chew through a 45% wall.
The real problem was the incoming damage.
Five Dreadknights hitting for 4,000 each. Five Goliaths hitting for 5,000 each. Five Assassins hitting for 3,500 each. If he got swarmed and pinned in the center of this coliseum, the sheer volume of attacks would instantly vaporize his 10,080 Max HP, even with his Diamond-tier necklace cutting the damage in half.
The fifteen Elites let out a synchronized, deafening roar that shook the spine walls. They all charged.
"Isolde! Lock down the fast ones!" Levi barked.
"Artillery protocols engaged," Isolde replied flatly.
She slammed the butt of her basic wooden staff into the bone floor. A massive, glowing red circular field expanded across the right side of the coliseum. Three of the Shadow-Weaver Assassins sprinted directly into the red zone. Their speed was violently yanked from 600 down to 100, causing them to trip and roll across the bone dust in a mess of tangled purple silk.
Levi didn’t care about the assassins. He had his eyes glued to the five Abyssal Goliaths charging straight down the middle.
"Platinum Ward of the Abyss!"
The air in the coliseum completely froze. A thick, swirling vortex of pitch-black abyssal matter erupted from the floor, entirely encasing his avatar. His massive 10,110 HP shield locked into place.
He didn’t try to dodge. He sprinted dead center into the five Goliaths.
"Let’s see how much you like your own damage," Levi grinned.
The five giants reached him at the exact same second. They raised their massive stone pillars high into the air and brought them crashing down in a synchronized, devastating overhead smash.
The five stone pillars slammed directly into Levi’s abyssal shield.
The VR pain engine hit him with a dull, vibrating shockwave that rattled his teeth, but he planted his boots and took the hit.
The system rapidly calculated the math.
Goliath Attack was 5,000. Levi’s current Defense was 549.
The raw incoming damage was 4,451 per hit. Levi’s Diamond-tier [Heart of the Chained] necklace instantly cut that number in half.
Five Goliaths hit him at the exact same time. 2,225 multiplied by 5 equaled a massive 11,125 incoming damage.
The 10,110 HP Platinum Ward took the brunt of the assault. The black vortex absorbed as much as it could before violently shattering into thousands of black shards with a loud, digital crunch.
The shield was gone. The remaining 1,015 damage bled right through and slammed into Levi’s actual health pool.
[-1,015]