Chapter 53: [53]: The Undercrypt, 70% Suppression
With his new Domain fully secured and his Grand Mercantile Hub generating passive income by the minute, Levi didn’t have to worry about gold anymore. The players outside in the courtyard were furiously trading gear, perfectly content to pay his 5% tax to avoid the NPC cities. Levi let them do their thing.
He had other business to attend to. He left the black glass throne room and headed toward the back of the keep.
The Ruined Keep of Ash was massive, and he hadn’t fully explored the interior yet. He walked down a narrow, winding stone staircase that led deep into the foundations of the fortress. The ambient heat of the volcanic zone slowly faded the further down he went, replaced by a damp, biting chill that seeped through his Obsidian Carapace armor.
At the very bottom of the stairs, the hallway ended in a collapsed stone wall. Behind the rubble, a swirling, pitch-black portal pulsed with a heavy necrotic energy. The air around it literally froze, leaving a layer of frost on the stone bricks.
Levi stepped up to the portal. The system UI popped up immediately.
[Discovered Hidden Zone: Undercrypt of the Forgotten]
[Recommended Level: 35]
Levi stopped and just stared at the text floating in the air.
"Level thirty-five," Levi muttered, resting the heavy haft of the Sovereign’s Deathknell on his shoulder. "I’m Level twenty-one. That is a fourteen-level gap."
In Aethelgard, fighting mobs fourteen levels higher than your character wasn’t just considered difficult. It was mathematically considered suicide. The Level Suppression penalty scaled at 5% per level difference. A fourteen-level gap meant the game was going to slap him with a staggering 70% damage reduction penalty.
For a normal player, hitting a mob in this zone would result in their damage being reduced to zero. They would deal exactly 1 damage per swing while getting one-shot in return.
But Levi’s stats were a complete glitch in the system. His Total Attack was sitting at a monstrous 532.
"I can definitely hit through a seventy percent wall," Levi grinned. "Let’s see what kind of XP a Level 35 zone gives."
He stepped directly into the swirling black portal.
The sensory transition was jarring. The VR helmet simulated a blast of freezing, stagnant air that smelled like dust and dried blood. He materialized in a massive, cavernous underground cavern lined with towering pillars of bone. The floor was covered in a thick layer of gray webbing.
He didn’t have to take more than five steps before the ground vibrated.
Dropping from the dark ceiling with a heavy, sickening thud was a massive spider. It was easily the size of a dump truck, covered in pale, translucent gray armor plates. Its eight eyes glowed with a toxic purple light, and its mandibles dripped with venom that hissed as it hit the stone floor.
[Crypt Weaver]
[Level: 35]
[HP: 30,000 | ATK: 900 | DEF: 350]
"Thirty thousand health and nine hundred attack," Levi said, stepping back to give himself room to swing. "You are an absolute nightmare for anyone else."
He ran the combat math instantly in his head.
The Weaver had 350 Defense. His Gold-tier scythe ignored 20% of that. Twenty percent of 350 was 70. That dropped the giant spider’s effective Defense to exactly 280.
Levi’s Total Attack was 532.
532 minus 280 meant his raw damage per swing was 252. Now, he had to apply that suffocating 70% Level Suppression penalty. He was only going to deal 30% of his actual damage.
252 multiplied by 0.3 equaled exactly 75 Final Damage per basic strike.
He quickly checked his core skill. [Hollow’s Guillotine] had a 3.5 damage multiplier. 532 Attack times 3.5 gave him 1,862 raw damage. Minus the 280 effective Defense left 1,582. Applying the 70% penalty dropped the final skill damage to 474.
"Seventy-five on a basic. Four hundred and seventy-four on a skill," Levi calculated. "This is going to take a while."
He looked at the defensive math. If the Crypt Weaver hit him, its 900 Attack would go up against his 113 Defense.
900 minus 113 meant he would take exactly 787 damage.
Levi checked his health pool. He had 1,760 Max HP. If he took two direct hits from this thing, he was dead. His [Siphon Aura] wouldn’t heal him fast enough to prevent a two-tap.
"Hollow’s Ward," Levi commanded.
He dumped 150 Mana. The pitch-black, dark-matter shield erupted around his avatar, locking into place with exactly 755 HP. It was essentially an extra life bar.
He toggled his Siphon Aura on. The green light wrapped around his boots, draining 2 Mana every second.
The Crypt Weaver shrieked and lunged forward, thrusting its massive front legs like spears.
Levi kicked off the webbing. His 98 Speed allowed him to slide perfectly to the right, letting the massive spider leg stab into the stone floor exactly where he had just been standing.
He spun his scythe around and brought it down hard on the spider’s leg joint.
[-75]
The jagged Gold-tier blade bit into the pale armor. He swung twice more in rapid succession.
[-75] [-75]
The scythe’s passive triggered instantly. The tiny bleeding teardrop icon popped up over the Crypt Weaver’s head.
[-5] [-5]
"That’s the real damage," Levi smirked. The 5 true damage per second completely ignored the massive 350 Defense and the brutal 70% suppression penalty.
The giant spider thrashed wildly, spinning its massive body around and sweeping its abdomen across the floor.
Levi couldn’t dodge the wide arc in time. The heavy, armored abdomen slammed directly into him. The VR engine simulated the massive kinetic force, throwing him backward.
The hit slammed into his dark-matter shield.
[-787]
The 755 HP Hollow’s Ward violently shattered into black glass. The remaining 32 damage bled through and hit his actual health pool, dropping his HP from 1,760 down to 1,728.
"Okay, I cannot let that happen again," Levi grunted, recovering his footing.
He didn’t bother recasting the shield immediately to save mana. He just relied entirely on his 98 Speed. He dashed back into melee range.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
He burned 100 Mana. The scythe erupted in a blinding, dark-gold aura. He ripped the blade in a massive ten-meter cone directly into the spider’s face.
[-474]
The Crypt Weaver shrieked as the skill’s debuff triggered. A broken shield icon appeared over its head, shredding 20% of its remaining defense.
Levi went to work. He weaved around the venomous strikes, constantly repositioning to stay in the spider’s blind spots. The combat turned into a five-minute marathon of absolute focus. He couldn’t afford to take another clean hit without his shield up. He relied purely on his iframes, physically ducking under the massive fangs and slashing at the unarmored joints.
His 10% Lifesteal instantly healed the 32 damage he had taken, keeping his health locked at a perfect 1,760.
He kept the bleed ticking. He cast Guillotine exactly on cooldown. Whenever his mana dropped below 50, he chugged a top-tier potion from his belt.
Four minutes passed. Then five.
The Crypt Weaver’s massive health bar finally hit the critical threshold. It dropped to exactly 6,000 HP.
Twenty percent.
Levi didn’t even hesitate. "Soul Harvest."
Fifty Mana vanished from his pool. The massive, spectral black guillotine materialized in the freezing air above the giant spider. It slammed straight down, cleanly decapitating the Crypt Weaver.
The massive monster collapsed and shattered into a huge explosion of blue polygons.
[System Notification: Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
[System Notification: Slain 1x Level 35 Crypt Weaver. Level gap bonus applied. Gained 25,000 XP.]
Levi stared at the system prompt, his eyes going wide.
"Twenty-five thousand experience points," Levi whispered, completely stunned. "For one single mob."
The XP return was absolutely earth-shattering. The 14-level gap meant the game was applying an extreme underdog multiplier to the base experience. It took him five minutes to kill one spider, but the payout was the equivalent of grinding an entire open-world zone for hours.
He walked over to the dissolving pixels. Alongside a pile of silver coins, the Weaver had dropped a glowing blue potion.
[Greater Mana Potion]
[Rarity: Uncommon]
[Effect: Instantly restores 300 Mana.]
Levi picked up the potion and laughed. "They even drop high-tier mana fuel. I don’t even have to go back to the city to restock."
He looked out across the massive, cavernous Undercrypt. There were dozens of Crypt Weavers crawling around the pillars, completely ignoring him.
He checked his progression bar. He needed 1.5 million XP to hit Level 22. At 25,000 XP per kill, he just had to kill sixty mobs to level up.
Levi tightened his grip on the Sovereign’s Deathknell. He wasn’t leaving this dungeon anytime soon.