Chapter 19: [19] : Cracking the Rot-Walker, Conceptual Sever

Declan stood inside his silver bubble of purified air and completely ignored the five hundred heavily armed players behind him.

He tilted his head back and looked up at Gargantua.

The monster let out a mechanical grinding roar that shook the bubbling gray mud under Declan’s boots.

Before the real action started.

Back at the barricade, Caldwell spilled the rest of his drink.

The guild master of the Sovereign Syndicate pointed a shaking finger at Declan.

"Who is that idiot?!" Caldwell screamed at his lieutenants.

Declan was interfering in his master plan.

"He just walked right into the aggro radius! He’s going to trigger the AoE stomp! Kill the boss! Hit it with everything before that random scrub resets the aggro!"

The Sovereign Syndicate was highly trained. They didn’t hesitate.

"Fire!" a raid leader yelled.

Dozens of heavy ballistas mounted on the crater ridge fired simultaneously.

Massive steel bolts the size of telephone poles slammed into Gargantua’s back and shoulders.

The mages in the backline released a synchronized volley of high-tier fireballs and lightning strikes.

The explosions were deafening.

The sheer amount of damage numbers popping up over the World Boss’s head formed a solid wall of red text.

Declan didn’t move. He just watched the boss’s health bar.

[HP: 42,000 / 50,000]

The artillery barrage had shaved off a huge chunk of health in seconds.

But then, the thick green vines wrapped around Gargantua’s body flared with a blinding light.

A new system prompt appeared over the monster.

[Passive Triggered: Fungal Regeneration]

The massive holes in the boss’s chest and shoulders began to violently knit back together.

Rotting wood grew at a rapid pace.

Mutilated corpses snapped back into place.

Within three seconds, the health bar shot right back up.

[HP: 49,500 / 50,000]

Caldwell slammed his fist onto his velvet folding chair.

"Keep firing! It’s a DPS check! We have to out-damage the healing factor! Drain its mana!"

Nothing beats hiting it hards until it breaks, everything has a limit.

More explosions rocked the swamp.

The cycle repeated.

The guild would blast away eight thousand health, and the boss would instantly heal it all back.

The ground pounded as Gargantua stomped its massive feet.

It sent waves of toxic spikes outward, instantly killing the low-level cannon fodder players Caldwell had pushed into the arena.

Declan stood perfectly safe in his silver bubble.

The toxic spikes hit the invisible wall of his +20 Purification Talisman and dissolved into harmless green mist.

"Well, that is annoying," Declan muttered to himself.

He crossed his arms and did the math.

His +20 Carnage Cleaver dealt massive bleed damage.

His +10 Warden’s Halberd dealt absurd kinetic crushing damage.

But neither of those mattered if the boss could just magically regenerate thousands of health points per second.

He could chop off the boss’s leg, and a new one would just grow back before the monster even hit the ground.

He needed anti-heal.

He needed to turn off that regeneration permanently.

This actually beats hiting it hard.

While the Sovereign Syndicate screamed and fired their weapons, Declan calmly pulled up his system interface.

The monster was pretty occupied with the incoming shots.

He opened the newly unlocked Global Auction House.

The holographic yellow screen floated in front of him.

He typed in a quick search filter.

[Keywords: Bleed, Anti-Heal, Wound. Tier: Scavenged.]

A list of cheap low-level items and skill books populated the screen.

Most of it was absolute trash being sold by desperate players in other sectors.

Declan scrolled past the rusty daggers and spiked arrows until he found what he was looking for.

[Skill Book: Lacerate]

↳ Type: Active Skill

↳ Requirement: Bladed Weapon

↳ Description: Consume 20 Stamina to deliver a jagged strike. Reduces target’s healing received by 10% for 5 seconds.

↳ Buyout Price: 15 Origin Points.

As usual, It was a terrible skill for a normal player.

Ten percent healing reduction for five seconds was basically useless against a World Boss.

But Declan didn’t care about the base stats.

He only cared about the concept.

He tapped the buyout button.

[Item Purchased. Origin Points -15.]

The glowing blue book materialized in his hand.

He pressed it against his chest instantly.

The book shattered into light and absorbed into his skin, dumping the muscle memory of the attack into his brain.

[Skill Learned: Lacerate Level 1]

Declan checked his balance.

He still had over four thousand Origin Points from the Black Vanguard massacre.

"System," Declan said in his mind. "Enhance the Lacerate skill. Twenty times."

The familiar splitting headache hit him.

It felt like someone was driving a nail into his temple as the system forcefully rewrote the digital code inside his mind.

[System Enhancement Initiated]

↳ Lacerate +1... +5...

[Notice: Maximum safety threshold reached. Neural corruption imminent.]

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Cap removed.]

↳ Lacerate +6... +15... +19...

The headache vanished and was replaced by a cold sharp clarity.

[Lacerate has reached +20.]

[Triggering Conceptual Mutation...]

The system text in his vision turned a dark bloody crimson.

[Skill Mutated: Conceptual Sever]

↳ Type: Active Skill

↳ Description: Consume 20 Stamina to deliver a strike that severs the target’s connection to restoration. Wounds inflicted by this attack cannot be healed by any spell, passive skill, item, or natural regeneration. The damage is permanent until the target dies.

Declan smiled.

The cheat codes were fully operational.

He closed the interface and reached into his digital storage.

The +20 Carnage Cleaver appeared in his right hand.

The pitch-black serrated blade pulsed with a dark red glow.

Gargantua was busy swatting away fireballs.

It hadn’t even noticed the tiny human standing by its left foot.

Declan checked his stamina. It was full. He had one hundred points.

He was more than ready.

"Void Blink," Declan thought.

The world went pitch black for a fraction of a second.

Declan vanished from the mud and reappeared directly behind the boss’s massive tree-trunk-sized left ankle.

He didn’t hesitate.

He activated Conceptual Sever and swung the Carnage Cleaver with both hands.

Schwing!

The red blade sliced cleanly through the rotting wood and thick vines of the monster’s Achilles tendon.

Dark sludgy sap sprayed out of the wound.

Gargantua let out a deafening screech.

The boss stumbled forward, its massive left leg buckling under its own weight.

The green vines around the wound flared brightly as the passive regeneration tried to kick in.

The green light met the jagged cut and physically shattered.

It looked like glass breaking.

The code of the game literally refused to allow the healing to apply. The wound stayed open.

"What happened to its leg?!" Caldwell yelled from the barricade.

"Did the artillery hit a weak spot?"

Declan didn’t stick around to answer. He looked up at the towering monster.

"Void Blink."

He teleported straight up, appearing fifteen meters higher right next to the boss’s massive hip joint.

Gravity immediately grabbed him but he already had his cleaver pulled back.

He activated Conceptual Sever again. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

He drove the blade deep into the rotting flesh and rusted metal of the hip socket, dragging it downward as he started to fall.

Gargantua roared in absolute agony.

The boss blindly swiped a massive hand at its own hip trying to crush whatever was hurting it.

Declan let himself drop for half a second to dodge the giant hand.

Then he locked his eyes on the center of the monster’s back.

"Void Blink."

He vanished from mid-air and reappeared directly between Gargantua’s shoulder blades.

He landed on a platform of fused rotting corpses that made up the boss’s spine.

He had sixty stamina left.

He only needed twenty for the final strike.

The World Boss was thrashing wildly now.

It couldn’t put any weight on its left leg and its hip was totally shredded.

The Sovereign Syndicate mages stopped casting.

They were completely confused as to why the boss was suddenly tearing itself apart.

Declan gripped the Carnage Cleaver tight.

He raised it high above his head.

The jagged blade glowed with the dark crimson light of the mutated skill.

He aimed straight down at the thickest part of the monster’s spinal column.

"Lights out," Declan whispered.

He drove the cleaver down with everything he had.

The Conceptual Sever easily cut through the rusted iron and petrified wood.

The blade sank deep into the core of the boss’s spine.

It instantly severed the main neural connection between the upper and lower halves of the colossal body.

Gargantua’s glowing green eyes flickered and dimmed.

The massive roar turned into a pathetic gargling wheeze.

The monster’s legs completely gave out.

Forty feet of rotting mass collapsed straight down into the swamp.

The impact was like a meteor hitting the earth.

A massive tidal wave of gray mud and toxic water exploded outward in a complete circle.

The mud wave crashed over the Sovereign Syndicate’s wind barriers.

It knocked dozens of heavily armored players off their feet and sent Caldwell tumbling out of his velvet chair.

Declan rode the collapsing monster down like a surfer on a wave.

Thanks to his Spiked Striders’ fall damage immunity, he didn’t even feel the jarring impact when the boss finally hit the ground.

He stood up straight on the paralyzed monster’s back.

Gargantua was completely immobilized.

Its health bar was sitting at 35,000 but it couldn’t move a single muscle.

The healing vines sparked and fizzled, desperately trying to repair the severed spine.

But the conceptual rule held firm. The boss was permanently crippled.

He was almost done.

Declan casually rested the bloody cleaver on his shoulder and looked out at the Sovereign Syndicate camp.

It was time to finish the job.