Chapter 103: Chapter 103: Breaking the Damage Cap

The battlefield outside Ironhold had completely frozen.

The thousands of players making up the allied armies, the scattered independent groups, and the NPC guards on the city walls had all stopped fighting.

The sheer overwhelming energy spike radiating from the avatar of Dante had drawn every single eye on the server.

High above the battlefield, Cipher hovered just out of bow range on a massive conjured disc of glowing blue data.

He wasn’t a combatant. His player ID hovered above his head in neutral white text.

He wore a sleek high-tech bodysuit completely devoid of armor plating. It was covered in glowing scrolling lines of localized code.

Cipher was the premier independent info-broker on the Overture server.

He made his living not by fighting bosses, but by streaming high-level engagements to millions of viewers back on Veridia.

He was currently operating three different high-definition recording drones. All of them were completely focused on the lone gold-armored player standing in the mud below.

"Are you seeing this stream?" Cipher muttered excitedly to his massive real-world audience. He adjusted a holographic interface projecting from his wrist.

"Dan just voluntarily tanked his own health bar to 10%. He is running a full berserker build in the middle of a Cathedral-level horde. If a single mob coughs on him, he is dead."

Cipher zoomed his primary camera drone directly onto the faceplate of Dante.

"But look at his output," Cipher analyzed and watched the real-time API data stream across his visor.

"He just hit a Dark Demon boss for over twelve thousand damage on a basic un-buffed swing. That is not a Zenith skill. That is just raw math. He is a walking nuke."

Down in the mud, Dante didn’t care about the cameras.

Void-Bishop Morgrim recovered from the massive hit.

The staggering blow had canceled the dark acid scroll, but the boss was furious.

The glowing crimson eye on his staff flared with a blinding toxic light.

[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Abyssal Shroud]

The Void-Bishop slammed the butt of his staff into the dirt.

An impenetrable dome of pure pitch-black darkness erupted from the staff. It expanded outward in a fifty-foot radius.

It completely engulfed Dante and the boss and cut them off entirely from the surrounding monster horde and the watching armies.

"Darkness," Dante said quietly. His voice resounded in the void.

It was a standard anti-melee mechanic. The boss blinded the player and then relied on rapid unpredictable magical strikes to whittle them down.

But Dante wasn’t a standard melee fighter.

He opened his inventory.

He didn’t pull out a torch or a glowing crystal.

He equipped a small dark ring he had looted from the Phantom Chimera Emperor back in the Whispering Chasm.

[Item Equipped: Band of the Void-Walker]

[Passive 1: Infinite Inventory.]

[Passive 2: Void Step.]

Dante hadn’t needed the combat passives of the ring since he acquired it. He mostly used it as a massive backpack.

But the Titan-tier accessory was designed specifically for fighting in absolute darkness.

The ring pulsed on his finger.

The pitch-black darkness of the dome didn’t lift, but the vision of Dante instantly sharpened.

He could see the clear sharp outlines of the stone floor, the swirling mist, and the towering silhouette of the Void-Bishop standing twenty feet away.

But seeing wasn’t the only benefit.

The hidden combat passive of the ring, fully identified by Master Sun earlier that day, activated the moment Dante entered an environment devoid of ambient light.

[Item Passive Activated: Night Incarnation]

[Effect: While operating in absolute darkness, the base physical attack power of the user is doubled.]

Dante felt the massive power surge.

He was already sitting at 6,450 Attack Power thanks to the [Blood Sacrifice] of Erebus, the domain buff of Aura, and the siege event multiplier.

The ring doubled it.

[Current Attack Power: 12,900]

He was a Level 55 player holding nearly thirteen thousand raw unmitigated attack power.

The number was so high the system interface was actively vibrating and struggling to process the localized data load.

Dante didn’t draw the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. He needed absolute armor-piercing destruction.

He held out his right hand. The black brand on his wrist flared violently.

Thick and light-absorbing smoke erupted from his palm. It condensed into the massive shape of [Voidsever].

The primordial greatsword recognized the massive power spike. It vibrated furiously in his grip and let out a low predatory hum.

The boss raised his staff. He blindly fired a rapid volley of glowing green necrotic bolts into the darkness. He hoped to catch the fragile 913-HP target.

Dante didn’t dodge.

[Skill Executed: Phantom Waltz]

The purple pulsating invulnerability frames enveloped him. He vanished.

The necrotic bolts passed harmlessly through his digital afterimage.

Crack.

Dante appeared directly behind the towering Dark Demon boss.

He didn’t use a basic swing this time.

He gripped the dark bone hilt of Voidsever with both hands and pulled the massive black blade back for a fully charged Zenith-tier strike.

[Skill Executed: Abyssal Cleave]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

The spatial fracture condensed along the edge of the blade and turned Voidsever into a singularity.

Dante swung the primordial greatsword horizontally and aimed directly for the center of the spine of the boss.

The blade hit.

[Passive Activated: Absolute Severance. 100% Armor Ignored.]

The black sword sheared completely through the heavy shadow-woven robes and the dense corrupted bone underneath without a single fraction of resistance.

The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol completely froze.

The system was trying to calculate the base damage of 12,900 multiplied by the Zenith-tier 5,000% damage of [Abyssal Cleave].

This was applied to a Level 25 Dark Demon boss while completely ignoring its massive physical defense stats.

But Dante had the [Zenith Incarnate] title. He had Max Luck.

Voidsever was a cursed weapon that fed on absolute localized destruction.

The cosmic dice didn’t just roll. They shattered into dust.

[Hidden Trait Triggered: Doom’s Echo]

[Multiplier Applied: 1,000,000,000%]

The black spatial fracture passing through the Void-Bishop suddenly pulsed.

There was no sound.

The sheer overwhelming mathematical volume of the damage output completely muted the audio engine of the game for a localized three-second window.

The massive pitch-black dome of the [Abyssal Shroud] didn’t just fade away. It violently shattered and was completely blown apart by the concussive force of the strike.

The daylight slammed back onto the battlefield.

High above, the recording drones of Cipher captured the exact millisecond the dome broke.

The entire server watched the live stream and saw Dante standing behind the boss holding the massive black sword.

Above the head of the Void-Bishop, the damage numbers didn’t pop up cleanly.

The font broke. The numbers overlapped and glitched in bright aggressive red static. They completely overflowed the visual parameters of the interface of the game.

[-540,000! OVERKILL!]

The Void-Bishop didn’t stagger. He didn’t turn around.

The towering Level 25 Dark Demon boss was instantaneously flawlessly vaporized.

He didn’t even leave behind digital ash. He was completely unmade.

Dante didn’t stop.

The [Phantom Waltz] animation wasn’t finished. He still had four teleporting strikes left in the sequence.

He vanished from the spot where the boss had died.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

Dante teleported rapidly across the muddy battlefield. He targeted the massive heavily armored bone-golems that had been flanking the boss.

Because he had secured a kill with the first strike, the [Dance of Death] passive triggered. It instantly reset the cooldown of the skill.

He didn’t stop swinging.

He chained [Phantom Waltz] repeatedly and bounced across the front lines of the monster horde like a localized unstoppable glitch.

The 13,000 attack power backed by the 100% armor penetration of Voidsever meant every single strike was a guaranteed instant execution.

He was a blur of gold armor and black smoke. He was entirely untargetable and systematically deleted the remaining high-tier siege monsters in a matter of seconds.

The massive monster horde was completely stripped of their commanding boss and their frontline heavy units. They panicked.

The siege system broke.

The corrupted hounds and sludge-monsters turned and fled. They sprinted desperately back toward the tree line of the Sky Demon Forest.

The Siege of Ironhold was over.

Dante appeared in the center of the battlefield.

He was perfectly balanced, and his boots sank slightly into the mud. The purple invulnerability frames faded from his armor.

He slowly lowered Voidsever. The black blade still hummed with aggressive energy.

He didn’t take a single point of damage during the entire melee sequence.

High above the battlefield, Cipher stared at his holographic interface in absolute stunned silence.

The chat on his live stream was moving so fast it was physically impossible to read.

Millions of players across Veridia were frantically typing and trying to process the impossible math they had just witnessed.

"Half a million damage," Cipher whispered to his audience. His professional fast-talking persona completely shattered.

"He just hit a damage cap that the developers swore would not be possible for at least another two years. He did not just kill the boss. He deleted it from the memory of the server."

Down on the mud, the system finally caught up to the absolute slaughter.

[Target Eliminated: Void-Bishop Morgrim (Level 25 Dark Demon)]

[Target Eliminated: Bone-Golem x14]

[Target Eliminated: Corrupted Hound x22]

The golden text of a massive server-wide announcement slammed into the sky. It completely overwrote the bruised purple clouds of the siege.

[CRITICAL SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT]

[The Siege of Ironhold has been broken!]

[The Dark Demon entity ’Void-Bishop Morgrim’ has been slain.]

[First Kill Secured by Player: Dan]

Dante dismissed Voidsever back into the brand on his wrist.

He was breathing heavily. The physical strain of processing that much high-speed movement finally caught up to his avatar.

He checked his health bar. It was still sitting at a fragile 913 HP from the [Blood Sacrifice].

Aura materialized instantly by his shoulder.

The tiny silver fox let out a sharp and scolding chime. She was clearly furious that he had risked his life so recklessly.

She pulsed her [Resurgence Wave].

The massive localized burst of Aether washed over him. It completely refilled his health bar and returned him to a comfortable 9,130 HP.

"I know, I know," Dante smiled and patted the tiny sprite on her glowing head. "It was a calculated risk."

He turned away from the massive pile of glowing loot that had spawned where the boss died. He looked back toward the high stone walls of Ironhold.

Lila, Mei, and Casanova were standing on the battlements. They stared down at him in absolute awe.

He had saved the city, humiliated the three largest guilds on the server, and completely shattered the mathematical ceiling of the game.

All in front of a live global audience.

Dante rolled his shoulders and felt the immense weight of the incoming rewards.