Chapter 111: Chapter 111: A Rain of Blades

Dante stood behind Garrick’s glowing red shield, his dark purple armor contrasting sharply with the bright magic.

Sam, Silas’s lieutenant, brought his glowing black broadsword down in a brutal, sweeping arc, aiming to shatter the barrier and siphon the tank’s emotional energy.

Before the blade could touch the shield, Dante stepped through the red dome.

He didn’t draw [Voidsever]. He didn’t even draw the Gold-tier [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

He simply stood in Sam’s path, his arms hanging casually at his sides.

"Arrogant fool!" Sam roared, redirecting his strike to cleave Dante’s unshielded chest. "You think you can tank a Stat-Siphon?!"

The black broadsword slammed directly into the gold plating of his armor.

The impact was heavy, but Dante didn’t flinch. He didn’t stagger backward.

[Debuff Applied: Siphon.]

[Effect: Drains 50% of the target’s total base stats and temporarily transfers them to the user.]

Dante immediately felt the drop. The heavy armor felt slightly heavier. His massive health pool plummeted from 9,130 down to roughly 4,500. His attack power dropped.

Sam laughed hysterically as the stolen stats flowed into his avatar. His dark leather armor bulged, straining against the sudden, overwhelming influx of raw power.

He had just stolen half the stats of the highest-level player on the server.

"I’m a god!" Sam bellowed, raising his broadsword again. He moved with terrifying, blinding speed, enhanced by Dante’s stolen Agility. "You’re nothing without your numbers, Dan!"

Sam swung a devastating, horizontal slash aimed directly at Dante’s neck.

It was a guaranteed execution strike. With his stats halved, Dante couldn’t dodge in time.

Dante didn’t try to dodge.

[Skill Activated: Source of Recovery]

The passive ability of the Saint Destroyer-tier [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] triggered the exact millisecond the black blade connected with Dante’s neck.

The heavy, starry fabric of the cloak flared.

The massive kinetic force of Sam’s strike, bolstered by thousands of stolen stat points, was instantly caught by the cosmic mitigation algorithm.

The incoming damage was brutally, automatically cut directly in half.

The remaining damage hit Dante, slicing into his health bar.

[-1,200 HP]

It was a significant hit. But before Dante’s avatar could even process the pain, the second half of the cloak’s passive executed.

The starry fabric pulsed, instantly regenerating fifty percent of the exact health pool he had just lost.

[+600 HP]

Dante barely staggered. The lethal, armor-piercing strike had been mathematically neutered, turning a guaranteed decapitation into a moderate inconvenience.

Sam’s arrogant laughter died in his throat. He stared at the completely unfazed Outworlder, his glowing black broadsword trembling slightly in his hands.

"You hit hard," Dante noted, rubbing his neck where the blade had struck. "But you clearly don’t understand how mitigation scaling works."

Sam backed up, absolute panic setting into his features. He had stolen Dante’s stats. He was mathematically superior. Why wasn’t the target dying?

"Kill him!" Sam screamed to the vanguard troops struggling behind him. "Swarm him!"

Dante didn’t let them swarm.

He didn’t need his stolen base stats to wipe an army. He had Zenith-tier skills, zero cooldowns, and a brand new trick he wanted to test.

Dante held out his left hand.

[Skill Executed: Aether-Blade Storm]

Because of his [Chrono-Shift] talent, the Zenith-tier defensive skill had a completely nonexistent cooldown and cost absolutely zero mana. He didn’t just cast it once.

He spammed it.

He tapped the internal command trigger ten times in the span of a single second.

The air around him didn’t just shimmer; it violently shattered.

One hundred glowing, silver broadswords instantly materialized in the air above him. Then another hundred. Then another hundred.

A thousand autonomous, floating phantom swords forged from pure, concentrated Aether filled the sky above the Gilded Syndicate’s frontline.

They didn’t fall to the ground. They hovered, a massive, swirling ocean of metallic death, humming so loudly the sound drowned out the screaming players below.

"What is that?" Silas breathed from his elevated position behind the barricades, dropping his spyglass.

Dante didn’t give them time to retreat.

The skill was designed to actively intercept incoming attacks, but with a thousand swords filling a fifty-foot radius, the system’s targeting algorithm completely overloaded.

The phantom swords stopped circling Dante.

They locked onto every single hostile entity within range.

"Rain," Dante commanded softly.

The thousand silver broadswords shot downward like a localized meteor shower.

They didn’t strike like normal weapons. Upon contact, each phantom sword violently exploded, dealing 1,000% true damage to the target.

The Gilded Syndicate’s frontline completely vanished.

Heavy tower shields were atomized. Armor was pulverized. Hundreds of high-level paladins and warriors didn’t even have time to scream before their health bars zeroed out.

The explosive force shattered the cobblestones and kicked up a massive cloud of dust, turning the vanguard’s position into a smoking crater.

[-OVERKILL!]

[-OVERKILL!]

[-OVERKILL!]

The red damage text formed a solid, unreadable block in the air.

Sam, standing just outside the immediate blast zone, stared in absolute, mind-numbing horror at the smoking crater where his elite infantry had just been standing.

Over five hundred players were instantly deleted in a single cast.

"You..." Sam stammered, raising his black broadsword defensively.

Dante turned his attention back to the lieutenant. He was still under the effect of the Stat-Siphon, but he didn’t care. He needed to get rid of the guy before he tried another desperate attack.

Dante raised his right hand. He didn’t summon [Voidsever].

He activated the innate passive shared with him by Erebus.

[Skill Activated: Blood Sacrifice]

Dante voluntarily burned 90% of his remaining health. His health bar plummeted, but his attack power instantly multiplied by 900%.

Even with his stats halved by Sam’s siphon, the 900% multiplier pushed his raw attack power to an absurd, game-breaking level.

Sam saw Dante’s health drop into the critical red. He saw his chance.

The lieutenant charged, raising his broadsword for a final, desperate strike.

Dante didn’t dodge. He triggered the [Band of the Void-Walker].

[Passive Activated: Night Incarnation]

The sky was bright gold, but Dante didn’t need localized darkness. He commanded the pitch-black, starry fabric of his Divine-tier cloak to wrap entirely around his avatar. For a fraction of a second, he was completely enveloped in absolute, artificial darkness.

The ring’s passive triggered, instantly doubling his already massively inflated attack power.

Sam swung his sword.

The blade passed straight through Dante.

[Night Incarnation] made the user temporarily un-selectable by hostile targeting mechanics. Sam’s attack didn’t register.

Dante stepped out of his cloak’s shadow. He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He simply drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] and delivered a casual, horizontal slash across Sam’s chest.

With the combined modifiers of [Blood Sacrifice] and [Night Incarnation], the basic attack hit with the force of a falling moon.

[-450,000! OVERKILL!]

Sam’s avatar didn’t just shatter into pixels. The sheer mathematical volume of the damage output completely unraveled his code.

He turned entirely gray and dissolved into fine ash, instantly triggering a True Death.

The lieutenant was permanently deleted from the server.

Dante stood in the center of the smoking battlefield. His health was sitting at an incredibly fragile fraction, but he didn’t look worried.

Aura chimed happily, pulsing her [Resurgence Wave]. The massive, percentage-based heal washed over him, instantly restoring him to full health, completely negating the risk of the [Blood Sacrifice].

The Gilded Syndicate army fell completely silent.

Silas stood behind his barricades, staring at the empty space where his vanguard and his top lieutenant had just been standing.

He had brought three thousand men to execute a single player. He had lost over a sixth of his force in less than two minutes, and the target hadn’t even broken a sweat.

The morale of the Gilded Syndicate didn’t just waver. It completely snapped.

"He’s unkillable!" a mage shrieked from the backline, dropping his staff. "He’s taking zero damage and dropping nukes! We can’t fight a developer!"

"Retreat!" another player yelled, breaking formation and sprinting away from the battlefield.

Panic is highly contagious. When the backline broke, the remaining infantry followed. Thousands of heavily armored players turned around and ran for their lives, abandoning their barricades, dropping their weapons to shed weight, and desperately scrambling back toward the safety of the surrounding forests.

"Hold the line!" Silas roared, his voice cracking with desperation. "Stand your ground! I am paying you! Fight him!"

Nobody listened to the Guild Master. They were too busy trying to survive the anomaly.

Within thirty seconds, the massive, overwhelming ambush had completely routed.

Dante stood in the clearing, watching the Gilded Syndicate scatter like frightened insects. He didn’t chase them. He didn’t summon another storm of Aether blades. He had sent his message.

He dismissed the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] and turned back to his squad.

Lila was sitting on the grass, panting heavily, her staff resting across her knees. Mei was leaning against her colossal pan, grinning wildly.

Casanova was busy posing for imaginary cameras, his [Titan’s Physique] completely drained. Sera and Nyx were frantically tapping their datapads, likely recording the massive amounts of loot currently littering the battlefield.

And Garrick was still standing perfectly still, his red [Spiteful Bulwark] shield glowing brightly.

"Is it over?" Garrick asked, peering around the edge of his shield. "Did we win? I didn’t even get to swing my sword!"

"You did great, Garrick," Dante said, walking over and tapping the red shield. "You held the aggro."

The red dome shattered, dissipating into harmless light. Garrick beamed, clearly thrilled that he had successfully performed his role as the main tank.

Pip fluttered down from Mei’s shoulder, landing on top of a discarded tower shield.

"Look at all this stuff!" the tiny red dragon cheered, doing a little dance. "We just inherited an entire army’s worth of gear! I am going to need a bigger bag!"

"We’ll pick it up on the way," Dante said, looking past the smoking craters toward the towering, pristine white marble walls of the city in the distance.

The massive, golden gates of Aethelgardia stood open, welcoming the first Outworlders to the Capital.

"Come on," Dante ordered, pulling the [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] tighter around his shoulders. "We have a city to buy."