Chapter 113: Chapter 113: The Illusion of Invincibility

Dante walked away from the Astral Emporium. He left Sera and the team to sort through the mountain of high-tier loot.

He didn’t activate any mobility skills.

He took his time and walked the pristine white marble streets of Aethelgardia.

The capital city of the Veridian Alliance was beautiful. It was built entirely to showcase the endgame grandeur of the Zenith Protocol.

Towering statues of ancient heroes lined the avenues. Massive glowing magical braziers provided a warm golden light against the bright blue sky.

The city wasn’t empty anymore.

The first wave of dedicated organized players who had managed to clear the Spire of Ascension were finally trickling into the capital.

They moved in tight disciplined groups, wore coordinated guild tabards, and had relatively decent Silver-tier gear.

They looked exhausted and hardened by the grueling final trial of the beginner zones. But they were scanning the massive city with eager and greedy eyes.

Dante kept his [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] pulled tightly around his shoulders.

He didn’t want to deal with the inevitable mob of players begging for gold or offering mercenary contracts.

He crossed into a massive open-air plaza situated right before the upper residential tiers.

The plaza was packed.

Several hundred high-level players were gathered around the central fountain. They loudly discussed the recent server events and formed new alliances.

Dante stuck to the edge of the crowd. He intended to quietly slip past them and continue his search for the descendants of the Blade-Saint.

He didn’t make it to the other side.

"You!"

A loud and incredibly aggressive voice cut through the ambient chatter of the plaza.

Dante didn’t stop walking. He ignored it.

"I said halt, Dan!"

Dante stopped. He slowly turned his head.

Standing in the absolute center of the plaza and pointing a massive broadsword directly at Dante was a player wearing dark sleek leather armor.

His player ID hovered proudly above his head in bright yellow text and indicated he was in the top 100 on the global leaderboards.

[ID: Aurelius]

[Level: 32]

Dante recognized the name.

Aurelius was a notoriously arrogant solo player known for grinding heavily in PvP zones and ganking lower-level players to pad his stats.

But what caught the attention of Dante wasn’t the player. It was the weapon in his hand.

The dark purple broadsword wasn’t a standard drop. It looked identical to the Dark Demon materials Dante had harvested from Gluttony.

It was a high-tier endgame weapon completely out of place for a Level 32 player on the first day of the cycle.

"You are Dan, are you not?" Aurelius sneered and took a step forward.

The crowd in the plaza immediately backed away and formed a wide circle around the two players. Nobody wanted to get caught in the crossfire of an anomaly.

"The guy who thinks he owns the server because he used a glitch to kill a dragon."

Dante fully turned around and faced the arrogant player.

"I do not think I own the server," Dante said. His voice was entirely flat. "I just own the people who get in my way. You are currently in my way."

Aurelius laughed loudly and played to the crowd. He spun the dark purple broadsword expertly in his hand.

"You got lucky, Dan," Aurelius mocked. "You found a bug. You used a system exploit to boost your damage. But the developers just pushed a hotfix."

"The exploit is patched. You are just a standard Warrior now. And I am going to be the guy who puts you in the dirt."

Dante raised an eyebrow.

A hotfix? The Zenith Protocol didn’t do hotfixes.

It wasn’t a game managed by developers sitting in an office. It was a cosmic system.

But the rumor mill on the forums fueled by the absolute desperation of Silas and Ryujin to discredit him had apparently convinced the general player base that the power of Dante was a temporary glitch that had been quietly resolved.

"Is that what they are saying on the forums?" Dante asked. He was genuinely amused.

"I do not care what the forums say," Aurelius stated. He pointed the tip of his dark sword at the chest of Dante.

"I care about the leaderboards. If I kill the guy who supposedly killed an Annihilation-Tier, my rank skyrockets. I am officially challenging you to a duel."

The system interface immediately popped up in the vision of Dante.

[Player ’Aurelius’ has issued a formal Duel Request.]

[Stakes: Death results in standard EXP loss and randomized item drop.]

[Accept? Y/N]

Dante looked at the prompt. He looked at the arrogant player holding the Dark Demon sword.

He had an SSS-Rank quest to track down, and he was currently wasting time indulging an idiot.

He reached out and tapped ’Y’.

[Duel Accepted. Engagement begins in 3... 2... 1...]

"You made a mistake," Aurelius grinned and dropped into a low combat stance.

He didn’t charge forward immediately. He reached into his system interface and activated his innate talent.

[Player ’Aurelius’ has activated Innate Talent: Absolute Dodge.]

The avatar of Aurelius suddenly blurred. He didn’t teleport, but his physical model seemed to vibrate and became slightly translucent.

"I drew an S-Rank talent," Aurelius boasted and took a slow step forward.

"For twenty seconds, my evasion stat is locked at one hundred percent. I physically cannot be hit by physical attacks, magical projectiles, or area-of-effect spells."

"You cannot touch me. And I am going to carve you to pieces."

Dante watched the translucent rogue.

Absolute Dodge. It was a notoriously frustrating mechanic in PvP.

It completely negated the need for armor or health pools.

For twenty seconds, the player was a ghost freely able to deal damage while completely ignoring defensive positioning.

The crowd in the plaza murmured nervously.

They had seen the massive explosive damage of Dante on the live streams, but if he couldn’t hit the target, his damage was useless.

Aurelius charged.

He moved incredibly fast with his Level 32 agility stat pushing him into a sprint.

He raised the Dark Demon broadsword and aimed a brutal horizontal slash directly at the unhelmeted neck of Dante.

Dante didn’t trigger [Phantom Waltz]. He didn’t summon [Cyclone of Ruin] to trap the rogue. He didn’t even activate [Aegis Deflection] to parry the strike.

He simply stood perfectly still.

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

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

The primordial greatsword hummed aggressively and devoured the ambient sunlight in the plaza.

Dante didn’t pull the massive blade back for a heavy swing.

He just casually thrust the tip of the black sword forward directly into the path of the charging rogue.

Aurelius didn’t even try to dodge the thrust.

He saw the black blade coming and sneered, fully trusting his S-Rank talent.

He leaned into the strike and expected the sword to pass harmlessly through his translucent avatar to allow him to deliver the decapitating blow.

He was wrong.

[Passive Activated: Inevitability]

[Description: The blade bends space to meet its target. Attacks made with Voidsever cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried by evasion mechanics. Hit rate is a guaranteed 100%.]

The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol didn’t even attempt to calculate the math.

The cosmic priority of a primordial Celestial-tier weapon completely and flawlessly overwrote the localized parameters of an S-Rank innate talent.

The tip of Voidsever didn’t pass through the ghost.

It hit solid digital meat.

The jagged black blade pierced cleanly through the dark leather armor of Aurelius and sank deep into the center of his chest.

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

The momentum of the sprint of Aurelius carried him entirely up the length of the massive blade. He impaled himself.

Aurelius stopped dead with his face mere inches from Dante.

The arrogant sneer completely vanished and was replaced by a look of absolute uncomprehending horror.

He looked down at the massive black sword protruding from his chest.

His ’Absolute Dodge’ buff was still actively ticking on his interface and was completely ignored by the weapon that had just gutted him.

Dante looked him in the eyes.

"You should read the patch notes," Dante whispered.

He didn’t swing. He just twisted the hilt of Voidsever sharply to the right.

[-48,000! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

Aurelius didn’t even have time to scream.

The massive true damage backed by the attack stats of Dante completely zeroed out the health bar of the rogue in a single frame.

The top-100 player violently exploded into a cloud of blue pixels. The concussive force of the sudden death blew the pitch-black cloak of Dante back.

[Duel Concluded. Winner: Dan]

Dante stood perfectly balanced and held the massive black sword.

The entire plaza was completely and utterly dead silent.

Several hundred high-level players stared at the empty space where Aurelius had just been standing.

They had watched a top-tier player activate a guaranteed invulnerability talent, charge forward, and get instantly and casually executed with a single thrust.

There was no massive explosion. There was no flashy Zenith-tier skill animation.

It was just a brutal undeniable demonstration of absolute overriding systemic priority.

Dante pulled Voidsever back and rested the massive black blade easily on his shoulder.

He looked down at the cobblestones.

Because it was a duel, Aurelius hadn’t dropped his entire inventory, but the system forced a randomized item drop as a penalty for losing.

Sitting on the pristine white stone was the dark purple broadsword Aurelius had been wielding.

Dante casually reached down and picked it up.

He dismissed Voidsever, the black blade dissolving back into the brand on his wrist, and continued his walk through the plaza to head toward the upper residential tiers of the city.

The crowd of heavily armored players immediately frantically parted to let him through.

Nobody said a word. Nobody raised a weapon. They just stared at the ground as the gold-armored anomaly walked past them.

"So much for the hotfix," a player whispered nervously as Dante disappeared down a side street.

Dante checked his digital map. The waypoint for the descendants of the Blade-Saint was only a few blocks away.

He needed to finish this fetch quest so he could return to the Emporium and see what Sera was doing with the auction.

He navigated the quiet pristine streets of the upper tier.

The architecture here was significantly more lavish. It had massive manors built from polished white stone and surrounded by manicured gardens.

He arrived at the designated coordinates.

It wasn’t a manor.

It was a small dilapidated stone building tucked into a narrow alleyway between two massive estates. The wooden sign above the door was heavily weathered and barely legible.

Dante pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside.

The interior was dusty and smelled strongly of old parchment and oxidized iron. It looked like a neglected training dojo.

Racks of rusted practice swords lined the walls, and the wooden floor was heavily scuffed from years of use.

Standing in the center of the room aggressively striking a wooden training dummy with a chipped steel longsword was a young woman.

She wore simple unadorned leather armor. Her dark hair was tied back in a tight practical braid.

Dante watched her swing.

The form was incredibly tight. It focused entirely on efficiency and speed and completely lacked the flashy exaggerated animations typical of standard Warrior classes. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

It was the exact same baseline martial discipline Kaelar had used in the dream.

Dante stepped forward, and his iron boots clicked on the wooden floor.

The woman stopped swinging instantly. She spun around and leveled the chipped steel longsword directly at the chest of Dante.

Her eyes were sharp and evaluated the massive cosmic weight of his armor.

"We are closed," she said. Her voice was completely flat and devoid of any fear. "I do not care what guild you represent. The dojo is not selling."

Dante didn’t draw his weapon. He reached into his infinite inventory.

"I am not here to buy anything," Dante said.

He pulled out the heavy leather-bound scroll sealed with the glowing silver sword emblem. The [Blade-Master] Hidden Class scroll.

"The Warden of 404 remembers his oath," Dante said and tossed the scroll to her.