Chapter 119: Chapter 119: Testing the Anomaly

Dante looked down the dark, spiraling staircase leading deeper into the Wyrm-Sealed Abyss.

The roars sound up from the depths were getting louder, rattling the loose stones on the tunnel floor.

He didn’t move immediately.

He looked at Erebus. The tiny Half-Soul Celestial was happily swinging her legs, sitting on a broken piece of masonry, finishing her meat bun.

The massive gray hound she had reality-warped sat obediently beside her, panting softly.

"I need to test something," Dante said, stepping closer to the little girl.

If Erebus could simply tell the game engine to delete or rewrite hostile entities, Dante didn’t need to swing a sword for the rest of the cycle.

He could just carry her through the hardest raids on the server and let her casually order the bosses to turn into loot piñatas.

It sounded too good to be true. And in the Zenith Protocol, anything that sounded too good to be true usually had a catastrophic systemic drawback.

"Erebus," Dante said, pointing at the gray hound. "Tell it to die."

Lila gasped, looking up from the floor. "Dante! You can’t just execute a dog!"

"It’s a digital construct made of corrupted code, Lila," Dante stated flatly. "I need to know the parameters of her authority."

Erebus blinked her solid red eyes. She looked at the hound, then back at Dante. She didn’t look malicious or cruel. She just looked mildly curious.

She pointed a tiny, pale finger at the massive beast.

"Die," Erebus commanded softly.

The hound simply ceased to exist.

The massive gray beast instantly collapsed into a pile of fine, gray digital ash. There was no explosion of blue pixels, no loot drop, no death animation.

The entity was completely, mathematically erased from the localized server partition.

"Okay," Dante noted, crossing his arms. "Absolute execution command verified."

Mei pouted, poking the ash with her boot. "Aw. I liked him. He was fluffy."

"Let’s test the scaling," Dante said, ignoring the brawler’s disappointment.

He turned toward the dark staircase. "We’re going down to the second floor. Everyone stay sharp. The difficulty curve is going to spike."

The squad moved carefully down the spiraling stone stairs. The ambient light faded entirely, forcing Aura to pulse her silver starlight constantly just to illuminate the path ahead.

The temperature rose drastically, the air growing thick with humidity and the heavy scent of sulfur.

They reached the landing of the second floor.

The environment wasn’t a narrow tunnel. It was a sprawling, subterranean volcanic cavern. Rivers of glowing orange magma cut through the black rock, illuminating massive, iron-barred cages suspended from the ceiling by thick chains.

The cages were ripped open from the inside.

Standing in the center of the cavern, guarding a massive stone archway, were three towering monstrosities.

[Monster Spawn: Abyssal Magma-Troll]

[Tier: Gold]

[Level: 30]

[HP: 85,000 / 85,000]

They looked like the Swamp-Troll Erebus had turned into a backpack, but massively upgraded. Their bodies were formed from hardened rocks glowing with deep, internal heat.

They wielded massive, two-handed battleaxes forged from pure, solidified lava.

"Level 30 Gold mobs," Casanova gulped, hiding firmly behind Mei. "That’s a massive stat jump from the hounds."

Dante didn’t draw [Voidsever]. He looked at Erebus.

"Your turn," Dante instructed. "Tell them to turn into backpacks."

Erebus stepped forward, completely unbothered by the towering, magma-dripping beasts. She raised her hand and pointed her tiny finger directly at the center Troll.

"You are a backpack," Erebus commanded, her voice carrying the heavy, dual-layered cosmic resonance.

The three Magma-Trolls paused, their glowing eyes locking onto the tiny girl.

The system interface hitched violently. A bright, blinding flash of white light pulsed around the targeted Troll.

But the Troll didn’t shimmer. It didn’t compress.

The white light shattered like cheap glass, dissolving instantly into harmless sparks.

The Magma-Troll roared furiously, raising its massive lava axe, entirely unaffected by the reality-warping command.

[System Error: Target’s Cosmic Density Exceeds Authority Threshold.]

[Command Failed.]

"It didn’t work," Lila panicked, raising her wooden staff.

Dante stared at the system error prompt.

He immediately understood the math. The Zenith Protocol wasn’t completely broken. Erebus’s [Law of Command] wasn’t absolute. It was strictly bound by level disparity and tier scaling.

Erebus was a Level 25 Celestial. The hounds and the Cultist Handler had been lower level or lower tier, making their underlying code weak enough for her to easily rewrite.

But these were Level 30 Gold-tier mobs. Their stats and internal cosmic weight were simply too dense for a Level 25 entity to manipulate with a raw, un-scaled command.

The system’s baseline defense algorithms successfully resisted her authority.

"She has limits," Dante concluded, entirely satisfied with the test results. He wasn’t disappointed. In fact, he was relieved. If she could instantly delete anything, the game would be incredibly boring.

Erebus frowned, her red eyes pulsing slightly. "Stupid rocks. They are ignoring me."

"Don’t throw a tantrum," Dante warned her quickly, stepping in front of her. "I’ll handle the rocks."

The three Magma-Trolls charged.

They moved with surprising agility, their heavy obsidian boots cracking the stone floor. They swung their lava axes in wide, sweeping arcs, aiming to cleave the entire party in half.

"Lila, pin the flanks!" Dante barked, drawing the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

Lila slammed her staff against the ground.

[Skill Executed: Gravity Well]

Two invisible cylinders of concentrated gravity crashed down, catching the two flanking Trolls. The massive beasts roared in surprise as the atmospheric pressure multiplied by a hundred.

Their heavy bodies didn’t completely flatten like the fragile hounds, but their movement was entirely arrested. They sank to their knees, struggling violently against the crushing weight.

The center Troll, completely unhindered, closed the distance. It brought its massive lava axe down in a devastating overhead smash directly toward Dante.

"Mei! Intercept!" Dante yelled.

Mei stepped forward, effortlessly hefting the cast-iron [God-Slaying Skillet].

She didn’t use [Colossal Manifestation]. She just caught the blow on the standard four-foot pan.

CLANG!

The [Perfect Block] passive absorbed the entire kinetic impact of the Level 30 Gold-tier strike.

The massive lava axe shattered against the indestructible skillet, sending a shower of superheated sparks across the cavern.

Mei grinned, perfectly holding the boss’s aggro.

Dante didn’t hesitate. He needed to execute the target quickly before Lila ran out of mana holding the flanks.

He triggered [Phantom Dash].

Because of [Chrono-Shift], there was no cooldown. He instantly teleported past Mei, materializing directly behind the staggered Magma-Troll.

BOOM.

The sonic boom hit the Troll point-blank. The Gold-tier mob resisted the full one-second stun, but the concussive force briefly interrupted its recovery animation.

It was all Dante needed.

He didn’t use an intricate Zenith skill. He relied on pure, raw stats. He gripped the Gold-tier broadsword with both hands and unleashed a flurry of rapid, brutal strikes against the back of the Troll’s knees.

The +50% bonus damage against corrupted enemies activated instantly.

[-15,000!]

[-18,000!]

[-22,000! Critical Hit!]

The armor cracked and shattered under the overwhelming attack power. The Troll roared, falling backward onto the stone floor.

Dante didn’t wait for it to hit the ground.

[Skill Executed: Execute]

The skill evolved into [Gaze of the Abyss]. The system teleported him instantly to the vulnerable, glowing core exposed on the falling Troll’s chest.

The 50x damage multiplier bypassed the remaining health pool completely.

[-450,000! OVERKILL!]

The center Troll exploded into a massive shower of blue polygons.

Dante immediately turned toward the two pinned Trolls on the flanks. He chained [Phantom Dash] twice in less than a second, delivering back-to-back executions before the beasts could break free from Lila’s gravity magic.

The cavern fell silent, save for the bubbling of the magma rivers.

Dante stood among the massive piles of dropped loot, his stamina bar completely untouched. He sheathed the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

He looked at Erebus.

"You can’t cheat the math on higher-level mobs," Dante told the little girl. "You’re going to have to let me do the heavy lifting from now on."

Erebus pouted slightly but accepted the ruling, reaching into her backpack to grab another meat bun.

They cleared the rest of the second floor efficiently. Dante didn’t bother using his Zenith-tier AoE skills; the cavern was too narrow, and he didn’t want to risk collapsing the ceiling.

They relied entirely on the flawless synergy of Lila’s crowd control, Mei’s indestructible blocking, and Dante’s massive burst damage.

They reached the end of the volcanic tunnels. A massive, jagged archway led down into absolute, suffocating darkness.

"The third floor," Dante noted, checking his interface. "The roars are coming from down there." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"I am terrified," Casanova announced, bravely standing at the very back of the group.

Dante ignored him and stepped through the archway, descending into the true depths of the Wyrm-Sealed Abyss.