The temperature inside the massive, sterile white laboratory completely flatlined.

The Apex of Winter didn’t move fast. The Super-Divine beast was sixty feet tall, an amalgamation of jagged, shifting glaciers held together by pulsing veins of dark red celestial magic.

Its sheer mass made the stone floor groan under its weight.

Alysia didn’t hesitate. The Frost Sovereign raised her massive greatsword, channeling a blinding, intense aura of pure cold.

[Skill Executed: Glacial Severance]

She swung the blade horizontally. A massive, razor-thin crescent of absolute-zero energy shot forward, tearing through the laboratory equipment and slamming directly into the chest of the Super-Divine beast.

CLANG!

The impact sounded like two mountains colliding.

The massive crescent of energy shattered against the beast’s thick, glacial armor, inflicting zero damage.

Alysia’s eyes widened slightly.

The Apex of Winter let out a deep, structural groan that rattled the surviving glass in the room. It raised a massive, frozen arm and brought it down like a falling skyscraper.

Alysia raised her sword, perfectly executing a block.

The kinetic force of a Level 75 Super-Divine entity hitting her was absolute. The Frost Sovereign was violently hammered into the floor, her boots cracking the pristine white stone.

"My magic is ineffective," Alysia gritted her teeth, struggling to hold the massive arm at bay. "It is forged from the absolute zero of the void. It absorbs my frost to fuel its own armor!"

"So you can’t freeze ice," Dante said, drawing the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. "Got it."

"We have to run!" Casanova screamed, sprinting for the shattered iron doors. "That thing is Level 75! It’s going to turn us into popsicles!"

"We can’t run," Lila shouted, slamming her staff into the floor. She cast a desperate [Gravity Well] to try and slow the beast’s other arm, but the spell shattered instantly against its massive cosmic weight. "The door is sealed! The room locked down when the boss spawned!"

They were trapped in the laboratory with an artificial Calamity that was completely immune to the primary damage output of their god-tier escort.

"Mei! Get them into a corner and hold the shield!" Dante barked, pointing to the far wall. "Do not try to block a direct hit from that thing! It will crush you!"

"I’m on it, Boss!" Mei yelled, grabbing Lila and Casanova by their collars and dragging them toward the back of the room, planting the massive [God-Slaying Skillet] in the dirt.

Dante turned his attention to the Apex of Winter.

He didn’t draw [Voidsever]. He couldn’t risk the raw, unmitigated damage reflection if the beast possessed a [Spiteful Carapace] passive like Gluttony. He needed to whittle down its armor safely.

"Alysia!" Dante yelled over the grinding ice. "I need you to hit it with everything you have when I break its plating!"

Alysia shoved the massive arm off her sword and nodded sharply. "Create the opening, Outworlder!"

Dante activated [Chrono-Shift].

His cooldowns vanished. His resource costs zeroed out.

He triggered [Meteor Stride].

He didn’t teleport to attack. He teleported to heat the room.

*Flash.*

He vanished, materializing fifty feet in the air, leaving a massive, ten-foot-wide wall of superheated plasma cutting straight across the beast’s chest.

The plasma didn’t deal massive damage, but the 2,000% fire scaling aggressively clashed with the absolute-zero ice of the beast’s armor.

The sudden thermal shock created a deafening hiss of violently expanding steam.

Flash. Flash. Flash.

Dante became an untargetable blur of white-hot light. He chained [Meteor Stride] back-to-back, bouncing rapidly around the massive, lumbering boss.

He drew dozens of overlapping, crisscrossing lines of superheated plasma, literally trapping the Apex of Winter inside a cage of Zenith-tier fire.

The temperature in the laboratory violently spiked.

The beast roared in genuine distress. Its physical attacks were slow, easily bypassed by Dante’s instantaneous teleportation.

The constant, overlapping thermal shock of the plasma trails was rapidly weakening the structural integrity of its glacial armor.

The thick ice began to crack and splinter, weeping heavy streams of water that instantly turned to steam.

"Its armor is failing!" Alysia called out, preparing her ultimate attack. The air around the Frost Sovereign glowed with a blinding, celestial intensity.

Dante materialized directly in front of the beast’s massive, faceless head.

He didn’t use a fire skill. He needed hard crowd control to keep the boss perfectly still for Alysia’s strike.

[Skill Executed: Phantom Dash]

He teleported exactly one foot forward.

BOOM.

The sonic boom detonated point-blank against the weakened ice of the beast’s skull.

[Guaranteed Stun Applied. Duration: 2 Seconds.]

The massive Super-Divine beast locked up completely, its massive arms freezing mid-swing.

Dante didn’t drop back. He stayed hovering in the air, maintaining his position with short, controlled bursts of teleportation.

"Aura!" Dante yelled, targeting the Frost Sovereign below. "Buff her!"

The tiny Grade 8 Doom Harbinger zipped out of her pet-space, flying directly over Alysia.

[Skill Activated: Aura of Dominion]

The hundred-foot domain of cosmic authority slammed down. Alysia, an allied entity, was instantly granted the massive buff.

Her base stats skyrocketed by a flat 50%.

The Frost Sovereign’s power, already astronomical, pushed into a completely uncalculated tier of destruction. The air in the laboratory didn’t just freeze; it actively shattered.

"Now!" Dante commanded.

Alysia didn’t hesitate. She gripped her frost greatsword with both hands and pointed the tip directly at the paralyzed, steaming Super-Divine beast.

[Ultimate Skill Executed: Absolute Zero - Shatter-Star]

A single, microscopic point of pure, absolute-zero light materialized at the tip of her blade.

The point of light shot forward. It didn’t travel fast. It drifted slowly through the air, completely silent.

It touched the cracked, weakened glacial armor of the Apex of Winter.

The system interface completely glitched out.

There was no explosion. There was no massive shockwave.

The massive, sixty-foot-tall Super-Divine beast simply stopped existing in its current state.

The temperature dropped so violently that the very concept of thermal energy was temporarily deleted from the room.

The beast’s massive body instantly, flawlessly converted into a single, towering statue of perfect, fragile, translucent crystal.

The two-second stun expired.

The beast attempted to finish its swing.

The microscopic kinetic movement shattered the crystal.

The Apex of Winter didn’t break into large chunks. It atomized. The massive boss collapsed into a billion glittering, microscopic shards of diamond dust that rained down onto the sterile white floor of the laboratory.

[Target Eliminated: The Apex of Winter (Level 75 Super-Divine)]

[Experience Gained.]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

Dante landed softly on the ground, dropping into a crouch. He let out a long, heavy breath.

He checked his level. He was sitting at Level 69. The experience from a Level 75 Super-Divine boss, split heavily with a God-tier NPC, was still astronomical.

The laboratory was completely quiet, save for the soft chiming of the falling diamond dust.

Aura proudly zipped back to Dante’s shoulder, exhausted but visibly pleased with her buff timing.

"That was incredibly close," Lila whispered, slowly lowering her staff as she stepped out from behind Mei’s massive frying pan.

"It wasn’t elegant, but we killed it," Dante said, sheathing the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

He turned around to look at Alysia.

He expected the Frost Sovereign to be standing tall, her white armor gleaming, offering a stoic nod of respect for his tactical setup.

Instead, Alysia was on her knees.

Her massive frost greatsword clattered loudly against the white stone floor.

Dante’s eyes narrowed. He took a quick step forward. "Alysia? Are you injured?"

The Frost Sovereign didn’t answer. She was gripping her chest, her breathing incredibly heavy.

Dante approached her, his Intuition stat pinging erratically. The system didn’t show a damage-over-time debuff above her head, but something was wrong.

He crouched down next to her.

"What happened?" Dante asked, reaching out to touch her armored shoulder.

The moment his iron gauntlet made contact with her armor, he jerked his hand back.

Her armor wasn’t cold. It was burning hot.

Alysia slowly looked up at him. Her piercing, icy blue eyes were completely unfocused, glazed over with a hazy, unnatural fever. A heavy flush covered her pale cheeks.

"The mist," Alysia gasped, her voice completely devoid of its usual absolute authority. It sounded weak, tight, and incredibly strained. "When Vane shattered the vats... the red fluid..."

Dante looked around the room. The glass vats lining the walls had been completely destroyed when the architect triggered the boss spawn.

The thick, red fluid hadn’t just spilled onto the floor; it had vaporized in the extreme heat of Dante’s plasma trails, turning into a fine, imperceptible red mist that currently permeated the entire laboratory.

Dante checked his own system interface.

[Status: Absolute Immunity Active.]

[Toxic Gas Negated: Fey-Bane detected and purged.]

Dante was completely immune thanks to the [Aetherial Nectar]. Lila, Mei, and Casanova were safe behind the remaining charges of their emergency barrier talismans.

But Alysia hadn’t been shielded.

"Fey-Bane," Dante read the system prompt aloud. "What is that?"

"A poison," Alysia whispered, her head slumping forward against his chest plate. She was completely losing control of her digital avatar.

Her breathing was erratic, bordering on a hyperventilating pant. "It doesn’t deal physical damage. It targets the divine core... it shatters celestial cultivation."

She gripped the gold plating of his armor, her hands shaking violently. The unnatural heat radiating from her body was actively melting the frost accents on her own gear.

"It induces an absolute, terminal fever," Alysia choked out, her icy eyes desperately trying to focus on his face. "It is an aphrodisiac weaponized to burn out a Guardian’s purity."

Dante froze.

He looked at the towering, God-tier NPC who had just effortlessly frozen a Demon Noble and shattered a Super-Divine beast.

She was currently burning alive from the inside out, completely overwhelmed by a specialized, lore-specific biological weapon designed to explicitly target her divine status.

"I need to get you out of here," Dante said quickly, trying to support her weight. "I have extraction talismans. We can go back to Ironhold. I know an apothecary."

"No," Alysia gasped, her grip on his armor tightening with terrifying, desperate strength. "You cannot move me. If I enter a populated zone in this state... the ambient mana will ignite the fever. I will explode."

She wasn’t exaggerating. A Level ??? Celestial Guardian detonating from a corrupted divine core would likely wipe the entire capital city off the map.

"Then how do I fix it?" Dante asked, panic finally creeping into his typically stoic voice.

Alysia didn’t answer with words.

She looked up at him, her eyes completely clouded over with the intense, unnatural fever of the Fey-Bane.

She raised her trembling hand.

[Skill Executed: Absolute Zero - Containment]

Alysia didn’t target a monster. She targeted the immediate area around herself and Dante.

A massive, impenetrable dome of solid, absolute-zero glacier ice erupted from the floor, completely encasing Dante and the Frost Sovereign in a tight, ten-foot-wide igloo.

The ice was thick enough to completely block out the sight and sound of Lila, Mei, and Casanova standing just outside.

Dante was trapped in a tiny, freezing dome with a burning, delirious god.

"Alysia, what are you doing?" Dante demanded, trying to step back, but the dome was too small.

Alysia didn’t answer.

She grabbed the collar of his armor with both hands. The sheer, terrifying physical strength of a Celestial Guardian completely overwhelmed his base stats.

With a single, violent pull, she ripped the heavy, Gold-tier chest piece completely off his avatar. The indestructible armor didn’t unequip; it was physically destroyed, shattering into golden fragments against the ice wall.

Dante stared at her, absolutely stunned.

Alysia collapsed heavily against him, her burning skin pressing directly against his unarmored chest. She pulled him down to the freezing stone floor, her icy blue eyes completely lost to the fever.

The system interface outside the ice dome was completely silent.