The inner sanctum was a battlefield.

Dominating the center of the chamber was a colossal dragon.

Its scales were jagged plates of pure midnight obsidian. They completely absorbed the ambient light.

It had six wings, a crown of horns, and a chest that glowed from within with a terrifying and molten purple heat.

[Monster: Obsidian Dreadwyrm]

[Tier: Calamity]

[Level: ???]

It was a Calamity. A world-ender. A monster designed to be fought by entire armadas.

But it wasn’t fighting an armada.

Hovering in the air, frantically dodging the massive and sweeping claws of the Dreadwyrm, was a girl.

She looked entirely human, no older than sixteen.

She was wearing a simple and tattered white dress that was heavily stained with soot and blood. But her eyes were glowing with a blinding and piercing silver light.

She was vastly overpowered.

The Dreadwyrm snapped its jaws. It entirely missed her but caught the air pressure, sending her tumbling backward.

She crashed hard against one of the massive stone pillars. She coughed up a spray of glowing silver blood.

Dante watched from the shadows. The girl was on the brink of death.

Her health bar wasn’t visible. But the erratic flickering of her silver eyes indicated she was running completely dry on energy.

The Dreadwyrm reared its massive head back. The molten purple glow in its chest traveled up its throat and expanded rapidly.

It was charging a breath attack. In a closed room, there was absolutely nowhere for the girl to run.

She looked up and wiped blood from her chin. Her silver eyes darted frantically around the room, desperately looking for an out.

Her eyes locked onto Dante hiding behind the archway.

"You!" she screamed. Her voice echoed with a strange and dual-layered resonance. "Help me!"

Dante didn’t move. He wasn’t suicidal.

Running out to fight a Calamity-tier dragon at Level 19 was beyond stupidity. It was a mathematically guaranteed death.

The girl reached into the folds of her ruined dress and hurled something across the room.

It flew like a bullet. It bounced off the stone floor and slid directly to the feet of Dante.

He looked down. It was a golden and crystalline scroll.

[Item Identified: Aether Scroll]

[Description: Grants the user Absolute Invulnerability for exactly 60 seconds. Cannot be pierced, dispelled, or bypassed by any mechanic.]

It was the exact same item Silas had used to survive the suicide bomb of Dante in Aethelgard.

"Hold its attention!" the girl yelled. She struggled to stay airborne. "Give me sixty seconds to charge the singularity! If you do not, we both die in here!"

The Dreadwyrm unleashed its breath. A massive torrent of purple and world-ending fire flooded the chamber.

Dante didn’t have time to debate the morality of the situation. He stomped on the scroll. He crushed the golden crystal beneath his boot.

[Aether Scroll Activated. Absolute Invulnerability applied. Duration: 60 seconds.]

A perfect and shimmering dome of golden light slammed down over Dante just as the purple fire washed over his position.

The heat outside the dome was enough to melt the obsidian walls into slag, but inside, Dante felt completely fine.

59 seconds.

Dante didn’t wait for the fire to stop. He activated [Blink Step].

He teleported directly through the torrent of purple flame. He materialized in mid-air right in front of the massive right eye of the Dreadwyrm.

"Hey, ugly," Dante said.

He triggered [Abyssal Cleave].

The Zenith-tier spatial fracture slammed directly into the eyeball of the dragon.

For the first time, the attack of Dante didn’t slice cleanly through.

The Calamity-tier defense of the Dreadwyrm was so astronomically high that the spatial fracture actually shattered against the cornea of the dragon like glass hitting a brick wall.

It didn’t do any real damage, but it definitely hurt.

The Dreadwyrm roared. It violently snapped its head back.

It completely ignored the girl in the white dress. It locked its burning purple eyes onto the tiny human floating in its face.

54 seconds.

Dante dropped to the floor and instantly activated [Wrath of the Firebird].

The massive and forty-foot phoenix projection erupted from his blade. It crashed into the chest of the dragon.

Again, the damage numbers were practically zero. But the sheer visual spectacle of a massive firebird exploding against its scales enraged the wyrm perfectly.

The Dreadwyrm brought a massive plated foot down. It attempted to crush Dante into a paste.

Dante didn’t even try to dodge. He just stood there.

The massive foot slammed into the golden dome!

The entire temple shook. But the Aether barrier didn’t even flicker.

Dante stood perfectly still beneath the massive weight. He looked up at the bottom of the foot of the dragon.

"You hit like a novice," Dante mocked loudly.

45 seconds.

The dragon went absolutely feral. It pulled its foot back and unleashed a flurry of strikes.

Claws the size of longswords battered the golden dome.

It lashed its tail and shattered the surrounding pillars. It brought massive chunks of the ceiling down on top of Dante.

Dante just stood in the center of the chaos. He occasionally threw out an [Abyssal Cleave] just to keep the aggro firmly locked on him.

He didn’t need to do damage. He just needed to be the most annoying thing in the room.

30 seconds.

Across the chamber, the girl in the white dress was floating near the ceiling.

She had her hands clasped together. A tiny and blindingly bright point of light was expanding between her palms.

It looked like a miniature star. The air around her was actively warping, sucked into the gravitational pull of the light.

20 seconds.

The Dreadwyrm realized its physical attacks were doing nothing.

It opened its jaws point-blank. It unleashed another torrent of purple fire directly onto the barrier of Dante.

The entire room turned into a localized sun. Dante couldn’t see anything through the flames.

He just watched the timer ticking down in his peripheral vision.

10 seconds.

5 seconds.

"Anytime now!" Dante yelled over the deafening roar of the flames.

3 seconds. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

2 seconds.

"Clear!" the voice of the girl echoed and cut through the chaos.

Dante used [Blink Step]. He teleported instantly to the far corner of the room.

He put his back against the wall just as the golden barrier finally shattered into dust.

He was completely exposed.

The Dreadwyrm snapped its head around. It tracked his teleport. But it was too late.

At the exact 59th second, the girl separated her hands.

She unleashed the singularity.

There was no sound. There was no explosion.

A beam of pure and reality-tearing white light shot across the room!

It was thinner than a thread. It was completely silent and moved instantly.

The light hit the center of the neck of the Dreadwyrm.

The Calamity-tier boss froze.

Above its head, a damage number popped up that Dante couldn’t even read.

It was a string of nines so long it literally glitched out the system interface. It overflowed the visual parameters of the game.

Billions of damage in a single frame.

The top half of the head of the Dreadwyrm slowly slid off its neck. It was cleanly bisected.

The massive body collapsed. It hit the floor with a earthquake that knocked Dante completely off his feet.

The room plunged into silence.

Dante sat up. He rubbed the back of his head.

He looked at the severed dragon. Then he looked up at the ceiling.

The silver eyes of the girl faded. The light vanished.

She went completely limp and plummeted out of the air like a stone.