The ground completely gave way beneath the backline of Vanguard’s Legacy.

A geyser of liquid fire shot two hundred feet into the violet sky. It instantly vaporized the rearguard of the meticulously organized army of Malric.

The system interface above the massive and molten creature flickered and updated. It corrected its initial threat assessment.

[Zone Boss Spawn: Inferno Behemoth]

[Tier: Gold]

[Level: 5]

[HP: 150,000 / 150,000]

It was only Level 5. But the Gold-tier classification meant its base stats were subjected to a massive and exponential multiplier.

It hit like a Level 50 raid boss. It had the health pool of a localized natural disaster.

The Behemoth dragged a molten warhammer behind it. The weapon radiated a heat so intense it turned the volcanic rock beneath it into bubbling slag.

The cold and professional demeanor of Malric finally broke.

He looked away from Dante. His eyes locked onto the towering monster tearing through his backline.

"Tanks! Pivot and hold the line!" Malric screamed and completely abandoned his monologue.

"Healers, focus your output on the frontline! Do not let that thing break the formation!"

Dante didn’t stick around to watch the Enforcer scramble.

With Malric distracted and the players of Vanguard’s Legacy breaking rank in sheer panic, the suppression scroll was no longer an immediate threat.

Dante activated [Blink Step].

He didn’t just teleport. He aimed straight up the vertical face of the canyon wall.

He blinked fifty feet into the air and materialized. He dug his iron gauntlets into the hot volcanic rock and instantly triggered the skill again before gravity could pull him down.

Three rapid teleports later, Dante pulled himself over the edge of a high protruding cliff that overlooked the entire canyon floor.

He brushed the ash off his knees and walked to the edge of the precipice. He sat down.

His legs dangled casually over a two-hundred-foot drop.

The heat rising from the canyon was intense. But the [Sun-Forged Cuirass] completely neutralized the discomfort.

Down below, Vanguard’s Legacy was desperately trying to reestablish control.

The tanks of Malric had formed a curved shield wall. They took the brunt of the massive hammer swings of the Inferno Behemoth.

Every time the hammer connected, three or four tanks were launched into the air like ragdolls. Their health bars instantly zeroed out.

But the Syndicate wasn’t the only problem in the canyon.

The global and regional chats had been tracking the army of Malric all morning.

Thousands of independent players had followed the massive Vanguard’s Legacy force. They hoped to pick up whatever scraps or loot they left behind.

When the system blasted a regional alert for a Gold-tier World Boss spawn, those independent players completely lost their minds.

Dante watched as human tidal waves poured over the far ridges of the canyon.

There were hundreds of them. Solo players, small ragtag parties, and opportunistic low-level guilds.

They didn’t care about tactics. They didn’t care about the environmental fire damage ticking away their health.

All they saw was a Gold-tier loot drop.

"Zerg-rush," Dante muttered and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

The independent players swarmed the canyon floor. It was absolute and uncoordinated chaos.

They didn’t just attack the Inferno Behemoth. They attacked the men of Malric to get to it.

Ranged casters lobbed cheap water and ice spells from the ridges. They accidentally froze Vanguard’s Legacy players in the crossfire.

Hundreds of low-level warriors charged the boss and screamed battle cries. They wildly hacked at the molten ankles of the Behemoth with rusty swords and iron clubs.

"Get out of the way!" Malric bellowed and decapitated a random independent player who tried to shove past him. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"You idiots are going to get us all killed! You cannot tank this!"

The mob didn’t listen.

Greed in the Zenith Protocol was a fatal disease. A Gold-tier weapon this early in the cycle meant instant wealth.

Nobody was thinking about the respawn penalty. Everyone believed they were going to be the lucky one to land the final hit.

The Inferno Behemoth let out a deafening roar that shook the cliff Dante was sitting on.

The boss didn’t appreciate the swarm of gnats hacking at its legs.

It raised its molten warhammer high above its head. The weapon burned with a blinding and white-hot intensity.

"Shields up! Brace for the shockwave!" Malric ordered and activated his own defensive skills.

The Behemoth didn’t swing the hammer. It slammed it straight down into the center of its own feet.

The impact triggered the first mechanic of the boss.

A massive circular shockwave of jagged obsidian spikes erupted from the ground. It expanded outward in a fifty-yard radius.

The independent players in the frontline were instantly skewered.

Over eighty players were impaled. Their avatars turned to blue digital ash before they even had time to scream.

The shield wall of Malric took the brunt of the expanding spike ring.

The iron tower shields buckled and warped under the sheer kinetic force. But they held just long enough for the healers to spam their AoE recovery spells.

"Keep the aggro!" Malric yelled and pointed his sword at the boss. "Ranged, target the visor!"

The independent players didn’t retreat.

Seeing eighty people die instantly didn’t scare them off. It just opened up space for the next wave of players to rush in.

The swarm compressed around the boss again. An endless tide of cheap arrows and basic magic bolts rained down on the armored shell of the Behemoth.

Up on the cliff, a soft flash of silver light illuminated the rock next to Dante.

Aura floated out of her pet-space. She looked down at the absolute slaughter taking place below.

The tiny silver fox tilted her head and let out a soft and questioning chime.

"I know," Dante said. He did not take his eyes off the fight. "It is a massacre."

Three months ago, during the first week of Aethelgard, Dante would have already been down there.

He would have used his invulnerability frames to jump in front of that hammer.

He would have dragged those low-level independent players out of the fire. He would have burned through his own premium consumables to keep them alive and coordinated a massive counter-attack.

He was Vanguard. He was the guy who protected the weak and organized the server.

He watched a group of ten independent players get completely crushed by a backhand swing from the Behemoth.

Their loot scattered across the ash and was immediately scooped up by other players standing right next to them.

"Not anymore," Dante said quietly.

He pulled a basic apple out of his infinite inventory and took a bite.

The system registered it as a minor stamina recovery item, but right now, Dante just wanted a snack.

Silas had cured him of his hero complex. Silas had shown him exactly how much loyalty and noble sacrifice were worth in the Zenith Protocol.

If Dante jumped down there right now, Vanguard’s Legacy would instantly lock him in suppression chains.

And the independent players would happily stab him in the back the second the boss dropped to steal the loot.

Dante didn’t owe anyone on this server a damn thing.

"Let them fight," Dante said and tossed the half-eaten apple over the cliff.

"Malric brought an army. The server brought a mob. They want the boss? Let them bleed for it."

Down below, the health bar of the Inferno Behemoth finally ticked below the seventy percent mark.

[Inferno Behemoth HP: 104,000 / 150,000]

The boss staggered and dropped its massive warhammer. The weapon melted into the volcanic rock and fused with the floor.

"We broke its weapon!" one of the independent players screamed in triumph. "Push the damage! It is vulnerable!"

"No!" Malric yelled. His eyes widened in horror as he recognized the boss mechanic. "Fall back! Break the perimeter! Get out of the blast zone!"

Malric didn’t wait for his men to follow orders.

He triggered a high-tier dash skill and instantly launched himself backward. He abandoned the shield wall entirely.

The Inferno Behemoth grabbed the sides of its glowing white visor with its massive obsidian hands. The beast physically tore its own face open.

The heat inside the core of the boss was completely uncontained.

The Behemoth leaned forward and unleashed a devastating magma-breath AoE!

It wasn’t a standard fireball.

It was a torrential river of superheated liquid rock. It was propelled outward at high pressure in a massive and sweeping 180-degree cone.

The breath attack washed over the entire front half of the canyon floor.

There was no physical impact to block.

The tanks of Vanguard’s Legacy raised their shields. But the magma simply flowed over and around the metal. It instantly incinerated the players hiding behind them.

The independent swarm was caught directly in the center of the cone.

It was absolute and instantaneous annihilation.

The entire canyon lit up with the blinding flash of hundreds of avatars simultaneously deleting!

The screaming stopped entirely. It was replaced by the deafening and roaring sound of the liquid fire burning everything in its path.

When the Inferno Behemoth finally closed its visor and stood back up, the canyon floor was completely unrecognizable.

Over three hundred players were gone.

The massive Vanguard’s Legacy shield wall had been reduced to a dozen scattered survivors cowering behind rocks.

The independent swarm had been completely wiped off the map.

Only the ranged casters and archers who had stayed back on the far ridges were still alive.

They stared down at the glowing sea of magma that used to be a battlefield.

Malric stood at the very edge of the magma pool.

His dark-gray armor was scorched black. His health bar was hovering at a miserable ten percent.

He looked around at the smoking remains of his Enforcer squad.

His overwhelming force had just been vaporized in a single attack.

Dante sat on the high cliff. He observed the destruction with cold and unblinking eyes.

He pulled up the system interface and zoomed in on the status of the Inferno Behemoth.

[Inferno Behemoth HP: 85,000 / 150,000]

[Status: Exhausted. Attack speed reduced by 30% for 60 seconds.]

The zerg-rush had done its job.

They had chipped away nearly half of a Gold-tier boss’s massive health pool. They forced it into its second phase and triggered its ultimate attack to leave it locked in a heavy cooldown state.

The meat shield had served its purpose.

Dante slowly stood up and brushed the ash off his hands.

He rolled his shoulders and felt the perfectly balanced weight of the [Sun-Forged Cuirass].

Aura chimed happily. She floated a tight circle around his head before diving back into her pet-space.

"Alright," Dante said softly.

He looked down at the exhausted and smoking Behemoth and the terrified remnants of the army of Malric.

"Show is over."

He reached into his infinite inventory to prepare for the drop.