Dante sat on the edge of the cliff. He looked down at the devastated canyon floor.

The massive army of Malric had been reduced to a handful of traumatized survivors hiding behind rocks.

The independent swarm was completely gone.

In the center of the molten battlefield, the Level 5 Gold-tier Inferno Behemoth was standing idle. Its massive heat-venting visor was slowly trying to cool down.

It was sitting at 85,000 HP.

"My turn," Dante said.

Before dropping into an active volcano to fight a Gold boss, Dante pulled up his system interface.

He wanted to see exactly where his numerical baselines were sitting.

In a game governed by math, walking into a boss fight without knowing your own limits was a rookie mistake.

The holographic window popped up. It projected a crisp blue character sheet.

[Name: Dan]

[Level: 19]

[Class: Warrior]

[HP: 9,100 / 9,100]

[Stamina: 1,200 / 1,200]

[Mana: 450 / 450]

[Attack Power: 1,850]

[Physical Defense: 2,800]

[Magical Defense: 1,550]

[Hidden Stats: Luck (100), Intuition (100), Charisma (100)]

His attack power was heavily inflated by the Silver-grade [Crimson Edge].

His defense and health were an absolute joke for a player under Level 20. He was effectively a walking raid boss.

But dealing 85,000 damage before the cooldown window of the Behemoth ended was going to take more than just a high attack stat.

[Abyssal Cleave] and [Wrath of the Firebird] were on cooldowns, and spamming them drained his stamina too fast. He needed sustained massive burst damage.

Dante opened his infinite inventory.

He scrolled past the piles of raw materials and Silver-tier vendor trash until he found a small gray skillbook. He had looted it off one of the Syndicate rogues back in the forest.

He pulled it out.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Mirror Stance]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: Creates a single fragile optical illusion of the user. The illusion mimics the movements of the user but deals zero damage. Dissipates upon taking 1 point of damage. Cooldown: 30 seconds.]

It was a standard decoy skill. Rogues used it to bait out enemy attacks or secure a quick backstab.

Dante tapped the cover. The book dissolved into a stream of gray light that flowed directly into his chest.

[Skill Learned: Mirror Stance (Novice)]

He stood up. His boots crunched against the ash on the edge of the cliff.

He looked down at the Inferno Behemoth two hundred feet below.

"Let us see how much you can multiply an illusion," Dante muttered.

He activated the skill.

[Skill Executed: Mirror Stance.]

The 10,000x Multiplier triggered instantly.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The rush of enlightenment hit him like a physical blow.

He didn’t just learn how to bend light to create a cheap mirage. His brain was flooded with the absolute mastery of spatial replication.

He felt the exact frequency required to tear a micro-fracture in reality.

He understood how to pull physical afterimages of his own body from split seconds in the past and weaponize them.

[Mirror Stance has reached Adept tier.]

[Mirror Stance has reached Master tier.]

[Mirror Stance has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The air around Dante violently rippled. It distorted the violet sky above him.

[Mirror Stance has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Mirror Stance has evolved into: Fractured Reality.]

Dante read the new description, and a slow grin spread across his face.

[Fractured Reality (Zenith)]

[Description: Tears the local spatial fabric to summon 12 autonomous physical afterimages of the user. Clones perfectly mirror the physical strikes of the user and inherit 100% of the base Attack Power of the user. Clones are immune to all damage and dissipate after 10 seconds. Cooldown: 15 seconds.]

"Twelve of me," Dante said. "That is going to be annoying."

He didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the edge of the two-hundred-foot cliff.

Gravity grabbed him. The wind roared in his ears as he plummeted toward the canyon floor.

He didn’t flail or panic. He just kept his eyes locked on the massive and molten back of the Inferno Behemoth.

Fifty feet from the ground, Dante activated [Blink Step].

His downward momentum instantly canceled.

He vanished from the air and materialized directly on the canyon floor. His boots splashed down into a shallow pool of liquid magma just ten yards behind the boss.

[Environmental Damage: -500 HP]

[Environmental Damage: -500 HP]

The Searing Atmosphere debuff was instantly amplified by physically standing in the lava.

The damage numbers popped up over his head rapidly. The heat was absurd, attempting to melt the iron greaves right off his legs.

Dante ignored it completely. He had 9,100 HP. Five hundred damage a tick was a mild inconvenience.

Malric was currently hiding behind a chunk of wall thirty yards away. He peeked out and saw a player literally standing in a pool of liquid fire.

"What are you doing?!" Malric yelled. He was completely baffled by the sheer suicidal stupidity of the play.

Dante didn’t even look at him. He drew the [Crimson Edge] and leveled the red blade at the Behemoth.

[Skill Executed: Fractured Reality]

The space around Dante shattered like a broken mirror. Twelve jagged rifts ripped open in the air.

Out of the rifts stepped twelve identical copies of Dante!

They weren’t optical illusions. They were forged from glitching black-and-red spatial energy.

They held identical and glitching copies of the [Crimson Edge]. They didn’t make a sound.

The Inferno Behemoth heard the spatial tears and spun around. It raised its massive fists.

"Swarm it," Dante commanded.

He lunged forward and charged directly through the knee-deep magma.

The twelve clones moved in absolute and terrifying synchronization.

They didn’t just follow him. They fanned out and completely surrounded the thirty-foot-tall boss in a circle of blades.

Dante swung the [Crimson Edge] in a heavy horizontal arc. He aimed for the back of the knee of the Behemoth.

At the exact same millisecond, the twelve clones swung their blades.

Thirteen longswords slammed into the hardened obsidian shell of the Behemoth simultaneously!

CRACK!

[-1,850!]

[-1,850!]

[-1,850!]

[-1,850!]

[-1,850!]

The screen became an absolute blur of red damage numbers. A single swing from Dante translated into nearly twenty-five thousand points of immediate physical damage!

The Inferno Behemoth let out a digitized shriek of pain.

The sheer kinetic force of thirteen perfectly synchronized strikes buckled its massive leg.

The boss dropped down onto one knee and sent a wave of lava splashing across the arena.

Dante stepped directly into the splash zone.

[Environmental Damage: -1,200 HP]

His health bar dropped to roughly 6,000.

A tiny silver chime rang out over the roar of the fire. Aura materialized by his right shoulder.

The little silver fox didn’t look worried. She just pulsed with a brilliant and concentrated burst of starlight.

[Resurgence Wave applied. 4,550 HP Restored.] 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The health bar of Dante instantly snapped back to maximum.

"Again," Dante said.

He unleashed a flurry of basic attacks. He didn’t need to use high-tier skills.

Every time he slashed, thrust, or parried, his twelve glitching afterimages did the exact same thing from every conceivable angle.

The Inferno Behemoth was trapped in a blender.

It tried to swing its massive fists, but Dante didn’t even bother dodging. He just tanked the hits.

The massive fist of the boss slammed into the chest piece of Dante.

[Boss Strike: -3,500 HP]

The [Sun-Forged Cuirass] mitigated the blow, and Dante barely staggered.

A fraction of a second later, Aura pulsed again.

[Resurgence Wave applied. 4,550 HP Restored.]

Back to full.

It was the most disgusting and mathematically broken synergy in the game.

Dante had the damage output of a thirteen-man raid group condensed into a single entity, backed by an infinite health battery.

He didn’t have to play mechanics. He didn’t have to respect the attack patterns of the boss. He just stood in the fire and hacked away.

Malric watched from his cover. His mouth hung slightly open.

The Enforcer had spent years playing competitive VR titles. He understood action economy, positioning, and resource management.

He knew what a high-level player looked like.

This wasn’t a high-level player. This was a system anomaly.

"He is out-healing the magma," Malric whispered in disbelief. "He is just standing in it."

The health bar of the Inferno Behemoth was melting faster than the volcanic rock.

[Inferno Behemoth HP: 40,000 / 150,000]

[Inferno Behemoth HP: 15,000 / 150,000]

The boss entered its final desperation phase.

The white heat in its visor flared. It raised both arms and prepared to trigger a massive self-destruct explosion that would wipe the entire canyon floor.

"Ten seconds are up," Dante noted.

The twelve spatial clones flickered and dissolved into black smoke as their duration expired.

Dante was standing alone in front of the massive and glowing boss.

He didn’t need the clones for the final hit.

He gripped the hilt of the [Crimson Edge] with both hands. The blade was already glowing with the condensed and pitch-black energy of his Zenith-tier spatial fracture.

He didn’t wait for the boss to finish its casting animation.

[Skill Executed: Abyssal Cleave]

Dante swung the blade upward in a vicious vertical arc.

The black shockwave erupted from the sword and expanded instantly.

It tore straight through the molten magma pooling around the feet of the boss. It parted the air and slammed directly into the glowing white visor of the Inferno Behemoth.

The Zenith-tier skill ignored half of the massive physical defense of the boss. The shockwave cleaved cleanly through the center of the head of the Behemoth and traveled all the way down its spine.

The Gold boss completely froze. Its self-destruct animation canceled mid-frame.

A massive and jagged black line appeared right down the center of its obsidian body.

For two seconds, the only sound in the canyon was the bubbling of the magma.

Then, the Inferno Behemoth split perfectly in half and violently shattered into millions of glowing gold polygons!

The shockwave of its death blew the ash clouds completely out of the sky. It left a clear view of the violet heavens above.

Dante stood in the center of the crater and lowered his sword. His health bar was sitting perfectly at maximum.

[Target Eliminated: Inferno Behemoth (Level 5)]

[Experience Gained. Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

Dante watched his level tick up to 22. The stats from the Gold boss were massive.

[Ding!]

[Server-Wide Announcement: The Gold-Tier Zone Boss ’Inferno Behemoth’ has been slain!]

[First Kill secured by Player: Dan]

[Rewarding 2,000 Global Fame, +5 to all base attributes, and an exclusive Gold Loot Chest!]

The blaring golden text dominated the sky again.

Somewhere in Outpost 404, Silas was likely destroying his own guildhall.

Dante casually shook the ash off the [Crimson Edge] and sheathed it.

He didn’t immediately look at the massive pile of glowing loot that had spawned in the center of the magma pool.

Instead, he turned his head and looked directly at the chunk of wall where Malric was hiding.

"Hey, Malric," Dante called out. His voice echoed across the empty and silent canyon. "You still have that suppression scroll?"