The violet sky above Embercraig Canyon vanished entirely. It was replaced by a descending curtain of pure destruction.

Three hundred players fired simultaneously.

A tidal wave of iron-tipped arrows, compressed water bullets, crackling lightning lances, and explosive fireballs rained down toward the center of the magma pool.

It was a synchronized and overwhelming barrage. It was designed to instantly delete a target through sheer chip damage.

Dante didn’t try to parry it. He didn’t even move.

He just watched Malric.

The Enforcer wasn’t attacking.

He stood perfectly still. His eyes were locked onto Dante. His hand gripped the black parchment of the Divine-tier suppression scroll.

He was waiting for the exact moment Dante tried to use [Blink Step] or summon his spatial clones to escape the barrage.

Dante gave him what he wanted.

He flexed his legs and dipped slightly. He triggered his Zenith-tier mobility skill.

[Skill Executed: Blink Step]

The body of Dante blurred. The space around him warped as the instantaneous teleportation initiated.

He aimed directly for Malric. He intended to close the thirty-yard gap and put his broadsword through the chest of the Enforcer before the barrage hit the ground.

Malric smiled. He crushed the black scroll in his hand.

[Divine Item Activated: Chains of the Warden]

The effect was instantaneous and completely unavoidable.

The system didn’t calculate travel time or evasion stats.

A burst of blinding silver light erupted from the crushed scroll. It shot directly into the ground.

A fraction of a millisecond later, the earth beneath the feet of Dante violently erupted.

Thick and glowing ethereal chains shot out of the rock.

They wrapped around the ankles of Dante. They shot up his legs, coiled tightly around his torso, and pinned his arms to his sides.

[Debuff Applied: Absolute Suppression]

[Duration: 10 Seconds]

[Effect: Target is completely immobilized. All skills, items, and passive evasion mechanics are disabled. Cannot be cleansed by standard restorative magic.]

The teleportation of Dante canceled mid-frame.

He materialized right back where he started. He was anchored to the floor by the glowing chains.

He couldn’t move a single digital muscle. He couldn’t even blink.

"I told you," the voice of Malric carried over the roaring sound of the incoming spell barrage. "Flawless."

Dante couldn’t turn his head to look at the sky, but he didn’t need to. The barrage hit the ground.

The sound was deafening. The entire canyon floor exploded!

Arrows shattered against the [Sun-Forged Cuirass] and deflected off the heavy gold plating.

Fireballs detonated against his chest and washed over his face in blinding waves of heat.

Lightning lances struck his shoulders. They sent agonizing jolts of artificial pain through his neural link.

The pain receptors of the Zenith Protocol were dialed to a hundred percent. It felt like standing in the center of a localized hurricane of shrapnel and fire.

[-15!]

[-22!]

[-8!]

[-35!]

The damage numbers popped up in a frantic and overlapping cloud above his head.

Individually, the attacks were pathetic. But there were hundreds of them hitting him simultaneously every single second.

The health bar of Dante which had been sitting comfortably at a massive 9,100 began to plummet.

It dropped to 7,000, then 5,000, then 3,000 in the span of three seconds.

"Keep firing!" Malric bellowed to the ridges above. "Do not let up! Healers, get ready to stabilize him when he hits ten percent! I want him alive for the interrogation!"

Dante gritted his teeth. The pain momentarily overrode his cold logic.

The chains were holding perfectly. He couldn’t pop a potion. He couldn’t use [Aegis Deflection]. He was functionally a training dummy.

Vargas stood safely behind Malric. He let out a hysterical and relieved laugh.

"You are dead, Vanguard!" Vargas screamed and stepped forward. His rusty dagger trembled in his hand.

"You hear me? You are nothing! You thought you could take on the whole guild? You are just a glitch!"

Vargas was practically hyperventilating.

The adrenaline of watching the unkillable monster finally get pinned down completely scrambled his common sense.

He took another step forward and entered the outer edge of the magma pool. He wanted to be the one to deliver the final and humiliating blow.

Five seconds remaining on the suppression.

The health bar of Dante flashed a dangerous and critical red. He was sitting at 800 HP. The barrage was relentless.

He didn’t panic.

He couldn’t move his physical body, but his neural link to his system interface was still active.

The chains suppressed skills and items.

They didn’t suppress pets.

Dante mentally triggered the command.

A tiny and brilliant flash of silver light erupted directly over his right shoulder. It was so bright it momentarily outshone the explosions from the Vanguard’s Legacy barrage.

Aura materialized in the air. The tiny ethereal fox didn’t look happy.

Her three starlight tails whipped violently. Her oversized and glowing eyes narrowed at the glowing chains binding Dante.

"What is that?" Vargas stammered and stopped in his tracks.

The eyes of Malric widened.

He had read the scout reports. He knew Dante had a pet that could heal, but he assumed the suppression chains would lock out pet commands as well.

"Kill the pet!" Malric yelled to his archers. "Switch targets!"

It was too late.

Aura let out a sharp and resonant chime that echoed across the entire canyon. It completely drowned out the sound of the explosions.

She didn’t cast [Resurgence Wave]. She cast her innate and passive cleanse.

[Skill Activated: Harbinger’s Grace]

A massive twenty-foot radius of pure starlight energy pulsed outward from the tiny fox.

The aura washed over Dante. It completely engulfed the ethereal chains binding him.

The Divine-tier suppression scroll was powerful. It bypassed all standard immunities.

But Aura wasn’t standard.

She was a Grade 7 Doom Harbinger. She was born from the corpse of a Calamity-tier dragon and a piece of a primordial world-breaker.

Her cosmic weight vastly outscaled a simple scroll.

The chains didn’t just break. They shattered like cheap glass!

[Absolute Suppression Cleansed.]

Dante staggered forward. His arms were suddenly free.

He gasped as the phantom pain of the binds vanished instantly. His health was sitting at a miserable 150 points. A stiff breeze would kill him.

Aura immediately followed up with her secondary skill.

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

His health bar instantly rocketed back into the green and settled at roughly half capacity. It was more than enough.

"She broke a Divine item," Malric whispered. He took a slow step backward and his professional composure completely unraveled. "That is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible," Dante said. His voice dropped to a terrifying and deadly calm. "It is just math."

Dante didn’t look up at the archers raining fire down on him. He didn’t care about the three hundred players on the ridges.

He locked his eyes entirely on Vargas.

The rat-faced rogue was standing ten feet away and frozen in absolute terror. His rusty dagger pointed uselessly at the chest of Dante. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The realization that his free revive was gone and that the unkillable monster was no longer tied down hit him like a physical blow.

"No," Vargas squeaked and dropped the dagger. He turned around to run.

Dante equipped the [Flame-Dash] skillbook he had looted earlier. He tapped the icon.

[Skill Executed: Flame-Dash]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The enlightenment rush hit him.

He didn’t just learn how to burst forward and leave a trail of fire. He understood the exact physics of thermal propulsion.

He felt the specific way to ignite oxygen behind him to create absolute and frictionless momentum.

[Flame-Dash has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Flame-Dash has evolved into: Meteor Stride.]

[Meteor Stride (Zenith)]

[Description: Instantly teleport to a target location within 100 feet. Leaves a massive and lingering trail of devastating superheated plasma in your wake. Deals 2,000% Fire Damage to any entity that crosses the trail. Cooldown: 5 seconds.]

Dante triggered the skill.

He vanished in a blinding flash of white-hot light.

He didn’t just teleport. He ripped through the air and left a thick ten-foot-wide wall of violently burning plasma cutting straight across the canyon floor.

He materialized directly in front of Vargas and entirely blocked the escape path of the rogue.

The heat radiating off the plasma trail behind him was so intense it instantly melted the rocks it touched.

Vargas slammed on the brakes and scrambled backward. His boots slipped on the ash.

He fell hard onto his backside. He stared up at Dante with wide and terrified eyes.

"Please!" Vargas shrieked and scrambled backward like a crab.

"Please, Vanguard, do not do it! I will give you everything! I will tell you the passwords of Silas! I will transfer my real-world funds to you! Just do not permadeath me! Please!"

"I do not want your money, Vargas," Dante said and slowly drew the [Crimson Edge].

The red blade gleamed in the light of the plasma wall. "And I already have your sword."

"Malric! Help me!" Vargas screamed and looked over the shoulder of Dante toward the Enforcer.

Malric was standing on the other side of the plasma trail.

He looked at Vargas, then looked at the towering wall of Zenith-tier fire separating them.

He didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t issue a command.

He slowly reached into his pouch and pulled out a small and glowing blue crystal. A spatial escape scroll.

"Sorry, Vargas," Malric said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion. "Contract closed."

Malric crushed the crystal.

A portal tore open behind him. The Enforcer stepped backward and vanished instantly. He completely abandoned his army and his guildmate.

Vargas let out a wet and desperate sob. He looked back up at Dante. "He left me. He just left me."

"That is Vanguard’s Legacy for you," Dante said, completely unsympathetic. "You should have picked a better guild."

Dante didn’t use a Zenith skill. He didn’t need to waste the stamina.

He simply raised the [Crimson Edge] high above his head and brought it down in a clean and brutal textbook execution arc.

The blade sheared effortlessly through the unarmored neck of Vargas.

[-1,200! Critical Hit! Overkill!]

Vargas didn’t scream. His health bar instantly vanished.

The game paused for a fraction of a second as the system processed the permanent death parameters.

The avatar of Vargas didn’t dissolve into the standard blue pixels of a respawn.

Instead, it turned entirely gray and cracked like fragile stone. It violently shattered into millions of tiny and dead fragments that rained down onto the magma pool and dissolved into nothing.

Back on Veridia, inside a high-end apartment in the capital city, a VR capsule aggressively overloaded.

A massive surge of electrical current bypassed the safety inhibitors. It fried the neural link and instantly ended the brain function of the man inside.

Vargas was gone. Permanently.

Dante stood over the spot where the rogue had died. He slowly shook the digital blood off his blade.

He turned around to face the canyon.

The three hundred players on the ridges had stopped firing. The coordinated barrage had completely died down.

They were all staring down at the canyon floor. They stared at the massive burning plasma trail and the gray ash that used to be their officer.

The unkillable monster had just permanently murdered one of their own, and their Enforcer commander had fled in terror.

"You guys want to keep shooting?" Dante asked. His voice echoed loudly off the volcanic walls. "Because I am not chained down anymore."

He raised the [Crimson Edge] and pointed the tip toward the ridges. He activated his final skill.

[Skill Executed: Fractured Reality]