"Take him down!" Arthur roared.

The heavy tank didn’t just charge. He reached into his belt and pulled out two thick, glowing parchment scrolls. He crushed them both in his armored fist simultaneously.

The system interface immediately flashed with hostile warnings.

[Hostile Consumable Activated: Scroll of the Iron Mountain]

[Buff Applied to Apex Coalition: +50% Damage Reduction.]

[Hostile Consumable Activated: Scroll of the Mire]

[Debuff Applied to Local Area: High-Gravity Zone. All hostile entities suffer a 60% reduction in Movement Speed.]

Dante immediately felt the environmental shift. The air in the Frostfire Steppes grew incredibly dense.

His iron boots felt like they were suddenly forged from solid lead. The massive 60% slow-down debuff anchored him to the volcanic rock.

"You guys really love burning cash," Dante said, his voice perfectly calm.

"It’s called playing to win!" Morgan yelled.

The rogue vanished into thin air, activating a high-tier stealth skill. She was circling around, waiting for the tank to draw Dante’s attention so she could secure a lethal backstab.

In the backline, Lancelot raised his wooden staff. He began rapidly chanting.

A glowing, translucent green spirit materialized in the air above Lancelot’s head. The spirit extended two tethers of healing light, connecting directly to Arthur and the stealthed Morgan.

Lancelot wasn’t just a mage. He was a highly specialized Summoner-Healer hybrid.

"I’ve got the sustain!" Lancelot shouted over the bubbling magma river. "Keep him pinned in the gravity zone!"

Arthur charged forward, his massive kite shield raised, fully intending to bash Dante into the dirt and let the rogue finish the job.

Dante didn’t try to sprint out of the slow-down zone. He didn’t waste his time fighting the heavy gravitational pull.

He just smiled.

"You want to play the numbers game," Dante said. "Fine."

He activated the secondary passive on his Divine-tier cloak.

[Skill Executed: Echoes of the Void]

The pitch-black, starry fabric of the [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] violently rippled.

Three exact, physical duplicates of Dante stepped right out of his own shadow. They didn’t look like optical illusions.

They were tangible constructs, complete with identical glowing gold broadswords.

Arthur skidded to a halt, his kite shield lowering slightly in complete confusion.

"What?" Arthur stammered. "Clones? He’s a Warrior! Warriors don’t have illusion magic!"

"They aren’t illusions!" Lancelot panicked from the backline. "The system is reading four distinct, high-stat entities! He just multiplied his base threat!"

Dante mentally commanded the clones.

The three Shadow Clones didn’t hesitate. They sprinted forward, completely ignoring the slow-down debuff because they weren’t technically classified as hostile entities by the scroll’s localized parameters.

Two of the clones rushed Arthur, slamming their broadswords against his massive kite shield.

The sheer kinetic force of the strikes, backed by Dante’s 3,270 Strength stat, forced the heavy tank to his knees.

The third clone spun around and blindly swung into the empty air to Dante’s left.

A loud clang echoed across the rocks.

Morgan’s stealth broke instantly. The clone had perfectly intercepted her backstab attempt, parrying her daggers and forcing her out of the shadows.

"He sees me!" Morgan shrieked, desperately backpedaling away from the relentless clone.

With the frontline completely occupied and the rogue running for her life, Dante turned his attention to the backline.

Lancelot was standing thirty yards away, frantically trying to channel healing magic into Arthur. The Summoner was completely exposed.

Dante didn’t walk.

He activated the Master-tier skill he had just looted from Gluttony.

[Skill Executed: Phantom Dash]

Normally, the skill possessed a fifteen-second cooldown. But Dante had the [Chrono-Shift] talent. His SSS-grade cosmic anomaly completely overrode the system’s baseline restrictions.

The cooldown was slashed, the mana cost was entirely deleted, and the systemic delay was erased.

The cooldown was functionally zero.

Dante vanished.

He didn’t leave a trail of plasma like [Meteor Stride]. He simply ceased to exist.

A fraction of a millisecond later, he materialized directly behind Lancelot.

The moment Dante’s iron boots hit the rock, the secondary effect of [Phantom Dash] triggered. A deafening sonic boom erupted from his avatar.

The concussive shockwave hit Lancelot point-blank.

[Guaranteed Stun Applied.]

Lancelot froze completely. His chanting stopped mid-syllable. The glowing green healing spirit hovering above his head violently shattered into digital dust.

The healing tethers connected to Arthur and Morgan instantly snapped.

The Summoner couldn’t move. He couldn’t pop a defensive potion.

"Support classes belong in the safe zone," Dante whispered directly into Lancelot’s ear.

Dante raised the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] and drove the glowing gold broadsword straight through the back of Lancelot’s unarmored cloth robes.

[-14,500! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

The Summoner’s health bar zeroed out instantly. Lancelot didn’t even have time to register the pain before his avatar violently exploded into a cloud of blue pixels.

[Target Eliminated: Lancelot (Level 27)]

Dante didn’t pause.

Morgan, having just managed to dodge a swing from the Shadow Clone, looked over and saw her healer turn into digital ash.

"Lance!" Morgan screamed. She abandoned her fight with the clone and sprinted toward Dante, her daggers glowing with a toxic green poison skill. "I’ll kill you!"

Dante turned to face her.

He triggered [Phantom Dash] again.

He vanished, instantly crossing the twenty yards between them. He materialized directly in front of the charging rogue.

BOOM.

The sonic materialization shockwave hit Morgan directly in the face.

Her sprint was canceled instantly. The yellow stun icon flashed above her head. Her daggers dropped to her sides, her avatar completely locked in place.

Dante casually stepped to the side, avoiding her frozen momentum. He swung the gold broadsword in a clean, horizontal arc, decapitating her.

[-18,000! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

Morgan shattered into pixels, completely deleted from the battlefield.

[Target Eliminated: Morgan (Level 26)]

Dante turned around.

The three Shadow Clones dissipated, melting back into the dark fabric of his cloak. The ten-second duration was up.

Arthur was the only one left.

The massive tank pulled himself up from the dirt. His health bar was sitting at seventy percent, heavily chipped away by the clones, and his healing tethers were gone.

He looked at the two empty spots where his elite guildmates had just been standing.

"You killed them," Arthur breathed, his voice trembling behind his heavy iron visor.

"That was the general idea," Dante said, slowly walking toward the tank.

Arthur didn’t try to run. He knew he couldn’t outrun a player who could teleport without cooldowns. He raised his massive kite shield, his entire avatar beginning to glow with a blinding, aggressive red light.

"You think you can just wipe an Apex squad?" Arthur roared, his voice laced with pure, desperate fury. "I’m the main tank! I am the wall!"

Arthur triggered his desperation ultimate.

[Skill Executed: Meteor Crash (High-Tier)]

Arthur didn’t swing a weapon. He launched his entire heavily armored body into the air. He soared thirty feet high, his shield burning like a miniature, falling sun.

He adjusted his trajectory, aiming directly for Dante, fully intending to crush the Outworlder into the volcanic rock with the sheer, unmitigated kinetic force of his entire health pool.

It was a devastating, all-or-nothing suicide attack.

Dante didn’t teleport away.

He stopped walking. He planted his iron boots firmly on the black ice. He gripped the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] with both hands and raised it horizontally in front of his chest.

"You’re not a wall," Dante said. "You’re a speedbump."

Arthur crashed down.

[Skill Executed: Aegis Deflection]

The golden hexagonal shield flared into existence exactly 0.2 seconds before Arthur’s burning kite shield made impact.

CLANG!

The concussive shockwave of the perfect parry blew the magma river completely off its course, sending a massive wave of liquid fire splashing against the distant glaciers.

Arthur’s ultimate attack hit the invincible shield and instantly stopped.

The tank’s kinetic energy was completely absorbed.

The golden shield violently pulsed outward, reflecting 500% of the ultimate attack’s damage directly back into Arthur at point-blank range.

The heavy iron kite shield didn’t just break. It atomized.

The reflection damage slammed into Arthur’s chest piece. The heavy tank armor crumpled inward like a crushed tin can.

Arthur was violently launched backward, skipping across the black ice like a skipped stone.

He crashed into a glacier, his health bar instantly plummeting to zero.

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

Arthur slid down the ice and shattered into millions of blue polygons.

[Target Eliminated: Arthur (Level 28)]

The Frostfire Steppes fell completely silent, save for the bubbling of the rerouted magma river.

Dante lowered his sword and let out a short, controlled breath.

"Flawless execution," Dante muttered.

He walked over to the base of the glacier where Arthur had died. Because he possessed the [Zenith Incarnate] title, the tank’s entire unequipped inventory had dropped.

Dante casually kicked aside a pile of basic iron repair kits and low-tier health potions.

He spotted something glowing faintly in the dirt.

It wasn’t a standard weapon or a piece of armor. It was a heavy, ornate parchment scroll, sealed with a thick ring of glowing green wax.

The wax was stamped with a massive oak tree emblem.

Dante knelt down and picked it up.

[Item Appraised: Exclusive Regional Quest Scroll (Oakhaven)]

[Tier: National Objective]

[Description: A highly restricted questline exclusively assigned to the Oakhaven Battlezone by the Zenith Protocol. Completion of this quest grants the host region a massive economic expansion and a permanent 10% global EXP buff.]

Dante stared at the scroll.

This wasn’t just a random piece of loot. This was the entire reason the Apex Coalition squad was out here in the Frostfire Steppes.

They were a designated national strike team, sent to complete a massive, server-wide objective to secure a permanent buff for their entire region.

And Arthur had been carrying the physical activation scroll in his inventory.

Dante broke the green wax seal.

The moment the seal snapped, the system interface didn’t just ping. It screamed.

A massive, server-wide announcement slammed into the sky, overwriting the clouds with a blaring, hostile crimson text.

[GLOBAL SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT]

[CRITICAL REGIONAL FAILURE.]

[Player ’Dan’ has stolen and claimed the Exclusive National Quest belonging to the Oakhaven Battlezone.]

[The Oakhaven territorial claim is officially revoked.]

Across the server, millions of players stopped what they were doing and stared up at the sky in absolute shock.

The system wasn’t finished.

[Penalty Applied: Oakhaven Battlezone.]

[Effect: A permanent 10% EXP Reduction penalty is hereby applied across the entire Oakhaven region and all affiliated players. Duration: 48 Hours.]

Dante stood in the middle of the Frostfire Steppes, holding the open scroll.

He read the massive red text floating in the sky. He had just slapped a massive, unavoidable progression penalty onto his own real-world city.

Every single player affiliated with Oakhaven was currently getting a 10% tax on their experience gains.

He had completely sabotaged them.

Dante couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.

"Oops," Dante smiled, tossing the regional quest scroll into his infinite inventory.

He didn’t feel guilty. The Apex Coalition had tried to rob him. They had tried to lock him in a gravity well and execute him for a boss claim.

If they wanted to play national politics, Dante was more than happy to show them what an anomaly could do to an entire country’s economy.

He turned away from the glacier and continued his march deeper into the Steppes.

He still had an SSS-Rank Beast King to hunt.