The Ignis Behemoth was falling apart.

Dante didn’t give the SSS-Rank regional boss a single fraction of a second to recover.

He was a blur of gold armor and black fabric. He relentlessly chained Zenith-tier skills and short-range teleportation.

He didn’t bother using [Voidsever].

The damage reflection passives of the primordial greatsword were too risky.

The [Dawn-Breaker Blade] was more than sufficient to whittle down the massive health pool when amplified by his overwhelming base stats.

The boss reared back. Its dark red eyes glowed violently as it prepared to unleash a massive arena-wide roar.

[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Intimidation Roar]

[Warning: Unblockable AoE. Applies a guaranteed 5-second ’Fear’ debuff, forcing the target to flee randomly.]

Dante saw the casting animation begin. He didn’t try to outrun the sound wave.

He triggered [Phantom Dash].

He vanished and completely bypassed the physical distance. He materialized directly in front of the open jaws of the beast.

BOOM.

The localized sonic boom from his materialization detonated point-blank against the face of the boss.

[Guaranteed Stun Applied. Duration: 1 Second.]

The massive roar caught in the throat of the Ignis Behemoth. The casting animation was brutally canceled by the hard crowd control.

The boss froze.

Dante didn’t swing his sword.

He opened his system interface and scrolled rapidly to the bottom of his active skill list.

He had watched the boss attempt to cast that roar three times now.

In the Zenith Protocol, certain high-tier skills could be learned not just by absorbing a skillbook.

They could be learned by directly observing and mimicking the code of an attack from a monster, provided the player had the necessary stats and a opening to process the data.

Dante didn’t just have stats. He had the [10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier].

"I will take that," Dante muttered.

He focused his intent and initiated the mimicry prompt.

[System Prompt: Attempting to mimic ’Intimidation Roar’.]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless observations.]

The combat enlightenment rushed into his neural link. It wasn’t the physical mechanic of shouting.

He understood the exact digital frequency required to bypass the mental defenses of a target and forcibly rewrite their localized combat logic.

This instilled a hard-coded command to flee.

[Intimidation Roar has been successfully copied.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Intimidation Roar has evolved into: Abyssal Command.]

[Abyssal Command (Zenith)]

[Description: Unleashes a pulse of overwhelming cosmic authority. Inflicts a guaranteed 3-second ’Stun’ on all hostile entities within a 50-foot radius. Does not trigger diminishing returns on boss immunity timers. Cooldown: 10 seconds.]

"Oh, that is completely unfair," Dante laughed and read the prompt.

Standard stuns in the Zenith Protocol suffered from diminishing returns.

If you stunned a boss, the next stun would last half as long, and eventually, the boss would become entirely immune to crowd control.

[Abyssal Command] explicitly bypassed that rule.

The one-second stun from [Phantom Dash] wore off.

The Ignis Behemoth immediately tried to swing a massive magma-dripping fist to crush the annoying human standing in front of it.

Dante didn’t dodge.

[Skill Executed: Abyssal Command]

Dante didn’t roar. He simply projected a pulse of pure and concentrated killing intent.

The air around him visibly distorted and radiated outward in a dark rippling wave.

The wave hit the Behemoth.

[Guaranteed Stun Applied. Duration: 3 Seconds.]

The massive boss locked up instantly. Its fist froze mere inches from the helmet of Dante.

"Three seconds," Dante said and adjusted his grip on the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. "Let us see how much damage I can do in three seconds."

He swung his sword in a rapid and relentless flurry of basic attacks. He carved deep glowing gashes into the obsidian scales of the boss.

[-3,200!]

[-3,500!]

[-3,100!]

[-6,800! Critical Hit!]

The health bar plummeted.

[Ignis Behemoth HP: 48,000 / 250,000]

The three-second stun expired.

The boss didn’t even get a chance to finish its swing.

Dante triggered [Phantom Dash] again. He utilized his halved cooldowns from [Chrono-Shift].

BOOM.

[Guaranteed Stun Applied. Duration: 1 Second.]

The boss froze again.

Dante delivered another heavy slash. He dropped the health of the boss below the critical twenty-percent threshold.

The moment the health bar dipped below 50,000 HP, the boss flashed a bright vulnerable red.

Dante didn’t hesitate. He activated the new skill he had looted from the Broodmother.

[Skill Executed: Execute]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

The skill evolved instantly and shifted into the Zenith-tier [Gaze of the Abyss].

Dante didn’t physically swing his sword.

The system simply deleted him from his current coordinates and pasted him directly into the optimal strike zone.

He was perfectly aligned with the massive glowing core in the center of the chest of the boss.

The Zenith-tier assassination skill bypassed all damage caps and invulnerability frames to apply a flat 50x damage modifier.

Dante drove the Gold-tier broadsword straight into the core.

[-163,500! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

The massive damage number popped up in bright red text.

The Ignis Behemoth didn’t have time to roar or trigger a death animation.

The sheer volume of raw damage completely shattered its internal code.

The massive building-sized gorilla-turtle violently exploded into a massive shower of blue and silver polygons. It scattered glowing loot across the obsidian ring.

Dante landed perfectly on his feet and withdrew his sword from the dissolving pixels.

He didn’t take a single point of unmitigated damage during the entire final phase of the fight. He had permanently stunned the boss into submission.

[Target Eliminated: Ignis Behemoth (Level 25 Dark Demon)]

[Experience Gained. Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

Dante watched his level tick up to 57.

The SSS-Rank regional boss granted a massive chunk of experience even without the double EXP event modifier he had enjoyed in the caverns.

He walked over to the loot pile and casually vacuumed up the gold coins and high-tier crafting materials.

A single massive piece of armor caught his eye. It was a heavy jagged chest piece forged from dark cooling magma.

[Item Appraised: Heart of the Ignis]

[Tier: Dark Demon]

[Type: Heavy Armor (Chest)]

[Stats: +6,000 Physical Defense, +2,000 Strength.]

[Passive: Generates a aura of extreme heat, dealing 5% of the Max HP of the user as fire damage per second to all nearby enemies.]

It was a fantastic piece of gear, but Dante already had the [Carapace of the Void-Devourer].

He didn’t need the fire damage, and the stamina recovery and phasing passives of the Void-Devourer were far more universally useful.

He tossed the chest piece into his inventory and marked it for his next trade with Seraphina.

As the last piece of loot vanished into his inventory, the system recognized the completion of the objective.

The [Exclusive Regional Quest Scroll (Oakhaven)] that Dante had stolen from the Apex Coalition squad earlier in the Steppes suddenly materialized in front of him and floated in the air.

The thick glowing green wax seal on the scroll completely melted away.

A massive server-wide announcement slammed into the sky. It completely overwrote the clouds with bright blazing gold text.

[GLOBAL SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT]

[SSS-Rank Regional Objective Completed: The Beast King of Frostfire has been slain!]

[The Frostfire Steppes have been pacified.]

[Completed by Player: Dan]

Dante smiled and read the text.

But the system wasn’t finished.

The automated logic of the Zenith Protocol required it to distribute the rewards associated with the specific quest scroll Dante had used to trigger the completion.

The text shifted from gold to a bright mocking green.

[System Reward Distributed.]

[Player ’Dan’ has successfully completed the Oakhaven Regional Quest.]

[Title Acquired: Friend of Oakhaven]

[Description: This title grants the user VIP access to all NPC merchants and fast-travel networks within the Oakhaven Battlezone.]

Dante stared at the title.

"Friend of Oakhaven," Dante said aloud. His voice dripped with irony.

He had literally just placed a massive unavoidable 10% EXP reduction penalty on the entire Oakhaven region and all affiliated players by stealing the quest scroll from the Apex Coalition.

He had completely sabotaged their entire early-game economy.

And the system had just rewarded him by officially naming him their best friend.

"The system in this game has a fantastic sense of humor," Dante laughed.

Thousands of miles away in the real-world city of Oakhaven, the reaction was apocalyptic.

The Apex Coalition guildhall located in the premium corporate sector of the city was in absolute ruins.

Gawain, the massive heavily armored Paladin and Guild Master of the Coalition, was actively destroying his own war room.

He had mobilized an entire army to march into the Frostfire Steppes to kill Dante and take their regional quest back.

His army had been completely wiped out by a single terrifying girl wielding an indestructible frying pan.

And now, the system had officially finalized the quest completion under the name of Dante.

The two-day 10% EXP penalty was locked in. The entire Oakhaven region was currently bleeding progression.

Gawain stared at the golden announcement in the sky. His hands shook with pure unadulterated rage.

"He stole our objective," Gawain roared and kicked a heavy oak table across the room.

"He wiped our strike team, he triggered the penalty, and the system just gave him VIP access to our city!"

His lieutenants stood around the room and were terrified to speak. They had never seen the Paladin this unhinged.

"Sir," Arthur spoke up. He was the tank Dante had executed in the Steppes.

He had used his free revive and was currently wearing basic beginner armor.

"Dan is a anomaly. He has zero cooldowns. He has clones. We cannot fight him in a standard engagement."

"I do not care about his cooldowns!" Gawain snapped and spun around to glare at his officer.

"He humiliated us on a global scale! The Sakura Nation is laughing at us! Vanguard’s Legacy is laughing at us!"

Gawain pulled up his system interface. He didn’t buy a global broadcast. He didn’t want to play PR games.

He opened the high-priority guild command channel.

"Listen to me," Gawain ordered. His voice was deadly quiet.

"I want every single member of the Apex Coalition pulled from the dungeons. I want every farming route abandoned. I want the entire roster mobilized."

"Sir, we have a 10% penalty," Arthur argued nervously. "If we stop grinding now, we will fall permanently behind the other regions."

"We are already behind!" Gawain yelled.

"Our reputation is completely destroyed! The only way we salvage this is if we bring back his head!"

Gawain pointed at the digital map floating in the center of the room.

"He is in the Frostfire Steppes," Gawain commanded.

"Deploy the entire Coalition. I want a dragnet. Do not engage him solo."

"If you see him, ping his coordinates and hold the perimeter until the heavy squads arrive. We are going to bury him under sheer numbers."

Back in the Frostfire Steppes, Dante completely ignored his regional chat.

He knew Gawain was coming for him. The Apex Coalition was a military organization. They wouldn’t let a public humiliation go unanswered.

"Let them come," Dante said and turned his back on the bubbling magma lake.

He had his stats, his zero cooldowns, and a permanent VIP pass to their home city.

He was perfectly content to spend the rest of the day dismantling their entire guild piece by piece.

He started walking back toward the frozen tundra. He was ready to see how many heavily armored Paladins it took to stop a spatial fracture.