The deafening horn blast from the Wraith-Commander echoed through the ruined courtyard, vibrating the very stone beneath their feet.

The boss wasn’t calling for reinforcements from another room.

It was utilizing the code of the one hundred Gold-tier knights Lila and Mei had just slaughtered.

The blue and silver polygons that had scattered across the floor didn’t fade. They violently shifted color, turning a sickly, glowing green.

[Boss Ultimate Triggered: Phantom Cavalry]

[Warning: The Wraith-Commander has animated the fallen. Target acquisition locked on highest threat level.]

The green polygons rapidly coalesced, pulling themselves upward. They didn’t reform into knights.

They formed into massive, ethereal warhorses composed entirely of rotting bone and green ghost-fire.

"Oh, come on!" Mei yelled, gripping her pan with both hands. "We just killed them!"

There were exactly one hundred phantom horses. They didn’t have riders, but they didn’t need them. They were a trampling mechanic designed to completely overrun an entire raid group.

The horses didn’t look at Lila or Mei.

They all turned their burning green eyes toward the ruined balcony where Dante was standing.

"I guess I’m the highest threat level," Dante noted calmly.

The Wraith-Commander, riding his own massive skeletal horse, pointed his spiked greatsword directly at Dante.

The horde charged.

It wasn’t a scattered, disorganized rush. The hundred phantom horses moved in a perfect, terrifying wedge formation.

They galloped across the courtyard, the sound of their ethereal hooves completely deafening.

They were moving incredibly fast, completely ignoring the rubble and shattered pillars in their path.

"Boss! They’re coming straight for you!" Lila shouted.

"I see them," Dante said.

He didn’t activate [Meteor Stride] to dodge. If he teleported away, the cavalry would simply re-target Lila and Mei, and a hundred charging horses would easily bypass Mei’s localized blocking arc.

He had to break the charge.

Dante opened his inventory. He scrolled quickly through the massive pile of skillbooks he had extorted from the Outpost merchants.

He found a thin, shimmering silver book.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Echo]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: Creates a single, stationary auditory and visual illusion of the user to briefly distract low-level enemies. Illusion breaks upon contact. Cooldown: 30 seconds.]

It was a stealth utility skill, completely useless for dealing actual damage or blocking a physical impact.

Dante absorbed it instantly.

[Skill Learned: Echo (Novice)]

The phantom cavalry was fifty yards away and closing fast. The ground beneath the balcony was literally shaking from the localized kinetic force of the stampede.

Dante held out his left hand, pointing it directly at the charging horde.

He didn’t draw a weapon. He activated the new skill.

[Skill Executed: Echo.]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The combat enlightenment was entirely sensory. Dante didn’t learn how to hit harder or move faster. He understood the absolute, fundamental mechanics of visual processing.

He learned how to hijack the systemic targeting algorithms of hostile entities. He understood how to fold ambient light and sound to create perfect, unyielding systemic decoys that registered to the game engine as physical mass.

[Echo has reached Adept tier.]

[Echo has reached Master tier.]

[Echo has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The air in the courtyard violently shimmered.

[Echo has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Echo has evolved into: Mirage Domain.]

The system interface flashed a brilliant, blinding white.

[Mirage Domain (Zenith)]

[Description: The ultimate expression of systemic deception. The user projects a massive, 500-foot domain of absolute optical illusion. Within the domain, the user generates up to 500 tangible, indestructible illusory walls and perfect duplicates. Illusions actively hijack hostile targeting algorithms. Duration: 30 Seconds. Cooldown: 1 Minute.]

"Let’s see you charge through this," Dante said.

He triggered the Zenith-tier skill.

The entire courtyard completely vanished.

Lila and Mei, standing near the bone doors, gasped as the ruined architecture around them was instantly overwritten.

A massive, incredibly complex labyrinth of towering, indestructible mirror-walls erupted from the stone floor.

The walls were reflective, completely disorienting, and they formed a tight, claustrophobic maze that occupied the entire courtyard.

But it wasn’t just walls.

Standing in every single corridor, at every single intersection, were exact, perfect duplicates of Dante.

The phantom cavalry hit the edge of the labyrinth.

The system governing the hundred horses and the Wraith-Commander completely broke.

The cavalry charge was a mechanic designed to lock onto a single, high-threat target and trample them in a straight line.

Suddenly, the system engine was reading over five hundred identical, high-threat targets scattered across a completely impassable maze of mirrored walls.

The wedge formation instantly shattered.

The phantom horses didn’t know who to charge. Some turned left, slamming full-speed into the indestructible mirror-walls, bouncing off and staggering backward.

Others charged straight ahead, hitting an illusion of Dante, only to find the illusion didn’t break. The illusions were tangible code; they acted as solid objects, completely absorbing the kinetic impact without taking damage.

The deafening sound of the organized charge turned into a chaotic, panicking cacophony of screeching ghost-horses and shattering glass.

The Wraith-Commander, riding in the center of the horde, was completely trapped in the maze.

He swung his massive spiked greatsword, trying to cleave his way through the mirror-walls, but the Zenith-tier illusions were hard-coded to be indestructible for the duration of the skill. His blade simply bounced off, leaving no scratch.

"Where are you?!" the Commander roared, his voice echoing confusingly off the hundreds of reflective surfaces.

"I’m right here," Dante’s voice echoed simultaneously from every single illusion in the maze, completely masking his true location.

Dante wasn’t hiding. He was actively navigating his own labyrinth.

Because he was the caster, the mirrored walls were completely transparent to his vision. He could see exactly where every single phantom horse was currently trapped and panicking.

He didn’t use [Voidsever] or [Gaze of the Abyss]. He didn’t want to waste the cooldowns or risk the reflection damage. He had an army of his own currently loitering in the maze.

Dante mentally commanded the three Shadow Clones he had generated from his cloak earlier.

The clones were immune to the confusion of the maze. They sprinted through the corridors, effortlessly weaving past the panicked horses, and converged directly on the trapped Wraith-Commander.

The three clones didn’t hesitate. They swung their [Crimson Edges] simultaneously, hacking into the massive boss from three different blind spots.

[-15,000!]

[-15,000!]

[-15,000!]

The Commander shrieked, entirely unable to defend himself in the narrow, mirrored corridor. He couldn’t turn his massive horse around to face them. He was a sitting duck.

"Mei!" Dante’s voice suddenly broadcasted through the party comms. "The boss is pushing toward your sector. He’s blind. Get ready to hit him when the maze drops!"

Mei, standing completely confused near the bone doors, tightened her grip on her pan. "I’m ready, Boss! Just point him at me!"

Dante watched the system timer for [Mirage Domain].

3... 2... 1...

The thirty-second duration expired.

The massive, towering labyrinth of mirror-walls and the five hundred identical illusions instantly shattered into fine, white digital dust.

The ruined courtyard reappeared.

The hundred phantom horses were in total disarray, scattered randomly across the stone, completely separated from their commander, and entirely stripped of their momentum.

The Wraith-Commander, completely disoriented by the sudden environmental shift, found himself charging his skeletal horse directly toward the heavy bone doors.

He was charging straight at Mei.

"Batter up!" Mei laughed.

She didn’t use the massive AoE skill this time. She just swung the standard, four-foot-wide cast-iron pan with absolute, perfect timing.

The Wraith-Commander’s skeletal warhorse slammed head-first into the [God-Slaying Skillet].

CLANG!

The [Perfect Block] passive absorbed the entire charge. The localized kinetic force didn’t push Mei back an inch.

The massive skeletal horse, however, instantly snapped its neck on the indestructible cast-iron. The beast crumbled into green pixels, violently throwing the towering Wraith-Commander over its head.

The massive Gold-tier boss hit the stone floor hard, sliding to a stop directly at Dante’s feet.

Dante was standing exactly where the maze had ended, waiting for him.

The Commander’s health bar was flashing a desperate, critical red, whittled down to a mere fifteen percent by the Shadow Clones while he was trapped in the labyrinth.

The boss tried to scramble to his feet, raising his spiked greatsword.

"You don’t get to swing," Dante said flatly.

He didn’t summon [Voidsever]. He didn’t need the true damage.

He activated the Zenith-tier assassination skill he had used on the Ignis Behemoth.

[Skill Executed: Gaze of the Abyss]

Because the boss’s health was below the 20% threshold, the execution parameter triggered instantly.

Dante didn’t teleport. He simply stepped inside the boss’s guard, completely bypassing the massive, spiked greatsword, and drove the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] directly into the glowing green fire of the Commander’s eye socket.

The Zenith-tier 50x damage multiplier, combined with the sword’s +50% bonus damage against corrupted enemies, hit with overwhelming, mathematical finality.

[-250,000! OVERKILL!]

The Wraith-Commander didn’t even twitch.

The towering, spiked black armor violently exploded into a massive, blinding shower of golden loot polygons. The concussive force of the boss’s death shattered the remaining phantom horses scattered across the courtyard, instantly deleting the entire mechanic.

[Target Eliminated: Wraith-Commander (Level 25 Gold)]

[Experience Gained.]

The courtyard was suddenly completely silent, save for the sound of hundreds of gold coins raining down onto the stone floor.

Dante slowly pulled the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] out of the fading pixels, smoothly sheathing the gold sword at his hip.

Lila let out a long, shuddering breath, lowering her staff. "That was... terrifying. I thought we were going to get trampled."

"You guys literally just built a house of mirrors and played pinball with a raid boss," Pip yelled from Mei’s shoulder, completely incredulous. "That is not how you fight a cavalry charge!"

"It worked, didn’t it?" Mei grinned, casually resting the frying pan on her shoulder.

"It worked perfectly," Dante said, walking over to the massive pile of loot the Commander had dropped.

Because he possessed the [Zenith Incarnate] title, the 100% drop rate guaranteed an absurd amount of wealth. The entire courtyard was basically paved with Gold-tier gear and high-level crafting materials.

Dante activated his [Band of the Void-Walker] and vacuumed the entire room clean in a single, sweeping motion. He didn’t even bother looking at the stats yet. They had a job to do.

"We’re almost there," Dante said, looking at the massive, dark archway at the far end of the courtyard.

The necrotic miasma was visibly thicker there, pouring out of the hallway like gray smoke. "The core of the corruption is right down that hall."

He checked his party’s status. Lila’s mana was completely full, thanks to Aura’s constant pulsing. Mei was entirely uninjured, her indestructible pan having blocked everything thrown at her. Dante’s stamina was locked at maximum.

They had just cleared the hardest room in the dungeon without taking a single point of damage.

"Lila, Mei," Dante said, his voice dropping into a serious, commanding tone. "The boss in the final room is the source of the rot.

It’s not going to be a Gold-tier physical brawler. It’s going to be a Dark Demon caster. The mechanics are going to be completely different." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"I’ll block the magic!" Mei declared confidently.

"The pan doesn’t block curses, Mei," Dante warned. "If it throws an AoE debuff, you run. Do not try to tank necrotic magic."

Mei frowned but nodded. "Understood, Boss."

Dante led them down the dark, miasma-filled hallway. The air was freezing, carrying the distinct scent of old blood and deep decay.

They were entering the final chamber of the Sunken Necropolis.

It was time to pull the plug on the corruption.