Chapter 93: Chapter 93: The Demonic Contract

Erebus sat cross-legged on the cold floor and happily munched on her fourth [Magma-Seared Meat Bun].

The terrifying room-shaking aura of the Level 25 boss was completely gone. She just looked like a pale and incredibly hungry kid in a gothic dress.

Dante sat across from her with his back resting against the jagged iron throne. He watched her eat, and his mind raced.

He couldn’t kill her.

Her two-million health pool and telekinetic attacks made a direct fight mathematical suicide.

But he also couldn’t just leave her here.

If she threw another tantrum while he was walking out, she could collapse the entire Necropolis on top of him.

"So," Dante started casually and rested his arms on his knees. "You have been locked in this crypt for a long time."

Erebus paused mid-chew.

She looked around the massive ruined throne room.

Her solid red eyes didn’t show fear or sadness. They just showed a blank and localized acknowledgment of the space.

"The shiny men put me here," Erebus said. Her voice returned to its flat emotionless baseline. "They said I was broken. They said my soul was too loud."

"The Celestials," Dante translated the lore. "They sealed you here during the First War because you only have half a soul."

"Yes," Erebus nodded. She finished the meat bun and immediately reached out for another one.

Dante tossed a [Frost-Boar Rib] from his inventory. She caught it smoothly.

"I cannot leave. The big door at the top of the stairs hates me. If I touch it, it burns."

Dante frowned.

The divine seal on the Sunken Necropolis wasn’t just to keep players out. It was specifically designed to keep her in.

The system had hard-coded a barrier that physically prevented the boss from exiting the dungeon instance.

"That is inconvenient," Dante muttered. "Because I am leaving. And I do not really want to leave you down here with nothing but rocks to play with."

Erebus stopped eating. She looked at Dante.

The red in her eyes pulsed slightly. It was a faint flicker of the cosmic power she wielded.

"You are leaving?" Erebus asked. The flat tone wavered, and a hint of abandonment crept into her voice. "But you have the good food. And you are not noisy like the bone man."

"I have things to do outside," Dante explained gently.

He didn’t want to trigger another telekinetic tantrum.

"I have a lot of people who are currently trying to kill me, and I cannot hide in a swamp forever."

Erebus tilted her head. "I can squish the people trying to kill you."

Dante smiled. "I appreciate the offer. But like you said, you cannot cross the door."

Erebus looked down at the half-eaten rib in her hands.

She looked incredibly sad. For a localized world-ending entity, she was surprisingly easy to read. She was just lonely.

Dante opened his system interface. He stared at the glowing blue menus.

The Zenith Protocol was a rigid system governed by absolute mathematical laws.

Bosses could not leave their designated zones.

It was a fundamental rule of the game architecture to prevent high-level entities from wandering into beginner areas and wiping the server.

But Dante was an anomaly. He had already broken half the rules in the game just by existing.

"System loopholes," Dante whispered to himself.

He navigated to the ’Companions’ tab.

The icon for Aura was currently grayed out and displayed a 22-hour cooldown timer until her digital form reconstructed.

The Doom Harbinger occupied his primary pet slot.

But players weren’t limited to a single pet.

They just couldn’t have two active simultaneously unless they possessed a specific Beast-Tamer class.

He didn’t need Erebus to be active. He just needed to change her localized classification.

If the system viewed her as a ’Boss’, she was bound by the dungeon seal.

If the system viewed her as a ’Pet’, she was bound to the coordinates of the player.

"Erebus," Dante said and leaned forward. "If I offered you a way out of here, would you take it?"

The little girl looked up, and her red eyes widened slightly. "I can leave?"

"I think so," Dante nodded.

"But it requires a contract. You have to agree to be bound to my system profile. It means you go where I go.

You stay in a pocket space until I call you. You cannot just wander around breaking things."

Erebus thought about it for exactly two seconds.

"Will there be more meat buns?" she asked.

"Infinite meat buns," Dante promised.

"Okay," Erebus agreed instantly.

Dante didn’t hesitate. He initiated the binding sequence.

He didn’t get a standard localized prompt like he did when he saved Aura from deletion.

Because Erebus was an active and healthy entity, the system required mutual consent for a Master-Servant contract.

A glowing crimson contract materialized in the air between them. It was written in complex and shifting systemic code.

Erebus didn’t read it. She just pressed her small pale hand against the glowing red seal at the bottom.

Dante pressed his iron gauntlet against his side of the contract.

The system interface violently hitched.

The blue menus glitched out and sparked with red static as the servers of the Zenith Protocol desperately tried to calculate the math of binding a Level 25 Celestial boss to a player character.

[System Error: Entity Classification Mismatch.]

[Attempting to bind a Dungeon Boss.]

[Warning: This action violates designated boundary parameters.]

"Override," Dante commanded. His voice was firm.

He wasn’t asking the system. He was telling it.

His massive cosmic weight bolstered by his SSS-grade talents and [Voidsever] pushed back against the baseline restrictions of the system.

The red static faded. The interface stabilized.

[Override Accepted. Restructuring Entity Data...]

[Master-Servant Contract Formed.]

[Pet Acquired: Erebus]

[Grade: Unlisted (Anomaly)]

[Designation: Half-Soul Celestial]

The glowing crimson contract shattered into light.

Erebus didn’t dissolve or shrink like Aura had.

She remained exactly the same size and still sat on the floor. But the oppressive heavy boss aura radiating from her completely vanished.

She felt entirely tethered to the coordinates of Dante now.

Dante let out a long breath of relief. The loophole had worked.

He pulled up her new stat sheet.

[Pet: Erebus]

[Level: 25]

[Status: Bound]

[Warning: Pet level exceeds progression parameters of the Master. Active combat participation is LOCKED. Pet cannot directly attack hostile entities or mitigate damage.]

Dante nodded. He expected that.

The system wouldn’t let him just summon a two-million-health boss to fight his battles for him.

Her raw telekinesis and massive AoE attacks were disabled while she was bound to him.

"That is fine," Dante said. "I do enough damage on my own."

He scrolled down to her innate abilities.

Even if she couldn’t actively fight, pets always provided localized passive buffs or utility skills to their masters.

Aura provided infinite healing and debuff immunity.

He wondered what a half-soul Celestial provided.

He read the first skill on the list.

[Skill 1: Blood Sacrifice (Passive/Active)]

[Description: The user may voluntarily burn their own Maximum HP to infinitely scale their localized Attack Power. For every 10% of Max HP sacrificed, Attack Power increases by 100%. The buff lasts until the end of the combat encounter. HP cannot drop below 1% from this effect.]

Dante stared at the text.

It was a berserker mechanic.

He could actively trade his massive health pool for localized and overwhelming burst damage.

If he sacrificed 90% of his health, his base attack power would multiply by 900% right out of the gate before factoring in any Zenith-tier skill multipliers.

It was incredibly dangerous, but the synergy with the healing of Aura was undeniable.

He could burn his health for massive damage, and she could instantly restore it.

He kept scrolling.

[Skill 2: Death’s Duel (Active)]

[Description: The ultimate challenge. The user burns 50% of their Maximum HP to lock a single target into an inescapable dimensional arena. No outside entities may enter or interfere. Inside the duel, the user gains a flat 100% damage boost. Additionally, every successful strike lands a 1% chance to inflict True Death (Instant Kill), regardless of the HP or immunities of the target. Duel ends when one participant dies. Cooldown: 24 Hours.]

Dante stopped breathing for a second.

A localized domain expansion.

If Silas or Malric tried to hide behind an army of three hundred players again, Dante could just trigger [Death’s Duel].

He could rip the Guild Master out of his formation, trap him in a 1v1 arena, and force a fight to death.

And the 1% chance to inflict True Death on every single hit?

With the [Max Luck] stat of Dante guaranteeing maximum RNG rolls, that 1% chance wasn’t a gamble. It was a mathematical certainty.

If he locked someone in a duel, the first time his sword touched them, they would instantly die.

"These are not support skills," Dante whispered. "These are execution protocols."

He scrolled to the third and final skill.

[Skill 3: Undying ghost (Passive)]

[Description: The manifestation of an unyielding soul. If the user takes fatal damage that would normally reduce their HP to zero and trigger True Death, the damage is completely negated. The HP of the user halts at exactly 1 point, and they are granted 5 seconds of absolute invulnerability. Cooldown: 30 Days.]

Dante closed the interface.

He sat on the floor and stared at the little girl who was currently licking barbecue sauce off her fingers.

Aura was the ultimate defensive safety net. She kept him healthy and immune to crowd control.

Erebus was the ultimate offensive failsafe.

She gave him the tools to isolate, overwhelm, and guarantee the absolute destruction of any target on the server while providing an ironclad thirty-day safety net against being one-shot.

Between his SSS-grade talents, [Voidsever], the Gold-tier armor, and his two anomalous pets, Dante had completely transcended the standard progression curve of the Zenith Protocol.

He wasn’t playing the same game as the other players anymore.

He was a walking apocalypse.

"Are we leaving now?" Erebus asked and looked around the empty throne room. "It is boring here."

Dante stood up and adjusted his heavy pitch-black cloak.

"Yeah, we are leaving," Dante said. "I have two friends waiting outside. Try not to squish them."

"Okay," Erebus agreed easily.

Dante tapped the pet icon on his interface.

Erebus didn’t dissolve into light.

The Master-Servant space opened a small spatial rift next to her.

She stepped through it, vanished from the physical world, and waited comfortably in her pocket dimension until he called upon her passives.

Dante turned toward the massive shattered archway leading out of the throne room.

He had cleared the SSS-Rank containment zone. The necrotic corruption was completely neutralized.

It was time to head back to Ironhold, turn in the quest, and see exactly what kind of trap the three massive guild armies had set for him in the swamp.

Dante drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. The gold metal glowed warmly in the dark.

He wasn’t hiding anymore.