The Sky Demon Forest was a massive sprawling expanse of ancient twisted timber located deep in the southern reaches of the Veridian Alliance territory.

Normally, the forest was a mid-game grinding zone filled with Level 30 Demonic-type beasts.

Today, the ambient wildlife had completely vanished. They were either slaughtered or driven away by the sheer overwhelming volume of localized player activity.

The three largest and most hostile guilds on the Overture server had formed an unprecedented temporary alliance.

They had marched thousands of heavily armored players into the dense dark woods. They actively converted the entire zone into a militarized staging ground.

Dante flew high above the cloud cover on the back of his armored Griffon and looked down at the tactical deployment.

He didn’t need the global map of the system to see their positions.

The sheer noise, the flickering of thousands of torches, and the massive glowing magical suppression arrays they were setting up painted a perfectly clear picture of their strategy.

Vanguard’s Legacy, commanded by Malric, held the northern perimeter.

They had erected heavy iron barricades and layered tower shields. They fully intended to bottleneck Dante if he tried to approach from Ironhold.

The Black Dragon Syndicate held the eastern flank.

They were furious, highly motivated, and completely desperate for revenge after the localized lockdown by Dante of their home nation.

They had deployed their elite stealth squads and rapid-strike rogues into the heavy canopy of the forest to turn the trees into a lethal vertical minefield.

The Apex Coalition held the western approach.

Gawain, the massive Paladin Guild Master, was personally leading the line.

They were deploying massive localized anti-magic fields and heavy artillery, furious over the stolen Oakhaven quest.

They had completely surrounded the deep center of the forest.

Dante didn’t immediately dive into the trees.

He pulled back on the heavy leather reins and held the Griffon in a slow high-altitude holding pattern.

His system interface pinged violently with an incoming private message.

It was Casanova.

[Casanova: BOSS! Do NOT go to the Sky Demon Forest! I am currently hiding in a bush near the southern ridge. It is a complete death trap!]

[Casanova: They have three massive armies deployed. I am talking thousands of players. They have locked down every single localized entry point!]

Dante smiled slightly.

The flamboyant bard was an idiot, but his dedication to providing localized intel was appreciated.

[Dan: I know they are there. I can see them from the sky.]

[Casanova: Then fly away! Go back to Ironhold! They brought Guild-Tier suppression arrays!]

[Casanova: They have hundreds of casters ready to synchronized-fire the second you step into their kill-box! You cannot survive this!]

[Dan: I am not going to survive it. I am going to finish it. Get out of the bushes and get back to the city before the crossfire hits you.]

Dante closed the interface and completely dismissed the frantic warnings of the bard.

He looked down at the massive dark green expanse of the forest.

The allied armies were treating this like a standard localized guild war.

They assumed Dante would be forced to march through their blockades, trigger their traps, and expose himself to their synchronized ranged fire.

They completely forgot that he possessed limitless flight.

Dante didn’t try to sneak past their perimeter. He didn’t try to assassinate their scouts.

He wanted them all exactly where they were.

Dante unhooked his legs from the heavy leather saddle of the Griffon. He patted the massive armored beast on its feathered neck.

"Go home," Dante ordered.

He stood up on the saddle. The high-altitude wind violently whipped the starry fabric of the [Mantle of the Void-Dragon] around his gold armor.

He didn’t use the flight passive of the cloak to slowly glide down.

Dante simply stepped off the Griffon.

Gravity instantly grabbed his heavy localized mass.

He plummeted through the freezing thin air and accelerated at terrifying speed toward the dark forest canopy thousands of feet below.

He didn’t try to slow his descent.

He kept his arms pinned to his sides to streamline his dive. He completely ignored the wind roaring in his ears.

Down in the forest, the allied armies were tense.

Malric stood behind his massive shield wall on the northern perimeter and checked his tactical map.

The Enforcer hadn’t slept in two days. He was completely obsessed with securing the kill.

"Keep the anti-air ballistas primed," Malric ordered his lieutenants. "He has a Griffon mount. If he tries to fly over the perimeter, shoot him out of the sky."

A sharp high-pitched whistling sound suddenly echoed from the sky above them.

It didn’t sound like a bird or a spell. It sounded like an incoming artillery shell.

Malric snapped his head up.

He couldn’t track the localized trajectory fast enough.

Dante hit the ground exactly in the absolute dead center of the Sky Demon Forest, right in the middle of the massive empty clearing surrounded by the three armies.

He didn’t use [Blink Step] to arrest his momentum. He didn’t cast a shield.

He triggered [Meteor Stride] at the exact fraction of a millisecond before he hit the dirt.

The Zenith-tier teleport didn’t displace him horizontally.

It absorbed his massive terminal-velocity kinetic momentum and instantly weaponized it.

BOOM.

The impact was entirely apocalyptic.

The sonic boom of his materialization, combined with the sheer physical force of a terminal velocity drop in heavy Gold-tier armor, completely shattered the center of the forest.

A massive crater fifty feet wide exploded outward. It violently threw dirt, shattered trees, and dust hundreds of feet into the air.

The shockwave knocked the front lines of all three massive armies completely off their feet.

Tower shields buckled, casters stumbled, and the Black Dragon scouts hiding in the nearby canopy were violently shaken out of the trees.

The dust slowly began to clear from the massive crater.

The three allied armies quickly scrambled back to their feet, drew their weapons, and stared into the settling dirt cloud.

Dante stood in the exact center of the crater.

He wasn’t crouching. He wasn’t panting for breath.

He stood perfectly upright.

The dark purple plating of his [Void-Devourer Gauntlets] pulsed with cosmic weight.

He didn’t draw a sword. He didn’t activate a spell.

He just looked around the massive clearing and casually took in the thousands of heavily armed players completely surrounding him.

"You guys really went all out," the voice of Dante carried effortlessly across the silent clearing completely devoid of fear.

Malric pushed his way to the front of the Vanguard’s Legacy shield wall.

The Enforcer glared down at the crater. His hand gripped his broadsword tightly.

"You are a fool, Dan," Malric roared and projected his voice over the tense silence.

"You bypassed our perimeter just to drop yourself directly into the absolute center of our kill-box! There are three thousand players here!"

"You cannot teleport out of this! The suppression arrays are already online!"

A massive shimmering dome of silver light slammed down over the entire clearing to confirm the threat of Malric.

It was a massive combined Guild-Tier Nullification Array designed to halve base stats and completely disable high-tier passives.

Dante didn’t even look at the glowing dome.

He just smirked.

"Malric," Dante called out, his voice echoing clearly. "Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to trap me in a canyon with a suppression array?"

Malric flinched.

The Enforcer clearly remembered Dante casually summoning a Zenith-tier hurricane and ripping his entire squad into the sky.

But this wasn’t a squad of eighty men. This was an army of thousands.

On the western flank, Gawain stepped out of his heavy infantry line.

He was the massive Paladin Guild Master of the Apex Coalition. He raised a massive glowing holy hammer.

"Your tricks will not work here, Outworlder!" Gawain bellowed. His voice filled with righteous fury.

"You stole our progression! You humiliated Oakhaven! We are not going to arrest you!"

"We are going to lock you in a respawn camp and farm your avatar until your capsule deletes you!"

"You are going to try," Dante corrected him smoothly.

He didn’t draw the [Crimson Edge]. He didn’t summon [Voidsever].

He simply raised his left hand and snapped his dark purple star-iron-plated fingers.

A tiny localized spatial rift tore open directly next to his shoulder.

The entire clearing went completely and terrifyingly cold.

The temperature didn’t drop because of an ice spell.

It dropped because the sheer overwhelming cosmic weight radiating from the spatial rift was actively suppressing the ambient atmosphere of the game engine.

Erebus stepped out of the rift.

The Half-Soul Celestial didn’t look like a towering monster.

She was just a pale barefoot little girl in a dark gothic dress who carried a massive Mythic-tier leather backpack.

She stood next to Dante and looked around the massive clearing at the thousands of heavily armed players.

Her solid blood-red eyes blinked slowly.

The three armies stared at the little girl in complete baffled confusion.

"Is that a pet?" a Vanguard’s Legacy archer laughed nervously. "He brought a cosmetic pet to a massive guild war?"

"Do not shoot the kid!" a Sakura Nation rogue yelled from the trees, entirely misjudging the localized threat level.

Dante didn’t laugh. He looked down at Erebus.

"Are you hungry?" Dante asked her quietly.

Erebus looked up at him. She didn’t offer a system prompt or a grand dramatic speech.

"Yes," Erebus stated flatly. Her red eyes locked onto the massive heavily armored line of the Apex Coalition. "They are noisy. I want to squish them."

Dante smiled. It was a cold absolute expression of execution.

He didn’t need to swing a sword. He didn’t need to cast a Zenith-tier skill.

He was holding the leash to a walking reality-warping apocalypse.

"Erebus," Dante commanded. His voice cut clearly through the tense silence of the three massive armies.

He pointed a single dark purple gauntlet directly at Gawain and the heavily armored Paladin frontline of the Apex Coalition.

"Squish them."