Chapter 99: Chapter 99: Chaos in the Forest

The Sky Demon Forest turned into absolute chaos.

Four thousand heavily armed players charged the center crater from all sides.

The noise was deafening. A roar of clashing steel, overlapping magical chants, and shouted orders completely drowned out the ambient sounds of the blighted woods.

The party of Dante didn’t flinch.

They didn’t form a defensive circle or turtle behind shields.

They operated with a smooth and terrifying synergy that completely bypassed standard game combat logic.

On the western flank, the Apex Coalition of Gawain managed to push past the edge of the initial gravity well of Lila.

Hundreds of heavy paladins and warriors charged down the crater slope and aimed to crush the blue-haired support player.

Lila didn’t retreat.

She tapped the butt of her wooden staff against the dirt in rapid succession.

[Skill Executed: Singularity]

[Skill Executed: Singularity]

Because she was a Hidden Class [Astral Arcanist], she bypassed chanting entirely.

Two massive and pitch-black spheres of concentrated gravity materialized directly in the path of the charging army.

The gravitational pull was absolute and entirely horizontal.

The Apex frontline was violently ripped off their feet.

Heavily armored paladins were sucked into the black spheres and crashed into each other with sickening metallic crunches.

Lila wasn’t just stalling them. She was actively stacking them.

Dozens of players were compressed into tight balls of flailing limbs and dented iron.

"Mei!" Lila yelled over the din. "They are grouped!"

Mei didn’t hesitate. The Brawler was standing near the edge of the crater and holding the massive thirty-foot-wide [God-Slaying Skillet].

She gripped the tree-trunk-sized handle and sprinted directly toward the clusters of trapped Apex players.

"Fore!" Mei shrieked happily.

She swung the colossal cast-iron pan in a massive horizontal sweep.

CLANG!

The impact was devastating.

The indestructible pan didn’t just hit the outer layer of players. The kinetic force rippled through the tightly compressed group and multiplied the blunt-force trauma exponentially.

[-12,000!]

[-14,500!]

[-15,000!]

The damage numbers exploded.

The entire cluster of players was launched horizontally across the crater and completely zeroed out before they hit the ground.

They shattered into massive clouds of blue pixels and left behind a shower of dropped silver coins and potions.

Pip the dragon immediately swooped down and vacuumed the localized loot into his tiny jaws.

"We are making so much money!" Pip yelled and dodged a stray arrow.

On the northern flank, Malric was desperately trying to organize the Vanguard’s Legacy shield wall.

"Push him back!" Malric roared and pointed his broadsword at the hulking seven-foot-tall bard.

Casanova laughed.

The massive vascular bruiser didn’t have a weapon, but with his [Titan’s Physique] scaling off his massive mana pool, his bare fists hit like meteor strikes.

Casanova charged directly into the heavy iron shield wall.

He didn’t try to break the shields.

He grabbed the top edge of a towering iron shield, lifted the screaming tank completely off the ground, and used the player as a makeshift battering ram.

Casanova swung the tank horizontally and violently cleared the entire front line. He scattered the Gilded Syndicate members like bowling pins.

"You guys really need to work on your footwork!" Casanova boomed. His deep voice carried over the chaos.

While Lila, Mei, and Casanova effortlessly held the perimeter, Dante focused on the high-value targets.

He didn’t wade into the thick of the infantry. He let the armies cluster up to create massive localized blind spots.

Dante activated his Zenith-tier assassination skill.

[Skill Executed: Phantom Waltz]

The purple invulnerability frames enveloped his Gold-tier armor. He vanished.

He didn’t target the front lines. He blinked directly into the dense and disorganized backlines of the three armies. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Crack.

He materialized behind a Black Dragon Syndicate lieutenant directing stealth squads from the tree line.

Dante swung [Voidsever] horizontally.

The 100% armor-piercing passive of the primordial greatsword multiplied by the 1,000% damage boost of the Zenith skill cleanly sheared the lieutenant in half.

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

Crack.

He blinked to the Apex Coalition backline and materialized directly above a cluster of high-tier healers.

Crack. Crack.

He delivered two brutal vertical strikes before his boots even hit the ground to delete their support network.

Crack.

He finished the five-strike sequence directly behind a Vanguard’s Legacy commander. He drove the black blade straight through his spine.

[Passive Trigger (Dance of Death): Cooldown Reset.]

Dante materialized back in the center of the crater perfectly balanced.

He was systematically decapitating their leadership structure.

Every time he used [Phantom Waltz], he wiped out five key players without taking a single point of damage.

But the sheer numbers of the allied armies were beginning to tell.

"Casters!" Gawain bellowed from the western ridge and finally managed to break free from the edge of the gravity pull of Lila.

The Paladin Guild Master realized physical combat was useless against the anomalies.

"Synchronize fire! Glass the center! Ignore the friendly fire!"

Gawain was desperate.

He was ordering his mages to drop massive area-of-effect spells directly onto the crater even if it meant killing his own frontline troops.

Hundreds of mages from the Black Dragon Syndicate and the Apex Coalition began rapidly chanting.

Massive and overlapping magic circles of fire, frost, and lightning illuminated the dark canopy of the Sky Demon Forest.

The mana density spiked to terrifying levels.

If that barrage launched, the sheer volume of overlapping chip damage would eventually shred the massive health pool of Dante.

Even the healing of Aura wouldn’t be able to keep up with the simultaneous hits.

"Dante! They are casting!" Lila yelled. She was completely unable to pin hundreds of spread-out mages.

Dante looked up at the glowing magical circles.

He didn’t activate [Aegis Deflection].

He looked down at the tiny girl clutching his iron greave.

"Erebus," Dante said smoothly. "They are being incredibly noisy."

Erebus looked up. The Level 25 Celestial boss was entirely bored by the physical fighting.

But the massive influx of magical energy caught her attention.

Her solid blood-red eyes blinked.

She raised her small pale hand and pointed a single finger directly at the hundreds of mages chanting on the ridges.

She didn’t use telekinesis. She didn’t cast a counter-spell.

"Those sticks are slippery snakes," Erebus said. Her voice was perfectly flat and completely devoid of any inflection.

The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol violently hitched.

[System Event: Localized Reality Altered.]

The hundreds of mages didn’t get interrupted. Their casting circles didn’t shatter.

The heavy polished wooden staves and glowing magical wands they were tightly gripping suddenly squirmed.

The wood softened, scales erupted across the surface, and the weapons literally hissed.

"Ahhhhh!"

"Get it off me!"

The synchronized chanting instantly broke into a chaotic chorus of absolute terror.

Dozens of high-level mages violently threw their weapons onto the dirt.

The staves had transfigured into thick, aggressive, and highly venomous vipers.

The snakes immediately began biting the panicked casters, wrapped around their arms, and struck at their faces.

The massive and apocalyptic magical barrage completely failed to launch.

The mages were too busy running away from their own weapons to cast a single spell.

Dante stared at the ridges and watched heavily armored casters frantically kicking at the ground, trying to stomp on snakes that used to be their Legendary-tier staves.

"I love that kid," Casanova laughed loudly and tossed another Vanguard tank into a tree.

"She is a tactical genius," Mei agreed and leaned on her colossal pan.

The three armies completely broke.

Without their leadership, with their frontlines being batted around like toys, and their magical support network currently fighting off a plague of transfigured serpents, the sheer numerical advantage vanished.

Panic is a virus, and it spread rapidly through the ranks.

Vanguard’s Legacy players saw their commanders deleted by an untargetable ghost and started backing away.

The Black Dragon Syndicate was already demoralized by the lockdown of their home nation, broke stealth, and ran for the tree line.

"Hold the line!" Gawain roared and desperately tried to rally the Apex Coalition.

Nobody listened.

A rogue from the Black Dragon Syndicate accidentally tripped over a Vanguard’s Legacy shield wall while trying to run away.

The panicked tank assumed he was being attacked and swung his mace.

The rogue retaliated and stabbed the tank in the shoulder.

"They are turning on us!" the tank yelled.

That was all it took.

The fragile temporary alliance between the three most hostile guilds on the server violently snapped.

Vanguard’s Legacy troops started actively attacking the retreating Sakura Nation players.

Apex Coalition paladins began indiscriminately swinging their hammers at anyone not wearing a green tabard and desperately tried to clear a path out of the chaotic and localized meat grinder.

The four thousand players were no longer fighting Dante. They were fighting each other.

The crater became a massive multi-faction free-for-all.

Dante stood in the center. He was completely ignored as the armies mutually self-destructed around him.

He didn’t bother joining the fray.

He didn’t need the experience points from low-level grunts, and the localized loot would just clog his inventory.

He dismissed [Voidsever] back into his wrist.

"Alright, that is enough," Dante called out to his squad. "Let them kill each other. I have a quest to finish."

Lila dropped her gravity wells and panted heavily.

Mei shrank her colossal pan back down to its standard four-foot size and hoisted it onto her shoulder.

Casanova casually walked back to the center of the crater. He was completely unharmed. His massive muscles deflated as he dropped his innate talent.

Pip fluttered down and dropped a massive heavy sack of gold coins at the feet of Dante.

"We are officially the wealthiest entity on this continent," Pip declared proudly.

"Good job, loot goblin," Dante smirked.

He turned away from the chaotic battlefield and looked toward the deeper darker section of the Sky Demon Forest.

The ambient corruption was noticeably thicker there. The trees were twisted, and the air smelled heavily of brimstone and old blood.

The Demon King wasn’t part of the armies. The SSS-Rank quest target was waiting in the dark.

"Let us go," Dante said and led the Squad away from the slaughter. "We need to find out exactly what kind of army the Demon King is actually trying to summon."

They walked deeper into the forest and left the three largest guilds on the server to tear each other apart in the dirt.