Free Web NovelChapter 120: Chapter 120: The Celestial Ambush
The third floor of the Wyrm-Sealed Abyss was a massive, subterranean cavern that defied all logical geometry.
The ceiling was lost in the absolute darkness above. The floor was a treacherous expanse of black rock, heavily scarred by deep, glowing fissures that pulsed with raw, corrupted violet energy.
Massive, shattered chains forged from an unidentifiable white metal hung uselessly from the walls.
The air was freezing, but it didn’t feel like natural cold. It felt like standing in a vacuum.
"This is the bottom," Dante said, his voice barely carrying over the ambient hum of the void energy.
Aura pulsed her silver starlight, pushing back the oppressive darkness.
Standing in the center of the cavern, surrounded by the shattered white chains, was a group of monsters that made the Magma-Trolls look like beginner boars.
[Monster Spawn: Abyssal Wyrmling]
[Tier: Yellow-Gold]
[Level: 32]
[HP: 150,000 / 150,000]
There were four of them. They were massive, heavily scaled drakes, lacking wings but possessing incredibly dense, muscular bodies.
Their scales were a sickly, glowing yellow, radiating a toxic, corrosive aura.
Yellow-Gold tier was a significant jump from standard Gold. It meant their base stats were highly inflated, and their AI was significantly more aggressive.
Dante didn’t wait for them to charge.
"Lila, pin the back two! Mei, take the front left!" Dante ordered, instantly drawing the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
Lila dropped a dual [Gravity Well], successfully locking the two rear wyrmlings to the stone floor. Mei charged forward, raising the [God-Slaying Skillet] to absorb a massive, tail-whip attack from the front-left drake.
Dante targeted the front-right wyrmling.
He triggered [Phantom Dash], materializing next to the beast’s head. The sonic boom stunned it for a fraction of a second.
He followed up with a brutal, point-blank [Abyssal Cleave]. The black spatial fracture sheared through the beast’s heavy yellow scales, chunking its massive health pool by thirty percent in a single swing.
The fight was intense but completely controlled. Dante systematically dismantled the wyrmlings, dancing between them using his zero-cooldown teleports, executing them one by one.
When the fourth and final Yellow-Gold beast exploded into a massive shower of loot, the system interface chimed warmly.
[Experience Gained. Level Up!]
Dante watched his level tick up to 62. The experience yield from Yellow-Gold mobs in a Level 70 zone was astronomical.
He didn’t have time to check his new stats.
Before the blue pixels of the dead wyrmlings even hit the ground, the entire cavern violently shuddered.
The ambient hum of the void energy shrieked. The glowing violet fissures across the cavern floor erupted, spewing concentrated pillars of dark matter high into the air.
"What is that?" Lila panicked, shielding her eyes from the blinding purple light.
A figure slowly descended from the darkness above, floating gracefully down to the center of the cavern.
It wasn’t a monster. It was an incredibly tall, imposing NPC.
He wore elegant, flowing robes of midnight blue and silver. His face was pale, his features sharp and aristocratic.
He carried a sleek, unadorned black staff. He looked completely out of place in a ruined, subterranean dungeon.
[Entity Identified: Lord Malaphar]
[Faction: Demon Noble]
[Level: ???]
Dante’s Intuition stat screamed. The cosmic weight radiating from the NPC was suffocating. It felt exactly like standing in the room with Lady Carmilla.
"Well, well," Lord Malaphar spoke. His voice was smooth, cultured, and layered with a cold, predatory arrogance.
"I heard the seals breaking. I expected to find the Emperor’s pathetic guards poking around in the dark. I certainly didn’t expect to find a group of heavily armed Outworlders slaughtering my pets."
"They were in our way," Dante said, keeping his grip tight on his sword.
Malaphar didn’t look at Dante. His eyes immediately locked onto Erebus, who was standing safely behind Mei.
The Demon Noble’s pale face twisted into a vicious, triumphant smile.
"And you brought me a prize," Malaphar laughed, a chilling sound. "Carmilla has been hiding the little half-breed for centuries. If I deliver her core to the Celestial Vanguard, they will owe me a favor that eclipses this entire continent."
Erebus didn’t hide. She stared at Malaphar with her solid red eyes. "You are loud."
"I am your executioner, abomination," Malaphar sneered.
He didn’t raise his staff to cast a spell. He simply snapped his fingers.
The darkness directly above the Demon Noble violently tore open.
A massive, colossal creature dropped out of the void, landing heavily behind Malaphar. The impact shattered the stone floor, completely destroying the remaining white chains.
It was a dragon. But it wasn’t the lumbering, tumor-covered beast from the siege.
This dragon was sleek, graceful, and utterly terrifying. Its scales were forged from pure, translucent crystal, pulsing with deep, swirling galaxies of void energy.
It possessed four massive wings, and its eyes burned with a cold, absolute blue starlight.
[Boss Spawn: Abyssal Void-Drake]
[Tier: Celestial Beast]
[Level: 50]
[HP: 2,500,000 / 2,500,000] fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Dante stared at the system prompt.
A Celestial Beast. Level 50. Two and a half million health points.
This wasn’t a standard dungeon boss. This was a god-tier entity, summoned directly by a primordial NPC. The math was completely, absolutely against him.
"Kill them," Malaphar commanded lazily, turning his back on the party. "Leave the girl alive."
The Void-Drake didn’t roar. It opened its massive, crystalline jaws.
Dante didn’t even have time to shout a warning.
[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Void Singularity]
The dragon fired a beam of pure, concentrated void magic. It wasn’t a massive, sweeping area-of-effect attack. It was a highly concentrated, razor-thin line of absolute destruction aimed directly at Dante’s chest.
Dante triggered [Blink Step].
The beam hit him before the animation even started.
The speed of the attack was functionally instantaneous. The Celestial magic completely bypassed the mitigation scaling of his armor.
The [Source of Recovery] passive on his Divine Emperor cloak tried to halve the damage, but the raw, unmitigated numerical value of the attack was too high.
[-15,500! FATAL DAMAGE!]
Dante’s massive 9,130 health pool was instantly, cleanly zeroed out.
The impact threw him violently backward. He crashed into a stone pillar, his avatar completely limp.
"Dante!" Lila screamed in absolute horror.
Dante’s vision went completely black. The system interface flashed the gray static of True Death. The server prepared to send the lethal disconnect signal to his physical VR capsule.
But the signal never sent.
The black brand on Dante’s wrist pulsed with a fierce, blinding crimson light.
Erebus’s passive ability, shared through their binding contract, triggered the exact millisecond his health hit zero.
[Passive Activated: Undying Spirit]
[Fatal damage negated. Health locked at 1 HP.]
[Absolute Invulnerability Applied. Duration: 5 seconds.]
Dante’s eyes snapped open.
He hit the stone floor, gasping for air. His health bar wasn’t empty. It was sitting at exactly one single hit point.
The golden invulnerability frames enveloped his avatar, completely negating the lingering void energy trying to disintegrate his code.
He was alive. But he had exactly five seconds to do something about the Celestial Beast, or the next hit would permanently delete him.
Dante didn’t try to heal. He didn’t tell Aura to pulse. Healing was useless against an attack that hit for fifteen thousand damage.
He slowly stood up, gripping his right wrist.
He didn’t look at the dragon. He looked directly at Malaphar.
"You should have made sure I was dead," Dante whispered.
The black brand on his wrist erupted. Thick, light-absorbing smoke poured out, instantly condensing into the massive shape of [Voidsever].
The primordial greatsword wasn’t just humming. It was practically screaming, vibrating with intense, desperate bloodlust.
Dante didn’t have the stats to fight a Celestial Beast. The math was impossible.
But he didn’t need stats. He had a weapon designed to murder gods.
Dante raised Voidsever, pointing the black blade directly at the massive, crystalline dragon.
[Active Skill Triggered: Calamity - Gluttony]
