Free Web NovelChapter 152: Chapter 152: The Reality of Pain
The Whispering Woods was located just outside the eastern borders of Aethelgardia. It was typically a quiet mid-game farming zone.
Currently, it was a slaughterhouse.
Three members of Aegis Vanguard caught far from the safety of the city walls were backed against a massive petrified oak tree.
They were low-level recruits clad in mismatched Bronze-tier armor. Their health bars flashed a desperate critical red.
Surrounding them were fifteen heavily armored players wearing the gold and white tabards of Vanguard’s Legacy.
Leading the death squad was Malachi.
He wasn’t an administrator or a tactician like Elara.
Malachi was the most brutal Enforcer of Silas. He was a massive towering brute who specialized in psychological warfare and high-impact physical damage.
He wielded a massive jagged executioner’s axe that scraped loudly against the dirt.
"Is this the best the First Guild has to offer?" Malachi laughed and pointed his axe at the terrified recruits.
"You thought wearing that shiny golden tag would protect you? Silas sends his regards." freeweɓnøvel.com
"We did not do anything!" one of the recruits pleaded and held up a cracked wooden shield. "We were just farming herbs!"
"You chose the wrong side," Malachi sneered and stepped forward.
"Now, I am going to chop you into pieces, camp your respawn, and make sure you never log into this server again."
He raised the massive executioner’s axe and fully intended to split the recruit in half.
The air pressure in the clearing suddenly and violently shifted.
The ambient noise of the woods, the rustling leaves, and the distant calls of monsters completely ceased.
A heavy, suffocating, and almost imperceptible aura slammed down over the entire clearing.
[Class Passive 1 (Aura of Despair) Active.]
Malachi froze mid-swing.
It wasn’t a physical paralysis.
A sudden overwhelming sense of absolute dread washed over him. His morale plummeted, and his combat focus fractured.
The heavy iron armor he wore suddenly felt incredibly weak as if the metal had turned to paper.
[Defense stats reduced by 50%.]
"What the hell?" Malachi muttered and dropped his axe slightly. He looked around the clearing, and his eyes were wide with sudden paranoia.
The fifteen members of his death squad were reacting identically.
They stumbled, looked around nervously, and their weapons shook in their hands.
The localized psychological pressure of the Asura was absolute.
Dante didn’t drop from the sky with a massive fiery explosion.
He simply stepped out from behind the petrified oak tree.
His dark purple armor absorbed the dim light of the woods.
The tattered liquid-blood crimson fabric of his cape flowed heavily around him.
His eyes burned with a solid piercing red light that cut through the shadows.
The three Aegis Vanguard recruits gasped and scrambled out of the way.
Malachi stared at the anomaly.
The Enforcer had seen the streams. He knew the stats.
But feeling the cosmic weight of the [Asura Vanguard] class in person was entirely different.
"Dan," Malachi breathed and took a hesitant step backward.
Dante didn’t draw the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. He didn’t summon [Voidsever].
He stood perfectly still, and his red eyes locked onto the Enforcer.
"You like hunting low-levels, Malachi?" Dante asked. His voice didn’t echo. It was quiet, flat, and terrifyingly cold.
"It is a guild war!" Malachi yelled. He tried to rally his fracturing courage and gripped his axe tightly.
"You do not scare me! You are just one guy! Squad, form up! Take him down!"
The fifteen Vanguard’s Legacy players hesitated. freeweɓnovel.cøm
The [Aura of Despair] was actively suppressing their will to fight. But the fear of their Guild Master eventually pushed them forward.
They raised their weapons and charged. It was a disorganized desperate rush aimed at the single target.
Dante didn’t raise his hands to defend himself.
[Skill Executed: Phantom Dash]
Because of [Chrono-Shift], the activation was instantaneous.
Dante vanished.
He didn’t teleport into the center of the squad. He didn’t teleport behind their backline.
He teleported exactly one foot forward directly into the personal space of Malachi.
BOOM.
The sonic boom of his materialization detonated point-blank against the Enforcer.
Malachi was stunned instantly, and his massive avatar locked up.
Dante didn’t swing a sword. He didn’t use a magical spell.
He reached out with his dark purple gauntlet, grabbed Malachi by the throat, and squeezed.
The [Asura Vanguard] class possessed a hidden and absolutely terrifying modifier.
[Class Passive Triggered: 200% Simulated Pain Feedback.]
The Zenith Protocol typically capped pain receptors to prevent real-world trauma.
The system recognized that players were connected via neural links. Excessive pain could cause psychological damage or even physical shock.
The Asura class completely overrode that safety parameter.
When Dante squeezed the throat of Malachi, the Enforcer didn’t just see his health bar drop.
He felt it.
He felt the cold, crushing, and unmitigated pressure of an iron gauntlet slowly collapsing his windpipe.
The pain was absolute, unfiltered, and mathematically doubled by the passive.
Malachi didn’t roar a battle cry.
He let out a horrifying, wet, and gurgling scream of genuine and unadulterated agony.
The fifteen members of the death squad stopped dead in their tracks.
They stared in absolute horror as their massive and unshakeable commander thrashed wildly.
His hands desperately clawed at the arm of Dante but were completely unable to break the grip.
But it wasn’t just the pain.
[Class Passive Triggered: Absolute Ruin.]
The physical attacks of Dante permanently altered the environment.
When applied directly to a player avatar, the passive forced the system to render catastrophic permanent physical damage before the health bar even zeroed out.
The avatar of Malachi didn’t just flash red.
He actively and physically bled!
Thick digitized blood poured from his throat, spilled down his heavy iron armor, and pooled on the dirt floor of the woods.
The visual effect was horrifying. It was a visceral terrifying display of violence that the Zenith Protocol wasn’t supposed to render.
"Stop!" one of the Vanguard’s Legacy rogues screamed. He dropped his daggers and backed away. "He is bleeding! Players do not bleed!"
Dante didn’t let go. He watched the absolute terror in the eyes of Malachi as the Enforcer realized he was experiencing genuine horrific trauma.
"You wanted to chop them into pieces," Dante whispered, and his red eyes burned into Malachi.
"You wanted to camp their respawns. Now, you get to feel it."
Dante tightened his grip one final time.
[-18,000! OVERKILL!]
The neck of Malachi snapped with a sickening crunch. His health bar vanished.
The Enforcer didn’t explode into a clean shower of blue pixels.
His avatar crumpled to the ground as a broken bleeding mess before the system finally processed the True Death and slowly dissolved the body into gray ash.
Back in the real world, inside a high-end gaming pod, a man woke up screaming.
He tore the neural cables from his neck in a blind panic. He was deeply traumatized by the unfiltered sensation of his own execution.
Dante stood over the ash and slowly wiped the digital blood from his gauntlet.
He turned his head to look at the fifteen surviving members of the death squad.
The Vanguard’s Legacy players were completely broken.
The sheer overwhelming brutality of the execution combined with the suffocating [Aura of Despair] shattered their resolve entirely.
"Run," one of them whispered.
"Log off! Just pull the plug!" another yelled.
They didn’t try to attack.
They spun around and frantically opened their system interfaces to trigger emergency disconnects.
They were desperate to escape the nightmare anomaly before he touched them.
"No," Dante said.
He didn’t want them to log off.
If they disconnected, they would just spawn safely in their guildhall later.
He needed to send a message. He needed to ensure that no player on the server ever considered taking a bounty against Aegis Vanguard again.
He opened a localized channel to his pet space.
"Erebus," Dante commanded quietly.
A tiny localized spatial rift tore open beside his leg.
The Half-Soul Celestial stepped out into the dark woods and clutched her massive Mythic-tier backpack.
She looked at the fifteen panicked players desperately trying to navigate their logout menus.
"Stop them," Dante ordered.
Erebus didn’t blink. She raised her small pale hand and pointed a single finger at the fleeing squad.
She didn’t use telekinesis. She used the absolute authority of the divine.
"You are statues," Erebus stated flatly.
[System Event: Reality Altered.]
The combat engine didn’t even attempt to calculate a resistance check.
The fifteen players didn’t freeze like they were hit by a stun spell.
Their physical avatars literally turned to solid and unmoving gray stone.
The system interfaces they were trying to access shattered into dust. Their escape routes were instantly and flawlessly canceled.
They were trapped in their own bodies, completely conscious, and entirely unable to move a single digital muscle.
Dante drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
The gold sword cast a harsh unforgiving light against the petrified players.
"You chose the wrong side," Dante said. His voice carried the cold absolute finality of the Asura.
He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He didn’t want to vaporize them instantly.
He walked down the line of frozen statues and systematically methodically swung his sword.
With every strike, the [200% Simulated Pain Feedback] triggered.
The [Absolute Ruin] passive ensured the damage was catastrophic.
The frozen players couldn’t scream, but their eyes widened in sheer unadulterated agony as their avatars were brutally dismantled.
It was a slow deliberate butchering.
Dante moved from one statue to the next and was entirely immune to pity. He ensured every single member of the death squad experienced the full horrifying reality of the class they had provoked.
When he finished, the clearing was completely silent.
Fifteen piles of gray ash joined the remains of Malachi on the dirt floor.
Dante sheathed the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
He didn’t bother looting the bodies. The gear was irrelevant.
He turned to the three terrified Aegis Vanguard recruits who had watched the entire massacre from behind the petrified oak tree.
They were trembling and staring at their Guild Master as if he were a monster.
"Go back to the Capital," Dante ordered them. His voice softened slightly, though his red eyes remained cold. "Stay inside the walls until I announce the perimeter is clear."
The recruits didn’t argue.
They nodded frantically, triggered their return scrolls, and vanished in flashes of blue light.
Dante stood alone in the woods with Erebus.
The event wasn’t isolated.
He knew the drones of Cipher or other independent scouts were always watching the high-traffic zones.
The footage of the execution—the bleeding avatars, the unbearable pain, the systematic butchering of frozen players—would hit the global forums within minutes.
His reputation as the Asura was about to be permanently and violently solidified.
Nobody would ever look at him as a simple high-stat anomaly again. He was the localized executioner of Overture.
"Let us find the next squad," Dante told the little girl.
He activated [Meteor Stride] and vanished into the woods ready to continue the purge.
