Free Web NovelChapter 25: [25]: The SSS-Rank Ascension, Herald of the Hollow
Levi let out a long, ragged exhale. He let his head fall back against the cold stone floor, his virtual chest heaving as his real-world lungs gasped for air inside his VR helmet.
"Holy crap," Levi wheezed, staring at the sharp edge of the blade hovering over his throat. "I actually beat the math."
A second later, the massive Avatar of the Hollow King dissipated. The giant iron armor, the scythe, and the burning red eyes all shattered into millions of glowing blue motes of light that floated up toward the dark ceiling of the Shrine.
The system interface erupted. It wasn’t the standard blue or green text. A cascade of blinding, brilliant golden notifications filled his vision, practically flashing like a slot machine paying out a jackpot.
[System Notification: Trial Completed Successfully.]
[Time Survived: 03:00]
[Damage Taken: 466]
[Evaluation: Flawless Survival]
[System Notification: You have unlocked the SSS-Rank Hidden Class: Herald of the Hollow.]
Levi forced himself to sit up, groaning as the simulated bruises on his back throbbed. But the pain didn’t last long. A torrent of pitch-black energy suddenly erupted from the stone floor beneath him.
The dark energy swirled around his body like a violent tornado. It didn’t hurt, but it felt incredibly dense and heavy, forcing its way right into his avatar’s base code. Levi felt his virtual muscles tighten and expand. His bones popped and hardened. The coarse, dirty peasant tunic he was wearing under his Obsidian Carapace armor actually turned pitch black, the fabric reinforcing itself to match the dark aesthetic of the class.
He laughed softly, pushing himself up to his feet. He felt completely different. The sluggish, heavy feeling of being a low-level player was entirely gone. He felt like a coiled spring.
"Let’s see what a SSS-Rank class actually gives you," Levi said, opening his status menu.
He tapped the flashing golden class icon. The details expanded, and Levi’s eyes widened so much they almost hurt.
[Class: Herald of the Hollow (SSS-Rank)]
[Passive 1: The Hollow’s Blessing - Grants a permanent +20 bonus to all base attributes (STR, AGI, VIT, INT, LUK).]
[Passive 2: Reaper’s Affinity - Increases Total Attack Damage by 20% when wielding any scythe-type weapon.]
"Twenty to all stats," Levi muttered, his voice cracking slightly. "That’s a hundred free stat points. That’s twenty levels worth of grinding just handed to me."
He quickly looked at his raw numbers. His progression had just violently shattered the intended mathematical curve of the entire game.
His Strength jumped from 60 to an absurd 80.
His Agility spiked from 38 to 58.
His Vitality went from 21 to 41.
His Intelligence leaped from 15 to 35.
Even his useless Luck stat bumped from 5 to 25.
He did the math for his derived stats. With 41 Vitality, combined with the 100 HP from his Obsidian Carapace, his maximum health pool skyrocketed to exactly 920 HP. He wasn’t a glass cannon anymore. He was a highly mobile tank!
With 35 Intelligence, his mana pool expanded to a massive 350 Mana, ignoring the bonus from his ring. Adding his Ring of Vigor’s +50 Mana, he was sitting pretty at exactly 400 Max Mana. He could spam his skills all day without breaking a sweat!
But the real joke was his damage.
Levi pulled his Silver-tier Arachnid’s Fang Scythe out of his inventory. The moment he equipped it, a dark, shadowy aura wrapped around the silver blade, reacting to his new class passive.
His Base Attack was his Strength multiplied by two. 80 times 2 was 160. Add the 45 Attack from the weapon, and his raw Base Attack was 205.
Now, the system applied the 20% class multiplier. 205 multiplied by 1.2 resulted in exactly 246 Total Attack!
"Two hundred and forty-six attack at Level 15," Levi laughed out loud. The sound echoed off the empty stone walls of the Shrine. "The major guilds are going to cry when they see my numbers on the PvP leaderboards. This is completely illegal."
He swiped the stat screen away and looked at the next flashing notification. It was his new class-exclusive active skill.
[Soul Harvest]
[Rarity: Class Exclusive (SSS)]
[Effect: Consumes 50 Mana. Instantly execute any non-boss enemy that is below 20% of their maximum HP. If the execution is successful, the cooldowns of all equipped movement skills are instantly reset.]
Levi stared at the text for a full minute, reading it over three times to make sure his brain wasn’t misinterpreting the words.
An instant execution mechanic was rare enough. Usually, only high-tier Assassins got skills like that, and they had massive cooldowns. But this skill didn’t have a cooldown listed. The only limitation was the 50 Mana cost and the 20% health threshold.
But the second part of the skill was what completely broke the game.
"Resets the cooldown of all movement skills," Levi whispered, pulling up his Phantom Step skill icon. Phantom Step had a 15-second cooldown. It was his only bottleneck in combat. If he blinked in, he was stuck there for fifteen seconds.
But now? If he blinked in, dropped a monster below 20% health, and executed it with Soul Harvest, his Phantom Step cooldown would instantly reset to zero. He could immediately blink to the next target, execute them, and blink again.
"Infinite mobility," Levi said, a ruthless grin spreading across his face. "As long as I have the mana to fuel it, I can literally teleport across an entire battlefield and chain-execute an entire guild by myself."
He had survived the brutal early game. He had drained his real-world bank account, bought a glitched item, and risked a permanent lockout just for this moment. The foundation of his power was completely secure. The world-bosses, the massive esports organizations, and the descending Gods of the apocalypse that would arrive in three years... they were all going to quickly realize that a new apex predator had just entered the ecosystem.
Levi slung his dark-aura-wrapped silver scythe over his shoulder. He turned his back on the glowing altar and walked toward the heavy obsidian doors.
He placed his hand flat against the stone. The system registered his trial completion, and the massive doors slowly ground open, letting in the faint, toxic yellow light of the Blighted Marches outside.
Levi stepped out of the Shrine, ready to bring the harvest to the rest of Starfall.
The massive obsidian doors of the Shrine ground shut behind Levi with a heavy thud, sealing the trial room away forever. He stood on the ash-covered slope of the dead volcano and looked out over the Blighted Marches.
The ambient environment hazard immediately tried to tick away his health.
[-1]
