Free Web NovelChapter 32: [32]: A Gold-Tier Harvest, Sovereign’s Deathknell
The Sovereign fight dragged on to the ten-minute mark.
Inside the NerveDive helmet, Levi was practically suffocating. The VR engine’s stamina system was brutal, perfectly simulating the burning exhaustion in his lungs and the heavy, aching fatigue in his shoulders. His fingers were actually cramping inside his haptic gloves from maintaining his grip on the massive silver scythe.
Over the last ten minutes, he had perfectly executed the dodge-strike-blink rotation over a hundred times. It was a flawless display of mechanical skill.
"Hollow’s Ward!" Levi shouted, dumping 150 Mana.
The skill had finally come off its agonizing 60-second cooldown. The dark-matter shield erupted around him, instantly providing a 725 HP buffer just as the Sunken Sovereign brought its crystalline trident down in a massive overhead crash.
The weapon smashed into the shield.
[-359]
The shield cracked but held, absorbing the fatal blow. Levi didn’t even flinch. He just kept swinging. His [Siphon Aura] was still running in the background, constantly eating his mana but providing that desperately needed 15 HP/sec. Over the course of the marathon fight, the slow trickle of healing had actually regenerated his real health pool all the way back to 1,020.
He was at full health, but his mana was completely tapped. He had exactly 40 Mana left in his pool, and all of his top-tier potions were on cooldown.
He checked the boss’s health bar. The Sunken Sovereign was sitting at a miserable 2,000 HP.
Levi gritted his teeth. He couldn’t use his SSS-Rank [Soul Harvest] skill here. The system tooltip explicitly stated it only worked on non-boss enemies. He had to chew through these last two thousand points the hard way.
The Sovereign roared, winding up for another massive AoE geyser cast. If that cast went off, Levi wouldn’t have the mana to Phantom Step through the safe zones. He would die.
Levi swung his scythe in a basic physical attack, aiming for the boss’s exposed chest.
[-92]
The jagged blade bit into the iron armor. And then, a bright yellow icon suddenly flashed above the Sovereign’s head.
The 5% Stun passive from his Sovereign’s Golden Gauntlets finally triggered.
The massive boss completely froze in place. Its attack animation violently canceled, its arms locked above its head. The stun only lasted for exactly 1 second, but for a player with Levi’s attack speed, 1 second was an eternity.
"Got you," Levi snarled.
He didn’t hesitate. He dumped his remaining 30 Mana into three back-to-back casts.
"Reaping Arc! Reaping Arc! Reaping Arc!"
He swung the scythe with everything he had left. The blade erupted in three consecutive waves of blinding red light, carving directly through the boss’s stunned, defenseless chest.
[-246] [-246] [-246]
Combined with the 5 DMG/sec bleed ticking in the background, the rapid burst of damage completely overwhelmed the final shred of the boss’s health pool.
The Sunken Sovereign’s health bar hit zero.
The massive fish-monster unfroze, but the attack animation didn’t continue. The boss dropped its crystalline trident. It let out a pathetic, bubbling groan, fell to its knees in the shallow water, and violently shattered into a massive shower of blue polygons.
The explosion of loot was absolutely blinding. Gold coins, gems, and purple and gold item boxes rained down onto the marble floor.
A golden, server-wide announcement immediately hijacked the top of Levi’s vision, broadcasting to everyone currently logged into the game.
[Server Announcement: Player ’Levi’ has achieved the Server First Nightmare Dungeon Clear! The Tomb of the Sunken Sovereign has been conquered!]
Levi didn’t care about the server chat currently exploding with hack accusations. He collapsed onto the wet marble floor, completely drained.
[System Notification: Boss Defeated. Gained 300,000 XP.]
The XP drop was monstrous. He was sitting at 0/550,000 for his next level, and this single kill instantly pushed him more than halfway there. He was now at 300,000/550,000.
But the real reward was already flying across the room. A blinding crimson aura ripped itself from the empty space above the throne and slammed into Levi’s chest like a physical punch.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[The Sunken Sovereign’s primary stat is INT (200).]
[You have plundered 3% of its core stat.]
[Gained +6 INT permanently!]
Levi let out a tired laugh from the floor. "Six Intelligence from one kill. This game is so broken."
He laid there for a full minute, waiting for his simulated stamina to recover and for his mana to naturally tick back up. When his real-world shoulders finally stopped aching, he pushed himself up and walked over to the massive pile of loot.
He ignored the generic gold armor and the piles of silver coins. He was looking for weapons.
He sifted through the glowing item boxes until he found exactly what he needed. Sitting at the bottom of the pile were three identical, dark metal scythes. The blades were curved like crescent moons and dripped with a faint, shadowy water effect.
[Silver Abyssal Blade]
[Rarity: Silver]
[ATK: 80]
"Three identical Silver-tier weapons," Levi grinned like a madman. Nightmare instances dropping full playsets of gear for solo players was the best mechanic the developers ever accidentally programmed.
He didn’t even equip one. He instantly opened the Boundless Fusion interface. The familiar golden slots popped up in front of him. He dragged the three Silver Abyssal Blades into the slots.
The system threw up the massive catalyst warning.
[Warning: Fusing Silver-tier weapons into Gold-tier requires a raw currency fee of 500 Gold Coins.]
Levi checked his inventory. Thanks to the massive pile of raw gold the boss had just dropped, he had exactly enough to cover the fee. He slammed the confirm button without a second thought.
"Take it all," Levi said.
A blinding, prismatic explosion of color lit up the dark throne room. The three silver scythes melted together, transforming into a swirling vortex of dark water and pitch-black metal. The digital grinding noise echoed loudly off the marble walls. The liquid metal stretched, solidified, and hardened into a terrifying, aggressive polearm.
The light faded. Levi reached out and grabbed the weapon from the air.
[Sovereign’s Deathknell]
[Rarity: Gold]
[ATK: 140]
[Passive 1: Attacks ignore 20% of target DEF.]
[Passive 2: 10% Lifesteal on all physical damage dealt.]
Levi stared at the tooltip. A Gold-tier weapon on the first week of the server. The 20% armor penetration was incredible, but the 10% Lifesteal was completely game-breaking. With his massive damage output, he wouldn’t even need his Siphon Aura to heal chip damage anymore. He could just face-tank enemies and heal by hitting them.
He instantly equipped the Sovereign’s Deathknell. The dark aura of his Herald class wrapped around the heavy gold and black blade, perfectly syncing with the weapon’s aesthetic.
He immediately opened his status menu to run his new math.
His Strength was 101. Multiplied by two, his base unarmed attack was 202. Adding the massive 140 Attack from the new Gold weapon brought his raw Base Attack to 342.
Now, apply his SSS-Class 20% passive damage multiplier. 342 multiplied by 1.2 resulted in a Final Total Attack of 410.
"Four hundred and ten attack," Levi whispered, completely stunned by his own numbers. "I’m Level 18. That’s more damage than a Level 30 player should have."
He quickly checked his other stats. His Intelligence had just received a +6 bump from the boss plunder, pushing it from 45 to 51.
Math check for his mana: 51 INT multiplied by 10 was 510. Add the 50 Mana from his Ring of Vigor, and his maximum Mana pool was now sitting at a very comfortable 560.
He recalculated his Hollow’s Ward shield. 51 Intelligence multiplied by 5 was 255. Add the flat 500 base HP, and his dark-matter shield would now absorb 755 damage per cast.
His defense was 91. His health was 1,020. His speed was 68.
Levi dismissed the menu and looked at his reflection in the shallow water covering the throne room floor. He was wearing pitch-black Obsidian Carapace armor, heavy Gold-tier gauntlets, and holding a terrifying Gold-tier scythe that radiated dark energy.
He didn’t look like a player anymore. He looked like a raid boss.
Levi turned his back on the empty throne, slung the Sovereign’s Deathknell over his shoulder, and walked out of the dungeon. He had completely broken the scaling for the early game. Now, it was time to step out into the overworld and see just how much chaos a 410 Attack stat could cause.
