Free Web NovelChapter 37: [37]: The Frontlines, 200% XP Bonus
The first wave of the Blood Moon Eclipse didn’t just walk toward the City of Thresholds. They crashed into it like a tidal wave of rusted iron and green muscle.
From his vantage point up on the ruined watchtower, Levi watched thousands of Level 20 Blood-Crazed Orcs slam directly into the makeshift wooden barricades the players had set up. The impact was deafening. The Orcs were massive, carrying heavy clubs covered in dried blood, and their eyes glowed with the same sickly red light as the moon above.
The players down below didn’t stand a chance.
"Hold the line! Healers, spam your AoE!" a random guild leader screamed from the mud.
An Orc raised its club and brought it down on the guy’s head. The player’s health bar was instantly deleted, his avatar shattering into blue polygons before he even hit the ground. The Orcs poured through the broken barricade, swinging wildly. Players were dying in droves. The NerveDive’s pain engine must have been working overtime because the proximity chat was just a wall of people screaming in actual panic.
"Level 20s! They hit too hard! Run!" someone yelled.
Levi just shook his head. "Amateurs."
He didn’t wait for the Orcs to breach the actual city gates. He gripped his Gold-tier Sovereign’s Deathknell scythe, stepped off the edge of the stone parapet, and plummeted directly into the absolute thickest part of the Orc formation.
His heavy boots slammed into the dirt right in the middle of a massive pack. The shockwave of his landing made a dozen Orcs turn their ugly, green faces toward him.
Levi immediately ran the math in his head. He was Level 18. The Orcs were Level 20. That was only a two-level gap, which meant the game’s Level Suppression penalty was a measly 10%.
’Their Defense is 80,’ Levi calculated quickly. ’My scythe ignores 20% of that. That leaves them with exactly 64 effective Defense.’
His Total Attack was sitting at a massive 410.
410 minus 64 Defense left him with 346 raw damage. Applying the 10% suppression penalty dropped his basic physical strikes to 311 Final Damage.
"Three hundred and eleven damage on a basic," Levi smirked.
He didn’t even wait for them to swing. He dumped 10 Mana from his pool and activated his core skill.
"Reaping Arc!"
The dark, shadowy aura around his Gold-tier scythe violently ignited into a blinding red light. He swung the massive weapon in a wide, horizontal sweep that carved right through the front row of Orcs.
The skill math kicked in. 410 Attack multiplied by the 1.8 modifier pushed his raw damage to 738. Subtracting the 64 Defense left 674. Minus the 10% penalty, the skill hit for exactly 606 Final Damage.
[-606] [-606] [-606] [-606] [-606]
A massive wall of red numbers exploded into the air. The Orcs roared in pain as a fifth of their 3,000 HP health bars instantly vanished.
But Levi was surrounded. There were over fifty Orcs packed tightly around him, and they didn’t care about their missing health. They all raised their jagged clubs and swung at him simultaneously.
Levi used his 68 Speed to duck under the first two clubs, but the sheer density of the mob made it physically impossible to dodge everything. Five heavy iron clubs smashed into his Obsidian Carapace armor from different angles.
The VR helmet simulated a barrage of heavy, blunt-force impacts that rattled his teeth. The math processed the hits instantly. The Orcs had 180 Attack. Levi’s Defense was 91.
180 minus 91 meant he took exactly 89 damage per hit.
He took five direct hits. 89 times 5 equaled 445 incoming damage.
[-89] [-89] [-89] [-89] [-89]
Levi’s health bar plummeted from a perfect 1,020 down to 575 in a fraction of a second.
Any normal player would have panicked, popped an emergency shield, and desperately tried to run away. Levi just laughed.
"Thanks for the setup," he said.
He tightened his grip on his scythe and unleashed a wild, horizontal basic attack directly into a dense pack of five Orcs standing in front of him. The heavy blade hacked through their green skin, dealing 311 damage to each of them.
That was 1,555 Total Damage dealt in a single swing.
The Sovereign’s Deathknell had a completely broken passive: 10% Lifesteal on all physical damage dealt. Ten percent of 1,555 was exactly 155.
A bright green number floated above Levi’s head the exact millisecond the scythe connected.
[+155]
Levi didn’t stop swinging. He swung again, and again, creating a blender of dark metal and red light. With every swing that hit multiple Orcs, his health bar violently shot back up. Combined with his [Siphon Aura] constantly ticking in the background for another 15 HP every second, he was literally out-healing the damage of fifty mobs.
His health bar yo-yoed like crazy. It would drop to 400 when he took a few hits, then instantly shoot back up to 800 when he landed a wide scythe slash. He never even came close to hitting zero.
Levi turned into a human meat grinder.
He kept his eyes glued to the red health bars floating above the Orcs. The second an Orc’s health dropped below 600 HP—exactly 20% of their maximum—Levi went to work.
"Soul Harvest."
Fifty Mana vanished. The massive, pitch-black spectral guillotine materialized in the air and slammed down, instantly decapitating the Orc.
[System Notification: Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Levi’s Phantom Step icon flashed green. He burned 20 Mana, his body dissolving into dark shadow to completely avoid a massive overhead club swing. He teleported three meters to the right, reappearing next to another wounded Orc.
He dumped another 50 Mana.
"Soul Harvest."
[Target Executed. Cooldowns reset.]
He blinked again. Teleported across the chaotic mob. Dropped a Reaping Arc. Swung three times to heal back to full. Executed the next target.
It was an absolutely flawless, infinitely sustainable combat loop. He bounced around the Northern Gate like a glitched shadow, executing Orcs and resetting his teleports. The Orcs couldn’t even track him properly. Every time they turned around to swing, he was already behind them, dropping a spectral scythe on their necks.
And the rewards were completely insane. Because of the event’s massive 200% XP modifier, a normal Level 20 mob that usually gave a few hundred experience points was now dropping an absolute fortune.
[System Notification: Slain Level 20 Blood-Crazed Orc. Gained 2,000 XP.]
"Two thousand experience for one trash mob," Levi grinned wildly, chugging a top-tier mana potion from his belt to keep his execution chain fueled. "I love the apocalypse."
For thirty uninterrupted minutes, the slaughter continued.
The players who had managed to survive the initial breach by hiding behind the stone walls just stared down at the Northern Gate in absolute disbelief. A single player, wearing pitch-black armor and wielding a Gold-tier weapon, was holding the entire front line by himself. The pile of dissolving blue polygons and dropped loot around Levi was so dense that the game engine was actually starting to lag trying to render it all.
He killed fifty Orcs. Then a hundred. Then a hundred and fifty.
The massive influx of 300,000 experience points flooded into his progression bar. The glorious, blinding golden pillar of light suddenly crashed down from the red sky, entirely washing away his simulated fatigue and fully restoring his health and mana pools.
[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 19.]
Levi executed one final Orc to clear his immediate area and rested the heavy scythe on the muddy ground. He breathed heavily, wiping a layer of digital sweat and Orc blood from his face.
He pulled up his progression menu. His previous XP had been sitting at 300,000 out of 550,000. Killing 150 Orcs at 2,000 XP each netted him exactly 300,000 XP. That pushed him to 600,000, easily crossing the threshold. He now had 50,000 XP carrying over into his next bar, which required a monstrous 750,000 XP to fill.
"Getting closer to the big two-zero," Levi noted.
He had 5 new free stat points. He looked out across the crimson-lit plains. The first wave of basic Orcs was starting to thin out, but he knew the game’s event scripting. The second wave was going to introduce the Elites. If he was going to face-tank Elites with his Lifesteal, he needed his maximum health pool to be slightly fatter to avoid getting burst down in a single bad stun.
He dumped all 5 points directly into Vitality.
His VIT bumped from 46 to 51. Because every point of Vitality gave 20 Max HP, his base health increased by 100. Combined with his Obsidian Carapace armor, his Max HP expanded from 1,020 to 1,120.
His base Defense also slightly ticked up from 91 to 96. He was officially a walking tank that hit like a nuclear bomb.
Levi dismissed his menus, rolled his neck until it popped, and stared out at the red horizon. The ground was already starting to shake again. The real fight hadn’t even started.
