Free Web NovelChapter 39: [39]: The Siegebreaker, The Colossal Beast
Hour eight of the Blood Moon Eclipse.
The relentless sea of green Orcs and gray Trolls suddenly stopped pushing. It wasn’t a gradual retreat. It was an instant, highly synchronized halt, like someone had literally pulled the plug on their aggro scripts. The monsters just stood there in the muddy plains, staring blankly at the City of Thresholds.
Levi rested the heavy Gold-tier Sovereign’s Deathknell on his shoulder and wiped a layer of digital sweat and monster blood from his forehead. His real-world arms were burning with exhaustion. He had been swinging non-stop for hours.
"Did the event bug out?" Levi muttered, looking around the empty space he had carved out in the horde.
A second later, the earth violently trembled. It wasn’t a low rumble this time. It was a massive, localized earthquake that actually knocked a few players off the wooden barricades back at the city gates. The dirty water in the puddles around Levi’s boots rippled aggressively.
From the very back of the corrupted army, the ranks of Orcs parted like the Red Sea.
A colossal figure emerged from the crimson-lit fog.
It was a Level 25 Elite Siege-Beast. It looked like a mutated, armor-plated rhinoceros crossed with a gorilla. The thing was the size of a three-story building, covered in thick, overlapping plates of dark iron. Wrapped around its massive shoulders were heavy chains dragging a giant, spiked iron ram—a weapon clearly designed to completely shatter the city gates in a single, scripted blow.
The system threw up the monster’s stat block.
[Siege-Beast]
[Level: 25 | Elite]
[HP: 100,000 | ATK: 550 | DEF: 250]
The players watching from the stone walls of the city started screaming in the proximity chat.
"One hundred thousand health?!" a guy yelled, his voice cracking in sheer panic. "Are you kidding me? It’s an Elite! The event is completely rigged!"
"Run! If that thing hits the gate, it’s over!" another player shouted.
Levi didn’t run. He just stood alone in the field of dissolving corpses and did the math.
He was Level 19. The Siege-Beast was Level 25. That was a six-level gap, which pushed the Level Suppression penalty straight to 30%. That was a massive chunk of damage completely deleted by the game’s code.
’Alright, let’s break this down,’ Levi thought, his eyes locked on the approaching monster. ’The beast has 250 Defense. My Gold scythe ignores 20% of that. Twenty percent of 250 is 50. That drops its effective Defense down to 200.’
He checked his own offense. Thanks to the absolute snowball of stats he just plundered from the ten Elite Trolls, his Total Attack was sitting at a staggering 482.
482 minus 200 meant his raw damage per swing was exactly 282.
’Now apply the 30% suppression penalty,’ Levi calculated. ’282 multiplied by 0.7 is 197.4. Call it 197 Final Damage per basic strike.’
He ran the numbers for his Reaping Arc skill. 482 multiplied by 1.8 gave him 867 raw damage. Minus the 200 Defense left 667. Apply the 30% penalty, and a clean skill hit would deal 466 Final Damage.
"A hundred and ninety-seven on a basic. Four hundred and sixty-six on a skill," Levi said, doing the division against a 100,000 HP pool. "This is going to be incredibly annoying."
He looked at the defensive math. If the Siege-Beast hit him, its 550 Attack would go up against Levi’s 91 Defense.
550 minus 91 meant Levi would take exactly 459 damage per hit. With his 1,120 Max HP, he could survive exactly two direct hits. A third would kill him instantly.
The Siege-Beast lowered its heavily armored head. It let out a deafening, metallic roar and charged.
The ground shook violently with every step. The monster crossed the distance insanely fast for its size, the giant iron ram dragging through the mud behind it. It aimed its massive horned head directly at Levi, intent on turning him into a red smear on the dirt road.
Levi didn’t try to block. He didn’t even try to side-step on the ground.
He kicked off the dirt, utilizing his phenomenal 83 Speed to sprint directly toward the charging beast. Right before the horns hit him, Levi vaulted off a nearby pile of dead Orc corpses, launching himself into the air.
He hung in the digital gravity for a split second, the beast’s massive head passing right under his boots.
"Phantom Step!"
Levi burned 20 Mana in mid-air. His body dissolved into a dark shadow, bypassing the beast’s massive shoulder plates, and he instantly materialized directly on the monster’s broad, flat back.
His boots slammed onto the iron armor plates covering the beast’s spine.
Before the monster even realized where he was, Levi drove the jagged blade of the Sovereign’s Deathknell straight down into the gap between the armor plates.
"Reaping Arc!"
He dumped 10 Mana. The scythe erupted in a blinding red aura, sending a massive shockwave of energy directly into the beast’s spinal column.
[-466]
The heavy red number popped up. The Siege-Beast shrieked, a sound like grinding metal, and violently slammed its front legs into the mud to stop its charge. It immediately started thrashing wildly, bucking its massive body left and right like a mechanical bull trying to throw a rider.
Levi tried to keep his balance, but the sheer kinetic force of the bucking threw him off the armor plates. He didn’t fall off the beast completely, but the environmental shockwave of the monster thrashing clipped him hard against the side.
The VR pain engine sent a jarring ache through his ribs.
[-200]
His health bar dropped from 1,120 down to 920.
"Yeah, I’m not playing this game," Levi grunted, grabbing a thick iron chain attached to the ram to stabilize himself. "Hollow’s Ward!"
He burned 150 Mana. The pitch-black, swirling dark-matter shield erupted around his avatar. It locked into place with a solid 755 HP buffer. More importantly, the Gold-tier skill made him entirely immune to all knockbacks and status effects.
The beast bucked again, trying to throw him into the sky, but Levi didn’t budge an inch. His boots were magnetically anchored to the monster’s back by the skill’s passive effect.
He let go of the chain, gripped his scythe with both hands, and went to work.
He unleashed an absolute barrage of high-speed basic strikes. Because he didn’t have to worry about dodging or getting thrown off, his 83 Speed allowed him to swing the massive Gold-tier weapon like it weighed nothing.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
[-197] [-197] [-197] [-197]
The jagged blade hacked into the beast’s thick hide over and over again. Every single hit triggered his weapon’s 10% Lifesteal, instantly pumping 19 health back into his pool. Combined with his Siphon Aura ticking for 15 HP a second, Levi’s health bar shot straight back up to a perfect 1,120.
The tiny bleeding teardrop icon appeared over the beast’s massive head.
[-5] [-5] [-5]
The fight turned into a brutal, one-sided rodeo. The Siege-Beast completely ignored the city gates. It just spun in tight circles in the middle of the plains, roaring and thrashing, desperately trying to get the annoying player off its back. The Orc horde had to scatter to avoid getting crushed by their own boss.
The players on the city walls were dead silent. They were watching a single guy in black armor stand completely perfectly still on the back of a raging, three-story-tall monster, just casually hacking it to death.
Minutes dragged on. The stamina drain was horrific. Levi had to constantly pop top-tier mana potions to keep his Siphon Aura and Hollow’s Ward fueled. The dark-matter shield absorbed all the ambient shockwave damage, and Levi just refreshed it the second the 60-second cooldown ended.
His fingers cramped in his haptic gloves. His real-world arms felt like they were filled with wet cement. But he didn’t stop swinging.
Fifty thousand health. Thirty thousand health.
After five grueling minutes of non-stop, repetitive hacking, the massive red health bar finally dipped to exactly 20,000 HP.
That was exactly 20% of the beast’s maximum health.
"Finally," Levi wheezed, completely out of breath.
He stopped swinging and stood up straight on the beast’s back.
"Harvest."
He dumped 50 Mana from his pool. The shadowy aura surrounding his avatar violently detached. It shot up into the red-lit sky, expanding and materializing into a pitch-black, spectral scythe that was easily as large as the city gates.
The spectral guillotine hung in the air for a fraction of a second, casting a massive shadow over the plains.
Then, it dropped.
The giant black blade slammed straight down with a deafening, sickening crunch. It cleanly decapitated the colossal Siege-Beast.
The monster’s thrashing stopped instantly. The massive, horned head hit the mud with a heavy thud, followed a second later by the rest of the three-story body. The beast collapsed, completely destroying a dozen basic Orcs caught underneath it, before violently shattering into a mountain of glowing blue polygons and giant item boxes.
[System Notification: Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]
Levi dropped to his knees in the mud, right where the beast’s back used to be. He toggled his Siphon Aura off to save his remaining mana. He was entirely exhausted.
Before the polygons even settled, the dense, blinding crimson aura of the harvest ripped out of the boss’s crater. It shot across the mud and slammed directly into Levi’s chest like a physical blow.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[Elite Siege-Beast’s primary stat is VIT (200).]
[You have plundered 5% of its core stat.]
[Gained +10 VIT permanently!]
Levi let out a tired laugh as the raw Vitality rushed into his system. His max health pool violently expanded again.
He didn’t stick around to pose for the players watching from the walls. He scooped up the massive pile of loot, shoved it into his inventory, and stood up. The ground was still trembling. The real event boss was coming, and he needed to prepare.
