Free Web NovelChapter 42: [42]: The 55% Wall, The Anomaly’s Return
The Blood Moon Herald brought its flaming greatsword crashing down.
Levi didn’t bother using Phantom Step. He needed to save his mana for offense. His 83 Speed allowed him to track the massive weapon as it blurred through the air. Instead of dodging completely out of the way, he slid forward, stepping right into the danger zone, and raised the heavy haft of his Gold-tier scythe to intercept the blow.
The massive, burning blade collided with Levi’s weapon.
The impact was like getting hit by a meteor. The VR helmet sent a violent, shaking vibration through Levi’s entire body. The ground beneath his boots instantly cracked from the kinetic force.
But because he successfully blocked the attack with his weapon, the game registered it as a parry.
The math triggered instantly. The boss had 800 Attack. A parry applied a flat 50% damage reduction to the incoming swing, cutting it down to 400.
Levi’s Defense was sitting at 91.
400 minus 91 equaled exactly 309 damage.
The 309 damage bypassed Levi’s actual health pool and slammed directly into his [Hollow’s Ward]. The dark-matter shield violently flickered, its health dropping from 755 down to 446.
Levi didn’t even flinch. He used the momentum of the parry to slide the scythe out from under the greatsword, completely opening the demon’s guard.
"My turn," Levi grunted.
He swung the Sovereign’s Deathknell in a rapid, horizontal basic attack aimed right at the boss’s knee.
He ran the numbers as the blade connected. The boss had 400 Defense. Levi’s scythe ignored 20% of it, dropping the effective Defense to 320.
Levi’s massively buffed Total Attack was 954.
954 minus 320 left 634 raw damage.
Now came the absolute worst mechanic in the game. The eleven-level gap imposed a 55% Level Suppression penalty. The system literally deleted more than half of his damage before it even applied. 634 multiplied by 0.45 meant he only dealt 45% of his actual damage.
The final result was exactly 285 Damage.
[-285]
The scythe ripped through the flames and bit into the demon’s armor. It was a solid hit, but compared to the 300,000 HP health pool floating above the boss’s head, it looked like a papercut.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," Levi hissed. "A nine hundred attack stat and I’m hitting for two hundred?"
He didn’t stop swinging. He couldn’t afford to. The potion timer in his peripheral vision was already down to 2:55.
"Reaping Arc!"
He dumped 10 Mana. The scythe erupted in a blinding red light. He dragged the blade upward, unleashing his core skill directly into the demon’s torso.
The math calculated again. 954 Attack multiplied by 1.8 gave him 1,717 raw damage. Minus the 320 Defense left 1,397. Applying the brutal 55% suppression penalty dropped the final skill damage to exactly 628.
[-628]
The demon roared in annoyance, but the health bar barely moved.
The 55% suppression penalty was an absolute, suffocating wall. Even with his stats completely pushed to the breaking point with a Gold-tier consumable, the math just wasn’t adding up in his favor.
The demon retaliated immediately. It swung its lower left arm, a massive fist wreathed in fire, in a sweeping backhand.
Levi ducked underneath the punch, feeling the virtual heat singe the top of his hair. He popped back up and unleashed a rapid flurry of basic strikes. Because of his 83 Speed, his swing timer was incredibly fast. He landed three basic strikes in two seconds.
[-285] [-285] [-285]
The scythe’s passive triggered. The small bleeding teardrop icon appeared over the demon’s head.
[-5] [-5] [-5]
The bleed dealt true damage, ignoring the suppression penalty, but 5 damage a second was a complete joke against a 300,000 HP boss.
The fight dragged on into an agonizing, hyper-focused war of attrition. For two full minutes, the Northern Gate became a chaotic blur of black shadows and crimson flames. Levi played completely flawlessly. He dodged the heavy overhead slams. He parried the horizontal cleaves, letting his dark-matter shield absorb the chip damage.
He dumped his mana into Reaping Arcs every five seconds, slowly whittling away at the massive oceanic health pool.
But his lack of healing was catching up to him. He couldn’t use his Siphon Aura. He couldn’t use his Lifesteal. Every single mistake was permanent.
At the 1:00 mark on his buff timer, Levi made a mistake.
The boss stomped its foot. Levi expected the standard fire-ring AoE and tried to backpedal. But the boss immediately followed the stomp with an untelegraphed, hyper-fast forward thrust with its greatsword.
Levi couldn’t parry it in time. The burning tip of the greatsword slammed squarely into the center of his Obsidian Carapace.
The VR pain engine flared violently, sending a horrible burning sensation straight through his chest. He was thrown twenty feet backward, skidding violently across the dirt.
The system calculated the clean hit. Boss ATK (800) minus Levi DEF (91) meant the attack dealt a massive 709 damage.
The attack slammed into his dark-matter shield. His shield only had 446 HP remaining.
The shield violently shattered into a thousand black shards. The remaining 263 damage bled directly through the shield and slammed into his actual health pool.
[-263]
Levi’s health bar plummeted from a perfect 1,320 down to 1,057.
"Damn it," Levi coughed, pushing himself up off the dirt. The pain engine throbbed, making his virtual vision blur for a fraction of a second.
He quickly checked his buff timer. 0:50 seconds left.
He checked the boss’s health bar. Despite two straight minutes of absolute perfect DPS, spamming skills and basic attacks non-stop, the Blood Moon Herald was still sitting at exactly 150,000 HP.
It was mathematically impossible.
"I can’t burst it," Levi realized, his stomach dropping. "When the potion wears off, my attack is going to drop back to four hundred. With the fifty-five percent penalty, I won’t even scratch it."
If he didn’t kill it before the buff expired, he would lose the DPS race. His mana was running low, his shield was broken, and his healing was completely disabled.
The demon raised its greatsword, stepping forward to finish him off.
Suddenly, the ambient lighting of the battlefield flickered. The red flames wreathing the demon’s body visibly glitched, turning a static, broken white color for a split second.
Levi froze.
Standing perfectly balanced on the massive demon’s left shoulder was a figure in a plain, untextured gray cloak. She held a basic, Level 1 wooden beginner’s staff in her hand. Her blank, completely robotic eyes looked down at Levi.
It was Isolde. The Anomaly.
She didn’t use an attack skill. She didn’t even look at the boss she was standing on.
"You are too early," Isolde’s voice echoed, completely devoid of any human inflection. The sound didn’t come from her mouth; it broadcast directly into Levi’s audio channels like a server announcement. "But acceptable."
Before Levi could even process what she was doing here, Isolde casually drove the bottom of her wooden staff directly into the demon’s flaming neck.
The staff pulsed with a blinding, pure white light.
A massive, glitched system status effect popped up over the Blood Moon Herald’s head.
[Anomaly’s Fracture: Target DEF reduced to 0 for 10 seconds. Level Suppression Disabled.]
Having completely altered the fundamental, hard-coded math of the boss fight, Isolde vanished instantly, teleporting away without a sound.
Levi stared at the debuff icon floating above the boss.
Zero defense. Suppression disabled.
For the next ten seconds, his 954 Attack stat was entirely uncapped.
Levi gripped the Sovereign’s Deathknell, a ruthless, terrifying smile spreading across his face. "Ten seconds is all I need."
