Free Web NovelChapter 43: [43]: The Ten-Second Window, Anomaly’s Fracture
The massive, thirty-foot-tall Blood Moon Herald was winding up for a crushing execution strike, its greatsword wreathed in violent crimson flames. Levi’s dark-matter shield was entirely shattered. His health was sitting at 1,057. His healing was completely locked out by the Gold-tier potion running through his digital veins. He had less than fifty seconds of his massive attack buff remaining, but he couldn’t even scratch the boss through the suffocating 55% Level Suppression penalty.
He was mathematically losing the DPS race.
Then, the ambient lighting of the battlefield violently flickered. The roaring flames covering the demon glitched, turning into a static, broken white color for a fraction of a second.
Levi froze, his virtual muscles locking up.
Standing perfectly balanced on the massive demon’s left shoulder was a figure wearing a plain, untextured gray cloak. She didn’t look like a high-level player. She held a basic, Level 1 wooden beginner’s staff in her right hand. Her eyes were completely blank, staring down at Levi like a pair of robotic lenses processing raw data.
It was Isolde. The Anomaly.
She didn’t use a flashy attack skill. She didn’t shout a battle cry. She didn’t even bother looking at the massive boss she was standing on.
"You are too early," Isolde’s voice echoed.
The sound didn’t come from her physical character model. It completely bypassed the game’s spatial audio and broadcast directly into Levi’s personal audio channels, exactly like a red server-wide announcement. Her voice lacked any human inflection. It was entirely flat and dead.
"But acceptable," she finished.
Before Levi could even process what an Anomaly was doing inside a server-wide public event, Isolde casually raised her cheap wooden staff and drove the blunt bottom of it directly into the demon’s flaming neck.
The staff pulsed with a blinding, pure white light that completely washed out the crimson glow of the Blood Moon.
A massive, glitched system status effect instantly popped up over the Blood Moon Herald’s head.
[-100,000 True Damage]
The red numbers were corrupted, shaking with static as they floated into the air. The boss’s massive health pool violently chunked down from 150,000 straight to 50,000 HP. But the massive burst of True Damage wasn’t even the best part.
A new debuff icon appeared next to the boss’s health bar.
[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. There was no teleportation animation. There was no flash of light. One frame she was standing on the demon’s shoulder, and the very next frame, she was just gone.
Levi stared at the debuff icon floating above the boss.
Zero defense. Suppression completely disabled.
For the next ten seconds, the oppressive 55% penalty that had been choking his damage output was entirely gone. His massive 954 Total Attack stat was completely uncapped.
Levi gripped the Sovereign’s Deathknell, a ruthless, terrifying smile spreading across his face.
"Ten seconds is all I need," Levi said.
The holographic timer above the boss started ticking down rapidly. 10... 9...
"Phantom Step!" Levi shouted.
He burned 20 Mana from his small remaining pool. His avatar dissolved into pitch-black shadow. He completely bypassed the massive, flaming greatsword the boss was trying to swing at him, teleporting exactly five meters forward and slightly upward. He reappeared directly in front of the demon’s massive, exposed chest armor.
He didn’t have anywhere to stand, so he let gravity take over, entering a brief free-fall right in the boss’s face.
"Reaping Arc!"
He dumped another 10 Mana. The silver blade of his Gold-tier scythe erupted in a blinding, bloody red aura. He twisted his torso mid-air and unleashed his core skill directly into the center of the demon’s chest.
He ran the math instantly. With the suppression penalty disabled and the boss’s defense stripped to absolutely nothing, it was just pure multiplication.
His 954 buffed Attack multiplied by the 1.8 Reaping Arc modifier gave him a raw output of 1,717 damage.
[-1,717]
A massive, critical red number exploded outward. The sheer kinetic force of taking unmitigated damage caused the boss’s hit-stun animation to trigger. The demon roared in absolute agony, its flaming arms flailing backward as it staggered on its massive feet.
Levi hit the dirt road, his boots digging into the ash and mud. He didn’t pause for a single millisecond. The timer was already at 8 seconds.
He planted his feet and unleashed a frantic, desperate barrage of basic physical attacks. He used the momentum of his falling strike to spin the heavy scythe around his body in wide, continuous loops.
Because the boss had zero defense, every single basic attack hit for exactly 954 damage.
Thanks to his 83 Speed stat, his swing timer was incredibly short. He was landing roughly three basic strikes every single second.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
[-954] [-954] [-954]
He was doing 2,862 damage per second. The math was finally working for him.
The VR helmet’s stamina engine was screaming at him. His virtual lungs burned, and his real-world shoulders ached as he forced the heavy scythe through its attack animations faster than the system was designed to comfortably handle.
7 seconds. 6 seconds. 5 seconds.
Levi turned into an absolute meat grinder. He didn’t care about his own safety. He completely ignored the demon’s attempts to kick him or swat him away. The boss was permanently locked in a staggered hit-stun animation because the damage threshold to trigger a stagger was being met every single second.
[-954] [-954] [-954]
The scythe’s passive bleed triggered, dropping the small teardrop icon over the boss’s head. It ticked for 5 true damage per second, adding just a tiny fraction of extra hurt to the massive red numbers filling Levi’s screen.
4 seconds. 3 seconds.
Levi kept his eyes glued to the boss’s health bar. It was plummeting. 40,000. 30,000. 20,000. He was literally carving the demon apart.
2 seconds. 1 second.
Levi landed two final basic strikes, chunking another 1,908 health off the boss.
[0 seconds]
The debuff icon floating above the Blood Moon Herald shattered into tiny pieces of static and vanished.
Instantly, the math wall slammed right back into place.
Levi swung his scythe one more time. The blade connected with the demon’s shin.
[-285]
The damage dropped from a massive 954 all the way back down to 285. The boss’s 400 Defense had returned, and the brutal 55% Level Suppression penalty had re-engaged.
Levi stumbled backward, gasping for digital air. He checked the boss’s health bar. Thanks to the Anomaly’s massive true damage strike and his own relentless nine-second barrage, the Blood Moon Herald was sitting at exactly 15,000 HP.
The demon snapped out of its hit-stun. It realized it had just lost over a hundred thousand health points in the blink of an eye. The boss let out a deafening, furious roar that physically pushed Levi backward, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and ash.
The flames wreathing the demon’s body suddenly changed from a standard crimson to a blinding, scorching white.
"Oh, come on," Levi groaned, tightening his grip on his scythe.
The demon completely ignored Levi on the ground. It bent its massive knees and launched itself straight up into the air. It floated about fifty feet above the battlefield, hovering directly in front of the pitch-black sky.
A massive, red magical circle appeared in the air behind the boss. The ambient red light of the missing Blood Moon started violently sucking into the center of the demon’s chest.
A system warning flashed in giant, urgent red text.
[Warning: The Blood Moon Herald is Enraged. Casting Lunar Devastation.]
Levi recognized the skill name immediately. It was the final phase. Lunar Devastation was an unavoidable, screen-wide nuke. When that cast bar finished, the demon was going to drop a literal nuke on the Northern Gate. It would instantly kill Levi and completely destroy the City of Thresholds, failing the entire event.
There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. The debuff was gone.
Levi checked his mana. He had exactly 100/560 Mana left.
He checked his buff timer for the Tears of the Warlord potion. He had exactly 5 seconds left before his 954 Attack dropped back down to 410.
It was do or die.
