Chapter 117: Chapter 117: The Abyssal Maw-Hounds
The horrific growl didn’t just vibrate the air; it physically rattled the heavy iron bars of the shattered gate far above them.
The narrow, enclosed space of the underground tunnel magnified the sound, turning a low rumble into a deafening, bone-chilling roar. It sounded like metal grinding against wet stone.
Valerius, the Guild Master of the Legion of Blades, didn’t immediately turn around. He was a disciplined military commander, and his eyes remained locked on Dante.
"Rearguard, report," Valerius ordered calmly through his guild comms, keeping his glowing silver longsword pointed squarely at Dante. "What is approaching our flank?"
There was a tense, two-second pause.
"Sir," a panicked voice crackled over the open channel. "It’s... we don’t know what it is. It’s not a player. It’s coming out of the lower caverns. It’s massive."
Dante didn’t wait for the Legion to figure it out. His Intuition stat was practically screaming, warning him of a massive, overwhelming threat rapidly closing the distance.
He didn’t activate [Phantom Waltz] to attack the player army. He didn’t want to burn his cooldowns or lock himself into an animation when an unknown threat was approaching.
"Back up," Dante ordered Mei and Casanova, taking a slow step backward up the tunnel incline.
Mei didn’t argue. The usually hyper-aggressive brawler lowered her massive cast-iron frying pan and took a step back.
Even she could feel the intense, oppressive weight radiating from the darkness behind the Legion’s formation.
Erebus, however, didn’t move. The tiny half-soul Celestial simply stood her ground, clutching her Mythic-tier backpack, her solid red eyes staring blankly down the tunnel.
Suddenly, the darkness behind the Legion’s rear guard violently parted.
A figure stepped into the dim light provided by the glowing weapons of the player army.
It wasn’t a massive dragon. It was a humanoid NPC.
He wore ragged, dark crimson robes that were heavily stained with old blood and soot. His face was hidden behind a crude, rusted iron mask shaped like a screaming skull. He held a thick, heavy iron chain in each hand.
[Entity Identified: Rogue Cultist Handler]
[Level: 45]
"A Level 45 Cultist?" Valerius scoffed, finally looking over his shoulder. The Warlord’s tension visibly dropped.
A Level 45 NPC was dangerous, but against a thousand highly coordinated, elite players, it was barely a speedbump.
"Rearguard, execute the NPC," Valerius ordered dismissively, turning his attention back to Dante. "Frontline, prepare to advance. Shield wall formation!"
The Legionnaires in the back of the tunnel raised their weapons, preparing to instantly delete the ragged Cultist.
The Cultist didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t cast a spell.
He simply laughed. It was a raspy sound that resounded horribly in the confined space.
"You think you hold the power here, intruders?" the Cultist mocked, his voice muffled by the iron mask.
"You are trespassing in the domain of the true sovereigns. The abyss does not suffer fools."
The Cultist violently yanked the thick iron chains in his hands.
The chains weren’t empty.
Out of the pitch-black darkness of the lower cavern, the true threat emerged.
They moved with terrifying, unnatural speed, entirely silent until they hit the light. They were roughly the size of heavy draft horses, but their anatomy was a grotesque, corrupted nightmare.
Their bodies were sleek, hairless, and covered in a thick layer of shifting, oily black shadows. They didn’t have heads.
Where a head should be, there was simply a massive, gaping vertical maw that split their entire torso, lined with hundreds of jagged, interlocking obsidian teeth.
[Monster Spawn: Abyssal Maw-Hound]
[Tier: Gold]
[Level: 25]
[HP: 35,000 / 35,000]
"Gold-tier hounds," Dante noted, his grip tightening on the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
But it wasn’t the tier or the level that made the encounter terrifying.
The system interface violently flashed red, prioritizing the threat over the thousand-man player army.
[Warning: Abyssal Maw-Hound mechanic detected.]
[Passive: Devouring Charge. The entity’s primary attack ignores all physical collision parameters. If the target is caught within the maw, they are instantly consumed. Inflicts True Death (Instant Kill) regardless of current HP or mitigation stats.]
"Instant kill mechanic," Dante said, his voice dropping to a flat, serious register.
It was the exact same absolute execution protocol that Gluttony had possessed in the Spire of Ascension.
But Gluttony had been a slow-moving, massive sphere. These were incredibly agile, high-speed hounds, and they were deployed in a narrow, confined tunnel.
There were dozens of them. The Cultist dropped the iron chains, releasing the pack.
The Abyssal Maw-Hounds didn’t roar. They surged forward, completely silent, a rushing tide of black shadow and jagged teeth.
They hit the rear guard of the Legion of Blades.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a harvest.
The heavily armored Legionnaires raised their tower shields, executing perfect, synchronized block commands, fully expecting to mitigate the physical impact and hold the line.
The Maw-Hounds didn’t crash into the shields. They passed straight through them.
The [Devouring Charge] passive ignored physical collision. The massive, vertical maws simply slid through the iron and steel as if it were water, closing directly over the torsos of the defending players.
The system didn’t even bother displaying damage numbers.
Dozens of high-level, elite Legionnaires instantly vanished. They didn’t scream. They didn’t bleed. Their health bars were completely bypassed.
They were simply swallowed whole, their avatars immediately triggering the gray, static crackle of True Death before exploding into blue pixels.
"Hold the line!" a Legion lieutenant screamed, absolute panic finally breaking their military discipline. "They’re ignoring armor! Use magic! CC them!"
The mages in the Legion’s center ranks frantically began chanting, throwing massive volleys of frost lances and fireballs at the charging shadow-beasts.
The magic hit, dealing significant damage to the hounds’ 35,000 health pools, but it wasn’t enough to stop the charge.
The narrow tunnel completely bottlenecked the players, preventing them from kiting or dodging. The hounds just kept running forward, absorbing the damage, and systematically eating the front row of defenders.
Valerius finally realized the severity of the situation. His disciplined, thousand-man army was actively being devoured from the back to the front.
"About face!" Valerius roared, completely abandoning his focus on Dante. "All units, concentrate fire on the hounds! Do not let them reach the center!"
The entire Legion of Blades turned their backs on Dante, desperately engaging the grotesque monsters tearing through their ranks.
"Boss," Casanova squeaked, hiding behind Mei. "They are literally eating people. Like, whole. In one bite. We need to leave."
Dante didn’t retreat.
He knew exactly how the aggro mechanics worked. The hounds were currently prioritizing the closest, most densely packed cluster of targets. The Legion was acting as a massive, unintended meat shield.
But the Legion wasn’t going to last. The hounds were tearing through them at a terrifying pace.
Dante couldn’t use [Meteor Stride] to bypass the fight. The narrow tunnel was completely packed with players and monsters; if he teleported in, he risked materializing directly inside one of the instant-kill maws.
He couldn’t use [Cyclone of Ruin] because the swirling vortex would likely suck the hounds directly toward his own party.
He needed to clear the immediate space. He needed ranged, absolute suppression.
Dante opened his inventory and equipped the Novice-tier parry skillbook he had evolved at Tang’s forge.
[Skill Executed: Aether-Blade Storm]
Because of his [Chrono-Shift] talent, the Zenith-tier defensive skill had zero cast time and zero mana cost.
One hundred glowing, silver broadswords instantly materialized in the air around Dante. They formed a massive, swirling, metallic halo, humming aggressively as they hovered in the narrow tunnel.
"Mei, hold the line right here," Dante ordered, pointing at the ground. "Do not engage. Let the swords do the work."
He stepped forward, pushing slightly past the edge of the Legion’s breaking formation.
A pack of five Abyssal Maw-Hounds, having just finished devouring a squad of paladins, spotted Dante’s glowing gold armor.
They abandoned the terrified players and charged directly at the new, high-threat target.
Dante didn’t swing his sword. He didn’t even raise his arms.
He just stood there.
The five hounds lunged, their massive vertical maws opening wide to instantly execute him.
The automated, floating minefield of [Aether-Blade Storm] reacted instantly.
The phantom swords didn’t wait for the hounds to reach Dante. They actively sought out the incoming threat. Dozens of silver blades shot forward like guided missiles, intercepting the charging hounds mid-air.
The phantom swords slammed into the shadow-beasts.
Upon contact, the Zenith-tier blades didn’t cut. They violently exploded.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Each explosion dealt 1,000% True Damage directly to the attacker.
The five Gold-tier Maw-Hounds didn’t even get within ten feet of Dante. The sheer, overwhelming volume of concentrated True Damage completely obliterated their 35,000 health pools.
The beasts were violently atomized, exploding into massive clouds of golden loot polygons.
[Target Eliminated: Abyssal Maw-Hound x5]
Because [Chrono-Shift] removed the cooldown on the skill, the destroyed phantom swords instantly regenerated in the air around Dante, maintaining the perfect, swirling halo of a hundred blades.
Dante was untouchable. Any hound that tried to enter the fifty-foot radius of the storm was instantly intercepted and vaporized by the exploding swords.
Valerius, desperately parrying a hound’s jaws with his silver longsword, looked back at Dante.
The Warlord’s eyes widened in absolute shock. He was watching his elite, thousand-man army get systematically devoured by the monsters, while the anomaly player casually stood in a storm of exploding silver swords, completely immune to the carnage.
"Dan!" Valerius screamed over the chaos, his military discipline completely shattered. "Help us!"
Dante looked at the Guild Master.
"You brought a thousand people to camp my spawn," Dante replied, his voice completely flat, completely devoid of sympathy. "You wanted to lock me down. You handle your own aggro."
Dante didn’t drop the sword storm, but he didn’t advance to help them. He held his position, perfectly content to let the Legion of Blades and the Abyssal Maw-Hounds mutually self-destruct in the narrow tunnel.
But the Zenith Protocol’s dynamic AI wasn’t going to make it that easy.
The Rogue Cultist Handler, standing safely behind the chaotic melee, realized his hounds were dying. He raised his jagged iron staff, the crimson eye flaring violently.
He didn’t summon more hounds. He targeted the source of the resistance.
[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Abyssal Displacement]
The system interface flashed a hard purple warning.
A massive, swirling black portal opened directly beneath Dante’s feet.
It wasn’t an attack. It was a forced coordinate swap.
Dante didn’t have time to trigger [Blink Step]. The portal swallowed him instantly.
A fraction of a second later, Dante materialized at the absolute rear of the tunnel, directly next to the Cultist Handler, completely surrounded by dozens of fresh, un-engaged Maw-Hounds.
The [Aether-Blade Storm] had traveled with him, instantly vaporizing the three closest hounds, but he was completely cut off from his party.
Worse, the portal he had just fallen through didn’t close.
It spat something back out.
One of the massive, shadow-covered Maw-Hounds dropped out of the portal, landing directly in the space Dante had just occupied.
It landed exactly two feet in front of Lila and Mei.
And more importantly, it landed directly in front of the tiny, floating form of Aura.
The hound didn’t hesitate. Its massive vertical maw snapped open, aiming a guaranteed instant-kill devour mechanic directly at the Grade 8 Doom Harbinger.
