Chapter 140: Chapter 140: A Strategic Retreat
The rhythmic and synchronized thud of two hundred bronze boots hitting the bone-covered ground echoed through the Mists of Carnage.
Dante stood up and brushed the pulverized bone dust off his gold armor.
His health bar was sitting comfortably at 19,000 HP. But the fact that a basic ranged attack had nearly taken a quarter of his massive health pool in a single reflection was a serious localized reality check.
He couldn’t rely on brute-forcing his way through the phalanx.
The Undead Hoplites were perfectly designed to counter players who relied on massive single-target burst damage.
The [Phalanx Reflection] passive essentially turned their combined health pool into a mirror. If he hit them too hard, he committed suicide.
"Okay," Dante muttered and watched the wall of bronze shields slowly advance. "No big swings. No Voidsever. We have to chip away at them."
He raised the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He didn’t activate his [Blood Sacrifice] multiplier.
He just used the raw baseline physical damage of his Gold-tier weapon and utilized the [Aether-Blade Projection] passive to maintain his distance.
He swung a light and quick horizontal slash.
A small and relatively weak golden crescent of energy shot forward and hit the center of the shield wall.
Clang.
The impact was minimal.
[-800]
The red light flared across the bronze shields again. The [Phalanx Reflection] passive triggered and bounced the damage back.
The weak golden crescent hit the chest piece of Dante.
[-400 HP]
Dante barely felt the impact.
The [Source of Recovery] passive on his Divine Emperor cloak instantly halved the incoming damage and mitigated the blow effortlessly.
He checked the Hoplites.
The 800 damage hadn’t even moved the massive combined health bar hovering above the formation.
It was going to take thousands of swings to whittle them down at this rate.
But Dante didn’t care about the time. He cared about the mechanics.
He took a step backward and completely matched the slow methodical pace of the advancing phalanx. He wasn’t running away. He was kiting them.
He swung again.
[-800]
[-400 HP]
He took another step back.
He swung twice.
[-1,600]
[-800 HP]
"This is incredibly tedious," Dante sighed and established a perfectly synchronized rhythm.
Swing. Step back. Take the mitigated reflection. Repeat.
It was a completely unglamorous and grueling war of attrition. But it was mathematically flawless.
As long as he kept his outgoing damage low enough that the 50% reflection didn’t outpace the massive localized passive healing from his cloak, he was functionally invulnerable.
For ten minutes, Dante slowly backed his way through the Mists of Carnage. He led the relentless wall of bronze shields across the bone-littered wasteland.
The combined health bar of the two hundred Undead Hoplites slowly began to chip away.
[Undead Phalanx HP: 8,200,000 / 9,000,000]
But the Gold-tier system governing the formation wasn’t completely brainless.
It recognized that the slow methodical march wasn’t closing the gap. The target was successfully kiting them and dealing sustained chip damage outside their melee range.
The phalanx suddenly stopped marching.
The two hundred Undead Hoplites slammed the butts of their spears against the ground in unison.
[Mob Mechanic Triggered: Javelin Volley]
The front two rows of the shield wall didn’t break formation. They crouched low and anchored their shields into the bone dust.
The three rows behind them stepped up.
They didn’t hold their long spears horizontally. They gripped them near the center, raised them high above their heads, and aimed directly at Dante.
"Oh, that is not good," Dante noted and stopped his backward retreat.
He didn’t have time to use [Phantom Dash] to close the gap and interrupt the animation.
The Hoplites hurled their spears.
It wasn’t a scattered and disorganized volley.
Over a hundred heavy bronze javelins flew through the thick red mist in a perfectly synchronized and highly parabolic arc.
They blotted out the sky and rained down directly on the coordinates of Dante.
Dante didn’t try to dodge. There were too many projectiles covering too wide an area.
He activated his Zenith-tier defensive skill.
[Skill Executed: Aether-Blade Storm]
Because of [Chrono-Shift], the skill triggered instantly without casting animation or mana cost.
One hundred glowing silver broadswords materialized in the air around him and formed a massive swirling metallic halo.
The bronze javelins hit the kill-zone.
The phantom swords actively sought out the incoming projectiles and intercepted them mid-air.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions were deafening.
Every single time a silver sword intercepted a bronze javelin, it detonated and dealt 1,000% True Damage.
But the True Damage didn’t hit the Hoplites. It hit the javelins.
The Zenith-tier skill completely pulverized the incoming volley and turned the heavy bronze spears into fine metallic dust before they could even touch the armor of Dante.
The [Aether-Blade Storm] flawlessly defended him. But the sheer volume of the incoming barrage depleted the phantom swords rapidly.
Dante didn’t panic. He just tapped the skill icon again.
Because the cooldown was zero, the destroyed phantom swords instantly regenerated and maintained the perfect impenetrable swirling halo.
The Hoplite system registered the failure of the volley.
The formation shifted again.
The back rows didn’t draw secondary weapons. They stepped backward and parted the dense phalanx to reveal the localized backline.
Dante squinted through the swirling silver swords and the red mist.
Standing behind the massive wall of bronze shields wasn’t just more infantry.
It was a dedicated and highly specialized ranged detachment.
Over fifty Undead Archers stepped forward.
They didn’t look like the heavily armored Hoplites. They wore tattered leather and carried massive recurve longbows forged from blackened bone.
But it wasn’t the archers that made the Intuition stat of Dante flare.
Standing behind the archers and mounted on heavily armored skeletal chariots were seven distinct towering figures.
[Monster Spawn: Undead Deputy General]
[Tier: Gold (Elite)]
[Level: 32]
[HP: 120,000 / 120,000]
"Seven generals," Dante muttered and his eyes narrowed. "They brought officer support."
The Deputy Generals didn’t carry shields.
They wielded massive two-handed glaives that crackled with dark localized necrotic energy.
They were significantly larger than the standard Hoplites, and their armor was heavily adorned with tattered crimson cloaks.
They weren’t just standing there to look intimidating.
The seven generals raised their glaives in unison.
[Boss Aura Applied: Relentless March]
[Effect: The entire Undead Phalanx receives a 50% boost to Movement Speed and a 20% boost to Attack Speed. Phalanx Reflection damage multiplier increased to 100%.]
The system interface flashed violently.
The slow methodical shield wall was suddenly moving twice as fast. The archers in the backline nocked glowing necrotic arrows with terrifying speed.
And the reflection penalty had just doubled.
If Dante hit the shield wall now, 100% of his damage would be reflected right back into his face.
He couldn’t even use basic attacks to chip them down anymore. The math had completely and absolutely shifted against him.
The archers fired.
Fifty necrotic arrows shot through the red mist and aimed directly at Dante.
The [Aether-Blade Storm] intercepted them.
But the necrotic energy attached to the arrows didn’t just explode when hit.
The dark magic splashed outward. It clung to the phantom swords and rapidly deteriorated their digital structure.
The storm was failing.
"I cannot kite this," Dante realized and took a step back as the shield wall rapidly closed the distance. "They are too fast. And I cannot hit the frontline without killing myself."
He needed to bypass the shield wall entirely. He needed to eliminate the archers and the generals holding the buffs.
Dante quickly formulated a completely reckless strategy.
He didn’t dismiss the failing [Aether-Blade Storm]. He needed it to cover his initial movement.
He opened his inventory and equipped the [Bow of the Eclipse].
The massive Mythic-tier weapon hummed with deep purple starlight.
He didn’t aim at the shield wall. He aimed directly up into the swirling blood-red sky above the canyon.
He pulled the crackling starlight bowstring back.
[Skill Executed: Eclipse Volley]
He fired.
The single purple arrow shot upward and instantly duplicated in mid-air.
One hundred identical glowing projectiles rained down.
They did not rain down on the frontline but in a massive localized parabolic arc that completely bypassed the towering bronze shields.
The arrows slammed directly into the backline of Undead Archers.
The Mythic-tier base damage combined with his raw stats absolutely obliterated the squishy ranged units.
[-45,000! OVERKILL!]
[-45,000! OVERKILL!]
Fifty archers were instantly vaporized into blue pixels, and their bone bows shattered into dust.
The barrage successfully cleared the backline, but it also triggered a catastrophic consequence.
The [Phalanx Reflection] passive wasn’t to the shields. It covered the entire formation.
Because Dante had just dealt millions of points of cumulative damage to the archers, the 100% reflection multiplier triggered.
The system interface flashed a blinding hostile red.
A massive concentrated wave of pure reflected kinetic force erupted from the surviving phalanx and shot directly back at Dante.
It was an unavoidable localized execution.
Dante didn’t even try to dodge.
He dropped the bow, raised his left hand, and activated the innate passive he had acquired from Erebus.
[Skill Activated: Undying Spirit]
The massive wave of reflected force hit him.
His armor couldn’t mitigate it. The [Source of Recovery] passive couldn’t heal it fast enough.
[-2,500,000 HP! FATAL DAMAGE!]
The health bar of Dante instantly vanished.
The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol queued the True Death deletion sequence.
But the passive held.
[Fatal damage negated. Health locked at 1 HP.]
[Absolute Invulnerability Applied. Duration: 5 seconds.]
Dante gasped and fell to one knee as the concussive shockwave blew the surrounding bone dust completely away.
He was sitting at exactly one hit point.
The golden invulnerability frames enveloped his avatar and protected him from the lingering necrotic damage.
He had five seconds.
He didn’t use an extraction talisman. He didn’t run away.
Dante looked up at the rapidly advancing shield wall.
The generals in the backline were roaring. They pushed the formation forward to crush the vulnerable anomaly.
He smiled.
It was a cold absolute expression of localized murder.
He had intentionally triggered the fatal reflection. He needed his health bar as low as mathematically possible.
Dante gripped the hilt of his sword.
[Skill Activated: Blood Sacrifice]
He didn’t burn 90% of his health this time. He was already at 1 HP.
The skill recognized his critical state and applied the maximum possible buff.
[Attack Power increased by 1,000%.]
Dante wasn’t just a glass cannon anymore. He was a nuclear warhead.
He stood up and ignored the flashing red warnings on his interface.
"Let us see if your shields can reflect this," Dante whispered.
