Started with a 10,000x Multiplier in a Game World

Chapter 154: Chapter 154: The Spatial Ambush

Danus stood in the center of the Crimson Canyon, and his gray armor was covered in a thin layer of dust.

The silence was agonizing.

The canyon was a massive natural trench flanked by towering sheer walls of jagged red rock.

High above him, perfectly concealed within the caves and ridges, ten thousand players waited with bated breath.

Vane, the mad Architect, had designed the kill-box flawlessly.

Overlapping magical arrays and synchronized firing lines were all trained precisely on the narrow entrance path leading into the basin.

Danus gripped his broadsword tightly, and his eyes glued to the choke point.

He was the bait. He just had to survive long enough for Dante to step onto the designated coordinates.

"Any sign of him?" Danus whispered nervously into his private comms channel.

"Negative," the high-pitched and erratic voice of Vane crackled back instantly.

"The detection wards have not been tripped."

"Maintain your position, Lieutenant. The anomaly is arrogant, but he is not fast enough to bypass my perimeter without leaving a digital footprint."

Danus swallowed hard and nodded to himself.

Vane was a rogue Celestial. He knew how the system worked better than any player. If Vane said the perimeter was secure, it was secure.

He just had to wait for Dante to walk through the front door.

Ten seconds passed. Then twenty.

Suddenly, a faint and almost imperceptible humming sound vibrated the air directly behind Danus.

It didn’t sound like a footstep.

It sounded like the fabric of reality was being violently pulled taut and snapped.

The system interface didn’t flash a warning.

A shadow fell over the lieutenant and entirely blocked the harsh sunlight pouring into the canyon.

Danus froze. His blood ran completely cold.

He didn’t turn around immediately. He slowly and terrifyingly lowered his gaze to the dusty red ground in front of him.

Projected perfectly onto the dirt and cast by the sunlight behind him was a massive silhouette.

It was the unmistakable silhouette of a player wearing heavy spiked armor and a flowing tattered cape.

"Hello, Danus," a voice whispered softly directly into his right ear.

Danus actually screamed. It was a high-pitched and undignified sound of absolute

terror.

He didn’t try to swing his broadsword.

He threw himself forward and scrambled frantically across the dirt. He put ten feet of distance between himself and the voice before he spun around.

Dante was standing exactly where Danus had just been standing.

He looked like a nightmare.

His eyes burned with a solid piercing red light, and the heavy tattered crimson fabric of his cape shifted slowly in the dry canyon wind.

Dante didn’t have a weapon drawn. He was casually holding a dark gray stone in his left hand.

[Spatial Stone (Holy-Forbidden)]

"How?!" Danus shrieked and backed up further while his broadsword trembled wildly in his hands.

"You did not trigger the wards! The entrance is half a mile away! You cannot teleport that far!"

"Your Architect relies on systemic logic," Dante said.

His voice was terrifyingly calm and devoid of any exertion.

"He thinks in terms of skill ranges and cooldowns. He does not understand that I do not use standard mechanics anymore."

Dante tossed the [Spatial Stone] slightly into the air and caught it smoothly.

"Grandmaster Jian gave me a developer-level fast-travel node," Dante explained and took a slow step toward the terrified lieutenant.

"I do not need to walk through your front door, Danus. I just need to know the coordinates of where I want to stand."

"And since Silas was kind enough to leak your exact location to the information brokers, I just teleported directly behind you."

Danus stared at the dark gray stone. The realization hit him like a physical blow.

The entire ambush was compromised.

Vane had spent hours meticulously layering traps, wards, and suppression arrays at the canyon entrance. He fully expected Dante to trigger them one by one.

Dante had completely bypassed the entire perimeter without triggering a single alarm.

"Vane!" Danus screamed into his comms, and panic completely hijacked his vocal cords. "He is here! He is right in front of me! He teleported past the entrance!"

There was a loud burst of static on the comms, followed by the sound of something heavy shattering.

"Impossible!" Vane shrieked back, and his voice was completely unhinged. "My wards are absolute! He is a variable! He cannot bypass the math!"

"I do not care about your math!" Danus yelled and watched Dante take another slow deliberate step forward. "He is looking at me! Drop the bombardment! Kill him now!"

"I cannot fire!" Vane snapped frantically.

"He is not standing on the designated target coordinates! If I order the archers to fire now, the overlapping trajectories will be misaligned! We will hit the canyon walls!"

Danus felt his heart stop.

The execution grid was too rigid. Vane had designed it for absolute mathematical perfection.

He had pre-calculated exactly where every single arrow and spell would land based on Dante walking through the chokepoint.

Because Dante was standing thirty feet away from the designated kill-zone, the ten thousand players hiding on the ridges couldn’t actually hit him without readjusting their entire formation.

"Then readjust!" Danus pleaded and took another step back.

"It will take time!" Vane argued. "Maintain your position, Lieutenant! Draw him to the center marker!"

"I am not fighting the Asura!" Danus roared.

The lieutenant completely broke.

He didn’t care about the threats of Silas. He didn’t care about the reputation of the guild.

He had watched the forum video of Malachi being slowly and painfully butchered while turned to stone. He wasn’t going to let that happen to him.

Danus dropped his broadsword entirely. The heavy metal clattered against the red rock.

[Skill Executed: Shadow Cloak]

Danus activated his highest-tier rogue survival skill.

He vanished instantly, and his gray armor blended perfectly into the ambient light. It rendered him completely invisible to standard optical tracking.

"I am out!" Danus screamed into the comms, and his voice echoed from an unseen location in the canyon. "I am not the bait anymore! Drop the army down here and save me!"

Dante stood in the center of the dusty canyon and was entirely alone.

He didn’t activate [Phantom Dash]. He didn’t use an AoE skill to flush the rogue out.

He just smiled. It was a cold cruel expression that perfectly mirrored the aggressive red light burning in his eyes.

"You think stealth works on me?" Dante asked the empty air.

He didn’t rely on sight. His Intuition stat was at 100.

Furthermore, the [Asura Vanguard] class passives were actively humming.

[Class Passive 1 (Aura of Despair) Active.]

The heavy suffocating pressure radiated outward from Dante in a 100-foot radius.

It wasn’t just a debuff. It was a physical weight.

Danus, currently sprinting invisibly toward the canyon wall, hit the edge of the aura.

The invisible rogue didn’t just slow down.

He let out a sharp involuntary gasp of genuine pain as the simulated pain feedback triggered and sent a jolt of agony through his neural link.

"Found you," Dante said.

Dante didn’t teleport. He didn’t need to. He activated [Asura’s Heart].

[Attack Speed increased by 100%.]

[Movement Speed increased by 100%.]

Dante blurred, and his movement speed doubled instantly.

He crossed the fifty yards in less than a second and entirely bypassed human reaction time.

He reached out his dark purple gauntlet and grabbed the empty air.

His iron-plated fingers closed solidly around the invisible throat of Danus.

The stealth skill violently shattered.

Danus materialized, and his feet dangled a foot off the ground as Dante effortlessly held him in the air with one hand.

The eyes of the lieutenant were wide and completely dilated with terror.

He couldn’t breathe, and his avatar frantically kicked at the air.

"You screamed for an army," Dante whispered and stepped closer to the struggling rogue. "Let us see if they actually care enough to save you."