Chapter 155: Chapter 155:Dante’s Cruelty
Danus dangled from the dark purple gauntlet of Dante. His boots kicked uselessly at the dusty air.
The hands of the lieutenant clawed frantically at the iron-plated fingers crushing his windpipe, but his Strength stat was completely insufficient to break the grip.
"V-Vane!" Danus choked out, and his voice was barely a raspy whisper over the guild comms. "Drop them! Drop the army!"
Up on the towering sheer red cliffs of the Crimson Canyon, the silence finally broke.
Vane, the rogue Celestial architect, stepped to the absolute edge of the highest ridge.
He looked down into the dusty basin, and his pristine white robes fluttered in the wind.
The mad scientist was visibly trembling. His unblinking eyes twitched erratically as he stared at the dark-armored anomaly holding his bait.
"He bypassed the mathematical perimeter," Vane muttered to himself and scratched his head aggressively.
"He completely ignored the entry vectors. It is an unacceptable variable."
Vane raised his hand and pointed down into the canyon.
"Adjust formation!" Vane shrieked. His voice was amplified by a system item to carry across the entire canyon. "Target the anomaly! Engage!"
The ten thousand players of Vanguard’s Legacy didn’t hesitate.
They had been waiting in silence for twenty minutes and were terrified of the target. Hearing an actual command broke their paralysis.
Thousands of heavily armored warriors and paladins poured over the edges of the lower ridges.
They slid down the steep dusty slopes and flooded into the canyon basin.
They formed massive overlapping shield walls and completely surrounded Dante in a localized sea of gold and white tabards.
High above them, thousands of archers and mages repositioned.
They drew their bowstrings and prepped magical circles aiming directly down into the bowl.
Dante didn’t drop Danus. He didn’t even look up at the massive army pouring into the canyon.
He looked directly into the terrified eyes of Danus.
"They actually came down here for you," Dante noted casually. "That is surprisingly loyal for the payroll of Silas."
Dante didn’t summon [Voidsever].
He didn’t want to instantly vaporize the lieutenant. He needed this to be deliberate.
He needed the ten thousand players watching him to understand exactly what happened when you accepted a bounty against Aegis Vanguard.
The influence of the [Asura Vanguard] class was heavily bleeding into his localized combat logic.
The bloodlust wasn’t overriding his tactical mind, but it was actively demanding a cruel and visceral display of dominance.
He opened his inventory.
He pulled out a basic and rusted iron broadsword.
It was a trash-tier weapon he had looted from a beginner mob in the Frostfire Steppes. It possessed a base attack power of practically zero.
"You see this?" Dante asked softly and held the rusted blade up.
Danus couldn’t answer. He just stared at the jagged metal.
"If I hit you with Voidsever, you die before you even register the damage," Dante explained, his red eyes completely cold. "It is too clean. But this? This is going to hurt."
Dante didn’t use a skill.
He just tightened his grip on the throat of the lieutenant and swung the rusty sword in a short, brutal, and unrefined chop.
He aimed for the right arm of Danus right at the joint of the shoulder pauldron.
The rusty blade didn’t cut cleanly. It hacked into the digital armor and ground violently against the metal.
Because the base stats of Dante were so astronomically high, even a trash-tier weapon carried terrifying kinetic force.
But because the weapon itself lacked any armor-penetrating or sharpness values, the strike didn’t sever the limb instantly.
It crushed it and tore through the pixels through sheer agonizing blunt-force trauma.
[Class Passive Triggered: 200% Simulated Pain Feedback.]
[Class Passive Triggered: Absolute Ruin.]
Danus let out a horrifying scream of absolute pain.
The pain didn’t hit him like a standard game mechanic.
The 200% pain multiplier combined with the catastrophic permanent damage of the [Absolute Ruin] passive flooded his neural link.
He felt the unfiltered sensation of his arm being violently hacked off by a blunt instrument.
Dante pulled the rusty sword back and swung again to hit the exact same spot.
[-1,200 HP]
The damage numbers were intentionally low, but the physical trauma was absolute.
With a sickening digitized crunch, the right arm of Danus was completely severed from his torso.
It dropped to the dusty canyon floor and instantly turned into a pile of gray useless code.
Thick digital blood poured from the wound.
The ten thousand players surrounding them went completely and utterly silent.
The vanguard shield walls stopped advancing. The archers on the ridges slowly lowered their bows.
They were watching a player be physically and methodically butchered.
"Aura," Dante said and did not take his eyes off the screaming lieutenant.
The tiny silver fox materialized by his shoulder.
She didn’t look happy. She didn’t like the visceral violence. But she obeyed the command.
[Skill Activated: Resurgence Wave]
A pulse of concentrated Aether washed over Danus.
The massive percentage-based heal instantly restored the health bar of the lieutenant.
It pushed him completely out of the critical red zone and back to full HP.
But the heal didn’t restore the severed limb. The [Absolute Ruin] passive ensured the damage was permanent until respawn.
It just kept him alive so he could feel the next strike.
Danus gasped for air, and his avatar trembled violently in the grip of Dante.
"Why?!" Danus sobbed, and his voice broke entirely. "Just kill me!!"
"I am sending a message," Dante whispered.
He raised the rusty sword again and swung it directly into the left knee of Danus.
The armor crumpled. The digital bone shattered. The 200% pain feedback triggered again.
Danus shrieked.
It was a sound of such pure unadulterated terror that several players in the vanguard actually threw their weapons down and scrambled backward.
They were physically sickened by the display.
Dante hacked at the knee three more times to completely sever the leg.
Aura pulsed again and fully healed the damage to ensure Danus didn’t zero out.
"This is what happens when you hunt my people," Dante announced.
His voice carried clearly across the silent canyon and projected absolute malice to the thousands of watching players.
"If you wear the tabard of Vanguard’s Legacy, if you take a bounty from Silas, this is how your run ends. Not with a clean execution. With a rusty sword and a healer."
Up on the highest ridge, Vane was practically tearing his own gray hair out.
"Shoot him!" Vane shrieked and completely lost his mind. "He is distracted! He is intentionally lowering his damage output! Vaporize him!"
Vane didn’t wait for the archers.
The mad architect pulled a massive, heavy, and glowing metal cylinder from his robes.
It wasn’t a standard bow or a magic staff.
It was a highly restricted localized piece of siege artillery. It was an armor-piercing mana-fueled ballista bolt designed to shatter castle gates.
Vane hoisted the heavy weapon onto his shoulder, aimed directly at the glowing gold back of Dante, and pulled the trigger.
The massive iron-tipped bolt fired with a deafening crack that resounded like thunder in the canyon.
It shot downward at terrifying speed and glowed with concentrated armor-piercing kinetic energy.
The Intuition stat of Dante flared.
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t drop Danus.
He simply raised his left arm, and the dark purple plating of the [Void-Devourer Gauntlets] caught the sunlight.
He didn’t activate [Aegis Deflection]. He just held his hand out.
The massive armor-piercing ballista bolt slammed directly into his open palm.
CLANG!
The kinetic force of the siege weapon pushed the iron boots of Dante two inches backward into the red dirt and kicked up a massive cloud of dust.
But the bolt stopped completely dead.
It didn’t pierce the dark purple metal. It didn’t shatter his arm.
Dante caught the artillery shell bare-handed.
The entire canyon stared in absolute unfiltered disbelief. A player had just caught a siege weapon like it was a thrown baseball.
Dante slowly closed his fingers and crushed the heavy iron tip of the ballista bolt into scrap metal.
He dropped the ruined projectile into the dirt.
He finally turned his head to look up at Vane standing on the ridge.
The red eyes of Dante burned with intense and unyielding fury.
He looked back at Danus who was still sobbing and hanging from his grip with a missing arm and leg.
"Message delivered," Dante said.
He dropped the rusty sword. He didn’t need it anymore.
He summoned [Voidsever].
The primordial greatsword materialized instantly in his free hand.
He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He just casually swung the massive black blade horizontally.
The 100% armor-piercing true damage sheared cleanly through the neck of Danus.
[-45,000! OVERKILL!]
The health bar of the lieutenant finally vanished. The agonizing and prolonged execution was over.
Danus exploded into a massive cloud of blue pixels and left a small pile of dropped gear in the dirt.
Dante stepped over the loot.
He didn’t look at the single terrified lieutenant anymore. He turned his full attention to the ten thousand heavily armored players completely surrounding him.
The Asura Vanguard was ready to escalate the violence.
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