Chapter 159: Chapter 159: Velocity Paradox
Dante logged back into the Zenith Protocol.
The transition from the pristine quiet of his corporate penthouse to the bustling hyper-detailed environment of Aethelgardia was instantaneous.
He materialized in the private VIP suite of the Astral Emporium exactly where he had disconnected hours ago.
He took a slow deep breath.
The cold suffocating apathy that had clung to his thoughts after the slaughter in the canyon was completely gone. His mind was clear.
The real-world break had successfully flushed the aggressive feedback loop of the [Asura Vanguard] class from his neural link.
He was in control.
Dante opened his system interface to check the guild roster.
Aegis Vanguard was sitting comfortably at its hard cap of fifty thousand elite members.
Sera was expertly managing the logistics to assign strike teams to secure high-yield resource nodes across the Veridian Alliance territory.
"Everything looks stable," Dante noted and swiped the menu away.
He didn’t want to sit in the VIP suite managing spreadsheets.
He had an entire open world to explore, and he was currently holding a massive pile of unappraised loot from the kill of [Seven Evils - Sloth].
He activated his [Band of the Void-Walker] and sifted through his infinite inventory to look for the specific drops from the Celestial Beast.
Because the encounter had ended so abruptly with the [Gaze of the Abyss] execution, he hadn’t actually had time to process what the primordial bear had dropped.
He pulled out a small glowing green gem.
It didn’t look like a standard stat crystal or a piece of armor. It pulsed with a frantic erratic energy.
[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Minor Haste]
[Tier: Novice]
[Description: Grants a temporary 5% boost to base movement speed for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 45 seconds.]
Dante frowned.
A Novice-tier skillbook dropping from a Level 35 Celestial Beast was statistically bizarre. The loot tables were completely warped.
"I guess a bear named Sloth would not drop anything related to moving quickly," Dante reasoned dryly.
He absorbed the book anyway.
He already had [Meteor Stride] for instantaneous teleportation, but a raw sustained movement speed buff was incredibly valuable for positioning during complex boss fights where teleporting might trigger anti-spatial wards.
[Skill Learned: Minor Haste (Novice)]
He equipped the skill to his active bar.
He didn’t draw a weapon or drop his defense. He simply triggered the skill to see what the multiplier would do with it.
[Skill Executed: Minor Haste.]
[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]
[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]
The combat enlightenment was intensely physiological.
Dante didn’t learn how to sprint faster or optimize his stride.
His neural link was flooded with the absolute fundamental understanding of kinetic friction and atmospheric resistance.
He learned how to physically vibrate the molecular structure of his digital avatar to completely bypass solid matter.
He understood how to generate localized slipstreams that eliminated all drag.
[Minor Haste has reached Adept tier.]
[Minor Haste has reached Master tier.]
[Minor Haste has reached Grandmaster tier.]
The air around Dante didn’t just shimmer. It warped violently and created a visible localized vacuum tunnel directly in front of him.
[Minor Haste has reached Zenith tier.]
[Skill Evolution Triggered.]
[Minor Haste has evolved into: Velocity Paradox.]
The system interface updated, and the text glowed with a brilliant blinding white light.
[Velocity Paradox (Zenith)]
[Description: The ultimate expression of sustained kinetic momentum. The movement speed of the user is increased by 5,000%.]
[While sprinting, the user becomes entirely intangible, capable of passing seamlessly through all physical obstacles, player avatars, and environmental terrain. Duration: 15 Seconds. Cooldown: None (Chrono-Shift Active).]
Dante smiled. It was a cold and incredibly satisfied smile.
"I can walk through walls," Dante whispered.
[Meteor Stride] allowed him to instantly reposition, but it couldn’t bypass solid objects if there wasn’t a clear line of sight to the destination coordinates.
[Velocity Paradox] completely ignored collision physics.
If Vanguard’s Legacy tried to hide behind another massive iron barricade or lock themselves inside a fortress, he wouldn’t even need to break the door down.
He could just jog right through it.
Dante turned away from the window and fully intended to test the new skill on the training dummies in the sub-basement.
Before he could reach the door of the VIP suite, his regional chat interface which he usually kept muted flared with a massive highly encrypted priority ping.
It wasn’t from Sera or Lila. It was from Oracle.
[Encrypted Sender: Oracle_Broker]
[Message: Dan. You need to look at the southern ash-wastes. Silas did not log off. He went offline to secure funding, and now he is actively engaging with a restricted NPC faction.]
Dante stopped walking. He opened the message.
[Dan: What faction?]
[Oracle_Broker: The Sect of the Scorched Earth. They are a high-tier lore faction. They do not interact with players unless specific localized tribute parameters are met.]
[Oracle_Broker: Silas is offering them the [Three Star Rainbow Berries]. It is an ultra-rare consumable that cures systemic curses. He is using it to buy an assassination contract.]
The red eyes of Dante narrowed.
The Sect of the Scorched Earth.
He remembered reading fragmented lore about them during the Aethelgard cycle.
They were ancient martial artists who utilized localized lava manipulation and unmitigated True Damage strikes.
They weren’t standard dungeon bosses. They were roaming highly lethal NPCs that operated entirely outside the standard aggro mechanics of the game.
Silas was desperate.
He couldn’t kill Dante with players, so he was trying to hire the game engine to do it for him.
[Dan: Can I intercept the trade?]
[Oracle_Broker: Negative. They are already inside the localized instance of the Sect. The transaction is complete. Silas has officially hired the Patriarch of the Sect to hunt you. The NPC is Level 65, and he ignores invulnerability frames. Be careful.]
Dante dismissed the chat window.
He didn’t panic.
The prospect of fighting a Level 65 NPC assassin didn’t terrify him. It annoyed him.
He had spent the last two days dismantling armies and fighting gods. Silas was just becoming incredibly tedious.
"If he wants to send an old man to fight me," Dante muttered and adjusted his [Mantle of the Void-Dragon]. "I will make sure Silas gets the ashes back."
He left the VIP suite and took the stairs down to the main floor of the Astral Emporium.
The massive auction hall was completely empty as the debris from the bidding war had been cleared away by automated cleanup protocols.
Sera was standing near the front entrance to direct a squad of newly recruited Aegis Vanguard guards.
"Dante," Sera called out as he approached. "You are back early. Are we expecting trouble?"
"Silas just hired a high-level NPC assassin to kill me," Dante explained casually. "I am going to head out and deal with it before the guy tries to ambush me in the middle of the city."
Sera sighed and rubbed her temples. "He really does not know when to quit, does he? Do you need backup? I can deploy a strike team."
"No," Dante said. "The NPC ignores invulnerability frames. If you send players, they will just be collateral damage. I will handle him solo."
He didn’t wait for her to argue. He walked out of the heavy oak doors and into the bright pristine streets of Aethelgardia.
He pulled up his digital map to search for a wide open area outside the city walls where collateral damage wouldn’t be an issue.
He found a massive desolate plateau known as the Weeping Crags located roughly fifty miles south of the Capital.
He activated the flight passive on his cloak and launched himself into the sky.
He didn’t fly at maximum speed. He wanted the assassin to track him.
He maintained a steady visible altitude and soared out of the city and over the lush green plains of the Veridian Alliance.
Ten minutes later, he reached the Weeping Crags.
It was a stark aggressive landscape of jagged gray stone pillars and deep echoing ravines.
The wind howled constantly through the rock formations and created a sound that resembled crying.
Dante landed in the center of the largest plateau.
He didn’t draw a weapon. He just stood there and waited.
His Intuition stat perfectly locked at 100 was completely silent.
"He is good," Dante noted softly.
A Level 65 NPC assassin should have generated at least a faint blip on his radar, but the ambient air was entirely clear.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
Dante crossed his arms and tapped his dark purple gauntlet impatiently.
Suddenly, the ambient temperature on the plateau skyrocketed.
The gray stone beneath the boots of Dante began to rapidly turn red and crack as intense localized heat radiated from the rock itself.
A figure didn’t step out of the shadows. The figure literally erupted from the stone floor.
A geyser of liquid magma shot into the air directly behind Dante.
Out of the fire stepped an old man.
He wore simple ash-stained martial arts robes and carried a long thin katana forged from glowing superheated obsidian.
[Entity Identified: Patriarch Yan (Sect of the Scorched Earth)]
[Level: 65]
[HP: 850,000 / 850,000]
The Patriarch didn’t hesitate.
He swung the obsidian katana in a brutal horizontal arc aimed perfectly at the neck of Dante.
The blade moved so fast it left a trail of searing plasma in the air.
Dante didn’t try to block. He didn’t have to.
He triggered [Velocity Paradox].
He didn’t just dodge. His avatar became entirely intangible.
The superheated katana passed straight through the neck of Dante and connected with nothing but digital air.
The Patriarch stumbled forward slightly, and his momentum was entirely unresisted by the expected physical impact.
"You missed," Dante said and stepped casually to the side while completely intangible.
Patriarch Yan spun around. His eyes widened in shock. "Intangibility? A mere Outworlder possesses phase-shifting?!"
"I possess a lot of things," Dante replied, and the fifteen-second duration of the skill actively ticked down.
Dante dropped the intangibility early. He didn’t want to drag the fight out.
He held out his right hand, and the black brand on his wrist flared violently.
[Voidsever] materialized, and the primordial greatsword let out a low predatory hum as it devoured the ambient light radiating from the magma blade of the Patriarch.
"A hit contract from Silas?" Dante asked and rested the massive black sword on his shoulder. "He must have paid you a fortune."
"He offered the cure to the rotting curse," Yan stated, his voice tight with desperation.
"I take no pleasure in this, Outworlder. But my Sect must survive."
"I understand," Dante nodded sympathetically.
He swung Voidsever.
He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He didn’t trigger [Blood Sacrifice].
He just utilized the base raw 100% armor-piercing damage of the primordial blade, backed by his massive Level 70 stats and the guaranteed critical hit from [Predator’s Eye].
The black blade sheared cleanly through the glowing obsidian katana of the Patriarch to shatter the Level 65 weapon like cheap glass. It continued its arc directly into the chest of the NPC.
[-340,000! Critical Hit!]
The Patriarch gasped and staggered backward. His massive health pool was instantly halved by a single un-buffed swing.
"The cure is not worth dying for, old man," Dante said softly and raised the sword again. "Go home."
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