Chapter 171: Chapter 171: The Sea of Dead
Garrick didn’t hesitate.
The middle-aged man enthusiastically marched forward. His heavy silver boots clanked loudly as he stepped off the obsidian pathway and directly onto the iron lids of the scattered coffins.
The fifty Undead Spear Guard Souls immediately turned their glowing green eye sockets toward him.
"Think about the bicycle," Garrick muttered to himself and raised his kite shield.
He didn’t just think about the flat tire. He thought about the unhelpful customer service bot.
He thought about the gross municipal negligence of a three-inch pothole in a designated bike lane.
He thought about Brenda.
"It is not covered by the warranty!" Garrick roared. His voice echoed across the massive cavern.
[Player ’Garrick’ has activated Innate Talent: Spiteful Bulwark.]
The system interface flared.
A massive translucent dome of incredibly hostile dark red energy erupted from the shield of Garrick.
The dome expanded violently and completely covered the middle-aged tank in an impenetrable sphere of concentrated emotional frustration.
The fifty Silver-tier bosses shrieked. Their aggro was completely and artificially locked onto the massive red dome.
They lunged simultaneously, leaped across the coffins, and thrust their jagged silver spears directly into the barrier.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The impacts were deafening. It was a continuous and rapid-fire staccato of heavy metal striking solid energy.
Garrick didn’t even flinch.
The [Spiteful Bulwark] didn’t buckle. The more the bosses attacked, the brighter the red dome glowed and fed off the localized rage of the tank.
"He actually held the line," Nyx whispered in genuine awe and adjusted her dark glasses.
"The math should not support a Level 8 player tanking fifty Level 30 bosses, but the talent is completely overriding the damage calculations."
"Alright," Dante said and drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. "The aggro is secured. Time to clear the room."
He didn’t activate [Asura’s Descent].
He didn’t want to vaporize the entire floor and accidentally drop them all into a lower sublevel. He needed coordinated and sustained DPS.
"Lila, group them up," Dante ordered. "Sera, Nyx, focus fire on the clusters."
Lila stepped to the edge of the obsidian path. She didn’t chant.
She raised her Dark Demon staff, and her blue eyes narrowed in intense focus.
[Skill Executed: Singularity]
She cast the massive chantless gravity spell directly over the center of the mob currently swarming the shield of Garrick.
The invisible black hole slammed down.
The intense horizontal gravity violently ripped dozens of Undead Spear Guards off the coffins. It dragged them backward into a massive and tangled cluster of flailing limbs and silver armor.
"They are pinned!" Lila called out and panted slightly as her mana drained.
Sera didn’t carry a sword.
She was a merchant class, but she had invested heavily in automated utility.
She opened her interface and deployed three hovering mechanical turrets that locked onto the cluster of trapped bosses.
The turrets fired a rapid volley of glowing armor-piercing bolts directly into the pile.
Nyx was operating as a high-tier rogue and didn’t charge into melee. She commanded Violet, her newly acquired Boomshade Trickster pet.
"Violet, execute," Nyx ordered smoothly.
The Boomshade Trickster didn’t complain.
She vanished into the shadows and reappeared instantly above the pinned cluster.
She dropped a handful of glowing pink explosive illusion traps into the center of the mob before teleporting back to safety.
The traps detonated and dealt massive burst damage that completely ignored the physical mitigation of the bosses.
[-15,000!]
[-12,000!]
[-14,500!]
The health bars of the pinned Spear Guards plummeted rapidly.
"Mei, Casanova," Dante commanded. "Clean up the stragglers on the perimeter."
"I am on it, Boss!" Casanova cheered.
The flamboyant bard didn’t use a spell. He triggered his [Titan’s Physique] and instantly expanded into a seven-foot-tall incredibly vascular bruiser.
He leaped onto the coffins, grabbed two stray Spear Guards by their skeletal necks, and violently smashed their heads together.
Mei moved like a localized hurricane.
She didn’t use massive slow swings.
She kept her [God-Slaying Skillet] close to her body and utilized rapid brutal deflections to parry the incoming spear thrusts.
She followed up immediately with devastating counter-strikes that shattered the ghost-iron armor.
"Pip! Incoming!" Mei yelled and batted a severely weakened boss completely across the cavern.
Pip the dragon swooped down. He expertly caught the dropping silver coins in mid-air as the boss exploded into pixels.
Dante didn’t stand idle.
He didn’t need to use his Zenith-tier skills to wipe the room.
He used the massive base stats provided by the [Asura Vanguard] class to act as a localized executioner.
He triggered [Phantom Dash] and utilized his zero cooldown to rapidly teleport between the chaotic skirmishes.
He materialized next to a Spear Guard trying to flank Casanova.
The sonic boom stunned the boss.
A single horizontal slash from the Gold-tier broadsword completely severed the monster in half.
He teleported again and appeared behind a group of bosses trying to break the gravity well of Lila. Three rapid strikes, three guaranteed critical hits.
[-25,000! OVERKILL!]
[-25,000! OVERKILL!]
Dante moved flawlessly. He was a blur of gold and black systematically deleting any boss that managed to survive the coordinated barrage from the rest of the squad.
The synergy was absolutely terrifying.
Garrick held the absolute center and drew 90% of the ambient aggro with his unbreakable emotional shield.
Lila controlled the positioning and grouped the targets for maximum efficiency.
Sera and Nyx provided heavy sustained ranged DPS.
Mei and Casanova brutally managed the flanks.
Dante acted as the rapid-response executioner and completely shut down any localized threats before they could break the formation.
And Aura hovered serenely over the entire chaotic battlefield.
Her [Ultimate Guardian Halo] ensured that even if a stray spear slipped past their defenses, the 60% damage reduction completely negated the risk.
It was a perfectly optimized unkillable machine.
Within ten minutes, the fifty Silver-tier bosses were completely eradicated.
[Target Eliminated: Undead Spear Guard Soul x50]
The cavern fell silent save for the heavy panting of the squad and the rattling of Pip dragging a massive sack of loot across the coffins.
Garrick dropped his red shield and wiped sweat from his forehead.
"That was incredibly therapeutic," Garrick sighed happily. "I feel much better."
Dante sheathed his sword and looked around the Sea of Coffins.
The remaining iron lids were completely still. The mob check was officially cleared.
"Good work, everyone," Dante praised them genuinely. "That was incredibly efficient. We did not burn any major cooldowns."
"It is easy when the tank literally cannot die," Sera noted and adjusted her robes.
She looked at Garrick with newfound respect. "I take back everything I said about his interview. He is mathematically the best tank on the server."
"I try my best, Boss!" Garrick beamed.
Dante walked over to the edge of the cavern where a heavy stone archway marked the path forward.
"The next room is going to be significantly harder," Dante warned and checked his system interface.
"Demon Spirit Land scales aggressively. If they threw fifty Silver bosses at us for a warmup, the next pull is going to be a nightmare."
He led the party through the archway and moved deeper into the dungeon.
The environment shifted.
The dark claustrophobic obsidian walls gave way to a massive sprawling hallway lined with towering and incredibly intricate golden statues of ancient warriors.
The floor was paved with polished flawless white marble.
It didn’t look like a tomb. It looked like a palace.
"This is suspiciously bright," Casanova muttered and shrank slightly behind the massive frying pan of Mei.
"Stay off the center path," Nyx advised and checked her datapad.
"Dungeons with this specific architectural layout usually utilize localized pressure plates to trigger massive room-wide traps. Walk near the walls."
They moved carefully and stayed close to the massive golden statues lining the right side of the hallway.
Garrick was walking at the front and was busy admiring the incredibly detailed carving on the massive golden shield of one of the statues.
"These graphics are amazing," Garrick commented and reached out to trace the carving with his iron gauntlet.
"Garrick, do not touch that," Dante warned sharply, and his Intuition stat suddenly pinged wildly.
He was a fraction of a second too late.
The heavy iron boot of Garrick stepped slightly off the safe path. His toe caught the very edge of a slightly raised marble tile directly beneath the golden statue.
Click.
The sound was incredibly faint, but in the silent hallway, it echoed like a gunshot.
The entire party froze.
The glowing green runes lining the ceiling suddenly flashed a violent aggressive red.
[System Alert: Intruder Detected.]
[Executing Defensive Protocol: Rain of Iron.]
The massive golden statues lining both sides of the hallway didn’t animate and attack. They weren’t monsters. They were automated turrets.
The stone walls behind the statues violently slid open.
They revealed hundreds of massive heavy iron ballistas pre-loaded with jagged armor-piercing bolts.
There was no casting time. There was no wind-up animation.
The ballistas fired simultaneously.
A localized storm of hundreds of heavy iron bolts shot across the hallway and completely filled the airspace with jagged lethal metal.
It was an unavoidable physical wall of death designed to instantly vaporize any raid group foolish enough to trigger the trap.
Dante didn’t have time to use [Cyclone of Ruin] to deflect it.
He couldn’t use [Phantom Waltz] because the invulnerability frames wouldn’t protect the rest of his squad.
"Garrick!" Dante roared.
The middle-aged man didn’t hesitate. He didn’t process the math of the trap. He just reacted to the immediate threat to his friends.
Garrick stepped directly into the center of the hallway directly into the path of the incoming storm of iron bolts and raised his rusty kite shield.
"Brenda lied about the book club!" Garrick screamed at the top of his lungs and completely surrendered to the absolute unfiltered trauma of his reality.
The system responded.
[Player ’Garrick’ has activated Innate Talent: Spiteful Bulwark.]
The dark red dome didn’t just expand. It exploded outward fueled by a level of emotional devastation that the combat engine of the Zenith Protocol could barely calculate.
The translucent barrier thickened into a solid blinding wall of crimson energy that completely covered the entire squad.
The wall of iron bolts hit the barrier.
CRASH!
The noise was deafening.
The sheer kinetic force of hundreds of heavy artillery bolts slamming into the shield simultaneously shook the entire dungeon.
The red dome violently buckled.
For a horrifying fraction of a second, the barrier actually cracked, and a spiderweb of jagged fractures appeared across the crimson energy.
Garrick groaned and dropped to one knee. The localized physical strain bled through his invulnerability.
But the shield held.
The iron bolts shattered against the barrier and fell harmlessly to the marble floor in a massive pile of twisted metal.
The automated firing mechanism clicked empty. The traps reset and retreated back into the walls.
The hallway was quiet again.
Garrick dropped the shield and panted heavily. The red dome vanished.
"I am so angry right now," Garrick wheezed and wiped sweat from his face.
Dante stared at the middle-aged man.
He had just tanked an unavoidable raid-wipe mechanic using pure unadulterated emotional baggage.
"You are the best tank on the server," Dante said softly.
He helped Garrick to his feet and gestured toward the end of the hallway.
They had survived the trap. The massive golden doors leading to the next chamber were waiting.
"Let us see what they are guarding," Dante said and led the squad forward.
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