Chapter 174: Chapter 174: The Commander’s Last Stand
The colossal fifty-foot-tall Celestial Dragon roared.
The concussive force rattled the bones of every player on the platform.
The [Heavenly Dragon Incarnation] hadn’t just boosted its size. The 200% stat multiplier turned the boss into a localized natural disaster.
The dragon raised its massive silver-plated claw. It prepared to crush the entire squad in a single unmitigated sweep.
"Lila! Barrier!" Dante barked.
Lila didn’t use a chantless offensive spell.
She tapped her staff against the obsidian floor and dumped a massive chunk of her mana pool into a localized defensive ward.
A shimmering blue dome of pure gravitational force snapped into existence over the party. It compounded with the passive 60% mitigation shield of Aura.
The claw of the dragon slammed down.
The impact was absolutely deafening.
The gravitational dome cracked wildly, and spider-webbed fractures raced across the blue energy. But it held long enough to absorb the kinetic force.
"I cannot hold another hit like that!" Lila warned. Her avatar visibly strained under the pressure.
Dante didn’t plan on letting the boss hit them again.
He didn’t draw [Voidsever].
He didn’t want to use the one-shot execution mechanic of the primordial greatsword yet.
He needed to test the absolute limits of his new [Asura Vanguard] class against a fully transformed endgame entity.
"Mei," Dante said and kept his eyes on the towering dragon. "Remember that trick you used in the Frostfire Steppes? The one that almost crushed me?"
Mei grinned broadly while standing behind the barrier of Lila. "You mean [Colossal Manifestation]? I thought you would never ask, Boss!"
Dante didn’t ask her to use it.
He opened his system interface and navigated to the specific unassuming gray skillbook he had absorbed earlier.
[Skill Executed: Enlarge.]
The anomaly in his code triggered instantly.
[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]
[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]
The combat enlightenment wasn’t about spatial displacement or raw attack power. It was the fundamental mastery of physical mass manipulation.
Dante didn’t just learn how to stretch the digital code of a weapon.
He understood how to feed raw localized atmospheric data directly into the structural wireframe of his own avatar to override the size parameters of the system.
[Enlarge has reached Zenith tier.]
[Skill Evolution Triggered.]
[Enlarge has evolved into: Colossal Manifestation (Avatar).]
The system interface flashed a brilliant blinding silver.
[Colossal Manifestation (Avatar) (Zenith)]
[Description: The ultimate expression of spatial domination. The physical avatar of the user violently expands, increasing physical size and mass by 10,000%.]
[Base attack power remains unchanged, but physical weight, kinetic momentum, and localized attack radius scale exponentially. Duration: 1 minute. Cooldown: None (Chrono-Shift Active).]
"Stand back," Dante warned his squad.
He triggered the Zenith-tier skill.
The air on the obsidian platform didn’t just warp. It violently shrieked as physical space was aggressively displaced.
Dante didn’t glow. He simply exploded in size.
In a fraction of a millisecond, the standard six-foot-tall Warrior was completely overwritten.
He expanded rapidly outward and upward. His iron boots crushed the obsidian rock beneath him as his mass increased exponentially.
When the rapid expansion stopped, Dante was standing fifty feet tall.
He was exactly the same size as the Celestial Dragon.
The dark purple plating of his [Carapace of the Void-Devourer] looked like massive slabs of battleship armor.
The [Dawn-Breaker Blade] in his hand was no longer a broadsword. It was a towering fifty-foot monolith of glowing gold metal.
Down on the platform, Casanova stared up at the colossal armored giant.
"Okay," the bard whispered with his jaw hanging open. "That is the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life."
"He is huge!" Pip shrieked happily and flew up to hover near the massive building-sized kneecap of Dante.
The Heavenly Dragon Commander didn’t roar in triumph anymore.
The boss stared at the player who had just effortlessly matched its ultimate transformation mechanic.
The Gold-tier AI completely paused. It was utterly unable to calculate the localized threat level of an anomaly this large.
"You wanted a fight," the voice of Dante echoed across the cavern. It was incredibly deep and resonated with the sheer physical volume of his vocal cords. "Let us fight."
Dante didn’t wait for the dragon to recover from its shock.
He stepped forward.
The obsidian platform groaned under his immense weight. He swung the colossal [Dawn-Breaker Blade] in a massive horizontal sweep.
The dragon tried to block and raised its heavily armored silver wings.
CRASH!
The impact was entirely different from a standard melee strike.
The base damage of the sword was identical, but the sheer overwhelming kinetic momentum of a fifty-foot blade hitting the target generated a localized shockwave that completely blew the magma rivers off their course.
The dragon was violently launched backward. Its massive body skidded across the platform and tore deep trenches into the stone.
[-45,000!]
The damage number was massive. But the 90% physical mitigation passive of the dragon kept it from being an instant execution.
Dante didn’t stop. He was operating on a one-minute timer.
He triggered [Phantom Dash].
The visual of a fifty-foot-tall armored giant teleporting across the arena was completely absurd.
He vanished and materialized directly above the recovering dragon.
BOOM.
The localized sonic boom of the teleport wasn’t just a loud noise. It was a physical pressure wave that flattened the dragon against the floor.
Dante brought the colossal gold sword straight down in a brutal two-handed vertical strike. He aimed perfectly for the gap between the armored neck scales of the dragon.
[-65,000! Critical Hit!]
The dragon shrieked and thrashed wildly.
It opened its massive jaws and fired a concentrated beam of celestial laser energy directly into the chest of Dante.
Dante didn’t dodge.
The [Source of Recovery] passive on his massive starry cape instantly halved the incoming laser damage and healed the remainder. It functionally rendered the attack useless.
He stood over the boss and relentlessly battered it.
He swung the massive sword with terrifying unyielding precision.
Every strike rattled the entire cavern and sent showers of pulverized obsidian flying into the air.
The Heavenly Dragon Commander couldn’t fight back.
Its massive size, intended to be a tactical advantage against tiny players, was completely neutralized.
It was trapped in a brutal localized brawl with an opponent who possessed infinite stamina and perfectly executed crowd-control teleports.
[Heavenly Dragon Commander HP: 450,000 / 2,500,000]
The health bar of the boss plummeted into the critical red zone.
Dante didn’t use an execution skill. He wanted to finish the fight cleanly.
He raised his free left hand.
[Skill Executed: Aether-Blade Storm]
Because he was in his [Colossal Manifestation] state, the skill scaled accordingly.
The one hundred glowing silver swords that materialized in the air weren’t standard broadswords.
They were massive thirty-foot-long phantom blades that formed a colossal swirling metallic halo around the giant avatar of Dante.
"Checkmate," Dante said.
He triggered the phantom swords and directed them not to intercept an attack, but to aggressively seek the target.
The hundred massive silver blades shot downward and slammed simultaneously into the downed Celestial Dragon.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The overlapping explosions of 1,000% True Damage completely bypassed the 90% mitigation passive of the dragon.
The sheer volume of localized destruction atomized the silver armor of the boss and shredded its health pool.
[-OVERKILL!]
[-OVERKILL!]
[-OVERKILL!]
The Heavenly Dragon Commander didn’t even have time to revert to its humanoid form.
The massive fifty-foot dragon violently exploded into an absolute mountain of blue and silver polygons that lit up the entire cavern.
Dante stood victorious in the center of the ruined platform.
The one-minute duration of [Colossal Manifestation] expired.
His avatar rapidly shrank to return to his standard six-foot-tall size in a fraction of a second.
The localized atmospheric pressure stabilized, and the deafening noise of the battle faded.
[Target Eliminated: Heavenly Dragon Commander (Level 30 Celestial)]
[Experience Gained. Level Up!]
Dante watched his level tick up to 71. The massive Celestial-tier boss provided an incredible influx of progression.
He rolled his shoulders and felt the tension leave his digital muscles.
"That was incredibly fun," Dante admitted and sheathed his normal-sized [Dawn-Breaker Blade].
His squad ran over from the edge of the platform completely unharmed.
"Boss," Casanova breathed and stared at Dante with absolute reverence. "If you can turn into a giant, why did you not do that during the siege?"
"I did not have the skillbook then," Dante replied smoothly. "And dropping a sky-beam was more efficient."
Before they could begin vacuuming up the massive pile of Celestial-tier loot, the ambient green light in the cavern slowly shifted.
The glowing corrupted runes lining the walls faded and were replaced by a soft, warm, and peaceful white light.
A figure materialized from the fading blue pixels of the dead boss.
It wasn’t a monster. It was a translucent glowing spirit.
It was the humanoid knight they had initially engaged, but his armor was no longer corrupted or dark. He looked pristine, noble, and deeply exhausted.
[Entity Identified: Soul of Commander Wei Min]
The spirit didn’t raise a weapon. He slowly dropped to one knee and bowed his head toward Dante.
"Outworlder," Commander Wei Min spoke. His voice was completely free of the aggressive boss-encounter echo.
He sounded human, frail, and incredibly sad. "You have broken the localized seal. You have freed me from the corruption."
Dante didn’t draw his sword. He recognized a lore sequence when he saw one.
"I apologize for the aggression," Wei Min continued. Tears of digital light fell from his eyes.
"When the Void-Blight breached the tomb centuries ago, I ordered my men to hold the line."
"I told them we would not fall. But the corruption was absolute. It did not kill us. It raised us as monsters. I trapped my entire legion in this localized hell."
As the Commander spoke, hundreds of smaller glowing spirits materialized around the platform.
They were the souls of the Undead Spear Guards and Shield Guards the squad had slaughtered in the previous rooms.
The soldiers didn’t look angry. They slowly walked toward their Commander.
"We do not blame you, General," one of the spirit soldiers said softly and placed a glowing hand on the shoulder of Wei Min. "You held the line. The battle is finally over."
Wei Min wept while surrounded by the souls of his redeemed army.
Dante watched the scene and his arms were crossed.
The Zenith Protocol was incredibly cruel, but occasionally, it allowed for moments of genuine localized closure.
The spirits slowly began to dissolve and fade into bright warm light before finally moving on from the localized dungeon instance.
Wei Min looked up at Dante one last time before fading completely.
"Take my token, Champion," the Commander whispered. "My legion owes you a debt. Call upon us when the true war begins."
The spirits vanished and left the platform entirely empty.
Dante walked over to the massive loot pile.
Sitting in the center of the gold coins and Celestial crafting materials was a single heavy iron token stamped with a dragon crest.
[Item Appraised: Heavenly Dragon Token]
[Tier: Divine]
[Description: A localized summoning artifact. Allows the user to summon the fully equipped Level 50 Heavenly Dragon Army (1,000 Elite Units) to fight on their behalf for one hour. One-time use.]
"Another army in my pocket," Dante noted. He stored the token safely next to the [Legion Summons] he had received from Vespera.
He didn’t have time to sort the rest of the loot.
The heavy sealed doors at the far end of the obsidian platform slowly ground open to reveal the path to the true final chamber of Demon Spirit Land.
The boss they had just killed wasn’t the final threat. It was merely the corrupted warden guarding the real prize.
"Alright," Dante said and looked at his squad. "The emotional closure is finished. The real fight is through those doors. Stay sharp."
He led the party forward. He stepped through the archway into the deepest and darkest level of the dungeon.
He was entirely ready to claim the ultimate Celestial pet egg waiting inside.
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