Chapter 50: [50]: The Obsidian Warlord, Claiming the Edict
Levi kicked the half-melted iron doors open. They groaned violently, scraping against the stone floor before giving way to the massive throne room of the Ruined Keep.
The air inside was even hotter than the courtyard. The room was illuminated entirely by rivers of magma flowing through grated channels in the floor. At the far end of the room sat a massive throne made of completely black, jagged volcanic glass.
Standing right in front of the throne, acting as the final guard for the glowing Domain Core pedestal, was the area boss.
It looked like a Charred Fiend on massive amounts of steroids. The monster was fifteen feet tall, completely covered in spiked obsidian armor plates. It held a gargantuan, two-handed battleaxe that literally dripped with liquid lava.
[Obsidian Warlord Darrow]
[Level: 32 | Boss]
[HP: 150,000 | ATK: 850 | DEF: 300]
"One hundred and fifty thousand health," Levi said, stepping into the room. "And you hit for eight hundred and fifty. Cool."
Levi didn’t rush in. He ran the math carefully. This was a DPS check of apocalyptic proportions. He had just hit Level 21. The boss was Level 32.
An 11-level gap meant the game was going to crush his damage with a brutal 55% Level Suppression penalty.
’Alright, let’s look at the wall,’ Levi thought. ’Darrow’s Defense is 300. My Gold scythe ignores 20%. Twenty percent of 300 is 60. That drops the effective Defense down to 240.’
He checked his brand-new Attack stat of 532.
532 minus 240 meant his raw damage per swing was 292. Now apply the 55% suppression penalty. 292 multiplied by 0.45 equaled exactly 131.4. The system rounded it down to 131 Final Damage per basic strike.
’A hundred and thirty-one damage against a hundred and fifty thousand health,’ Levi smirked. ’Yeah, this is going to be a long twelve minutes.’
He ran the defensive numbers next, and his smile instantly vanished.
Darrow had an Attack of 850. Levi’s current Defense was 101.
850 minus 101 meant that if that massive lava axe hit him cleanly, he was taking exactly 749 damage.
Levi’s Max HP was 1,520. If Darrow hit him twice, he was taking 1,498 damage, leaving him with a miserable 22 HP. Any tiny bit of ambient heat damage would finish the job. Two hits equaled instant death.
"No mistakes," Levi told himself.
He didn’t wait for the boss to aggro naturally. "Hollow’s Ward!"
He dumped 150 Mana. The pitch-black, dark-matter shield erupted around him, locking into place with exactly 755 HP. He toggled on his Siphon Aura, the green light wrapping around his boots as his mana began draining by 2 points a second.
Levi sprinted across the throne room. His 98 Speed made him an absolute blur.
Obsidian Warlord Darrow snapped its glowing red eyes toward him. The boss didn’t just swing its axe. It bent its massive knees and launched itself straight into the air.
A red target circle instantly appeared on the floor directly beneath Levi.
[Warning: Obsidian Warlord Darrow is casting Meteor Leap.]
"Nope," Levi said. "Phantom Step."
He burned 20 Mana just before the giant boss crashed down. Levi dissolved into dark shadow, completely bypassing the massive physical impact, and reappeared five meters backward.
Darrow smashed into the stone floor. The VR engine violently shook the room. The direct impact missed, but the boss’s skill produced a massive AoE shockwave of magma and kinetic force that rippled across the entire room.
Levi couldn’t dodge the shockwave. It slammed into his dark-matter shield.
Because it was ambient AoE damage, the system treated it as a glancing hit.
[-300]
The 755 HP shield violently flickered, absorbing the massive damage and dropping to 455 HP. Levi didn’t even flinch. The shield’s immunity passive completely ignored the knockback effect of the explosion.
He planted his boots and lunged right back into the boss’s face while it was recovering from the landing.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
He dumped 100 Mana. The Sovereign’s Deathknell erupted in a pitch-black and gold aura. He unleashed the massive ten-meter cone directly into Darrow’s chest plate.
Math processed the skill: 532 Attack times 3.5 gave 1,862 raw damage. Minus 240 effective Defense left 1,622. Apply the 55% penalty, and the final skill damage was exactly 729.
[-729]
Darrow roared in anger. The skill’s debuff triggered instantly. A broken shield icon appeared over the boss’s head, shredding 20% of its remaining armor. Darrow’s effective Defense plummeted to 192.
Levi immediately wove his basic attacks. With the boss’s defense shredded down to 192, his 532 Attack hit significantly harder.
532 minus 192 equaled 340. Minus the 55% penalty, his basic strikes now hit for exactly 153 damage.
[-153] [-153] [-153]
He landed three rapid strikes, fully utilizing his 98 Speed to swing the heavy scythe like a blur. The 10% Lifesteal from the weapon fed 15 HP back into his pool per swing, entirely overriding the ambient heat damage of the lava channels.
The bleed passive finally triggered. The tiny teardrop icon popped up over Darrow’s head, ticking for 5 true damage per second.
The boss didn’t stagger. It recovered from its leap and swung the massive lava axe in a devastating horizontal cleave.
Levi ducked entirely under the swing, his virtual hair singeing from the heat. He popped up and delivered another basic strike to the boss’s knee.
[-153]
The fight instantly turned into a hyper-lethal dance. Levi couldn’t take a direct hit. He relied entirely on his massive 98 Speed to literally weave through the boss’s attack frames. When Darrow swung down, Levi stepped left. When Darrow swept horizontally, Levi ducked.
He executed a flawless, repetitive combat loop. He wove exactly three basic physical strikes between every 10-second cast of Hollow’s Guillotine.
It was exhausting. His mana pool was draining rapidly. Between the 100 Mana for the Guillotine, the 150 for the shield, the 20 for Phantom Step, and the constant aura drain, his 560 Mana pool kept bottoming out.
Every time his mana dropped to exactly 50, Levi used a half-second of breathing room to pull a top-tier mana potion from his quick-belt and down it. The blue liquid instantly refilled his tank, allowing the brutal dance to continue.
Minute after minute dragged on. Five minutes. Eight minutes. Ten minutes.
Levi’s virtual stamina bar was screaming. His haptic gloves felt slick with real sweat. But he didn’t miss a single dodge. His iframe timing was absolute perfection.
Finally, the massive 150,000 HP pool was completely whittled down to a miserable sliver.
Darrow had exactly 200 HP left.
Levi couldn’t use Soul Harvest on a boss entity. He had to finish it manually.
Darrow raised its massive axe for one final, desperate overhead slam. Levi didn’t even try to dodge. He just planted his feet and swung his scythe directly upward, aiming for the gap under the boss’s helmet.
The system registered it as a Weak Point strike.
The basic hit for 153 damage was automatically doubled by the critical multiplier.
[-306 CRIT!]
The massive axe stopped inches from Levi’s head. Obsidian Warlord Darrow froze entirely. The glowing magma veins inside its rocky body turned gray and hardened.
The massive boss collapsed backward, hitting the stone floor with a deafening crash, and violently shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons and item boxes.
[System Notification: You have slain Level 32 Boss Obsidian Warlord Darrow. Gained 500,000 XP.]
Levi dropped his scythe, letting it clatter against the stone floor. He toggled off his Siphon Aura, completely out of breath.
"Twelve minutes," Levi wheezed, staring at the ceiling. "Never doing a boss with an eleven-level gap again without a buff potion."
Before he could even process the massive XP drop, the incredibly dense, blinding crimson aura of the harvest ripped out of the boss’s dissolving corpse. It shot across the room and slammed into Levi like a freight train.
[Supreme Harvester triggered.]
[Obsidian Warlord Darrow’s primary stat is VIT (400).]
[You have plundered 3% of its core stat.]
[Gained +12 VIT permanently!]
Levi let out a loud laugh as the raw Vitality forced its way into his stats. He instantly opened his menu to check the math.
His Vitality jumped from 71 to 83.
Because every point of VIT gave 20 Max HP, his health pool violently expanded. 83 times 20 equaled 1,660. Add the 100 HP from his Obsidian Carapace, and his new maximum health was exactly 1,760 HP.
His base Defense also spiked. 83 VIT plus the 30 from his armor pushed his permanent Defense to exactly 113.
"I am a literal tank," Levi grinned, closing the menu.
He didn’t bother checking the rest of the loot boxes yet. He walked past the dissolving polygons and approached the far end of the room. Sitting behind the black glass throne was a glowing blue pedestal.
Levi pulled the [Domain Edict: Ruined Keep of Ash] scroll from his inventory. He placed the heavy parchment directly onto the glowing pedestal.
The system chimed with a massive, golden notification.
[Domain Claimed.]
[Owner: Levi.]
[Please name your territory.]
Levi looked around the hot, volcanic throne room and smiled.
"The Harvester’s Exchange," Levi said.
The system locked his words in, and the true base-building phase of the game officially began.
***
Updated Stat Sheet:
- Name: Levi | Level: 21
- Class: [Herald of the Hollow (SSS)] | Talent: [Supreme Harvester (SSS)]
- HP: 1760/1760 | Mana: 560/560
- STR: 152 | AGI: 93 | VIT: 83 | INT: 51 | LUK: 25
- Attack: 532 | Defense: 113 | Speed: 98
- Core Skills: [Hollow’s Guillotine], [Phantom Step], [Siphon Aura], [Soul Harvest], [Hollow’s Ward].
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