The five Earthfire Behemoths charged.

They didn’t move with the blinding, unnatural speed of a high-tier assassin, but their sheer mass made the volcanic glass platform violently tremble with every step.

They were towering, top-heavy gorillas forged from cooling black stone and liquid magma, and they were furious. Their primary environmental mechanic had just been completely hijacked.

Dante stood in the center of the arena, his iron boots planted firmly on the smooth glass. The massive, jagged black blade of [Voidsever] rested easily in his grip, greedily devouring the ambient orange light of the caldera.

The glowing orange icon on his system interface pulsed steadily. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

[Thermal Shield: +30,000 HP]

He didn’t just have his base health; he was wearing an armor of pure, absorbed thermal energy. But a shield was only good if it held, and getting punched by five Level 20 Bronze-tier bosses simultaneously was a great way to test its limits.

The closest Behemoth closed the gap. It raised both of its massive, molten fists high above its head, the joints cracking like shifting tectonic plates, and brought them down in a devastating overhead smash.

Dante didn’t block with the cursed sword. He didn’t even use [Blink Step].

He watched the fists slam into the glass platform. The impact didn’t shatter the arena, but it sent a massive, splashing wave of liquid magma expanding outward in a ten-foot radius.

Dante deliberately took a step forward, placing his iron boot directly into the splashing wave of liquid fire.

[Skill Executed: Inferno Step]

He didn’t just dodge the physical strike; he assimilated the resulting hazard. Dante vanished into the liquid fire the exact millisecond the Behemoth’s fists cratered the floor.

He materialized thirty feet away, stepping seamlessly out of a lingering trail of embers left by one of the other advancing bosses. As he exited the teleport, the embers were violently sucked into his boots.

[Thermal Shield Applied: +2,500 HP]

[Current Shield: +32,500 HP]

The Behemoth that had just slammed the ground roared in confusion, pulling its fists up to find empty space.

"Over here," Dante called out, casually resting Voidsever on his shoulder.

The dance began.

The five Earthfire Behemoths completely abandoned any semblance of coordinated tactics. The Gold-tier AI governing their movements was actively breaking down in the face of a player who refused to respect their environmental hazards.

They resorted to raw, unadulterated aggression.

Two of the Behemoths lunged at him simultaneously from opposite sides, swinging their massive arms in wide, horizontal sweeps intended to crush him in the middle.

Dante waited until the last possible fraction of a second. He watched the molten magma dripping from their knuckles hit the glass floor.

He stepped into the drops.

Whoosh.

He vanished into the fire, reappearing directly above them, stepping out of a burst of sparks rising from the caldera below.

He dropped back down to the platform, landing gracefully ten yards away.

The two Behemoths slammed their fists into each other. The concussive force of friendly fire echoed loudly across the magma pool, sending a fresh shower of liquid rock raining down onto the glass.

"Thanks for the top-off," Dante smirked.

He chained [Inferno Step] back-to-back, teleporting into the newly created splashes of magma before they even settled.

*Whoosh. Whoosh.*

[Thermal Shield Applied: +1,500 HP]

[Thermal Shield Applied: +1,800 HP]

He was an untargetable blur of motion. It was an incredibly dangerous, high-speed game of tag. Every time the bosses tried to attack, they inadvertently created the exact resource Dante needed to maintain his mobility and bolster his defenses. He was actively feeding off their aggression.

But Dante wasn’t just stalling for time. He was analyzing their pathing.

To clear the floor efficiently, he couldn’t just pick them off one by one. If he killed a Behemoth with Voidsever, the resulting explosion of loot and digitized rock would likely scatter the remaining four, forcing him to chase them down.

He wanted a clean sweep. He needed them grouped together in a tight, concentrated cluster.

He stopped teleporting.

Dante planted his boots at the absolute edge of the circular glass platform, his heels hovering just inches over the two-hundred-foot drop into the bubbling caldera.

He lowered Voidsever, pointing the jagged black tip directly at the center of the arena.

"Come and get it," Dante challenged.

The five Earthfire Behemoths didn’t hesitate. Seeing their target finally stand still, boxed in against the edge of the platform with nowhere to retreat, they roared in unison.

They charged, their heavy footsteps shaking the volcanic glass.

They converged on him, forming a tight, overlapping semi-circle of molten stone and black rock.

The lead Behemoth didn’t try an overhead smash this time. It threw a brutal, straight right cross, aiming to punch Dante directly off the edge of the platform and into the lava below.

Dante didn’t dodge. He wanted them committed.

He braced his legs and took the hit.

The massive, molten fist slammed square into Dante’s chest.

BANG!

The impact sounded like a cannon firing. The kinetic force was absolutely staggering. Dante was shoved backward, his boots skidding across the smooth glass, stopping a fraction of an inch from the deadly drop.

Above his head, the damage numbers flashed.

[Physical Strike: -8,500 HP]

The number was massive. A hit like that would have instantly vaporized any other Level 45 Warrior on the server.

But it didn’t touch Dante’s actual health bar.

The glowing orange shield icon on his interface flashed violently, absorbing the entire blow.

[Thermal Shield: 27,300 HP Remaining]

"That would have hurt if I was a normal person," Dante gritted his teeth, feeling the phantom pressure of the blow dissipate.

The Behemoth pulled its fist back, its glowing red eyes widening in mechanical disbelief. It had landed a direct, unmitigated hit, and the tiny human hadn’t even flinched.

The remaining four bosses piled in, crowding shoulder-to-shoulder with the first, boxing Dante completely into the edge of the platform.

They raised their fists, preparing to deliver a synchronized, five-way barrage that would undoubtedly shatter his remaining thermal shields and crush him into a paste.

They were perfectly grouped. Shoulder to shoulder. A massive wall of magma and stone.

"Perfect," Dante whispered.

He didn’t use [Inferno Step] to escape. He tightened his iron-plated gauntlets around the dark bone hilt of Voidsever.

He pulled the primordial greatsword back, angling the jagged blade horizontally.

[Skill Executed: Abyssal Cleave]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

The air in front of him didn’t just warp; it actively tore. The Zenith-tier spatial fracture condensed along the edge of Voidsever, devouring the ambient orange light of the caldera, turning the blade into a localized singularity.

He swung.

Dante unleashed a fully charged, perfectly horizontal sweep directly into the clustered mass of the five Earthfire Behemoths.

[Passive Activated: Absolute Severance. 100% Armor Ignored.]

The black shockwave erupted from the blade. It didn’t hit the stone armor and stop.

It sliced cleanly through the first Behemoth, passed instantly into the second, sheared through the third and fourth, and exited the back of the fifth.

The Zenith Protocol’s combat engine stuttered.

The system was trying to calculate the base damage of [Abyssal Cleave], 5,000% physical damage applied simultaneously to five Bronze-tier bosses.

While simultaneously completely bypassing their massive physical defense stats due to Voidsever’s passive.

But the system didn’t just have to calculate the base math.

Dante had 100 points in his hidden Luck stat. He was swinging a cursed, primordial weapon that fed on absolute destruction.

The microscopic odds didn’t just tilt; they shattered.

[Hidden Trait Triggered: Doom’s Echo]

[Multiplier Applied: 1,000,000,000%]

The black shockwave passing through the five bosses suddenly pulsed.

There was no sound. The sheer mathematical volume of the damage output completely muted the game’s audio engine for a fraction of a second.

The numbers that popped up above the five Earthfire Behemoths didn’t even look like standard Zenith Protocol text. They were a glitched, illegible mess of red static and overflowing zeroes.

[-OVERKILL-]

[-OVERKILL-]

[-OVERKILL-]

[-OVERKILL-]

[-OVERKILL-]

The five massive gorillas didn’t stagger. They didn’t fall to their knees.

They were instantaneously, simultaneously vaporized.

The black shockwave triggered by Doom’s Echo completely unmade their digital forms. They shattered into millions of brilliant, glowing gold polygons, filling the air over the caldera with a blinding shower of loot and digitized ash.

The shockwave continued outward, carrying over the massive lava pool, silently carving a deep, perfectly smooth trench into the far wall of the volcanic cavern.

Dante stood on the absolute edge of the glass platform, his cape fluttering violently in the displaced air. He slowly lowered Voidsever.

The glowing orange thermal shield around his body flickered and dissipated, its duration finally expiring now that he was no longer absorbing fresh magma.

Aura chimed happily from her pet-space, entirely unfazed by the localized apocalypse her master had just unleashed.

The system flooded his vision with victory prompts, catching up to the destruction.

[Target Eliminated: Earthfire Behemoth x5]

[Floor 2 Cleared.]

[Time: 3 Minutes, 12 Seconds.]

Dante let out a long, slow breath. His stamina bar dipped slightly from the Zenith-tier execution, but [Breath of the Colossus] instantly refilled it, cleansing the digital lactic acid from his avatar’s muscles.

He dismissed Voidsever. The black blade dissolved into thick smoke and retreated seamlessly into the brand on his right wrist.

He turned away from the edge of the platform and walked toward the center, where a massive mountain of glowing loot was currently resting on the smooth glass floor.

He didn’t bother sorting through the individual pieces of Bronze-tier armor or the thousands of raw gold coins.

He activated his [Band of the Void-Walker] and vacuumed the entire pile into his infinite inventory in a single sweep.

Sitting at the very bottom of the pile, left behind on the glass, was a small, pulsing orange crystal.

[Item Appraised: Earthfire Core]

[Tier: Consumable]

[Effect: Permanently grants +5 to all base stats.]

Dante picked up the crystal and crushed it in his palm. The warm energy flowed into his arm, instantly integrating with his digital physiology.

He pulled up his interface to confirm the bump.

[Name: Dan]

[Level: 45]

[Strength: 3,260]

[Agility: 1,130]

[Physical Defense: 2,840]

[Magical Defense: 1,590]

"Every floor just makes me hit harder," Dante noted, closing the blue window.

The ambient heat of the caldera seemed to lessen slightly. At the far edge of the circular glass platform, the magma bubbled and parted, revealing a heavy, frost-covered stone staircase rising out of the liquid fire, leading upward into the dark.

The transition to the next environment was already bleeding through the archway. A freezing, bitter wind howled down the steps, bringing a flurry of jagged ice crystals that hissed as they hit the hot volcanic glass.

Dante rolled his shoulders, feeling the pleasant, permanent weight of the new stats settling into his avatar.

"Two down," Dante said to the empty arena.

He walked toward the frost-covered stairs, his iron boots leaving faint, hot footprints on the glass. He didn’t hesitate at the threshold.

He stepped out of the searing magma forges and plunged directly into the freezing dark of the third floor.