The massive and pulsating sphere of dark matter drifted across the invisible glass floor.

Gluttony didn’t move fast. It floated with a slow and eerie inevitability.

The dozens of jagged maws covering its surface gnashed together. The wet clicking sound echoed loudly in the silent void.

Dante didn’t retreat.

He stood his ground and gripped the [Crimson Edge] with both hands.

He kept his eyes locked on the shifting mass. His mind ran the combat math on a continuous loop.

"Keep the heals coming, Aura," Dante whispered. "Do not let my health drop."

The tiny silver fox chimed. She floated a safe distance behind him and was ready to pulse her [Resurgence Wave].

The boss closed the gap to twenty feet.

Suddenly, a thick and fleshy tentacle erupted from the center of the dark matter sphere.

The end of the tentacle wasn’t a hand or a spike. It was a massive and gaping mouth lined with razor-sharp wooden teeth.

It whipped forward with terrifying speed and aimed directly for the chest of Dante.

Dante didn’t try to block it. He couldn’t risk the kinetic impact.

He triggered [Blink Step] and teleported five feet to the right.

The tentacle smashed into the invisible glass floor where he had just been standing. It sent a ripple of dull gray light outward.

Dante materialized and immediately lunged forward.

He swung the red broadsword in a fast and controlled horizontal slash against the extended tentacle.

He didn’t use a skill. He just used a basic standard attack.

The silver-grade blade sliced shallowly into the fleshy appendage.

[-1,200]

The damage number popped up. The massive defense stat of the boss mitigated the majority of the strike.

Instantly, the system interface flashed red.

[Spiteful Carapace Triggered: 20% Damage Reflected.]

A localized burst of raw kinetic force erupted from the tentacle. It slammed directly into the chest of Dante.

The reflection bypassed his [Sun-Forged Cuirass] completely.

[-240 HP]

Dante staggered slightly and absorbed the unmitigated true damage. It stung, but it was manageable.

"Two hundred damage for a basic swing," Dante gritted his teeth and quickly backed away as the tentacle retracted. "And it has five hundred thousand health. This is going to take forever."

He didn’t have time to complain.

Gluttony wasn’t a standard boss that relied on slow and telegraphed attacks.

The dark matter sphere rippled violently. Six more tentacle-maws erupted from its surface simultaneously.

They didn’t strike in unison. They lashed out in a chaotic and overlapping flurry. They covered a massive thirty-foot radius around the boss.

Dante couldn’t use [Blink Step] to dodge them all. The two-second cooldown was too long for a sustained barrage.

He had to rely on raw evasion.

He activated [Phantom Waltz].

He didn’t use it to attack. He used it purely for the Zenith-tier invulnerability frames.

The world slowed to a crawl.

The pulsating purple aura enveloped his gold armor. He became utterly untargetable by the combat engine of the game.

The six tentacle-maws whipped through his avatar. They completely phased through the digital structure without causing a single point of damage.

Dante didn’t vanish to strike.

He intentionally canceled the offensive portion of the animation by dropping into a heavy combat roll.

He let the invulnerability frames expire exactly as he cleared the effective range of the tentacles.

He popped back up to his feet and breathed heavily.

[Phantom Waltz] had a 45-second cooldown if he didn’t secure a kill during the animation. He was now completely exposed for almost a minute.

"Okay," Dante exhaled and gripped his sword. "That was close."

The fight settled into a grueling and razor-thin dance of attrition.

Dante couldn’t stand his ground.

He was constantly moving and sprinting across the invisible glass floor to avoid the relentless overlapping strikes of the tentacle-maws.

He treated the encounter like an intricate rhythm game.

Dodge. Roll. Wait for an opening.

Strike once with a basic attack.

[-1,100]

Take the unmitigated reflection damage.

[-220 HP]

Fall back. Let Aura heal the chip damage. Repeat.

It was absolute agony.

Dante was used to dominating the battlefield with overwhelming Zenith-tier burst damage.

Now, he was fighting like a terrified Level 1 beginner and desperately poking at a mountain with a stick.

Minutes turned into an hour.

The focus of Dante was absolute. He couldn’t afford to get bored. He couldn’t afford to get frustrated.

A single mistake meant taking too much reflection damage or getting caught by a tentacle.

The physical toll on his digital avatar was immense.

The localized exhaustion was rapidly building up.

He had to burn [Breath of the Colossus] on cooldown just to keep his digital lungs from collapsing and his stamina bar from zeroing out.

[Gluttony HP: 350,000 / 500,000]

"Only a hundred and fifty thousand down," Dante muttered and dodged another sweeping tentacle. "This is miserable."

But Gluttony wasn’t a static beast. It was an advanced Dark Demon boss.

It recognized that the tiny human wasn’t dying. It recognized the pattern.

The boss adapted.

The dark matter sphere suddenly stopped moving. All six extended tentacles retracted instantly and pulled back into the central mass.

The entity began to violently pulse. The localized maws across its surface opened impossibly wide.

Dante stopped sprinting. His Intuition stat spiked so hard he actually felt dizzy.

"Aura, get back!" Dante yelled.

[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Endless Devour.]

Gluttony didn’t shoot a tentacle this time.

The entire dark matter sphere violently expanded!

The boss literally turned itself inside out. It transformed from a fifty-foot sphere into a massive and black hole.

The gravitational pull was absolute.

The invisible glass floor beneath Dante groaned. The void itself was actively being sucked into the gaping and expanding maw of the boss.

There was no physical attack to dodge. There was no projectile to parry.

It was an arena-wide tracking attack that completely ignored collision physics.

Dante tried to trigger [Meteor Stride] to teleport away.

[Error: Spatial anchor applied. Teleportation failed.]

He was trapped.

The expanding black hole rushed toward him and covered the fifty-yard gap in a fraction of a second.

The unavoidable execution mechanic was triggering. If he touched the black matter, his avatar would be permanently deleted.

The 45-second cooldown on [Phantom Waltz] still had twelve seconds remaining. He didn’t have his invulnerability frames.

He was going to die.

A tiny flash of silver light exploded in the dark.

Aura didn’t stay back.

The tiny Grade 8 Doom Harbinger zipped directly in front of Dante. She placed herself between him and the massive expanding black hole of the boss.

She let out a piercing and resonant chime that resounded violently across the void.

She didn’t cast her healing wave. She cast the ultimate defensive skill she had acquired after absorbing the residual energy of the Annihilation-Tier dragon.

[Skill Activated: Aegis of the Harbinger]

Aura didn’t just project a shield. She ripped the fabric of reality apart.

A localized reality-bending dome of pure and concentrated starlight slammed down over Dante.

It wasn’t a physical barrier like [Aegis Deflection]. It was a localized temporal lock.

It completely removed Dante and Aura from the physical timeline of the server for exactly three seconds.

The massive expanding black hole of [Endless Devour] hit the starlight dome.

The system interface completely glitched.

The unavoidable and instant-death execution mechanic of the Dark Demon boss slammed into the absolute and reality-bending invulnerability of the Grade 8 pet.

The starlight dome didn’t break. It didn’t even flicker.

The black hole washed completely over them and swallowed the dome entirely.

For three seconds, Dante was completely submerged in absolute terrifying nothingness.

He couldn’t hear the ambient noise of the void. He couldn’t see his own hands.

He just watched the glowing buff icon ticking down in the corner of his vision.

3... 2... 1...

[Aegis of the Harbinger expired.]

The darkness vanished.

Dante was still standing on the invisible glass floor. The starlight dome shattered into silver dust around him.

Fifty yards away, the massive black hole collapsed back in on itself. It reverted to the floating pulsating sphere of dark matter and jagged teeth.

The [Endless Devour] animation had finished. The mechanic had been completely negated.

Dante took a massive shuddering breath.

"You saved me," Dante whispered and looked down.

Aura was floating near his waist. But she wasn’t glowing brightly.

The tiny silver fox looked completely faded.

The brilliant starlight that usually radiated from her three tails was entirely gone. It was replaced by a dull and flickering gray static.

She was physically drooping in the air and struggled to maintain her digital form.

[System Warning: Pet ’Aura’ has exhausted cosmic energy reserves.]

[Current Status: Critical Exhaustion.]

[Warning: Further exertion will result in structural deletion.]

The blood of Dante ran cold.

The [Aegis of the Harbinger] skill didn’t run on mana. It ran on her core cosmic energy.

Negating an instant-death mechanic from a Dark Demon boss had completely drained her battery. She was on the absolute verge of permanent deletion.

If she died, she didn’t respawn. She was an NPC bound to his soul. She would be gone forever.

"No," Dante said instantly.

He didn’t wait. He didn’t ask her. He forced his hand forward and tapped her fading static-filled form.

[Pet command issued: Return.]

Aura let out a weak and protesting chime.

She tried to float away from his hand and wanted to stay and pulse her heal. But she didn’t have the energy to resist the master command.

She dissolved into a stream of dull gray light and retreated into the hidden pet-space within his system interface.

The void was completely silent again.

Dante stood alone in the dark.

He looked at his system interface.

The 45-second cooldown on [Phantom Waltz] was ticking down. The massive reality-bending shield of [Aegis of the Harbinger] was on a one-hour cooldown.

More importantly, Aura was gone.

He no longer had his infinite health battery. He didn’t have his passive status cleanse.

He was a melee fighter trapped in an arena with a boss that healed from magic, instantly killed him if he got too close, and reflected 20% of all physical damage back at him.

He had 9,130 health. The boss had 350,000 health remaining.

Every single time he hit the boss from now on, the reflection damage would permanently chip away at his health bar. There was absolutely no way to heal it back.

It was no longer a war of attrition. It was a mathematically guaranteed execution.

Gluttony pulsed.

The massive dark matter sphere floated forward again. The dozens of maws gnashed loudly in the silence.

It knew the glowing light was gone. It knew the human was completely isolated.

Dante tightened his grip on the [Crimson Edge].

His arms felt incredibly heavy. The adrenaline of the near-death experience was fading. It was replaced by the sheer crushing reality of the numbers.

"Just you and me now," Dante whispered into the dark and stared down the massive shifting sphere.

He didn’t have an out. He didn’t have a backup plan.

For the first time since he entered Overture, Dante was completely and utterly out of options.