Mei charged forward, her massive cast-iron frying pan leaving a trail of sparks as she dragged it across the frozen dirt.

Dante didn’t move. He held his right hand out. The thick, black smoke erupted from the brand on his wrist, rapidly condensing into the primordial shape of [Voidsever].

The massive greatsword instantly devoured the ambient light in the valley.

Mei didn’t slow down. She closed the distance and swung the oversized pan in a brutal, upward arc, aiming to launch Dante into the sky.

Dante didn’t block. He swung Voidsever.

He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill. He just used a standard, heavy attack.

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

The black blade of the cursed weapon met the cast-iron surface of the frying pan.

Dante fully expected Voidsever to shear cleanly through the metal cookware. The primordial greatsword completely ignored all defense stats and physical mitigation. It cut through Gold-tier armor and glacier ice like wet paper.

CLANG!

A deafening, metallic shockwave exploded outward, cracking the ground beneath their feet.

Voidsever bounced.

Dante staggered backward, his arms vibrating wildly from the recoil. The kinetic feedback was massive, stinging his digital muscles.

He looked at Voidsever. Then he looked at the frying pan.

There wasn’t a scratch on it. The black cast-iron was completely unharmed.

"What?" Dante stared at the pan in absolute disbelief.

"Ha!" Pip the tiny red dragon cheered from the air above them, doing a celebratory flip. "You can’t cut the God-Slaying Skillet, shiny boy! It defies all known metallurgical laws!"

Mei laughed, spinning the massive pan expertly in her hands. "It’s indestructible! Give up your loot, and I promise I won’t hit you in the face!"

Dante narrowed his eyes.

In the Zenith Protocol, absolute statements like ’indestructible’ didn’t exist unless an item completely bypassed the standard combat engine.

[Voidsever] ignored all armor because of its primordial lore. If the frying pan could block a strike that mathematically ignored defense, it meant the pan wasn’t using a defense stat.

It was a gag item. A system anomaly designed to be completely immune to destruction, likely carried over from Mei’s previous game cycle as a joke.

"You’re relying entirely on the weapon’s passive," Dante analyzed, lowering Voidsever. "Your actual base defense isn’t blocking my sword. The pan is."

"So what?" Mei smirked, dropping into a low combat stance. "As long as the pan is between me and you, you can’t touch me."

"We’ll see about that," Dante said.

He needed to bypass her block. If he couldn’t cut through the pan, he needed to swing around it.

But Mei was fast, and her Brawler class gave her incredible reaction time.

If he tried to use [Phantom Waltz], she would likely just turtle behind the massive skillet and let the invulnerability frames block the Zenith-tier strikes.

He needed a skill that she physically couldn’t block, no matter how fast she moved her pan.

Dante opened his infinite inventory. He quickly scrolled through his massive collection of unread skillbooks.

He was looking for something very specific. A utility skill. Something basic that he could violently mutate.

He found a thin, unremarkable gray book.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Enlarge]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: A basic physical enhancement skill. The user temporarily increases the size of their equipped weapon by 10%. Cooldown: 1 minute.]

It was a completely useless cosmetic skill, generally used by low-level players to make their weapons look slightly more intimidating in the Outpost hubs.

Dante absorbed the book instantly.

[Skill Learned: Enlarge (Novice)]

"Are you checking your inventory to see what you’re going to hand over?" Pip yelled from the sky. "We accept all major credit cards and raw gold!"

"I’m checking to see how much range I need to bypass your pan," Dante said.

Mei frowned. "What?"

Dante raised [Voidsever] and pointed it directly at her.

He didn’t swing. He activated the new skill.

[Skill Executed: Enlarge.]

The anomaly in his code triggered.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The combat enlightenment didn’t flood him with the mechanics of kinetic force or thermal dynamics. It was the absolute, fundamental mastery of spatial mass manipulation.

He understood exactly how to stretch digital code without breaking the structural integrity of the object.

He learned how to feed raw, unrestrained atmospheric data into the physical structure of a weapon, forcing it to violently expand its own atomic footprint.

[Enlarge has reached Adept tier.]

[Enlarge has reached Master tier.]

[Enlarge has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The black blade of Voidsever began to aggressively hum. The dark metal rippled and stretched.

[Enlarge has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Enlarge has evolved into: Colossal Manifestation.]

[Colossal Manifestation (Zenith)]

[Description: The ultimate expression of spatial domination. The user’s equipped weapon violently expands, increasing its physical size and attack radius by 10,000%.

Base attack power remains unchanged, but the physical weight and kinetic momentum scale exponentially. Duration: 10 Seconds. Cooldown: 5 Minutes.]

Dante smiled. "Let’s see you block this."

He triggered the Zenith-tier skill.

[Voidsever] exploded in size.

The primordial greatsword shot forward, the black metal rapidly expanding outward and upward. In a fraction of a millisecond, the standard, five-foot-long broadsword transformed.

The blade was now a colossal, one-hundred-meter-long monolith of pure, light-absorbing black metal.

The width of the blade alone was wider. The edge cast a massive, terrifying shadow over the entire valley floor, completely blocking out the violet sky above.

The physical weight of the weapon was so astronomically massive that Dante’s avatar actually sank two inches into the frozen dirt just holding the hilt, which had expanded to the size of a redwood tree trunk.

Mei stared up at the hundred-meter-long black monolith currently blotting out the sun.

Her jaw dropped. Her cheerful, hyper-energetic demeanor completely vanished.

"Pip," Mei whispered, her voice trembling.

"Yes, Mei?" the tiny dragon squeaked, frantically backpedaling in the air, his yellow eyes wide with absolute, unfiltered terror.

"I don’t think the skillet is big enough," Mei said.

Dante didn’t use a secondary skill. He just engaged the raw, physical weight of the weapon.

He swung the massive greatsword.

He didn’t swing it fast. He didn’t need to. The sheer, overwhelming size of the blade meant the arc of the swing covered the entire valley.

The physical displacement of air created a hurricane, completely blowing the purple mist away and uprooting the dead pine trees along the ridges.

The massive black blade came sweeping toward Mei like a falling building.

"Ahhhhh!" Mei shrieked in pure panic.

She didn’t try to block. She knew the indestructible frying pan would survive the hit, but the kinetic force of a hundred-meter sword slamming into it would physically launch her across the entire server map.

Mei threw the massive cast-iron frying pan directly onto the ground, completely abandoning her legendary weapon.

She grabbed Pip out of the air, tucked the tiny red dragon under her arm like a football, and activated her highest-tier movement skill.

She sprinted desperately out of the strike zone, diving behind a massive cluster of black ice just as the colossal blade passed over her head.

The impact of the swing didn’t hit her. It hit the ground.

The hundred-meter blade of Voidsever slammed into the frozen dirt of the valley floor.

The resulting earthquake physically shattered the entire biome. A massive trench, fifty feet deep and hundreds of yards long, was carved directly into the bedrock.

Geysers of liquid magma erupted from the exposed fault lines, instantly turning the frozen valley into a chaotic wasteland of fire and steam.

The ten-second duration of [Colossal Manifestation] expired.

The massive black monolith violently shrank, rapidly condensing back into the standard, five-foot length of Voidsever.

Dante stood at the edge of the massive new canyon he had just carved, breathing easily. His stamina had completely reset thanks to [Chrono-Shift].

He dismissed the cursed sword back into his wrist.

He looked toward the cluster of black ice where Mei had dived for cover.

"You still want the toll?" Dante called out over the hissing steam.

Mei’s head slowly popped out from behind the ice. Her twin buns were slightly crooked, and her face was covered in dirt.

"Keep your money!" Mei yelled back, her voice shaking slightly. "We are currently closed for business!"

"Wise choice," Dante nodded.

He walked forward, stepping to the edge of the newly created canyon. Resting on the very edge of the cracked earth, completely unharmed by the apocalyptic strike that had just reshaped the geography, was the massive cast-iron frying pan.

Dante crouched down and picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy.

[Item Appraised: The God-Slaying Skillet]

[Tier: Universal Anomaly]

[Type: Two-Handed Blunt Weapon / Shield]

[Stats: Base Attack Power scales with user’s cooking proficiency.]

[Passive 1 (Indestructible): This item cannot be broken, melted, or altered by any force, skill, or cosmic entity within the Zenith Protocol.]

[Passive 2 (Perfect Block): When held defensively, the item negates 100% of all frontal kinetic impact. The user takes zero damage from blocked physical strikes.]

"A literal gag item," Dante laughed softly, shaking his head.

The system couldn’t calculate its defense because it didn’t have one. It was just hard-coded to never break and never pass damage through.

It was the ultimate, impenetrable shield, disguised as cookware.

He tossed the massive frying pan into his infinite inventory.

He had no intention of using it in combat, but an indestructible piece of metal might come in handy for wedging open heavy dungeon doors.

He looked back toward the black ice. Mei was gone. She had likely used a recall scroll to escape back to the Outpost while he was distracted by the loot.

Dante was finally alone in the valley.

The chaotic steam venting from the magma geysers began to clear.

Dante looked toward the deepest part of the cratered valley. The massive environmental disruption had completely cleared the area, revealing the entrance to a towering, jagged volcanic cave.

His Intuition stat pinged sharply.

A low, rumbling growl resounded from the mouth of the cave. It wasn’t the artificial, digitized roar of a standard mob. It sounded deep, resonant, and incredibly dangerous.

The Beast King.

Dante drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. The gold metal gleamed against the backdrop of fire and ice.

"Alright," Dante said, stepping into the mouth of the volcanic cave. "Let’s finish this quest."