Started with a 10,000x Multiplier in a Game World

The earth-shattering roar echoed a second time. It was followed by a concussive shockwave that nearly knocked Dante off the jagged mountain path.

He didn’t slow down.

He chained [Meteor Stride] and teleported rapidly up the treacherous incline of Mount Daqing. He left a trail of superheated plasma that hissed against the cold barren rock.

The source of the conflict wasn’t hidden in a cave or a dungeon instance.

Dante crested a high ridge and dropped into a crouch behind a massive boulder. He looked down into a sprawling bowl-shaped crater near the absolute summit of the mountain.

The crater was a war zone.

The ground was entirely glassed and turned to smooth slag by repeated catastrophic impacts of high-tier magic.

Massive chunks of the surrounding mountain had been completely sheared off to alter the local geography permanently.

And in the center of the crater, two absolute behemoths were trying to murder each other.

The system interface flashed rapidly and struggled to compile the data on the two overlapping massive cosmic signatures.

[World Event Detected: Clash of Sovereigns]

Dante focused his gaze on the first entity.

It was a towering heavily armored demon easily twenty feet tall.

It wore intricate ornate robes of deep crimson and black similar in aesthetic to Lord Malaphar but vastly more imposing.

It wielded a massive jagged halberd that dripped with raw corrosive dark magic.

Four massive leathery wings sprouted from its back, though one was heavily torn.

[Entity Identified: Yongye Demon King]

[Tier: Celestial Demon]

[Level: 35]

[HP: 1,200,000 / 3,500,000]

The Demon King was heavily wounded, and its health bar hovered around a third of its maximum capacity.

Dante shifted his attention to the second entity.

It didn’t look like a sleek dangerous god or a terrifying demon.

It was a bear.

But it was a bear the size of a three-story building.

Its fur was a matted dirty brown caked with mud and pulverized rock.

It looked incredibly fat, lethargic, and completely unbothered by the apocalyptic fight it was currently engaged in.

It was literally sitting on its massive haunches in the center of the crater. It casually swiped a massive paw at the Demon King whenever the demon got too close.

[Entity Identified: Seven Evils - Sloth]

[Tier: Celestial Beast]

[Level: 35]

[HP: 2,100,000 / 4,000,000]

Dante stared at the system prompt.

"Seven Evils," Dante whispered, his eyes widening slightly.

He had read fragments of lore about the Seven Evils during his time in the Aethelgard cycle. They weren’t standard bosses.

They were primordial manifestations of the original sins, ancient entities that predated the current server architecture.

They were functionally immortal and wandered the map to occasionally wake up to cause a localized extinction event before going back to sleep.

And right now, a Celestial Demon was actively trying to kill the manifestation of Sloth.

"The Demon King must be trying to absorb its cosmic weight," Dante analyzed and watched the fight from the safety of the boulder.

The Yongye Demon King let out a furious echoing roar. He raised his jagged halberd and channeled a massive sphere of dark concentrated void magic at the tip.

"Die, ancient relic!" the Demon King bellowed. His voice vibrated the crater walls. "Your era is over!"

The Demon King launched the massive sphere of void magic. It shot across the crater and left a trail of absolute darkness.

Sloth didn’t dodge. It didn’t cast a defensive barrier. It didn’t even stand up.

The massive bear simply raised one incredibly sluggish heavy paw and casually swatted at the incoming void sphere.

The impact didn’t trigger a massive explosion.

The sheer overwhelming physical mass and cosmic density of the Celestial Beast completely absorbed the magic.

The void sphere just fizzled out against the matted fur of the bear and dealt a fraction of its intended damage.

[-45,000 HP]

Sloth let out a long heavy yawn that sounded like a localized earthquake.

It slowly lowered its paw and was entirely unimpressed.

"That thing is a literal damage sponge," Dante noted and shook his head. "It does not even care that it is in a boss fight."

The Demon King was infuriated by the dismissal.

He didn’t cast another spell.

He activated a high-tier movement skill and blurred across the crater to close the distance instantly.

He swung the jagged halberd in a brutal two-handed overhead chop aiming directly for the skull of the bear.

Sloth finally reacted with slightly more urgency.

The massive bear didn’t parry. It just leaned its head slightly to the left.

The halberd slammed into the glassed floor of the crater, missed the head of the bear, but carved a massive fifty-foot trench into the rock.

Before the Demon King could pull his weapon free, Sloth slowly and methodically brought its other massive paw down directly onto the back of the demon.

It wasn’t a fast strike. It looked like the bear was just trying to comfortably rest its arm.

But the physical weight behind the paw was absolute.

The Demon King was instantly and violently crushed face-first into the stone.

The sheer kinetic force shattered his ornate crimson armor, and the impact sent a massive shockwave echoing across the mountain peaks.

[-450,000! Critical Hit!]

The massive damage number popped up. The health bar of the Demon King plummeted into the critical red zone.

"You dare... strike a sovereign?!" the Demon King choked out. He desperately tried to push the massive paw off his back.

He channeled dark magic to attempt to blast the bear away.

Sloth didn’t seem to notice the dark magic burning its fur. The bear just let out another heavy sigh, shifted its weight slightly, and casually pressed down harder.

A loud sickening crunch echoed across the crater as the spine of the Demon King completely snapped.

[-800,000! FATAL DAMAGE!]

The Yongye Demon King didn’t even have time to trigger a final desperation mechanic.

The towering Celestial Demon was instantly and effortlessly crushed to death by a bear that hadn’t even bothered to stand up.

The demon exploded into a massive localized shower of deep purple and gold polygons. It left a massive pile of high-tier loot in the crater.

[Target Eliminated: Yongye Demon King (Level 35 Celestial)]

Sloth slowly pulled its massive paw back and shook the digital ash off its fur.

It looked at the pile of glowing loot, sniffed it once, and completely ignored it.

The bear let out a long rumbling groan, laid its massive head down on its paws, and closed its eyes.

It was going back to sleep.

Dante stayed crouched behind the boulder.

He checked the system interface.

[Seven Evils - Sloth]

[HP: 1,600,000 / 4,000,000]

The fight with the Demon King had taken a significant toll. The bear was sitting at roughly forty percent of its maximum health.

1.6 million health points.

It was an astronomical number for a standard player.

A full forty-man raid group would take an hour of sustained perfectly coordinated DPS to chip through that health pool. This assumes the bear didn’t wake up and casually swat them into the stratosphere.

Dante wasn’t a forty-man raid group.

He opened his inventory and checked his cooldowns.

[Asura’s Descent] was available.

[Asura’s Heart] was available.

[Blood Sacrifice] was available.

[Gaze of the Abyss] was available.

He looked at the sleeping Celestial Beast.

"The system says I have a 100% critical hit chance," Dante whispered to himself. "And a 300% critical damage multiplier."

He didn’t need to fight a grueling war of attrition.

He didn’t need to trade blows with a monster that could crush a Demon King with a casual slap.

He just needed one perfectly executed mathematically devastating strike.

He drew the [Dawn-Breaker Blade].

He didn’t use [Voidsever].

The damage reflection passives of the primordial greatsword were completely unnecessary against a sleeping target, and he didn’t want to risk the volatile weapon glitching out the math.

"Aura," Dante whispered via the pet interface.

The tiny silver fox didn’t pop out of her pocket dimension.

Dante kept her hidden to avoid generating ambient cosmic noise that might wake the beast. He just needed her buff.

[Skill Activated: Aura of Dominion]

The invisible hundred-foot domain of cosmic authority pulsed outward. Dante immediately felt the flat +50% boost to his base stats.

He was ready.

He didn’t sneak down the slope. He stood up from behind the boulder.

He activated his first buff.

[Skill Executed: Asura’s Descent]

The system interface violently flashed white, then crimson.

His defense dropped to absolute zero. His maximum health pool multiplied by ten and skyrocketed to 255,000 HP. His base attack power doubled instantly.

The golden invulnerability frames enveloped his avatar. He had five seconds.

He activated the second buff.

[Skill Activated: Blood Sacrifice]

He voluntarily burned 90% of his newly inflated health pool. His HP plummeted and left him at 25,500.

The agonizing localized drain ripped through his avatar, but it was instantly replaced by the overwhelming intoxicating surge of raw physical power.

[Attack Power increased by 900%.]

He wasn’t done. He chained the third buff.

[Skill Executed: Asura’s Heart]

The burst of pure combat adrenaline flooded his neural link.

His attack speed and movement speed doubled. The crucial passive locked in, and Critical Hit Damage was instantly increased to 300%.

His raw attack power was currently sitting at an unmitigated 36,000 points.

He was a Level 70 Warrior holding the raw destructive capacity of an endgame nuke.

"Do not wake up," Dante whispered.

He didn’t use [Phantom Dash] or [Meteor Stride].

He didn’t want the sonic boom or the plasma trail to alert the sleeping boss before the strike landed.

He just used his doubled movement speed to sprint down the slope of the crater.

He moved like an absolute blur. A streak of gold and black crossed the fifty yards in less than a second.

Sloth didn’t stir.

The massive bear continued its deep rumbling breathing and was completely oblivious to the glass cannon charging directly at its exposed neck.

Dante reached the target.

He didn’t hesitate. He gripped the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] with both hands.

He channeled every single ounce of his 36,000 attack power into a brutal and perfectly executed downward thrust.

He aimed directly for the gap between the massive cervical vertebrae of the bear.

[Passive Activated: Predator’s Eye (100% Critical Hit Chance)]

The Gold-tier broadsword pierced the matted fur and sank deep into the flesh of the Celestial Beast.

The impact didn’t make a sound.

The combat engine of the Zenith Protocol completely froze.

It was entirely unable to process the sheer volume of overlapping and massive damage multipliers triggering simultaneously on a single target.

A fraction of a millisecond later, the math finally resolved.

Above the head of the sleeping bear, the damage numbers didn’t pop up cleanly.

They exploded in a massive glitching cloud of aggressive red static that completely overflowed the visual interface.

[-1,620,000! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

Over one and a half million points of damage. In a single basic melee swing.

Seven Evils - Sloth didn’t wake up. The massive Celestial Beast didn’t roar in pain or thrash wildly.

The sheer mathematical force of the strike completely unraveled the core code of the entity before its nervous system could even register the damage.

The three-story-tall bear simply turned gray, cracked like brittle porcelain, and violently exploded into a massive and blinding shower of golden polygons and high-tier loot.

Dante landed perfectly on his feet. He was surrounded by the falling digital ash.

The golden invulnerability frames faded from his armor. His buffs expired and returned his stats to their normal absurdly high baseline.

He stood alone in the center of the crater.

[Target Eliminated: Seven Evils - Sloth (Level 35 Celestial)]

[First Kill Secured.]

[Experience Gained. Level Up!]

Dante watched his level tick up. He had just casually one-shot a primordial sin while it was napping.

"I really love this class," Dante smiled and wiped a speck of digital dust off his pauldron.