Dante and Casanova ventured deeper into the Wyrmrest Caverns.
The ambient corruption grew thicker. The purple mist clinging to the floor reached their knees.
The glowing veins of blighted ore in the walls pulsed rapidly like the cavern itself had a heartbeat.
Dante led the way. He relied heavily on his 100 points of Intuition to navigate the twisting tunnels.
He didn’t want to get lost in a Catastrophic event zone.
"Hey, Boss," Casanova whispered and walked a few steps behind Dante. "Are we actually looking for the dinsional fracture, or are we just farming?"
"Both," Dante replied.
"The Outpost Elder gave two Aetheric Ward Banners. I have to plant them on opposite sides of the fracture to seal the breach. But I am not going to complain about the free EXP on the way."
They rounded a sharp and jagged bend in the tunnel.
The narrow path abruptly ended.
They stepped into a massive, perfectly circular, and artificially constructed chamber.
Unlike the rough stone of the natural caverns, the walls here were lined with smooth and polished black basalt.
Intricate and glowing gold runes were carved into the floor in a massive geotric pattern.
At the far end of the chamber stood a massive pair of heavy bronze doors perfectly sealed tightly.
And standing guard in front of those doors were twelve statues.
"Uh oh," Casanova muttered and took a step back.
The statues weren’t made of stone. They were forged from solid and dull-yellow tal.
They were ten feet tall. They were built like heavily armored knights with massive blocky shoulders and thick cylindrical arms that ended in heavy maces instead of hands.
The mont Dante stepped onto the geotric runes on the floor, the twelve statues simultaneously activated!
Their eyes flared with a bright and hostile crimson light.
[Monster Spawn: Vault Guardian Golem]
[Tier: Gold]
[Level: 5]
[HP: 25,000 / 25,000]
"Gold-tier mobs?" Casanova shrieked. "Twelve of them? Boss, this is a raid encounter! We are not supposed to be here without forty people!"
Dante evaluated the system prompt. Gold-tier ant their base stats were highly inflated.
At Level 5, their HP was relatively low, but their physical defense would be absolutely astronomical.
The tal they were forged from was designed to completely negate physical slashing and piercing damage.
Normal players literally couldn’t scratch them without high-tier armor-penetrating magic.
"Do not panic," Dante said calmly and stepped forward into the center of the room. "They are just rocks with health bars."
The twelve Golems moved with surprising speed. They didn’t stagger or clank.
They glided across the polished basalt floor in perfect synchronization and surrounded Dante in a tight circle.
They raised their massive mace-arms in unison.
If all twelve maces hit him simultaneously, the concussive force would likely bypass his [Sun-Forged Cuirass] and crush him instantly.
Dante didn’t let them swing.
He didn’t draw Voidsever. The cursed weapon was too unpredictable. He didn’t want to accidentally trigger a massive explosion that would collapse the entire cavern ceiling.
He needed crowd control. He needed sustained DPS.
He raised his empty left hand.
[Skill Executed: Cyclone of Ruin]
The Zenith-tier wind skill triggered instantly.
A deafening roar erupted in the sealed chamber. The massive F5 hurricane exploded outward from the palm of Dante and completely filled the circular room.
The twelve heavy Gold-tier Golems, each weighing several tons, were instantly ripped right off their feet.
The sheer rotational force of the cyclone sucked them into the air. It trapped them in a violent and high-speed airborne juggle.
They crashed into each other. Their heavy tal bodies clanged loudly over the roaring wind.
[-3,000]
[-3,000]
[-3,000]
The physical damage from the wind alone was massive and ticked rapidly.
Dante didn’t just watch them spin. He drew the [Crimson Edge].
"Keep the buff up!" Dante yelled to Casanova over the wind.
Casanova was flattened against the wall near the entrance tunnel.
He frantically strumd his lute. He refreshed the [Song of the Scoundrel] buff to give Dante a tiny speed advantage.
Dante looked up at the massive tal bodies spinning thirty feet in the air.
He triggered [teor Stride].
He vanished from the floor and materialized mid-air directly next to one of the spinning Golems.
The Zenith-tier teleportation completely ignored the physics of the hurricane.
While suspended in the air, Dante swung the red broadsword.
[Skill Executed: Abyssal Cleave]
The black spatial fracture slamd into the chest of the Golem.
The Zenith-tier attack ignored 50% of the massive defense of the monster and cleanly sheared the tal construct in half.
Gravity tried to pull Dante down. He didn’t let it.
He triggered [teor Stride] again.
He teleported instantly from the first destroyed Golem to the second. He materialized higher in the air.
He left a trail of superheated plasma cutting through the center of the hurricane. It dealt massive fire damage to the remaining Golems caught in the blast path.
He swung again.
Another [Abyssal Cleave]. Another Golem shattered.
It was a srizing and terrifying display of chanical dominance.
Dante was literally dancing in the air.
He teleported between the trapped enemies inside his own hurricane. He systematically executed them one by one before gravity could pull him to the floor.
He was burning through his stamina pool at a horrific rate by chaining Zenith-tier skills back-to-back.
But Aura was floating safely near the ceiling and constantly pulsing [Resurgence Wave] to keep his energy and health topped off.
Down on the floor, unnoticed over the deafening roar of the cyclone, a group of players silently slipped out of the entry tunnel.
There were twenty of them, all wearing the black and gold armbands of Vanguard’s Legacy.
Leading the group was a tall and lean man wearing dark leather armor.
His player ID was Darius. He was another Enforcer equal in rank to Malric. He was currently looking for a way to salvage the ruined reputation of the guild.
Darius didn’t charge in.
He stayed near the archway and stared in absolute awe at the hurricane filling the room. He watched the lone player teleporting through the air and systematically executing Gold-tier mobs.
"Sir, do we engage?" one of his grunts whispered nervously.
"Are you insane?" Darius snapped. "He just wiped the entire army of Malric. If we step into that room, we are dead in ten seconds."
"Then what are we doing here?"
Darius didn’t answer. His eyes scanned the room and looked past the hurricane.
He noticed the heavy bronze doors at the far end of the chamber. And more importantly, he noticed the massive archaic iron lever protruding from the wall right next to the entry archway.
It was a containnt switch. It was standard dungeon architecture designed to lock players in a boss room once an encounter started.
Darius smiled. It was a cowardly and brilliant smile.
He didn’t need to fight Dan. He just needed to eliminate him.
Darius grabbed the heavy iron lever with both hands.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Casanova yelled. The bard had finally spotted them.
Darius ignored him. He yanked the lever down with all his might.
A massive grinding sound echoed through the chamber and cut through the noise of the wind.
Above the entry archway, a solid two-foot-thick slab of solid black basalt violently dropped from the ceiling!
"Boss! The door!" Casanova scread.
He dove out of the way just as the massive stone slab slamd into the floor. It perfectly sealed the entrance tunnel.
Up in the air, Dante executed the final Golem and shattered it into golden polygons.
The duration of [Cyclone of Ruin] expired. The wind died instantly.
Dante dropped thirty feet. He used [Blink Step] right before hitting the ground to cancel his montum and landed perfectly on his feet.
He turned around.
The entrance to the chamber was completely gone. It was replaced by a solid wall of black stone.
Casanova rushed up to the wall and banged his fists against it. "We are trapped! Vanguard’s Legacy just locked us in!"
Dante walked slowly up to the massive stone slab. He didn’t look panicked. He knocked his iron gauntlet against the basalt. It was completely solid.
"Are you still out there?" Dante called out. His voice echoed in the sealed room.
On the other side of the thick stone, the muffled laugh of Darius filtered through.
"I am here, Dan," Darius called back. "Enjoy the tomb. This chamber is a hard-lock containnt zone."
"You cannot break that stone. You will be stuck in there until the Void-Blight reaches the Outpost and deletes the entire zone along with your character data."
"You sealed yourself out of the boss room, Darius," Dante pointed out calmly.
"I do not care about the boss," Darius laughed.
"Silas offered a massive cash bounty for your permanent death. Locking you in a box is the easiest money I will ever make. Goodbye, Vanguard."
Dante listened as the heavy footsteps of the twenty Vanguard’s Legacy mbers faded away down the tunnel.
Casanova looked at Dante, completely terrified. "Boss... what do we do? We are buried alive."
Dante didn’t answer. He turned away from the sealed door and looked across the polished floor toward the heavy bronze double doors at the far end of the chamber.
"They did not bury us alive," Dante said and walked toward the bronze doors. "They just forced us to move forward."
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