Don stood in the throne room, blood coating every inch of his armor, his eight Executioner's Edge blades hovering in a perfect circle around him. One hundred twenty blood weapons formed an outer ring—crimson death waiting to be unleashed.
Valdris's Oath burned in his right hand, corrupted holy flames dancing along the blade's edge. The sword's presence alone made the air shimmer with heat and divine corruption.
Uzgoth the Devourer King rose from his throne, all four arms spreading wide, his burning coal eyes fixed on Don with predatory hunger.
"Show me if you're worthy."
Don said nothing.
Words were irrelevant.
His mismatched eyes—amber-gold and crimson-gold, both shot through with silver threads—tracked Uzgoth's every micro-movement. His Combat Analysis ability activated automatically, beginning its time-based scaling.
[COMBAT ANALYSIS: ACTIVE]
[ENEMY: UZGOTH THE DEVOURER KING]
[STAGE 3-5 vs YOUR STAGE 3-3]
[ANALYZING PATTERNS...]
[TIME ELAPSED: 0 SECONDS]
[WEAKNESS DETECTION: 0%]
Uzgoth moved.
Not charging. Not attacking. Just moving.
But that single step covered fifty meters in a blink. The obsidian floor exploded beneath his feet, creating a crater three meters wide. The shockwave alone knocked Don back two steps, his enhanced Agility the only reason he didn't fly across the room.
[STRENGTH ESTIMATED: 2,000+]
[AGILITY ESTIMATED: 1,400+]
The Sovereign's upper right arm lashed out—no weapon, just clawed fingers aimed at Don's throat.
Don activated Dash.
[DASH: ACTIVATED]
[COST: 17 MANA]
[MANA: 44,983/45,000]
Reality compressed. Don blinked ten meters left, the claw passing through empty air where his neck had been.
His eight Executioner's Edge blades struck immediately—all converging on Uzgoth from different angles, targeting joints, eyes, throat, kidneys.
Uzgoth's four arms moved in a blur.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Each blade was intercepted mid-strike—not by weapons, but by Uzgoth's bare hands. The Sovereign caught four blades, deflected two more with his elbows, and let the final two strike his chest.
The blades bit into green flesh—and stopped.
Not deeply. Maybe a centimeter. Then they were repelled by sheer density of Stage 3-5 body.
[STAGE DIFFERENCE DETECTED: DAMAGE REDUCED BY 60%]
"Is that ALL?" Uzgoth laughed, his voice like grinding mountains. "Stage 3-3 blades against Stage 3-5 defense? You'll need to do BETTER than that, boy!"
His lower left arm shot forward in a palm strike aimed at Don's chest.
Don's one hundred twenty blood weapons intercepted—a wall of crystallized blood forming between them.
The palm hit the wall.
The wall shattered.
Crimson fragments exploded outward like shrapnel, and the palm continued through, slamming into Don's sternum with the force of a falling meteor.
CRACK!
Don's chest caved in. Ribs shattered. Sternum fractured. His heart compressed, stopping for a fraction of a second before Immortality forced it to restart.
He flew backward, crashing through two bone pillars before slamming into the far wall. The impact left a Don-shaped crater in solid stone.
[HP: CRITICAL DAMAGE]
[IMMORTALITY: ACTIVE]
[REGENERATING...]
[MANA: 44,983 → 44,483 → 43,983 → 43,483]
Five hundred mana per second to heal catastrophic damage.
Don's chest reformed—ribs knitting back together, sternum fusing, heart repairing internal tears. Three seconds from shattered to functional.
He stood, blood dripping from his mouth, his expression unchanged.
[COMBAT ANALYSIS: 5 SECONDS ELAPSED]
[WEAKNESS DETECTION: 2%]
[PATTERN IDENTIFIED: Uzgoth favors upper arms for precision strikes, lower arms for power attacks]
Uzgoth was already closing the distance.
Don activated Blood Domain.
[BLOOD DOMAIN: ACTIVATED]
[COST: 200 MANA]
[RADIUS: 50 METERS]
[DURATION: 5 MINUTES]
The shattered blood weapons didn't stay broken. They reformed, multiplied, became four hundred blood weapons—swords, spears, chains, whips, all moving with autonomous intelligence.
And the blood coating the floor—all of it from twelve hundred corpses—rose like a crimson tsunami.
"DROWN!"
The wave crashed toward Uzgoth from all sides.
The Sovereign's upper arms blurred through seals.
"Devourer's Aura."
Dark energy exploded from his body—not visible, but felt. A pressure that made reality itself feel hungry.
The blood wave hit the aura and disintegrated.
Not burned. Not frozen. Consumed.
Eaten by the aura like the blood had never existed.
Four hundred blood weapons charged anyway—attacking from every angle simultaneously, each one targeting weak points Don's Combat Analysis had started identifying.
Uzgoth's four arms became a tornado of violence.
He caught weapons bare-handed, crushed them to powder, deflected dozens with casual swipes. His movements were economical—no wasted motion, every action perfectly calculated to counter multiple attacks.
Fifty blood weapons destroyed in two seconds.
One hundred in five seconds.
Two hundred in eight seconds.
But during those eight seconds—
Don's eight Executioner's Edge blades attacked from outside the blood weapon swarm, targeting the one weakness he'd identified:
The Crown.
Three blades converged on Uzgoth's head from different angles—left temple, right temple, crown of skull.
Uzgoth's eyes widened fractionally.
"You—!"
His upper right arm shot up, catching two blades mid-strike.
The third blade carved a shallow groove across the Crown's surface before being knocked away.
Golden metal sparked. Ancient runes flickered.
[CROWN DAMAGE: 3%]
[UZGOTH'S POWER: 2000 STR → 1940 STR]
[60 POINT REDUCTION]
"NEVER TOUCH THE CROWN!"
Uzgoth's voice shook the throne room. Literal rage made physical—soundwaves cracking stone, shattering bone pillars, making the air itself tremble.
All four arms came together.
Clasped.
Pulled apart.
And between them—
A weapon materialized from nothing.
A warhammer. Massive. Dark metal that drank light. The head was carved from compressed bone and souls—actual souls, visible as screaming faces trapped in the metal.
[ANALYZE: ACTIVATED]
[WEAPON: DEVOURER'S HUNGER]
[GRADE: SS-RANK]
[PROPERTIES: Consumes target's essence on hit, +300% damage vs Stage 3 and below, Soul Trap (permanent death on kill)]
"Now," Uzgoth said, his voice cold and final, "I stop playing."
He swung.
Don activated Execution Field + Berserker's Fury simultaneously.
[EXECUTION FIELD: ACTIVATED]
[COST: 42 MANA]
[BERSERKER'S FURY: ACTIVATED]
[COST: 100 STAMINA]
[STRENGTH: 1,743 → 2,789 (+60%)]
[AGILITY: 1,365 → 1,911 (+40%)]
[DURATION: 5 MINUTES]
The world slowed.
Not actually—but Don's enhanced Agility made it seem that way. The hammer's descent became visible, trackable, counterable.
He didn't try to block.
He dodged.
His Agility of 1,911 carried him aside as the hammer crashed into the floor where he'd been standing.
The impact was apocalyptic.
The obsidian floor didn't just crack—it vaporized. A crater fifty meters wide appeared instantly. The shockwave knocked bone pillars over like dominoes. Dust and debris filled the air.
And from the crater—
Dark energy erupted. The trapped souls in the hammer screamed, reaching out with spectral hands, trying to grab anything living.
Don was already moving—circling Uzgoth's left side at impossible speed, Valdris's Oath raised, targeting the Crown again.
Uzgoth spun faster than something his size should move, lower left arm intercepting the sword strike with a block.
Metal met flesh.
Valdris's Oath—empowered by King's Wrath, burning with corrupted holy flames—carved through Uzgoth's arm.
Not all the way through. Maybe halfway before the density of Stage 3-5 flesh stopped it.
But that was enough.
Green blood sprayed. Uzgoth's lower left arm hung useless, bone visible through the wound.
"GOOD!" The Sovereign laughed through the pain. "FINALLY! Someone who can actually HURT me!"
His upper arms grabbed the hammer with both hands.
Overhead swing.
Don tried to Dash again—
[DASH: ON COOLDOWN]
[TIME REMAINING: 3 SECONDS]
No time.
He raised Valdris's Oath in a desperate block, his eight Executioner's Edge blades converging to reinforce—
The hammer hit.
BOOOOM!
The impact was like being hit by a falling mountain.
Don's arms shattered. Both radius and ulna in each arm snapped like dry twigs. His shoulders dislocated. His spine compressed, vertebrae cracking.
He flew across the throne room like a missile, crashing through the far wall entirely, his body creating a tunnel through solid stone.
[HP: CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE]
[IMMORTALITY: CRITICAL MODE]
[MANA: 43,483 → 42,483 → 41,483 → 40,483 → 39,483]
Two thousand mana to repair damage that severe.
Don's arms reformed—bones knitting, muscles regrowing, tendons reattaching. His spine straightened, each vertebra popping back into place with audible clicks.
Five seconds from shattered to functional.
He emerged from the rubble, both arms working again, Valdris's Oath still gripped in his right hand.
[COMBAT ANALYSIS: 30 SECONDS ELAPSED]
[WEAKNESS DETECTION: 10%]
[BASIC PATTERNS IDENTIFIED:]
• Prioritizes Crown protection above all else
• Lower arms 15% slower than upper arms
• Slight delay (0.3 sec) when transitioning from offense to defense
• Hammer swings leave 0.8 second recovery window
Not enough. He needed more time for full analysis.
But time was a luxury he didn't have.
Uzgoth charged, hammer raised, all four arms working in concert—two gripping the weapon, one casting dark magic, one reaching for Don's throat.
Don's one hundred blood weapons (reformed from the remains) attacked simultaneously with his eight Executioner's Edge blades.
The throne room became a hurricane of violence.