Chapter 101: A Fierce Battle: The Epic Boss

[THE HOLLOW EMISSARY] (Epic)

Kael’s breath caught as he read the full block.

An Epic-rank boss. Here, of all places.

Rarity compounded hard with every step up the tier ladder. In his first life, the Legendary tier had set a hard floor at Level 50.

Epic climbed considerably steeper, and no confirmed record had ever shown one below Level 65. The old guild chronicles had been very clear on that point, and he had read them more than once.

This thing sat at a bare 55, and the system still stamped it Epic.

It tracked with something he had seen once before: the Skeleton General waiting in the hidden map beyond Haven’s Rest, a Silver-tier boss that had no business existing at Level 10.

Certain maps simply seeded outliers, bosses that broke the rules of their own bracket entirely. They were rare and unpredictable, and a veteran learned to respect every one he met, because the system never explained them.

One tier below the Spire’s true summit guardian didn’t sound like much on paper. In practice, a full rank of difference meant an entirely different category of danger. The climb was about to get considerably harder in a single step.

The chamber seemed to agree. The silence around the figure had weight, a held-breath stillness that made the air feel thick in his lungs.

Even Kael, studying the hidden edge of that scythe and the restless wraiths coiling around it, felt real pressure settle across his shoulders like a cold hand.

"So the top of this tower was never going to come easy."A faint, grim smile touched his mouth.Good. Easy had stopped being interesting days ago.

Beneath the caution, something sharper stirred. Pure excitement, the kind that tightened his grip on the hilt and slowed the world down to the beat of his own pulse.

Five primary companions stood at his back, each covering a distinct role. A tank. Two front-line fighters. A ranged caster. A flying striker.

He had built the lineup with care, deliberately varied, each one filling a gap the others left open instead of doubling up on something he already had.

Three gaps remained. An assassin, built for stealth and burst execution. A dedicated control specialist, something that could lock enemies down in a real fight.

And a support, a companion built to buff and sustain the rest of the roster the way a proper healer would.

He looked at the Hollow Emissary, and the answer to one of those gaps stood directly in front of him, wrapped in ash-gray cloth and trailing cold.

Perfect for the assassin slot. If the bond lands.

Succeed here, and it would be his first true Epic-tier companion, a leap past anything in his current roster. It would change the shape of every fight that came after.

The math, however, ran badly against him. Fifteen full levels separated them, and the odds reflected it: a flat one in a thousand, nothing like a sure thing.

Not easy. Worth every attempt anyway.

Before he could settle into the calculation, the Emissary moved first.

Cold murder flickered in the shadow of its hood. It stepped forward, dissolved into a thread of chill wind, and vanished from where it stood. The skull pendant at its chest swung once in empty air.

Hollowleap.

A heartbeat later, that same wind reformed directly above Kael’s head. The scythe was already rising, its black wisps streaming behind it like smoke from a burning village.

Hollowrend Slash.

His instincts screamed a half second too late. He read the arc perfectly and knew exactly where it was headed, but the gap in raw attributes left him no real window to dodge clear.

Knowing a blow was coming and surviving it were two very different things.All he managed was to trigger Bloodbind.

The tether snapped taut to the Void Colossus in the same instant the scythe came down.

The blade passed through him as though it barely acknowledged physical resistance at all.

A wave of true cold rolled through his chest, the kind that had nothing to do with winter, and for one terrible heartbeat he could feel the faces in the blade screaming against his ribs.

-1,675

Even with the Beastsoul Relic’s bonus and Warden’s Mandate’s fusion stacked together, his effective panel sitting on par with a full Level 50 Legendary boss, that single hit had carved deep.

With Bloodbind siphoning eighty percent of it away to the Void Colossus, the number left on his own bar still landed brutally.

*Without that transfer, this thing just took over eight thousand off me in one swing.*

Terrifying math, for a single connected strike.

A chill ran down his spine as the weight of what he was facing settled in fully. It didn’t dampen him.

If anything, it lit something sharper behind his eyes, the particular hunger of a man who has finally met something worth the effort. His mouth curved, slow and dangerous.

He raised his blade and answered in kind. Crimson light gathered along the edge, bright as a forge.

Wyrmrend Slash.

The arc swept out clean and true, and found nothing.A surge of cold, dark energy wrapped the Emissary an instant before contact.

Its whole body faded out of existence and slid clear of the blow, and the crimson light cut through empty air and dissolved against the far wall in a shower of sparks.

Shroudstep.

Kael had already planned for exactly this.

The moment the Emissary vanished, he barked a single word.

"Lyra!"

He needed nothing more. There was a trust between them that should have taken years to build, and they had shared only a handful of days.

Her bow was rising before he finished the syllable, an arrow already nocked and loosed skyward in one fluid motion.

It burst apart in midflight and scattered soft, silvery starlight across the whole chamber like frost catching the dawn. Every hidden corner lit bare. Every shadow was stripped of its cover.

The Hollow Emissary’s outline snapped back into view, caught mid-reposition with nowhere left to hide, its cloak still twisting around its shoulders.

Elara’s staff came up next. A biting storm of wind and snow rolled out to blanket the ground around the Emissary, the temperature plunging until the very stones began to crackle with ice.

The damage was minimal against stats so far ahead of her own, but the thin rime settling over its frame dragged its movement speed down hard regardless.

The Wraithlord seized the opening without hesitation, spear leveled, black armor gleaming dully in the starlight.

Cinder Charge.

The skeletal charger’s hooves lit with flame, and it closed the distance in a single thundering burst, sparks trailing behind it like a comet’s tail.

It drove straight into the Hollow Emissary with everything the charge had behind it, and the whole chamber shook.

Dust rolled across the floor. The torches along the walls flared and bent. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a pair of blood-red eyes turned slowly toward the man who had dared to bring a leash into this room.

Whatever came next, Kael intended to be standing at the end of it, with a sixth companion bonded at his side.