Chapter 15: Finish him

The gate open. The instant the opening appeared, the twenty elite units waiting in the center of the twentieth floor didn’t hesitate.

"Fire! Burn the entrance!" their leader, a scarred fighter named Captain Kross, roared through the corridor.

Twenty staffs ignited simultaneously. A wave of red fire shot forward, filling the entire entrance passage. The thermal output was high enough to melt ore into liquid fluid within seconds. The red flames rushed straight toward Dante face like a wave.

He didn’t activate his mirror body to reflect the attack either. He simply raised his right hand, where the Eye of Fate ring sat on his middle finger, and snapped his digits together.

Snap.

The moment the sound left his fingers, the red fire arrays completely froze in mid-air. The red flames didn’t explode. Instead, a sudden transformation took place. The bright red color was violently sucked out of the fire, replaced by a dark purple hue. The heat vanished from the air, replaced by an unnatural, cold that burned the skin even worse than real flames. The entire wave of fire belonged to Dante now.

Captain eyes stretched wide beneath his mineral helmet. "What is happening? The mana control... it’s gone! The fire isn’t responding to the staffs!"

Dante pointed his right finger forward.

The massive wave of dark purple fire instantly turned around, rushing back toward the twenty elite units at three times its original speed. The purple flames didn’t just strike their armor; the Hellfire Genesis attribute allowed the fire to pass directly through their physical shields, entering their skin to burn their internal mana channels from the inside out.

"Ahhhh!"

Ten vanguard units collapsed onto the floor instantly, clutching their chests as dark purple sparks erupted from their mouths and eyes. Their mana pools were completely incinerated within seconds, leaving them as hollow, lifeless husks on the ground.

The remaining ten units broke their formation, scrambling backward in pure panic.

Before they could even call for help, Yenna moved. Through the shared mental link, her voice echoed in Dante’s mind with absolute clarity.

’Activating Domain Silence on the leader.’

Yenna stepped forward, her feet making zero noise on the floor. A fifty-meter circle of deep, absolute silence expanded from her body, completely cutting off the room from the outside tower network. The screams of the dying men stopped. The sound of the crackling fire vanished.

She glided through the panic-stricken ranks like shadow. Her claws, dripping with purple smoke, moved in a clean blur, slicing through the remaining vanguard units before they could even draw their daggers. Within ten seconds, only Captain was left standing, his knees shaking as his staff fell to the floor.

Dante walked through the remnants of the purple sparks, stopping three feet away from Kross. The dark token on his belt flashed with its text interface.

[System Notification: Sovereign’s Tax is active.]

[Draining 5% of attributes from the remaining target.]

[You permanently gained: +6 Strength, +6 Intelligence.]

Captain felt his muscles turn to lead. He dropped to his knees, his breath coming out in small, ragged gasps as he looked up at Dante’s cold features beneath the black hoodie.

"Who... who are you?" Captain whispered, his voice sounding muffled inside Yenna’s silence zone. "Marcus sent the entire lower floor resource budget to equip us... how did you take the fire?"

Dante knelt down, his eyes locking onto captain with a terrifying stillness.

"Tell Marcus that his old manager is coming up to check the books," Dante said. "Where is he hiding his primary core stash on the upper levels?"

The captain spat a glob of fluid onto the ground, his teeth grinding together. "If I tell you, he will delete my family’s registration from the safe zone database. I am a dead man either way."

Dante didn’t look angry. He just lifted his right hand out of his pocket and snapped his middle finger again.

A spark appeared on his fingertip, humming with the heat of the Hellfire Genesis.

"If Marcus deletes your family, they die quickly," Dante said, his voice dropping low. "If I drop this spark into your chest, the purple fire will enter your body and burn your mana lines one millimeter at a time. It will take three days to finish. Marcus cannot match that timeline."

The captain looked at the spark. He could feel the unnatural radiating from it, making the air around his nose freeze. He shivered, his mental defenses completely breaking down under the pressure of Dante’s absolute indifference.

"Floor twenty-five," the captain leaked out, his voice cracking. "Marcus built a hidden vault inside the central mining sector of the twenty-fifth level. He keeps eighty percent of the Calamity-tier cores collected from the lower zones there. He is using them to fund his breakthrough to the SSS-Rank."

Dante nodded slowly. "And the keycard?"

"It is in the captain’s office on the twenty-first floor," the man gasped, his eyes fixed on the purple spark. "Please... I told you what you want. Just make it quick."

Dante didn’t answer. Through the mental link, his thoughts moved directly to Yenna.

’Finish him, Take his gear.’

Yenna moved instantly. Her feet made zero noise on the floor as she glided behind the captain’s back. Her smoky claws moved in a clean horizontal blur, slicing through his throat before he could even blink. The captain collapsed, his remaining life force flowing directly into the room’s energy pool.

[System Notification: Hostile vanguard leader eliminated.]

[Sovereign’s Tax calculation complete.]

[You permanently gained: +8 Strength, +8 Intelligence.]

[Your shared experience pool has reached maximum capacity.]

[You have leveled up! Level 22 -> Level 25.]

Dante felt a sudden rush of physical energy expand through his joints, his muscles tightening as his baseline attributes grew heavier. He reached down, picking up the small storage bag hanging from the captain’s belt. Inside were three high-tier transport crystals and fifty thousand corporate credits.

Yenna wiped her claws on her dark trousers, her black cat ears rotating toward the elevator doors at the back of the vanguard station.

"The twentieth floor is completely cleared,The network logs show no other units are coming down from the twenty-first floor. They think the vanguard is still fighting."

Dante shoved the storage bag into his hoodie pocket and walked toward the gates.

"Let them think whatever they want," Dante said aloud, swiping the master card through the elevator slot. "We are going to the twenty-first level to get that vault keycard. Marcus wants to reach the SSS-Rank—I am going to make sure his vault is completely empty before he even gets the chance."

The doors opened, and Both stepped inside, ready to climb the next level one step at a time.