Chapter 197: The Six-Fold Harvest

The Colossus rose from the lava like a god climbing out of hell.

It was thirty feet tall. Its body was a walking fortress of condensed phantom energy, so dense that the air around it visibly bent, warping the red light of the sky into strange halos. Its armor was made of a solid shell of black energy, seamless and without any visible weakness.

Its head was a flat slab of phantom steel. No face. No helmet. Just a smooth black surface with two horizontal slits burning white-hot. The light from those slits was so intense that Holden’s eyes watered when his processor tried to scan them.

In its right hand, it held a greatsword.

The edge glowed orange-white from the heat of the lava, while the air around it shimmered from the sheer amount of energy packed into the blade.

The Colossus planted its feet.

Lava surged around its ankles, drawn toward the energy radiating from its body. The entire dungeon floor trembled as the massive creature took its first step.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Its footsteps were earthquakes.

Each one sent shockwaves across the burning plain, widening fissures, and throwing plumes of molten rock into the air. The ground between Holden and the Colossus was already falling apart, disappearing into the lava pit below and leaving him with a shrinking platform of solid stone.

Holden’s 10,000x processor analyzed the problem.

The results were not encouraging.

[Phantom Colossus (Rank 3, 6-Star, Nightmare)]

[Effective Combat Level: Rank 3, 9-Star+ (300% Boost)]

[Armor Integrity: 100% - No structural flaws detected]

[Weapon Energy Output: Sufficient to destroy a fortified mountain position]

[Estimated Survivable Hits at Current Rank: 0]

[Recommendation: EVADE ALL CONTACT]

Zero survivable hits.

The System was telling him that one clean strike from that sword would kill him

The Colossus raised its sword.

The motion was slow.

The weapon was so massive that the swing needed a long buildup. The Colossus pulled the sword backward, gathering momentum over roughly two seconds. For a fighter with a 10,000x processor, two seconds should have been more than enough time to calculate and execute a dodge.

It wasn’t.

Because the sword wasn’t simply falling toward him.

It was expanding.

As the Colossus swung, the blade of condensed energy stretched outward, growing wider every second. By the time the swing reached its full arc, the blade would cover a sixty-foot radius. ℯℯ𝑙.

Every inch of the remaining platform would be inside the kill zone.

There was nowhere to dodge.

Holden’s processor ran the calculation thousands of times in the space of a microsecond.

The result was always the same.

The blade would hit him.

The only question was how much of him it would hit.

He couldn’t dodge.

Even the Solar-Forged Sword, at full Hellfire output, couldn’t stop a weapon carrying enough force to split a mountain.

The sword came down.

BOOM!

A catastrophic release of force tore through the battlefield and rewrote the landscape. The platform vanished beneath the strike. Lava erupted into the air. The shockwave flattened everything within a hundred-yard radius, reducing solid rock to powder and turning liquid fire into vapor.

Holden didn’t dodge.

The Sovereign’s Pendant activated.

The moment the lethal energy of the Colossus’s blade entered the kill radius around Holden’s body, the pendant on his chest released everything it had.

A sphere of brilliant silver energy exploded outward from the artifact, surrounding Holden inside a dome of pure defensive force.

CLAAAAANG!

The sword hit the shield.

The two forces ground against each other with a deafening scream, throwing off waves of light and heat that turned the already-burning air into a superheated haze.

The shield held.

For exactly one second, it held.

Then it shattered.

CRACK!

The silver dome broke apart like glass. Fragments of defensive energy scattered through the air before dissolving into nothing.

The Sovereign’s Pendant had spent its entire charge in a single exchange.

The shield was gone.

But the sword had stopped.

The Colossus’s blade had been arrested in mid-swing. The full discharge of the Sovereign’s Pendant had been enough to halt its momentum for one second.

That was all Holden needed.

He lunged.

His body was exhausted. His muscles screamed with every movement. The 10,000x processor was running at ninety-nine percent capacity, every cycle devoted to keeping his body moving forward.

Both hands tightened around the Solar-Forged Sword.

The blade was still burning.

Holden compressed Hellfire Cleave to its maximum density, channeling every remaining ounce of his energy into a point at the tip of the blade.

Then he struck.

The tip of the Solar-Forged Sword touched the Colossus’s seamless chest armor.

For a second, nothing happened.

The armor was too dense.

Too strong for a Rank 3, 2-Star fighter to simply cut through.

Then the fire went in.

The Hellfire didn’t overpower the phantom steel through brute force. Instead, its Perfect-tier flame resonated with the energy holding the armor together. The two energies collided at a frequency that destabilized the bonds maintaining the Colossus’s shell.

The surface of the chest plate rippled, cracked then softened.

The blade pushed through.

FWOOOOOSH!

Fire erupted inside the Colossus’s body.

The Hellfire had been compressed to a pinpoint as Holden forced it through the destabilized armor. The moment it cleared the shell, it expanded violently inside the creature.

It hit the core.

The core fought back.

Dark energy surged outward, trying to repel the invading flame. The two forces collided inside the Colossus’s body, creating a pressure wave that made the creature’s armor bulge outward.

Crack. Crack. CRACK.

The armor couldn’t contain it.

The Colossus’s chest exploded.

BOOOOOOM!

A pillar of white-hot crimson fire erupted from its ruptured torso and shot into the sky. It pierced the red clouds and climbed so high that it split the atmosphere above the dungeon.

For a moment, a shaft of pure white light broke through from somewhere beyond the nightmare.

The Colossus froze.

Its white-hot eyes flickered.

Then it dissolved.

The whole thirty-foot body of condensed phantom energy collapsed inward. The armor lost cohesion. Its limbs broke apart. The head split down the middle.

The greatsword was the last part of the body to lose its shape. With the energy sustaining it gone, the massive weapon shattered into countless fragments that dissolved into the air.

Only the core remained.

For one second, it hung in the air as a sphere of raw, concentrated energy. It burned so brightly that Holden raised his forearm to shield his eyes.

Then the Hellfire consumed it.

The core vanished.

Tsssss.

The red sky flickered.

The lava stopped flowing.

The dungeon was dying.

Without the energy sustaining it, the pocket dimension began collapsing inward. The burning plain folded into itself like a dream coming to an end.

Holden dropped to his knees.

His sword disappeared.

He couldn’t hold it anymore.

His fingers had gone numb. His arms hung uselessly at his sides as his chest heaved with every breath. Each one felt like fire filling his lungs.

Sweat poured from his body and evaporated against his skin in the remaining heat.

The dungeon dissolved around him.

Holden was on his knees on the bedroom floor.

The carpet beneath him was wet with sweat. His Phantom-Weave Armor was scorched, scratched, and cracked in a dozen places.

His entire body trembled with exhaustion.

Then the System went berserk.

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

[Phantom Colossus (Rank 3, 6-Star, Nightmare) Defeated!]

[+50,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

[Total Multiplier: 6x!]

[+300,000 KP!]

DING! DING!

[NIGHTMARE DUNGEON COMPLETE!]

[First Clear Bonus!]

[+10,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

[+60,000 KP!]

DING!

[Total KP Earned (Nightmare Session): +540,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 1,496,290]

[KP Booster: 2x Active]

Holden stared at the number.

The figure glowed brightly in his vision, pulsing with every beat of his heart.

He had crossed the million mark.

The dungeon had nearly killed him.

But the reward had been worth it.

Holden tried to stand. His legs refused.

He tried again.

His knees buckled beneath him, and he settled for sitting on the floor with his back against the bed.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed quietly on his finger.

It had sealed countless minor wounds throughout the Nightmare session, including the three more serious cuts from the second wave and the injuries that followed during the later battles. Without it, those wounds would have accumulated into something dangerous.

The ring had helped keep him alive.

Holden looked at the number again.

1,496,290.

He had crossed the million mark.

But the System had already made one thing clear.

The next multiplier milestone wouldn’t simply activate because he had reached the required KP.

He needed Rank 4 first.

And Rank 4 wasn’t cheap.

The path to the next rank required 3,230,000 KP.

Holden looked at his current total.

1,496,290.

He still needed 1,733,710 more KP.

A lot more.

But tonight, he had earned more KP in a single session than most cultivators could hope to earn in their entire lives.

Holden pulled himself toward the bed.

His arms gave out halfway.

He rolled onto the mattress like a fish thrown onto a dock and landed flat on his back.

The ceiling stared down at him.

The System interface still glowed in his vision.

1,496,290.

He smiled.

It was a small, tired, satisfied smile.

The smile of someone who had just run a marathon through hell and somehow returned with a bag of gold.

"I definitely earned a day off."

His eyes closed.

He was asleep before the System finished displaying the final notification.