Chapter 186 - 50% Retribution Force Applied

Evren pulled the cores into his ring and checked the countdown timer.

[ASTRAL-CHASM RIFT SINGULARITY COLLAPSE: 01:21:40 REMAINING]

"Still too slow," he said, taking a deep breath to steady his racing pulse. Fighting without his area-of-effect skills was burning far more physical stamina than usual.

He broke into a dead run, following the glowing crystal veins deeper into the chasm. For nearly fifteen minutes, he leaped over collapsing ridges and dodged falling boulders, pushing his body to the limit to reach the sixty-level threshold.

At the end of the tunnel, the stone path ended abruptly at a sheer cliff. Before him stretched the third zone: the Gravity-Inversion Trench.

An alert blinked in the corner of his vision as he stepped to the ledge:

[WARNING: SINGULARITY EVENT HORIZON PROXIMITY]

[GRAVITATIONAL TIME COMPRESSION: TIMELINE ACCELERATING]

Evren watched the golden timer in his sight. The seconds were ticking down twice as fast as normal. The massive gravitational pull of the black singularity above was warping space and time, bleeding away the remaining clock.

The huge chasm had no solid floor, opening into a dark bottomless void where purple spatial lightning flashed between broken rock pillars. Large pieces of stone and floating platforms drifted slowly upward toward the spinning singularity above.

A single narrow stone walkway bridged the gap between the cliff and the distant central platform. And standing right in the middle of that walkway was a twelve-foot titan of solid stone.

[LEVEL 78 VOID GOLEM]

The golem’s body was made of dark meteoric rock bound together by glowing purple veins of concentrated void mana. Its glowing eye slits burned with red light as it spotted Evren standing at the tunnel exit.

The monster raised its massive stone fists, then slammed them down onto the walkway with thunderous force. A violent shockwave tore through the floating bridge, sending jagged chunks of stone flying into the abyss below.

Determined to close this rift as soon as possible, Evren sprinted straight down the crumbling bridge. The golem swung a fist the size of a carriage straight at his chest, the air screaming under the crushing blow.

Evren tapped into Umbral Blink, his body dissolving into shadow for a microsecond. He vanished from the path of the fist, reappearing five feet higher directly atop the golem’s outstretched stone arm.

He sprinted along the thick arm toward the creature’s head, channeling Heavenly Lightning through the Frost-Bane Cleaver. With a roar of effort, he buried the heavy blade into the golem’s neck joint, releasing a blinding burst of golden lightning.

The golem roared in fury, its stone neck cracking under the blast. It raised its free hand to swat Evren like an insect, forcing him to leap backward into the empty air.

In the zero-gravity zone, Evren flipped smoothly, planting his boots onto a drifting slab of granite. He bent his knees and pushed off with all his SS-Rank strength, hurtling back toward the golem like an arrow.

The golem raised both arms in a heavy guard to block the incoming strike. Evren blinked again, phasing right through the creature’s guard and landing squarely on its chest plates.

Holding the cleaver with both hands, Evren drove the blade straight into the pulsating purple mana core at the center of the golem’s chest. "Shatter!" Evren shouted, unleashing the full force of his lightning directly into the monster’s heart.

The golem’s stone body stiffened as blinding golden light shot out through every crack in its rocky armor. With a deafening boom, the twelve-foot beast exploded into harmless stone dust and purple embers.

Evren snatched the large Level 78 core from mid-air as he leaped off the collapsing walkway. He landed with a heavy thud onto the edge of the central platform, rolling twice across the stone to absorb the momentum.

[CORE SIPHON ACTIVE: 1x LEVEL 78 VOID GOLEM CORE HARVESTED]

Evren stood up, breathing heavily as sweat dripped from his chin. His muscles ached from the continuous high-speed combat, but his eyes were sharp and clear.

He looked up at his System display:

[ASTRAL-CHASM RIFT SINGULARITY COLLAPSE: 00:39:15 REMAINING]

Thirty-nine minutes left.

Between the long run through the lower levels and the singularity warping time near the bottom of the chasm, over forty minutes had vanished in what felt like a brief sprint.

He had less than forty minutes... obviously less with the time acceleration, before the singularity crushed the entire zone into nothingness. Ahead of him, the center of the underground cavern opened into a huge dome of black stone.

High above the floor, a massive black singularity sphere was spinning with terrifying speed, tearing huge slabs of rock from the cavern walls and crushing them into floating dust.

Hovering directly beneath the black sphere was the ruler of the rift.

A sixty-foot giant stood motionless above the central dais, its body armored in plates of dark meteoric steel and glowing purple crystals. In its right hand, it held a massive crystal war hammer that crackled with spatial lightning.

At the center of the giant’s chest, a radiant star-shaped diamond was beating like a radiant heart, bathing the entire chamber in pure white light. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

[LEVEL 80 STAR-DIAMOND VOID TITAN]

The cure for Calista’s legs was beating right there, locked inside the chest of a Level 80 boss.

The huge creature slowly turned its glowing purple eyes down toward the lone intruder, lifting its massive hammer into the air. The pressure from its aura was so heavy that the stone beneath Evren’s boots cracked.

Evren wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and adjusted his grip on the Frost-Bane Cleaver.

"Thirty-nine minutes," Evren said quietly to himself, stepping toward the center of the platform. "That is more than enough time to bring your core home."

The sixty-foot titan took a massive step forward, swinging its crystal war hammer in a sweeping arc. The hammer tore through the air, sending waves of purple spatial lightning crashing across the platform floor.

Evren activated Kinetic Flow, reading the glowing purple trajectory of the blow before it landed. He leaped high into the air, vanishing into shadow with Umbral Blink just as the hammer obliterated the stone where he had stood.

He reappeared twenty feet up, dropping directly toward the titan’s chest. Evren gripped the Frost-Bane Cleaver with both hands and channeled raw mana straight through the hilt.

The moment his mana hit the frozen monster core inside the weapon’s guard, a wave of cold frost mana burst across the blade. Golden lightening crackled alongside the frost, wrapping the edge in a storm of ice and thunder.

Evren drove the cleaver down with all his SS-Rank strength straight into the crystal armor surrounding the star-shaped core.

A deafening shockwave exploded across the platform as the blade connected.

The dual blast of sub-zero ice and high-voltage lightning tore a jagged fracture straight across the titan’s chest plate, making the sixty-foot giant stumble a half-step backward.

Before Evren could smile, a bright purple geometric grid flashed across the monster’s crystal skin:

[BOSS TRAIT: RETRIBUTION LATTICE ACTIVE]

[DAMAGE REFLECTION: 50% RETRIBUTION FORCE APPLIED]

An invisible hammer of pure kinetic shock detonated directly against Evren’s chest. Half of the devastating force he had just unleashed slammed straight back into his own ribs.

Even with his SS-Rank body density and the thirty percent damage reduction raid blessing from the home-made dinner quest, the impact felt like getting hit by a speeding train. His breath was knocked completely out of his lungs.

Blood welled up in Evren’s throat, and he was hurled fifty feet backward through the air, crashing hard against the cracked platform.

He skidded across the stone on his knees, coughing up a spray of blood.

He wiped the blood from his lips, his ribs burning with pain as he stared up at the towering giant, then at the alert on his screen.

[BOSS TRAIT: RETRIBUTION LATTICE ACTIVE]

[DAMAGE REFLECTION: 50% RETRIBUTION FORCE APPLIED]

To kill this Level 80 titan before the singularity collapsed, he would have to take half of that fatal damage into his own body.