Chapter 199: Void Calamity Beast - Level 102

The smoke and purple dust slowly settled around the center of the cavern.

Forty hunters stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind their heavy shields, coughing against the sharp smell of burnt ozone.

Nobody moved... Nobody said a word.

Every pair of eyes was glued to the smoking crater where the six-story cocoon had just exploded.

Then, the rubble shifted.

A massive black hand, thick as a tree trunk and covered in jagged scales, slammed down onto the edge of the crater. The ground groaned under its weight. A second later, the creature pulled itself up into the open air.

It stood nearly twenty-five feet tall. Its upper body looked like an armored demon carved from black volcanic glass, supported by four thick, powerful legs that dug deep grooves into the bedrock.

Instead of normal hands, its forearms ended in massive, curved bone scythes that blurred slightly, like looking at hot pavement in the summer.

On its head, four glowing purple eyes burned in the dark, staring down at the forty humans like they were bugs.

A cold digital ping rang out from Evren’s wrist-pad:

[THREAT DETECTED: VOID CALAMITY BEAST — LEVEL 102 (SSS-RANK)]

Several junior guild masters in the back took an instinctive step backward.

"Level 102..." one of them whispered in a shaky voice. "The sensors aren’t glitching. That thing really broke past Level 100."

The monster opened its wide jaw, revealing rows of black, needle-like teeth, and let out an ear-splitting roar.

ROOOAAARRR!

The force of the roar hit the front line like a physical blast.

Loose rocks tumbled from the high ceiling, smashing into pieces on the floor. The sound was so loud it made Evren’s teeth vibrate in his gums.

"Hold your ground!" Silas Drake bellowed, stepping to the front of the Solar Crown hunters with his golden rapier raised high. "Ranged units, fire on my mark! Knock it off balance!"

A dozen spellcasters and archers in the back ranks stepped forward.

"Fire!" Drake roared.

A barrage of fireballs, ice lances, and explosive mana arrows shot across the dark chamber, lighting up the cavern in bright red and blue flashes.

Every attack hit dead center on the monster’s chest.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Thick smoke covered the beast’s torso.

The guild masters cheered for a brief second, thinking they had landed a clean blow. But as the smoke blew away, the cheers died in their throats.

The black armor on the monster’s chest wasn’t cracked at all. In fact, strange purple veins along its shell were glowing brighter, drinking in the stray elemental mana like water in a desert.

"It absorbed the magic," Amber said, tightening her hand around her dragon-bone sabers. "Regular spells aren’t going to scratch that shell."

The monster lowered its head and swung its right scythe arm horizontally through the air.

It didn’t even touch the ground. But the swing pushed out a massive, crescent-shaped wave of distorted air that tore straight toward the front line.

"Shields up!" Drake shouted.

Five heavy tanks slammed their alloy tower shields into the rock, interlocking their edges to form a solid metal wall. Golden defensive aura flared over the steel plates.

CRASH!

The air wave slammed into the shields with the force of a speeding truck, shattering the golden aura instantly. The five heavy tanks were thrown backward off their feet, skidding ten yards across the stone before crashing into the rock wall.

Two of them coughed up blood, their shields bent and dented in the center.

The front line was broken wide open.

The monster took a heavy step forward, raising both massive scythes to crush the fallen defenders.

"Not on my watch," Evren muttered.

He dashed forward, his boots kicking up clouds of gray dust.

Evren triggered his Gravity Domain directly on top of the beast’s front legs.

BOOM!

A circle of crushing downward force slammed onto the stone beneath the monster’s front hooves. The bedrock cracked, sinking four inches under the sudden pressure.

The beast’s forward momentum jerked to a sudden halt, its front knees bending slightly as it felt the immense downward weight. It let out an irritated hiss, glaring down at Evren with its four purple eyes.

Silas Drake seized the opening.

He lunged forward like a streak of golden lightning, thrusting his rapier straight toward the creature’s left eye.

CLANG!

The monster jerked its head to the side, deflecting the rapier with the thick armor plating on its cheek. Sparks sprayed across Drake’s golden breastplate, and the sheer shockwave of the parry knocked Drake two steps back.

Drake grimaced, shaking out the numbness in his right wrist. "Its armor is too thick, Chairman Evren! Even an S-Rank piercing skill barely leaves a white scratch!"

Evren didn’t answer right away; his eyes were locked onto the monster, tracing its movements and heat signatures in bright red lines using Kinetic Flow.

He looked past the front chest plate and scanned along its massive spine.

There, just beneath its neck where the bio-cables had been ripped away in the last battle, four large circular vents were pulsing with raw violet fluid. Thick purple smoke leaked out from the holes with every breath the beast took.

Because Evren had severed the feeding lines before the cocoon could finish its full eighteen minutes, the armor over those four vents hadn’t hardened yet.

The skin inside was raw, soft, and completely exposed.

"Its chest is a trap!" Evren shouted over the noise of the cavern. "It’s built to absorb frontal attacks! But its back vents are completely raw!"

Drake snapped his head around. "The back?"

"The bio-cables we cut fed that area," Evren explained quickly. "The armor on its spine never finished forming. If we hit those four vents with concentrated physical force, we can take it down!"

Drake looked at the four smoking holes on the monster’s back, then back at Evren.

"How do we get behind it?" Drake asked. "That thing has four legs and scythes on both sides. The second anyone tries to flank, it’ll cut them in half."

"You and the guild masters keep its attention on the front," Evren said. "Use physical strikes, not raw spells, so it can’t feed on the energy. Amber, Zephyra, and I will handle the flanks."

Drake nodded and turned toward the forty hunters, raising his golden blade high.

"You heard him!" Drake roared. "All heavy units, lock your shields and charge its front! Archers, aim for the joints! Do not let it turn around!"

The guild masters roared back in unison.

With their panic gone, the forty elite hunters moved like a well-oiled military unit.

Ten of them charged forward, locking their shields against the monster’s front legs to pin it in place. Behind them, archers fired dense volleys of steel-tipped arrows into its shoulder joints, keeping its head down.

The monster screeched in anger, swinging its scythes violently to bat the hunters away, but the number of coordinated strikes kept its attention completely glued to the front.

"Amber, Zephyra, now!" Evren called out.

Amber spread her crimson wings and shot into the air, banking wide around the monster’s right flank. She drew both dragon-bone sabers, unleashing bright red aura slashes across its right flank to draw its eyes away from Evren.

Zephyra slipped into the monster’s shadow on the left. Her whip-blade whistled through the dark, wrapping around its rear right leg to keep it from turning around.

The opening was clear.

Evren tightened his grip on the Frost-Bane Cleaver, focused on the four exposed vents on the monster’s spine and triggered Umbral Blink.

FZZT!

Evren’s body blurred into dark mist and reappeared twenty feet in the air, landing firmly right on the creature’s armored shoulders.

The monster felt the sudden weight on its back and let out a furious, muffled shriek.

Without wasting time, Evren poured both lightning and sub-zero frost into the cleaver’s blade. Crackling blue arcs and white freezing mist wrapped around the steel, turning the weapon into a terrifying pillar of cold electricity.

Evren raised the heavy blade high with both hands, aiming the razor-sharp point straight down at the largest exposed vent on its spine.

"Die," Evren growled.

He drove the blade downward with all the force of his SS-Rank body.

But right before the tip could touch the raw flesh, the monster’s four cosmic eyes flared with an intense, blinding flash.

A strange, unnatural humming sound echoed directly inside Evren’s skull.

The air froze, the roar of the battle instantly vanished, and a silent, invisible shockwave tore through Evren’s mind, freezing him dead in his tracks.