Chapter 276: The Black Dragon Gang Also Wants to Interfere?, The Hidden Flank

The battlements of the Citadel were a localized bloodbath.

The Level 50+ Dark Demon NPCs of the Heavenly Fire Sect were systematically tearing through the Aegis Vanguard defenders. Despite Aria's [Life Song] providing massive passive regeneration and Lila's gravity wells disrupting the enemy formations, the sheer, unmitigated raw stats of the endgame entities were mathematically overwhelming the Level 30 players.

"Hold the eastern wall!" Sera screamed, drawing a sleek, silver rapier and physically stepping into the frontline to deflect a heavy magma strike aimed at a downed cleric. "Do not let them reach the courtyard stairs!"

Mei was a blur of motion on the western flank, her [God-Slaying Skillet] ringing out like a continuous, localized church bell as she aggressively batted heavy infantry off the walls. Casanova, fully expanded in his [Titan's Physique], was wrestling a massive lava lizard near the main gate.

But they were losing ground.

High above the chaos, Dante stood perfectly still on the central obsidian spire.

He hadn't drawn a weapon. He hadn't cast a single spell.

"Dante!" Nyx's voice cracked over the private comms, completely devoid of her usual analytical calm. "The eastern flank is buckling! The NPCs just broke through the second barricade! If you don't drop an AoE right now, they are going to flood the courtyard!"

"I see them," Dante replied smoothly, his red eyes completely focused on the dark, quiet tree line roughly five hundred yards away from the eastern wall.

"Then do something!" Lila panicked, slamming her staff into the stone to pin another group of charging enemies. "We're dying!"

Dante didn't look at the dying players. He didn't look at the NPCs.

He was watching the shadows.

Through the dense, corrupted foliage of the Sky Demon Forest, Dante's maxed-out Intuition stat clearly tracked the massive, synchronized movement of five thousand highly organized, stealthed players.

The Black Dragon Syndicate.

Ryujin had returned. The Guild Master of the Sakura Nation had mobilized his absolute best, highest-level rogues and assassins, forming a specialized, highly lethal strike team. They were creeping silently through the brush, completely ignoring the massive siege happening at the front gates, moving in a wide arc to perfectly flank the vulnerable, crumbling eastern wall.

Dante understood the tactic immediately.

Ryujin didn't want to fight a fair war. He didn't want to engage Dante while the anomaly was fully buffed and resting in his invincible fortress.

Ryujin wanted the Citadel.

The Sakura Nation leader was waiting for the Heavenly Fire Sect to completely exhaust Aegis Vanguard's resources, break the walls, and theoretically kill Dante or force him into a critical, low-health state. Then, the five thousand stealthed Black Dragons would aggressively flood the broken eastern wall, execute the surviving NPCs, and casually claim the Level 5 guildhall before Dante could respawn.

"You're a scavenger, Ryujin," Dante murmured, a cold, predatory smile spreading across his face.

Dante opened his guild management interface.

He had fifty thousand players actively fighting and dying on the walls. He couldn't risk dropping a Zenith-tier [Starfall] or [Cyclone of Ruin] on the eastern flank. The massive, indiscriminate AoE damage would vaporize his own guild members alongside the NPCs, and the Sakura Nation assassins were still technically outside the blast radius, waiting in the trees.

If Dante engaged the NPCs with his heavy attacks now, Ryujin would simply wait for his cooldowns to trigger before launching the ambush.

Dante needed a localized, highly specific tactical wipe. He needed an attack that would instantly delete the high-level NPCs without harming his own players, while simultaneously conserving his Zenith-tier cooldowns to deal with Ryujin's five-thousand-man flank.

He needed the guild's ultimate weapon.

"Sera," Dante commanded, his voice cutting through the panicked shouting on the comms with absolute, localized authority. "Pull the eastern flank back. Abandon the outer wall entirely. Funnel the NPCs into the inner courtyard."

Sera froze mid-parry, staring up at the central spire. "Dante, are you insane?! If we let them into the courtyard, they have direct access to the guild core! If they shatter the monument, the Citadel falls!"

"They aren't going to touch the monument," Dante stated flatly. "Trust me. Pull them back. Now."

Sera didn't argue. She trusted Dante's combat logic implicitly.

"All units on the eastern wall!" Sera roared, abandoning her duel and sprinting toward the stairs. "Fall back! Abandon the barricades! Retreat to the inner courtyard!"

The Aegis Vanguard players didn't hesitate. They were exhausted, heavily battered, and terrified. They immediately broke formation, turning and scrambling down the wide obsidian staircases, desperately fleeing into the massive, open-air courtyard below.

The Heavenly Fire Sect NPCs roared in localized, artificial triumph.

"The wall is broken!" Commander Ignis-Claw bellowed, pointing his magma battleaxe toward the retreating players. "Flood the courtyard! Burn the sanctuary to the ground!"

Hundreds of massive, heavily armored Dark Demon NPCs poured over the abandoned battlements, charging aggressively down the stairs and flooding into the pristine white marble courtyard. They aggressively swarmed the area, their heavy boots cracking the polished stone, their weapons radiating intense, localized heat.

They were completely concentrated in a massive, densely packed cluster in the dead center of the fortress.

"Dante, they're inside!" Nyx warned, watching the red threat markers fill her datapad screen. "There are over eight hundred of them in the courtyard!"

"I see them," Dante said, stepping up to the absolute edge of the central spire, looking down at the massive, swirling mob of hostile NPCs.

He didn't draw [Voidsever]. He didn't activate [Asura's Descent].

He opened his guild interface, navigating directly to the highly restricted, administrative tab unlocked by achieving the First Guild milestone.

He selected a specific, localized command icon.

"All Aegis Vanguard mages and archers," Dante broadcasted across the entire guild channel. "Target the center of the courtyard. On my mark, channel your mana into the guild array."

Thousands of ranged players, currently standing safely on the high interior balconies overlooking the courtyard, raised their weapons, confused but completely ready to follow orders.

Dante didn't wait.

"Mark," Dante commanded.

He tapped the icon on his interface.

[Guild Skill Executed: Dark Cage]

The system interface didn't flash blue or gold. The entire sky above the Citadel violently hitched, turning a deep, aggressive, bruised purple.

The [Dark Cage] wasn't a standard player skill. It was the exclusive, combination crowd-control ability rewarded for being the server's First Guild. It required the synchronized, localized mana input of hundreds of guild members to activate, but the sheer, overwhelming power of the skill scaled exponentially with the number of casters.

Dante had just directed over a thousand ranged players to feed the array simultaneously.

The result was mathematically apocalyptic.

A massive, towering dome of solid, impenetrable dark energy slammed down directly into the center of the courtyard. The dome was easily two hundred feet wide, completely enclosing the eight hundred Heavenly Fire Sect NPCs in a flawless, inescapable localized prison.

The dark energy didn't just trap them.

[Debuff Applied: Absolute Paralysis.]

[Effect: Target's mobility, evasion, and localized physical mitigation are reduced to zero. Duration: 60 Seconds.]

The eight hundred Dark Demon elites, including Commander Ignis-Claw, locked up completely. They froze mid-stride, their weapons raised, their aggressive roars silenced. The massive, overwhelming threat of the invasion was instantaneously, flawlessly neutralized.

"They're pinned!" Casanova cheered, staring down at the massive, dark cage from a nearby balcony. "They can't move!"

"Don't just stare at them!" Dante ordered sharply. "The cage doesn't deal damage! It's a localized holding pen! Open fire!"

The Aegis Vanguard players didn't need to be told twice.

They were furious. They had just spent the last twenty minutes getting brutally battered by the high-level NPCs, watching their guildmates suffer localized True Deaths.

Now, the enemies were completely paralyzed, tightly clustered in a massive, unmissable target zone, and their defense stats were functionally zero.

Thousands of mages and archers unleashed absolute, unmitigated hell.

A massive, continuous, overlapping barrage of fireballs, frost lances, arcane bolts, and armor-piercing arrows rained down from the balconies, pouring directly into the [Dark Cage].

The dark energy of the dome allowed allied attacks to pass through while completely trapping the hostile entities inside.

The damage numbers exploded in a massive, blinding red cloud.

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

Because the NPCs possessed zero localized defense, even the low-level attacks from the Aegis Vanguard recruits were hitting with devastating, unmitigated force.

The courtyard turned into a literal blender of magical artillery. The eight hundred elite NPCs were systematically, methodically melted down into digital ash. They didn't even have the localized mobility to raise their shields. They just stood there, completely paralyzed, as their massive health bars were shredded in seconds.

"This is beautiful," Sera whispered, watching the slaughter from the safety of the command suite. "It's mathematically flawless execution."

Dante didn't celebrate the slaughter. He didn't care about the NPCs.

He immediately turned his attention away from the courtyard and looked back out over the eastern wall, staring into the dark tree line of the Sky Demon Forest.

He was watching the true threat.

In the dense, corrupted brush, Ryujin stared in absolute, unfiltered horror as the massive, impenetrable [Dark Cage] slammed down, instantly trapping and neutralizing the primary invasion force.

The Sakura Nation Guild Master realized his tactical plan had just completely, violently disintegrated.

He hadn't waited for the NPCs to weaken Dante. He had waited for the NPCs to provide a distraction, and Dante had just flawlessly deleted the distraction without burning a single localized cooldown or personal resource.

Ryujin's five thousand elite assassins were currently sitting in the woods, completely exposed, staring at an anomaly who was now entirely free to focus his absolute, unmitigated attention on them.

"He saw us," a Black Dragon lieutenant whispered over the panicked comms, noticing Dante's glowing red eyes locked directly onto their position in the trees. "God-King, he knows we're here. We need to abort."

Ryujin's face twisted into a mask of pure, desperate, bruised ego.

He had lost his nation's economy. He had lost his primary army. He had been humiliated on a global broadcast twice. If he ran away now without even engaging, the Black Dragon Syndicate was permanently finished.

"We do not abort," Ryujin hissed, drawing his katana. The blade crackled with frantic, aggressive lightning.

Ryujin didn't order a full frontal assault. He wasn't stupid enough to charge a fully fortified Citadel with light infantry.

He looked at the high, exposed balconies where the Aegis Vanguard mages and healers were currently distracted, pouring their mana into the [Dark Cage] in the courtyard below. They were completely focused inward, ignoring the outer walls.

"Deploy the suicide squad," Ryujin ordered coldly.

The lieutenant hesitated. "Sir? A suicide push? Against the automated defenses?"

"I don't care about the defenses!" Ryujin roared quietly. "Equip the squad with the Invincibility Scrolls and the CC-Immunity elixirs! I want them to breach the wall, dive straight onto the balconies, and activate localized dispel scrolls on the Dark Cage!"

Ryujin's plan was desperate, but tactically sound. If a squad of completely invulnerable, unstoppable rogues managed to break the [Dark Cage], the surviving high-level NPCs would be instantly freed right in the middle of Aegis Vanguard's unprotected backline. The resulting chaos would tear the defending guild apart from the inside out, providing Ryujin with the perfect opening to claim the Citadel.

"Do it now!" Ryujin commanded.

Dozens of elite Sakura Nation rogues stepped forward in the brush. They didn't hesitate. They simultaneously crushed glowing golden scrolls and downed vials of thick, blue liquid, instantly wrapping their avatars in brilliant, impenetrable auras of absolute systemic immunity.

They broke stealth, sprinting out of the tree line with terrifying, localized speed, heading straight for the eastern wall of the Citadel.

Dante, standing on the central spire, saw the golden auras flaring in the dark.

"Invincibility frames," Dante noted, crossing his arms.

He smiled. It was a cold, predatory, incredibly dangerous expression.

"Finally," Dante whispered. "A real fight."

He didn't order his automated ballistas to fire. He knew the turrets couldn't pierce the premium, cash-shop invincibility scrolls.

Dante reached up and tapped the dark, liquid-shadow metal of the [Night Illusion Mask] resting on his face.

It was time to introduce the Sakura Nation to the true power of the Asura.