Chapter 133: The Time-Keeper, Chronos

He relied on Isolde’s gravity snares to clump them together and just spammed his scythe swings, letting the Lifesteal keep him completely immortal.

A fifty-man raid party was supposed to spend two hours slowly chipping away at these mobs using coordinated crowd-control and healing rotations.

Levi cleared the entire first room of the dungeon in under ten minutes.

Over twenty Aegis-Constructs shattered into pixels, dropping massive piles of silver coins and glowing blue crafting materials called Aether-Sparks.

He didn’t even have time to pick up the loot before the massive XP drop hit his UI.

[System Notification: Slain 20x Level 88 Elite Aegis-Constructs. Gained 280,000,000 XP.]

The golden pillar of progression light crashed through the dark purple sky and engulfed Levi, completely washing away the minor VR fatigue in his arms.

[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 66.]

Levi grinned, swiping open his status menu.

The 280 million XP added to his leftover 40 million gave him exactly 320,000,000 XP. It perfectly paid the 320 million cost for Level 66. He had 0 XP carrying over, and he needed 340,000,000 XP for the next level.

He had 5 new free stat points. He dumped them straight into Strength without thinking.

His permanent Strength bumped from 3,045 to 3,050.

3,050 multiplied by two gave him a base attack of 6,100. Add the 2,000 Attack from his Diamond scythe, bringing it to 8,100.

Apply the 20% Herald class passive.

His new permanent Total Attack was exactly 9,720.

"Nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty," Levi said, closing the menu. He walked over to the dissolving polygons and started vacuuming up the dropped Aether-Sparks. "I can’t even use the physical damage against these guys, but it’s nice to see the numbers go up."

Isolde glided over to him, her wooden staff resting at her side.

"The next chamber contains the first major entity of the dungeon," Isolde warned, her gray eyes scanning the heavy iron doors at the back of the courtyard. "Scans indicate temporal manipulation magic. The target alters the physics engine’s internal clock."

"Time magic," Levi smirked, spinning his scythe. "Doesn’t matter if he slows me down. Every hit I land still deletes five percent of his health."

He walked toward the massive iron doors.

"Let’s go find the forge," Levi said.

**

The heavy iron doors leading out of the first courtyard groaned as Levi pushed them open. He didn’t bother checking for traps. His 117,180 Shared HP pool basically made him a walking tank, and his new Diamond scythe was itching for something to hit.

He stepped onto a massive, circular platform. The floor wasn’t made of stone or metal. It was a giant, interlocking network of turning brass gears. The grinding noise of the machinery was so loud Levi actually had to turn down his master volume settings in his UI.

"Watch your step," Levi warned, keeping his boots on the largest gear in the center. "If the physics engine decides to clip our hitboxes into these gears, we’re going to take infinite crush damage."

Isolde glided into the room behind him. Her untextured gray cloak hovered just an inch above the grinding brass. She didn’t look at the floor. Her blank eyes locked onto the far side of the room.

"Entity spawning," Isolde stated flatly. "High-density temporal magic detected. The server is allocating extra processing power to this grid."

A massive pillar of blue Aether shot up from the center of the gears.

The light faded, leaving behind an absolute nightmare of a Mini-Boss. It was a towering, floating clockwork monstrosity. Its body was made of thousands of spinning, floating dials and glowing blue clock faces. It held a giant staff shaped like the hands of a grandfather clock.

The system threw the glowing red nameplate directly into Levi’s vision.

[Chronos, the Time-Keeper]

[Level: 90 | Elite]

[HP: 100,000,000 | ATK: 60,000 | DEF: 100,000]

Levi stared at the text. He let out a harsh, dry laugh.

"One hundred million health," Levi said, shaking his head. "And one hundred thousand defense. The developers were smoking something when they balanced this zone. That armor stat is completely stupid."

He didn’t panic. He ran the math.

He was Level 66. Chronos was Level 90. That was a twenty-four-level gap.

In Starfall, a gap over twenty levels meant the Level Suppression penalty was hard-capped at 100%. The system was going to take his 9,720 Total Attack and reduce the physical damage portion to an absolute, solid zero. It didn’t matter if his scythe ignored 50% of the boss’s armor. He couldn’t scratch it with raw stats.

But the Scythe of the Shattered Heavens didn’t care about base stats.

"I have five percent Max HP True Damage," Levi reminded himself, gripping the heavy bone haft of his weapon. "Five percent of one hundred million is exactly five million. I just need to hit this guy twenty times, and he dies. I don’t care if he has a million defense."

Chronos didn’t wait for them to finish talking. The giant clockwork entity raised its staff. The gears inside its body clicked rapidly.

A massive, transparent dome of yellow energy expanded outward, covering the entire gear platform.

Levi felt the debuff hit him instantly. It wasn’t a damage attack. It was a status effect.

[Warning: Temporal Slow applied. Attack Speed and Movement Speed reduced by 50%.]

The VR engine reacted immediately. Levi suddenly felt like he was walking through thick mud. His arms became incredibly heavy. Moving his Platinum scythe felt like he was swinging a telephone pole underwater. It was the gaming equivalent of suddenly playing on a 300-ping server connection.

"Oh, I hate time magic," Levi groaned, forcing his boots to drag forward.

Chronos floated toward him, completely unaffected by the slow. The boss swung its heavy clock-hand staff in a wide, horizontal sweep.

Levi tried to duck, but his character model was moving at half speed. The staff smashed squarely into his ribs.

The pain engine jolted him.

The defensive math calculated instantly. Chronos had 60,000 Attack. Levi’s current Defense was 2,154.

60,000 minus 2,154 equaled 57,846 raw incoming damage. He had no percentage-based damage reduction anymore. The hit slammed directly into his Shared HP pool.

[-57,846]

His health bar plummeted from 117,180 down to 59,334 in a single hit.

"Levi! Your health parameters are compromised!" Isolde yelled. She raised her wooden staff, but the yellow dome was slowing her casting animations too.

"I’m fine!" Levi grunted. "Just keep firing when you can!"

He didn’t back up. He leaned into the heavy, sluggish feeling and swung the Scythe of the Shattered Heavens.

The blade was moving in slow motion, but it didn’t matter. It connected with the boss’s brass casing.

The True Damage passive bypassed the boss’s 100,000 Defense completely. It bypassed the 100% suppression penalty. The system simply read the boss’s max health and deleted five percent of it.

[-5,000,000 True Damage]

The massive red text exploded across the screen. Chronos let out a screeching, metallic gear-grinding noise.

At the exact same time, Levi’s 40% Lifesteal triggered. Forty percent of five million was two million.

[+2,000,000 HP]

The system tried to force-feed two million health back into his pool. His Shared HP bar violently slammed from 59,334 straight back to a perfect 117,180. The massive overheal just vanished into nothing.

"I can do this all day, clock-boy!" Levi yelled.

He planted his boots and just started swinging. It was incredibly annoying. Normally, with his massive Agility, he could swing four times a second. Now, it took him almost two full seconds just to complete a single attack animation.

But every time the blade touched the boss, another five million health vanished.

90 million. 80 million. 70 million.

Chronos swung the staff again. Levi ate the 57,000 damage hit to the face. He didn’t even flinch. He just swung back and instantly healed it. It was a stupid, brain-dead slugfest of broken mechanics.

Isolde’s True Damage blasts finally started landing. Because her casting speed was halved, she was only firing every few seconds, but every hit chunked another 10,000 True Damage off the boss.

Levi counted his swings. "Ten. Eleven. Twelve."

When the boss’s health hit exactly 30,000,000 HP, the gears inside Chronos began to spin backward. The yellow dome in the room flashed white.

A new, extremely aggressive system warning popped up.

[Chronos is casting Absolute Stasis.]

"What now?" Levi growled, winding up his fourteenth swing.

The room lost all its color. Everything turned entirely grayscale.

Levi’s character model completely locked up. He was frozen mid-swing, the blade of his scythe hanging exactly two inches away from the boss’s chest. He couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t blink. The VR engine literally severed his movement inputs.

[Status: Time-Stop. Duration: 5 seconds.]

Chronos, entirely immune to its own spell, raised its massive staff. The tip of the weapon glowed with highly concentrated blue Aether. The boss was winding up an execution strike.