Chapter 81: Void-Touched Hounds, The Artillery

The heavy, pitch-black fabric of the Mantle of the Long Night settled over Levi’s shoulders. The second he stepped out of the bonfire’s orange glow and back into the thick purple fog, the system UI stayed perfectly quiet. No red damage numbers. No suffocating drain on his health bar.

The *[Curse of the Long Night]* debuff icon flickered once and completely vanished from his peripheral vision.

"Alright, the jacket works," Levi muttered, adjusting the collar of the cloak. He unequipped his scythe, letting it rest on his back. "Free from the fog. Now we can actually play the game."

He looked inland. The Midnight Continent was an absolute nightmare of level design. The ground wasn’t dirt or grass; it was jagged, polished obsidian that reflected the dark purple sky. Massive black stone spires jutted out of the earth like broken teeth, covered in glowing, bioluminescent blue vines. Far in the distance, piercing the clouds, was the Midnight Spire.

Levi started walking. Isolde followed right behind him. She didn’t trigger any footstep audio. Her plain gray cloak just glided over the jagged obsidian floor.

They barely made it half a mile from the beach before the shadows between the rock formations started moving.

Low, guttural growls echoed across the glass-like ground.

"Company," Levi said, instantly drawing the Sovereign’s Deathknell.

Ten massive, pitch-black wolves stepped out from behind the obsidian pillars. They were the size of small horses, but their bodies looked like they were made of unstable dark matter. Their eyes burned with a toxic purple light, matching the fog around them.

The system threw up the stat block in bright red text.

[Void-Touched Hound]

[Level: 55]

[HP: 60,000 | ATK: 2,200 | DEF: 800]

"Level fifty-five," Levi said, deadpan. "You have got to be kidding me."

He was Level 36. The Void-Touched Hounds were Level 55. That was a nineteen-level gap.

In Starfall, the Level Suppression penalty scaled at 5% per level difference. Nineteen multiplied by five meant the game was going to slap him with an absolutely suffocating 95% damage reduction penalty. The system was basically telling him he had no business being in this zone.

’Alright, let’s look at the math,’ Levi thought, his eyes tracking the wolves as they fanned out into a hunting circle. ’Their Defense is 800. My Gold scythe ignores 20% of that. Twenty percent of 800 is 160. That drops their effective Defense down to 640.’

He checked his own Total Attack. It was sitting at 1,080.

1,080 Attack minus 640 Defense meant his raw damage per swing was exactly 440. Now, apply the brutal 95% suppression penalty. He was only going to deal 5% of his actual damage.

440 multiplied by 0.05 equaled exactly 22.

"Twenty-two Final Damage per basic strike," Levi scoffed, shaking his head. "Against a sixty-thousand health pool. My raw physical damage is literally completely useless."

He quickly ran the numbers for his skill.

[Hollow’s Guillotine] carried a 3.5 multiplier. 1,080 times 3.5 gave him 3,780 raw damage. Minus the 640 effective Defense left 3,140. Applying the 95% penalty dropped his massive Gold-tier nuke to exactly 157 Final Damage.

He couldn’t kill these things. Not natively.

He checked the defensive side. If a Hound hit him, its 2,200 Attack would go up against his current 349 Defense. 2,200 minus 349 was 1,851. The Diamond-tier necklace cut that in half, meaning he would take 925 damage per hit. With 6,480 Max HP, he could tank a few bites, but not ten at once.

"Isolde," Levi barked without looking back. "You are the artillery. I am the executioner. You don’t stop casting until the target hits twenty percent health. Got it?"

"Affirmative," Isolde stated, her voice robotic and flat.

The ten Void-Touched Hounds lunged simultaneously. They didn’t run; they practically teleported across the obsidian floor, moving with terrifying speed.

"Hollow’s Ward!"

Levi dumped 150 Mana. The swirling, pitch-black dark-matter shield erupted around him. Scaling off his 201 Intelligence, the shield locked into place with exactly 1,505 HP.

He immediately burned 100 Mana. "Hollow’s Guillotine!"

The scythe flashed with a dark-gold aura. Levi ripped the blade in a massive ten-meter cone, smashing into the front line of the charging wolves.

[-157] [-157] [-157] [-157]

The damage was completely pathetic, barely moving their health bars a millimeter. But the skill’s secondary effect triggered instantly. The broken shield icon popped up over the Hounds’ heads, shredding 20% of their remaining defense.

"Fire!" Levi yelled.

Isolde stepped forward. She didn’t flinch as the massive wolves bared their fangs. She just raised her basic wooden staff and pointed it at the debuffed pack.

A pulse of bright white light shot from the tip of her staff.

[-5,000 True Damage]

The corrupted red text exploded into the air. The first Hound’s health bar took a massive chunk. Because Isolde was an Anomaly, her attacks completely bypassed the 95% Level Suppression penalty. She just deleted server code.

Levi went to work. His job wasn’t to kill them; his job was to hold aggro so they didn’t touch Isolde.

With his 346 Speed, Levi was an absolute blur. He dashed between the massive black wolves, swinging his scythe in rapid, wide arcs. He landed basic attacks that hit for 22 damage. It was garbage, but every single hit applied his weapon’s passive bleed.

The tiny teardrop icon popped up over the Hounds.

[-5] [-5] [-5]

The true damage bleed ticked away. The wolves completely ignored Isolde, totally enraged by the constant ticking damage coming from the guy in black armor.

They snapped their jaws, trying to bite Levi’s legs. One of the Hounds caught his thigh.

[-925]

The bite completely shattered his 1,505 HP Hollow’s Ward, but the remaining shield absorbed most of the hit. Only a sliver of damage bled through to his actual health pool.

Levi didn’t care. He just kept herding them into a tight cluster. "Keep hitting them!"

Isolde unleashed a barrage of Anomaly blasts.

[-5,000] [-5,000] [-5,000]

The health bars of the massive wolves plummeted rapidly. 50,000. 30,000. 15,000.

Levi kept his eyes glued to the numbers. The second the first Hound dropped to exactly 12,000 HP—which was exactly 20% of its maximum health—Levi made his move.

"Soul Harvest."

Levi spent 50 Mana. The pitch-black spectral guillotine materialized in the purple-fogged sky and slammed straight down. It didn’t care about the 800 Defense. It didn’t care about the 95% suppression.

The spectral blade cleanly decapitated the Level 55 Hound.

[Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]

Levi’s Hollow’s Traverse instantly refunded the mana. He blinked three meters to the left, dodging a bite from the second Hound. Isolde blasted the second Hound down to 12,000 HP.

"Soul Harvest."

Execute. Reset. Blink.

Levi chained the executions flawlessly. He bounced across the obsidian floor, a glitching shadow of death. He dropped spectral scythes on all ten of the massive wolves in less than thirty seconds. The synergy was absolute perfection. Isolde provided the raw DPS to break the math wall, and Levi provided the execution threshold to finish them instantly.

The ten Void-Touched Hounds shattered into millions of blue polygons.

[System Notification: Slain 10x Level 55 Void-Touched Hounds. Gained 7,500,000 XP.]

The XP payout was astronomical. He was getting 750,000 XP per kill just from the massive level-gap multiplier.

Before the polygons even settled, a dense crimson aura ripped out of the dissipating monster corpses. It slammed into Levi’s chest.

[Supreme Harvester triggered.]

[Void-Touched Hound’s primary stat is AGI (500).]

[You have plundered 3% of its core stat.]

[Gained +15 AGI permanently!]

Levi let out a sharp laugh. "Fifteen Agility. I’ll take it."

He wiped a smear of digital dirt from his face and dismissed the dark aura around his scythe. He turned around to look at Isolde. She was already lowering her wooden staff, her blank eyes returning to a neutral stare.

"Your combat efficiency has increased by fourteen percent since we formed a party," Isolde stated mechanically. "The execution chain negates the necessity for prolonged damage output."

Levi walked over to her and smirked. "It’s called teamwork, Isolde. Try to feel it."

Isolde stared at him. She processed the word. "Emotions are inefficient. They consume processing power without providing mathematical advantages."

Levi just shook his head. But as he turned to start picking up the dropped loot, he noticed it. The edge of Isolde’s gray cloak flickered with a faint, warm green hue. It only lasted for a fraction of a second before stabilizing back to flat gray.

The God-fragment was saying one thing, but the human code buried underneath was definitely listening.

"Sure," Levi said, pocketing a stack of silver coins. "Let’s go find some more inefficient math."

***

Updated Stat Sheet:

Name: Levi | Level: 36

Class: [Herald of the Hollow (Unique)] | Talent: [Supreme Harvester (Unique)]

HP: 6480/6480 | Mana: 1810/2060

STR: 380 | AGI: 341 | VIT: 319 | INT: 201 | LUK: 175

Attack: 1080 | Defense: 349 | Speed: 361

Core Skills: [Hollow’s Guillotine], [Hollow’s Traverse], [Siphon Aura], [Soul Harvest], [Hollow’s Ward].