Chapter 232: The Rain of Annihilation, Golden Meteors.

Dante released the bowstring.

The single, glowing purple arrow shot upward, leaving a thick trail of crackling starlight.

The moment the arrow reached the apex of its trajectory, high above the massive Beast-Kin army, the Zenith-tier skill triggered.

The single arrow violently shattered.

It didn’t break into pieces. It aggressively multiplied.

One arrow became ten. Ten became a hundred. A hundred became ten thousand.

The sky above the valley was completely blotted out by a massive rain of blinding, superheated golden projectiles.

It looked like a meteor shower, casting a brilliant, aggressive light over the entire battlefield.

But it wasn’t just a random spread of arrows.

The Zenith-tier skill flawlessly synergized with the innate passives of the [Bow of the Eclipse].

[Passive Activated: Unerring Flight]

[Description: Arrows fired from this weapon possess an auto-aim mechanic. They perfectly track the target’s primary weak point. Ignores all evasion stats.]

The ten thousand blazing arrows didn’t fall randomly into the dirt.

They actively, intelligently curved in mid-air. They homed in on the massive, densely packed backline of the Beast-Kin army.

"What is that?!" Warlord Iron-Hide screamed, looking up at the falling suns. "Shields up! Protect the mages!"

They didn’t have time to raise shields. They didn’t have time to cast defensive barriers. The arrows were moving at supersonic speeds, guided by absolute, mathematical precision.

The volley hit.

The sound was absolutely deafening, a continuous, localized roar of pure destruction that completely shook the valley. It sounded like the sky itself was cracking open.

The Zenith-tier base damage, doubled by the [Asura’s Descent] buff and guaranteed to critically hit by his [Predator’s Eye] passive, struck the Beast-Kin army with overwhelming, apocalyptic finality.

The heavy, iron-reinforced siege ballistas were instantly atomized, melting into pools of glowing slag.

The thousands of mages in the backline didn’t even have time to scream. The golden arrows slammed directly into their unarmored bodies, completely bypassing any active magical shields.

[-250,000! OVERKILL!]

[-250,000! OVERKILL!]

[-250,000! OVERKILL!]

The red damage numbers didn’t pop up individually. They formed a massive, solid block of glitching red text that entirely obscured Dante’s vision.

The entire backline of the fifty-thousand-man army, the siege engineers, the mages, and the support clerics was instantaneously, flawlessly deleted.

They exploded into a massive, synchronized shower of blue pixels, their health bars completely zeroed out in a single fraction of a second.

The golden rain didn’t stop there.

The remaining arrows, having vaporized their primary targets, automatically re-targeted the surviving vanguard. The heavy cavalry and the infantry ranks were systematically shredded, their thick bone armor completely useless against the superheated, armor-piercing projectiles.

Dante lowered the bow. The golden invulnerability frames faded from his armor as the five-second timer expired. His massive health pool normalized, and his defense returned to baseline.

He stood alone in the crater, completely untouched.

The front line of the Beast-Kin army, the surviving infantry and the three terrified Warlords who had managed to survive the barrage, slowly turned around.

They looked at the empty, smoking crater where their entire support structure and artillery division had just been standing. Over twenty thousand elite troops had been deleted in a single, five-second window.

The aggressive, mind-controlled green static in their eyes violently flickered.

The sheer, unfiltered, apocalyptic terror of what they had just witnessed completely shattered Silas’s administrative override.

"He is a god!" a Beast-Kin warrior screamed, dropping his axe and falling to his knees. "The Outworlder is a god!"

The army broke.

They didn’t try to regroup. They didn’t try to charge. The mind-control programming holding them together completely snapped under the weight of absolute, unmitigated panic.

The remaining thirty thousand players completely abandoned the siege. They threw their weapons into the dirt, abandoned their mounts, and fled in absolute, unadulterated terror, desperate to escape the anomaly before he decided to fire another arrow.

"Retreat!" Warlord Blood-Tusk roared, turning his massive warhorse around. He didn’t care about the Enforcer’s decree anymore. He cared about survival.

The three Warlords led the panicked stampede out of the valley, leaving the massive stone fortress entirely alone.

Dante watched them run.

He didn’t chase them. He didn’t need to. The siege was broken, and the army was no longer a threat.

He slung the [Bow of the Eclipse] back over his shoulder and dismissed his [Asura Vanguard] buffs. He took a long, slow breath, letting the heavy adrenaline leave his system.

He turned his attention back to the massive, ancient stone fortress standing in the center of the valley.

The heavy iron gates of the keep were securely barred, but the walls were lined with dozens of heavily armed Beast-Kin warriors. They weren’t wearing the bone armor of the Emperor’s army. They wore simple, functional leather and steel.

They were staring down at Dante in absolute shock, having just watched a single player route an entire national army.

Dante didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t approach aggressively.

He walked slowly toward the main gates, his iron boots crunching on the dropped loot and pulverized rock.

He stopped fifty feet from the wall.

"I’m looking for the descendants," Dante called out, his voice calm and entirely devoid of hostility. "The Warden of 404 sent me."

The Beast-Kin warriors on the wall murmured nervously among themselves.

A figure stepped up to the battlements, pushing his way through the guards.

He was a young, sleek panther-kin. He wore polished silver armor that looked remarkably similar to the design the Blade-Saint had worn in Outpost 404. He held a long, curved silver sword.

[Entity Identified: Thane]

[Faction: Heir of the Blade-Saint]

[Level: 48]

Thane looked down at Dante. His golden eyes scanned the massive, imposing figure in the dark purple armor. He lingered heavily on the small, intricate insignia etched into Dante’s shoulder.

The [Zenith Epaulet].

Thane’s eyes widened. The suspicion and fear completely vanished, replaced by profound relief.

"The Conqueror of the Abyss," Thane whispered, his voice carrying clearly down to Dante. "My grandfather said you would come."

Thane turned to the guards manning the gate.

"Open the doors!" Thane ordered. "He is an ally!"

The heavy iron chains rattled loudly as the massive gates slowly ground open, granting Dante access to the inner courtyard of the fortress.

Dante walked inside.

He had broken the siege. He had found the descendants.

Now, he needed to find out exactly why Silas was so desperate to wipe this specific fortress off the map, and what the rogue Enforcer was really planning on the Beast-Kin continent.