Chapter 130: Garuda, the Sky-Tyrant, Broken Math

The wind instantly hit them like a solid brick wall. They weren’t just falling; they were diving after a million-ton piece of rock that had a massive head start.

"Hold on!" Levi yelled, pointing the Behemoth’s nose straight down.

Isolde’s green Anomaly code flared around the beast’s hooves, creating tiny, slanted friction pads in the air that allowed the mount to literally run straight down toward the surface. Their speed spiked. They were dropping at terminal velocity, breaking through the thick, ashen clouds.

The friction of the atmosphere was absolutely brutal. The air around them began to physically burn, turning into a sheath of red-hot plasma.

The system threw up the environmental hazard warning.

[-5,000 True Damage]

[-5,000 True Damage]

The red text popped up over Levi’s head every single second. The atmospheric entry was designed to instantly incinerate any player stupid enough to jump off an island without a teleport scroll. Five thousand True Damage a second ignored all armor and damage reduction.

"Siphon Aura," Levi commanded calmly.

The green light flared around his boots. It drained 2 Mana a second to heal 15 HP. It was mathematically useless against the 5,000 damage drain.

But it didn’t matter. Levi glanced at his top-left UI.

[Shared HP: 105,980 / 115,180]

Their massive, Tether-bloated health pool of 115,180 could comfortably eat the environmental damage for nearly twenty-three seconds before they were in any actual danger.

"We’re fine," Levi yelled over the roaring plasma. "Just look for the landing zone!"

They broke through the bottom of the cloud layer. Below them, the massive Level 90 island was hurtling toward the digital ocean that currently covered the surface map.

"Target acquired," Isolde stated. She pointed her staff toward the very center of the falling landmass.

There, sitting inside a massive crater of cracked stone and glowing green crystals, was a nest made of shredded steel and entire uprooted trees.

Waiting for them in the center of the nest was the Level 85 World Boss.

"Pull up!" Levi shouted, yanking hard on the reins.

The Behemoth of the Hollow fired its hooves against the air, violently killing their downward momentum. The beast hit the rocky surface of the falling island with a thunderous crash, shattering the stone beneath its boots.

They had successfully boarded the plummeting rock.

Levi dismissed the mount and drew the Scythe of the Shattered Heavens. The Diamond-tier blade hummed with void energy, perfectly matching the apocalyptic chaos around them.

He looked up at the nest.

The Sky-Tyrant was waiting.

***

The wind on the falling island was absolute madness.

The entire landmass was plummeting toward the surface at terminal velocity. The gravitational sheer was violently ripping trees out of the dirt and throwing massive boulders off the edges into the empty sky.

Levi stood in the center of the rocky crater, his Gold-tier boots firmly planted against the quaking stone. The heavy dark fabric of his cloak whipped behind him, but he didn’t stumble.

Rising from the center of the steel-and-tree nest was an absolute monster.

It was a colossal, four-winged avian entity. Its feathers weren’t made of organic material; they were comprised of razor-sharp, highly compressed wind currents. Every time it shifted its massive wings, the air around it shrieked like metal scraping on glass. Its eyes glowed with a terrifying, piercing yellow light.

The system threw up the massive, aggressive red nameplate.

[Garuda, the Sky-Tyrant]

[Level: 85 | World Boss]

[HP: 50,000,000 | ATK: 40,000 | DEF: 20,000]

"Fifty million health," Levi said, resting the Diamond-tier Scythe of the Shattered Heavens on his shoulder. "And twenty thousand defense. That’s a lot of numbers for a dead bird."

He didn’t even bother casting a defensive shield. He just stood there and ran the combat math in his head.

He was Level 62. Garuda was a Level 85 World Boss.

That was a staggering twenty-three-level gap.

In Starfall’s engine, the Level Suppression penalty scaled at 5% per level difference. Twenty-three levels multiplied by five equaled exactly 115% suppression. The game legally capped the penalty at 100%, but the result was the same.

The system was programmed to reduce Levi’s physical damage output to absolute zero.

"My base attack is totally walled," Levi told Isolde, who was standing a few feet behind him.

"Your physical output is irrelevant," Isolde replied, her gray eyes locking onto the massive boss. She raised her wooden staff, the tip glowing with bright white Anomaly code. "Execute your weapon’s secondary parameters."

"Way ahead of you," Levi smirked.

He didn’t use an opening skill. He didn’t pop his Overdrive buff. He just bent his knees and launched himself forward with his 1,636 Speed. He closed the gap in a fraction of a second, leaping directly up into the air toward the boss’s massive, razor-wind chest.

He swung the Scythe of the Shattered Heavens in a brutal, horizontal arc.

The physical blade passed through the wind-current feathers. The system did its math.

Garuda’s 20,000 Defense completely absorbed Levi’s 9,432 Total Attack. The 100% suppression penalty triggered. His physical damage output registered as exactly 0.

But the Diamond scythe had a third passive ability.

*Attacks deal True Damage equal to 5% of target’s Max HP.*

The game engine registered the hit. It looked at Garuda’s massive 50,000,000 HP pool. It calculated five percent.

Fifty million multiplied by 0.05.

[-2,500,000 True Damage]

The red number that exploded out of the boss’s chest was so unbelievably massive that it actually clipped through the environment, the text rendering outside the boundaries of the crater.

Garuda let out an agonizing, ear-splitting shriek. A huge chunk of its compressed-wind feathers violently dissipated. The massive red health bar floating above the boss’s head visibly chunked backward by exactly five percent in a single, casual swing.

"That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen," Levi laughed out loud.

Garuda didn’t just take the hit. The World Boss reacted instantly. It snapped its four massive wings forward, unleashing a point-blank, unavoidable storm of razor-wind blades directly at Levi.

Levi couldn’t dodge it in mid-air. He took the hit straight to the chest.

The VR pain engine hit him with a horrific, shredding sensation that made his teeth grind together.

The defensive math processed instantly. The boss had 40,000 Attack. Levi’s current Defense was 2,054. Because he had sacrificed his Diamond necklace to forge the Soul-Tether, he had zero percentage-based damage reduction.

40,000 minus 2,054 equaled exactly 37,946 incoming raw damage.

[-37,946]

Levi’s massive Shared HP pool plummeted. It dropped from a perfect 115,180 straight down to 77,234.

"Okay, that hurt," Levi grunted as his boots hit the rocky floor of the crater.

But his scythe hadn’t finished its math yet.

The Scythe of the Shattered Heavens boasted an absurd 40% Lifesteal passive. The Lifesteal calculated based on the total damage dealt.

He had just dealt 2.5 million True Damage.

Forty percent of 2,500,000 was exactly 1,000,000.

[+1,000,000 HP]

A blinding wave of green numbers flooded his UI. The system forcefully tried to inject one million health points back into his pool. His Shared HP bar violently shot from 77,234 straight back up to 115,180, instantly capping out. The remaining 962,000 healing just vanished into the void.

Levi let out a breathless laugh. He was basically a walking glitch. He could take thirty thousand damage a hit and heal for a million.

"He’s all yours, Isolde!" Levi yelled, dashing back into the pocket.

"Firing," Isolde stated flatly.

She pointed her staff. A thick beam of pure white Anomaly energy slammed into Garuda’s back.

[-10,000 True Damage]

Her damage was a drop in the bucket compared to the scythe’s percentage-based hits, but she was consistently chunking the health bar without ever needing to worry about the boss’s armor.

Garuda panicked. The boss’s AI realized it was getting mathematically outpaced. It couldn’t out-damage Levi’s lifesteal, and its massive health pool was actively working against it.

The Sky-Tyrant shrieked, beating its four wings violently. It lifted off the floor of the nest, trying to fly up and create distance so it could spam AoE magic from the sky.

"Where do you think you’re going?" Levi sneered.

He didn’t need to chase it.

"Isolde, anchor the bird!"

"Gravity Well of the Abyss," Isolde commanded.

She slammed her staff into the rock. A colossal, glowing red sphere of Anomaly energy materialized in the air exactly fifty feet above the nest. It dropped straight down, completely enveloping Garuda’s massive avian body.

The effect was instantaneous. The artificial gravity inside the red sphere spiked to a billion times normal. The boss’s Speed stat locked to zero. Garuda shrieked as its four wings violently buckled under the pressure, physically dragging the World Boss right back down to the stone floor.

It was trapped.

Levi didn’t waste a single frame. He dashed right into the red gravity sphere.

"Hollow’s Guillotine!"