Chapter 134: Chronos, World-Forge

If that staff hit Levi while he was frozen, the critical damage multiplier would easily wipe out his entire 117,180 health pool.

"Isolde!" Levi yelled. He couldn’t move his mouth, but his voice still carried through the party chat.

Isolde was standing near the edge of the gears. Her character model was completely frozen in grayscale too.

But her gray eyes suddenly flashed with bright green hexadecimal code.

The God-fragment inside her didn’t care about the game’s time magic. Her Anomaly code simply rejected the status effect. The green static violently burned away the grayscale filter on her avatar.

She snapped her arm forward, pointing her staff directly at the boss.

"Anomaly Pulse," Isolde stated flatly.

A massive, localized shockwave of glitching white code erupted from her staff. It didn’t deal damage. It just slammed into the boss and the room, violently forcing a server desync.

The time-stop shattered like cheap glass. Color flooded back into the room.

Levi’s character model instantly unlocked. His momentum carried forward, and the scythe smashed into Chronos.

[-5,000,000 True Damage]

"Nice hack!" Levi laughed, completely ignoring the boss’s canceled execution strike.

He didn’t give Chronos a chance to cast anything else. He just went to town. The boss was still slowing his attack speed, but Levi just muscled through it.

He landed four more heavy, sluggish swings.

25 million. 20 million.

The boss’s health bar hit the magic twenty percent threshold.

Because Chronos was classified as an Elite and not a World Boss, Levi’s ultimate execution skill was online.

"Soul Harvest."

The pitch-black spectral guillotine blade materialized out of the heavy, slow air above the boss. It didn’t care about the temporal slow. It dropped at normal speed, slicing cleanly through the thick brass neck of the Time-Keeper.

Chronos froze. The glowing blue clock faces on its body all stopped ticking simultaneously.

The massive mechanical entity collapsed into a pile of loose gears before shattering into millions of glowing blue polygons.

[Target Executed. Movement skill cooldowns reset.]

Levi let out a long breath, dropping the heavy scythe onto the floor. The yellow temporal slow dome vanished. His movement speed instantly snapped back to normal. His real-world arms felt incredibly light.

A dense crimson aura ripped out of the loose gears and slammed into Levi’s chest.

[Supreme Harvester triggered.]

[Chronos, the Time-Keeper’s primary stat is AGI (6,000).]

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

[Gained +200 AGI permanently!]

"Two hundred agility," Levi grinned, swiping his menu open. "That’s exactly what I needed to counter this zone’s stupid debuffs."

The massive XP drop hit him a second later.

[System Notification: Slain Level 90 Elite Chronos. Gained 500,000,000 XP.]

The golden pillar of progression light crashed down, completely washing away the VR fatigue.

[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 67.]

"Not quite enough for sixty-eight," Levi noted, looking at his progression bar. He had 160 million XP carrying over, and he needed 360 million for the next level.

He looked toward the heavy iron doors at the back of the gear room.

"The inner sanctum is right past those doors," Levi told Isolde, who was walking over to him. "There’s a whole hallway of Level 90 Aegis-Constructs waiting for us between here and the forge. I want to clear all of them. I need to hit Level 68 before we start crafting."

"Understood," Isolde said. "My True Damage parameters are ready."

They spent the next hour treating the connecting hallways like a slaughterhouse.

Levi used his new 1,936 Speed to literally run circles around the heavy silver constructs. He spammed his basic attacks, letting the 5% True Damage passive melt their 10 million HP pools. He chained Soul Harvests back-to-back, racking up insane amounts of experience points.

He didn’t stop swinging until the progression bar finally tipped over.

[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 68.]

Levi dismissed the notification and opened his stat sheet to assign his points. He had 10 new free stats from the two levels. He dumped them all into Strength.

His new permanent Strength hit exactly 3,060.

His Agility, boosted by the Chronos plunder, was sitting at an impressive 1,916.

He ran his offensive math in his head. 3,060 multiplied by two gave him a base attack of 6,120. He added the 2,000 from the Diamond scythe, bringing it to 8,120. With the 20% Herald passive, his Total Attack locked in at exactly 9,744.

"My stats are looking ridiculous," Levi said, closing the UI.

He looked at the final set of massive, glowing blue doors at the end of the hall.

"That’s the forge room," Levi said. He gripped his scythe tightly. "Let’s go see if we can finally upgrade this armor."

**

Levi pushed the massive, glowing blue doors open with his shoulder. The metal was incredibly hot to the touch.

The moment the doors swung inward, a blast of searing, dry heat washed over them. It smelled like melted copper and burning ozone.

They stepped out of the heavy iron hallway and onto a massive, floating plateau. There were no walls or ceilings here. The plateau was completely open to the dark purple sky of the Shattered Heavens.

But what caught Levi’s attention was the drop-off. The plateau was hovering directly over an endless sea of pure, liquid Aether. The blue energy rolled and crashed like ocean waves, generating so much ambient heat that the air above it physically warped and shimmered.

"That is a lot of magic," Levi muttered, wiping a bead of digital sweat from his forehead.

Right in the dead center of the plateau sat the World-Forge.

It didn’t look like a standard crafting bench or a player-made anvil. It was a colossal, brutalist structure made of dark iron and glowing runes. A massive crucible hovered above a bed of concentrated blue fire. Giant mechanical hammers hung suspended from iron chains, waiting to strike.

"This is the original forge where the Celestial Pantheon crafted their armor," Isolde stated, her gray eyes scanning the massive structure. "The ambient energy here accelerates digital fusion algorithms by four hundred percent."

"Perfect," Levi grinned. "But we have some unwanted guests to deal with first."

Guarding the World-Forge were the last remaining trash mobs in the dungeon. Six Level 90 Aegis-Constructs stood in a perfect circle around the anvil. They were heavily armored silver golems holding massive energy shields.

[Aegis-Construct]

[Level: 90 | Elite]

[HP: 10,000,000 | ATK: 35,000 | DEF: 50,000]

"Same trash as the front gate," Levi said, spinning his Diamond scythe. "Just two levels higher. The suppression penalty is still an absolute one hundred percent. My physical damage is walled, so we just stick to the True Damage."

"I will isolate them," Isolde replied. She raised her wooden staff and didn’t even wait for his command.

She slammed the staff into the iron floor. Three massive red Gravity Wells erupted simultaneously, completely blanketing the area around the forge. All six Aegis-Constructs were instantly caught in the Anomaly magic. Their movement speed artificially locked to zero. The heavy silver golems froze in place, unable to raise their shields.

"Too easy," Levi laughed.

He dashed forward, his 1,936 Speed turning him into a glitching black shadow. He stepped right into the red gravity fields and went to work.

He didn’t bother using Hollow’s Guillotine. The 100 Mana cost wasn’t worth it when the physical damage portion of the skill was reduced to zero anyway. He just relied entirely on the 5% Max HP True Damage passive from the Scythe of the Shattered Heavens.

He swung the blade into the first construct’s thick silver leg.

[-500,000 True Damage]

The massive red text popped up. His 40% Lifesteal instantly triggered, feeding 200,000 health into his fully capped 117,180 Shared HP pool. The overheal just vanished into the void.

Levi used his frame-linking technique, twitching his wrists to cancel the recoil animations. He swung incredibly fast, landing four hits a second.

[-500,000] [-500,000] [-500,000]

He was melting two million health every single second. He ripped through the first construct, hit the twenty percent threshold, and didn’t even bother casting Soul Harvest. He just kept swinging until the 10 million HP bar hit zero.

The silver golem collapsed and shattered into glowing blue polygons.

He moved to the next one. Chop. Chop. Chop.

Isolde backed him up, firing her 10,000 True Damage Anomaly blasts from outside the gravity fields. It was a totally one-sided slaughter. The constructs couldn’t move, and Levi’s percentage-based damage completely ignored their ridiculous 50,000 Defense.

In less than three minutes, all six Aegis-Constructs were dead.

The massive piles of silver coins and glowing blue crafting materials hit the iron floor with heavy clinks.

The XP drop hit Levi’s UI immediately.

[System Notification: Slain 6x Level 90 Elite Aegis-Constructs. Gained 280,000,000 XP.]

The golden pillar of progression light crashed down, completely washing away the heat and fatigue of the room.

[System Notification: Level Up! You are now Level 69.]