Chapter 207: The Continental Raid, All Hands on Deck

The glitching UI in Alvian’s vision smoothed out. The padlocks over his skill trees shattered. His [Void Sovereign] class icons lit up, bright and eager. The oppressive, sanity-draining aura of the creature had vanished, replaced by the standard, heavy pressure of a high-level boss monster.

It was no longer an abstract concept of the end of the world. It was a target.

"It’s solid," Valeria realized, looking up at the beast. She reached back and unhitched her massive claymore. "It has a level. It has a health bar."

"Which means it can take damage," Alvian agreed, the cold, calculating efficiency returning to his tone. He reached out, and the [Lance of the Void Winter] materialized in his hand, its black ice blade humming with a hungry resonance. "And if it has stats, it can be killed."

The Leviathan, suddenly realizing it had been dragged down into the mud of mortality, let out a roar. It wasn’t the silent, psychic scream that bypassed eardrums. It was a physical, concussive blast of sound that rattled the spires of Azureus and sent a shockwave through the clouds.

"It sounds angry," Valeria noted, her golden [Titan’s Aura] flaring back to life, the comforting light pushing away the gloom of the massive shadow.

"It used to be a god," Alvian said, spinning the lance expertly in his hand. "Now it’s just a really big piñata. Let’s see what kind of loot it drops."

—-

The roar of the Cosmic Leviathan was a physical weight, a blast of displaced air that threatened to knock the Vanguard knights right off the battlements of Azureus. Alvian stood firm on the balcony, his [Chaos Body] effortlessly grounding him against the gale.

He stared up at the impossible health bar floating in the stratosphere. The numbers were staggering. Even with his [Strength] sitting at an absurd 900, hitting that thing with his lance would be like trying to drain the ocean with a slotted spoon.

"I can’t solo that," Alvian admitted aloud, the words tasting strange on his tongue. For his entire second life, he had operated on the principle that he was the ultimate variable. He had optimized himself to be a one-man army. But staring at a continent-sized space squid, the math simply didn’t add up.

"Finally found a wall you can’t punch through?" Seraphina’s voice crackled over the comms. She had materialized on the roof of the adjacent spire, her sniper rifle—a newly acquired terrestrial weapon she had heavily modified with Syndicate tech—propped on a gargoyle.

"I can punch through it," Alvian corrected automatically. "It would just take approximately seventy-four years of continuous striking. It’s highly inefficient."

"So what’s the play, boss?" Kincaid’s gruff voice boomed through the channel. Down in the courtyards, the mercenary warlord was standing atop a heavily modified terrestrial tank, hefting a massive, glowing warhammer. "That thing looks hungry, and my guys are starting to look like bite-sized snacks."

Alvian looked down at the city. Azureus was a flying fortress, bristling with the combined might of Earth’s military and the magical artillery of Gods Domain. He looked at the human fighter jets hovering in formation, their wings glowing with [Wind] enchantments. He looked at the [Void Sentinel] turrets lining the city walls.

He didn’t need to solo it. He was the Administrator. He had a server full of players.

"System," Alvian commanded, tapping the [Heart of Azureus] interface integrated into his wrist console. "Patch my audio feed through the global grid. I want every comms channel, every magical relay, every radio frequency on this planet."

[Processing... Global Audio Link Established.]

Alvian took a breath. He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. His voice, calm, authoritative, and laced with the metallic resonance of the Void Sovereign, echoed from the deepest bunkers in Siberia to the Vanguard lines on the Azureus walls.

"This is High Marshall Alvian," he began. "To the Abyssal Guard, the Vanguard, the Sea Kings, and the terrestrial military of Earth. The patch is live. The enemy is no longer a concept. It is a target with a health bar."

He pointed the [Lance of the Void Winter] up at the writhing mass of cosmic flesh.

"The enemy is massive," Alvian continued, his voice carrying the cold comfort of absolute certainty. "That just means we don’t have to aim. All batteries. All squadrons. All casters. You are clear to engage."

He paused, a fierce, predatory smirk touching his lips.

"Fire at will."

The response was deafening.

From the underbelly of Azureus, the newly forged [Genesis Warheads] launched. They didn’t fly like normal missiles; they tore through the air, skipping across dimensions to bypass the distance instantly. They slammed into the underside of the Leviathan, detonating with flashes of silent, absolute erasure.

Massive chunks of the creature’s grey, fleshy exterior simply ceased to exist, leaving gaping, bleeding craters the size of city blocks.

[-5,000,000! Absolute Erasure!]

[-5,000,000! Absolute Erasure!]

"YEAAAAH! EAT VOID, YOU OVERGROWN CALAMARI!" Kincaid’s laughter echoed over the open comms as the mercenary directed his tank battalion to fire their enchanted artillery.

The human fighter jets, retrofitted with mana-drives, swarmed upward like angry hornets. They didn’t fire standard bullets. General Winters had authorized the use of rounds enchanted with [Armor Penetration] by the Sea King artificers. The jets strafed the Leviathan’s massive tentacles, the enchanted rounds tearing through the cosmic hide and leaving trails of blue, magical fire in their wake.

"Target practice, boys!" General Winters barked over the military band, sounding less like a terrified politician and more like a kid in an arcade. "Light it up!"

Down on the city walls, the Vanguard knights locked their shields, creating a massive, interconnected array of golden [Titan] energy. From behind this impenetrable wall, thousands of mages unleashed a synchronized volley of Tier-4 and Tier-5 spells. Fireballs the size of houses, massive spears of jagged ice, and crackling webs of chain lightning rained upward, striking the beast in a spectacular fireworks display of localized destruction.

"Hold the line!" Valeria commanded, pacing behind the shield wall, her own [Aegis of Terra] planted firmly on the stone. "Don’t let up the pressure! Keep the aggro on the heavy plating!"

Alvian watched the damage numbers cascading across the sky. It was a beautiful, chaotic spreadsheet of violence. Millions of points of damage were shaving off the Leviathan’s health bar every second.

But as he watched, the cold logic of the System cooled his initial satisfaction.

The Leviathan shrieked, a sound that cracked the newly formed glass of the rebuilt palace windows. One of its massive tentacles, which had just been severed by a Genesis Warhead, began to writhe. Thick, black sludge poured from the stump, rapidly solidifying into fresh, grey flesh. Within seconds, the limb had completely regrown.

The health bar, which had dipped by a visible fraction, surged backward, refilling with terrifying speed.

[Target Status: Cosmic Regeneration Active.]

[Regeneration Rate: +10,000,000 HP/sec.]

"Boss," Seraphina’s voice clipped through the cheering on the comms. "Are you seeing this? It’s out-healing our DPS. We’re throwing everything we have at it, and it’s just growing it back."

"I see it," Alvian muttered, his eyes narrowing.

The external bombardment was spectacular, but it was superficial. They were peeling layers off an onion that grew new layers faster than they could chop.

"It’s a sponge," Valeria said, walking up beside him. She looked up at the regenerating beast, her jaw set. "If we can’t out-damage its healing, we lose the war of attrition. We’ll run out of warheads and mana long before it runs out of health."

"Then we don’t fight it from the outside," Alvian decided, his mind rapidly shifting tactics. He zoomed his optical interface in on the underbelly of the beast.

Where the Genesis Warheads had struck, the regeneration was slower. The void energy left a lingering, rotting effect on the cosmic flesh. One particular crater, near what appeared to be the central mass of the creature, was still gaping open, a massive tunnel leading deep into the Leviathan’s internal biology.

"We need to hit the core," Alvian said, pointing at the wound. "The regeneration is an external defense mechanism. The power source is inside."

"You want to go inside that thing?" Seraphina dropped down from her perch, looking at the massive, bleeding hole in the sky. She wrinkled her nose. "Alvian, it looks like the inside of a diseased lung. My boots are new."

"I want to kill it," Alvian corrected. "And efficiency dictates we sever the power source. Get the strike team. We’re going spelunking."

The wind shear was brutal as the strike team launched from the highest balcony of Azureus.

Alvian led the formation, his [Void Step] carrying him through the sky in rapid, jagged blinks of spatial displacement. Behind him, Valeria flew using a pair of enchanted grav-boots, her golden [Aegis of Terra] held out before her like the prow of a ship. Seraphina clung to Valeria’s back, her conceptual stealth keeping them both masked from the Leviathan’s immediate sensory array.