The air in Embercraig Canyon didn’t just feel hot. It felt heavy.

Dante stood at the entrance of the massive ravine.

The sky above was choked with thick and swirling clouds of black ash.

The canyon walls were completely barren. They were forged from cracked volcanic rock that glowed with a dull and angry orange heat in the deep crevices.

The moment Dante stepped over the threshold, a system prompt flashed in his peripheral vision. It was bordered in warning red.

[Zone Alert: Embercraig Canyon]

[Extreme Heat Detected. Applying ’Searing Atmosphere’ debuff.]

[Effect: Take 20 Fire Damage every second while inside the canyon. Standard health regeneration is disabled.]

For a normal player around Level 15 or 20, taking twenty points of damage every single second was a logistical nightmare.

It meant you were constantly on a timer.

You had to chug health potions just to walk around. Let alone fight the aggressive monsters spawning in the ash.

Dante just smiled.

He didn’t pull out a potion. He didn’t activate a cooling ward. He just stood there and watched his health bar.

The debuff ticked.

[-20 HP]

A fraction of a second later, the passive regeneration from Vespera’s [High-Grade Vitality Elixir] kicked in.

The elixir restored one percent of his maximum health every ten seconds.

With his base HP pushed to an astronomical 9,100 thanks to the [Ironbark Draughts], one percent was 91 health points.

He was taking twenty damage a second. But he was healing almost ten times that amount over the same window.

The fire damage was a joke. It felt like standing in a slightly overheated sauna.

"I love being rich," Dante muttered.

He drew the [Crimson Edge] and started walking down the steep and ash-covered slope.

He wasn’t trying to be stealthy.

He didn’t use the [Band of the Void-Walker] to mask his footprints.

He actively kicked loose rocks down the canyon walls. The loud clattering echoed off the volcanic stone for miles.

If Silas was tracking him, Dante wanted to make it as easy as possible.

Twenty minutes into the descent, Dante found his first quest objective.

Growing out of a small and bubbling vent of liquid magma was a cluster of bright and glowing yellow flowers.

The petals looked like they were woven from literal fire.

[Resource Identified: Sunflare Orchid]

He walked over. He grabbed the thick stem with his iron-plated gauntlet and yanked it out of the rock.

He tossed it into his infinite inventory.

"One down, nine to go," Dante said.

A sharp crunch of shifting gravel echoed from the ridge directly above him.

Dante stopped. He didn’t look up. He kept his eyes locked on the magma vent in front of him.

With his massive Intuition stat, he didn’t need to see the scout to know exactly where they were.

He could hear the rapid and nervous breathing of three distinct players hiding behind a boulder about forty feet up the slope.

"You guys have terrible stealth mechanics," Dante called out. His voice carried easily up the ridge.

The breathing stopped.

"I know you are Vanguard’s Legacy," Dante continued. He casually rested his sword on his shoulder.

"Silas has half the server looking for me. Do me a favor. Ping your boss. Tell him exactly where I am."

For a few seconds, there was dead silence.

Then, a skinny player in dark leather armor leaned over the boulder. He held a communication crystal.

The scout looked terrified. He stared at Dante like he was a glitching raid boss.

"They are already coming," the scout yelled down. His voice cracked. "You are dead, Dan! The Enforcers are already in the canyon!"

The scout ducked back behind the boulder. Dante heard the sound of three players frantically scrambling away up the ash-covered slope.

"Enforcers," Dante repeated.

In Vanguard’s Legacy, there was a strict hierarchy.

The grunts farmed materials. The core members ran the dungeons. The officers managed the economy and public relations of the guild.

But the Enforcers were different.

They were a dedicated PVP division.

Silas paid them real-world salaries to act as a private hit squad.

If a rival guild claimed a valuable resource node, the Enforcers went in and slaughtered them until they gave it up.

They were heavily geared, highly coordinated, and completely ruthless.

Thorne and Vargas were low-level officers. The guys Silas sent to do the dirty work were a massive step up.

Dante didn’t run. He didn’t try to bottleneck them in a narrow pass.

He just walked to the center of the widest section of the canyon floor.

It was a massive clearing of flat and blackened rock surrounded by towering walls of volcanic glass.

He drove the tip of the [Crimson Edge] into the rock, leaned against the hilt, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Ten minutes later, the ground actually started to vibrate.

It wasn’t the ambient rumbling of the volcano. It was the synchronized and heavy marching of hundreds of armored boots.

A vanguard of players crested the ridge at the far end of the clearing.

Then more followed. And more.

They poured into the canyon like a swarm of black and gold ants.

They didn’t rush in blindly.

They fanned out. They took calculated positions along the ridges.

They blocked the exit paths and formed a massive and heavily shielded phalanx across the main canyon floor.

Dante did a quick visual headcount.

There were at least three hundred of them.

The frontline was composed of fifty tanks wielding tower shields and heavy maces.

Behind them stood over a hundred damage dealers. Rogues, warriors, and brawlers.

The backline was stacked with casters and archers. They were already nocking arrows and prepping spells.

They were all taking the passive twenty points of fire damage from the atmosphere of the canyon.

To counter it, healers of Vanguard’s Legacy were systematically pulsing AoE healing spells every few seconds to keep the entire army topped off.

The coordination was flawless.

It was a massive drain on their mana pools. But they had the numbers to rotate healers and keep the entire force alive in a hazard zone.

The sea of black and gold parted in the center.

A single player walked through the ranks and stopped ten feet in front of the massive shield wall.

His ID read: Malric.

Unlike Silas, who preferred flashy and regal armor, Malric wore highly functional and dark-gray iron plating.

He didn’t carry a massive weapon, just a standard steel broadsword strapped to his hip.

He had short and military-cropped hair and a completely unreadable expression.

He looked less like a gamer and more like a private military contractor.

Which is exactly what he was back on Veridia. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"Dan," Malric said. He didn’t shout. He spoke in a calm and projecting voice that easily carried across the clearing.

Dante didn’t move from his sword. "You brought a lot of friends, Malric. Silas must be incredibly nervous."

"Silas is a politician," Malric replied flatly. "He cares about leaderboards and announcements. I do not. I care about closing open contracts. And right now, you are an open contract."

"Three hundred players to close one contract," Dante noted. "Seems like an inefficient use of guild resources."

"It is called overwhelming force," Malric said.

"Thorne was an idiot. He let you bait him into an open fight. He did not respect your stats."

"I respect your stats. You are currently Level 19. You have gear that far exceeds the current server average."

"You possess a Zenith-tier area-of-effect skill, and you have a pet that can apparently restore your health pool in an instant."

Dante raised an eyebrow. The scouts had definitely reported everything they saw back at the Outpost.

"You did your homework," Dante said.

"I always do," Malric said. He took a slow step forward.

"I know exactly how this goes if I send my men in blindly."

"You use that firebird skill. You wipe my frontline. You use your mobility skill to bypass my tanks and assassinate my healers. You make a mess."

Malric reached into a heavy leather pouch on his belt. He pulled out a dark and tightly bound scroll.

The parchment was completely black. It was tied with a glowing chain of silver light.

"So I am not going to let you do any of that," Malric said.

The eyes of Dante locked onto the scroll.

[Item Identified: Chains of the Warden]

[Tier: Divine]

[Type: Single-Target Suppression]

A Divine-tier suppression scroll. This wasn’t a generic piece of loot.

The Zenith Protocol reserved Divine-tier items for the absolute pinnacle of end-game content.

Silas must have dropped tens of millions of real-world credits to buy that off a black-market data broker just to bring it into Overture.

"You see, Dan," Malric continued. He held the scroll up.

"This item does not care about your health pool. It does not care about your Zenith-tier damage."

"It bypasses all status immunities, including your pet’s aura. It has one function. It locks a single target in absolute and unbreakable stasis for exactly ten seconds."

The cold eyes of Malric locked onto Dante.

"Ten seconds," Malric repeated.

"In ten seconds, I have three hundred players who are going to dump every single spell, arrow, and weapon art they have directly into your head."

"You will not be able to dodge. You will not be able to parry. You will not be able to trigger your pet’s heal."

Dante pulled the [Crimson Edge] out of the rock. He didn’t look panicked. He looked completely bored.

"It is a good plan, Malric," Dante said.

"It is a flawless plan," Malric corrected.

"There is just one problem," Dante said. He gestured lazily with his free hand toward the massive army surrounding him. "You brought three hundred people into a highly volatile and active volcano."

Malric frowned. "The healers are managing the environmental damage."

"I am not talking about the ambient heat," Dante said. He pointed the tip of his sword past Malric toward the far end of the canyon.

Malric didn’t turn around. But a few of the tanks in the frontline of Vanguard’s Legacy nervously glanced over their shoulders.

Deep within the canyon, a low and rhythmic thudding sound echoed against the volcanic glass.

It didn’t sound like marching boots. It sounded like massive boulders being repeatedly dropped onto the earth.

The ground beneath the army began to violently shake.

The ash clouds swirling above the canyon were suddenly sucked downward. They were pulled into a massive thermal updraft.

The temperature in the clearing spiked so rapidly that the environmental debuff of the system flashed from twenty damage a second to fifty.

"Healers! Overdrive!" one of the Syndicate officers screamed from the backline. He panicked as the health bars of the entire army suddenly started dropping twice as fast.

"What did you do?" Malric snapped. His hand tightened around the suppression scroll.

"I did not do anything," Dante smiled.

"I just waited. You guys brought a massive and concentrated clump of high-level player signatures into a mid-game boss zone. The system is designed to balance threats."

A massive and geyser-like eruption of liquid magma exploded from the center of the canyon floor directly behind the backline of Vanguard’s Legacy.

A dozen Syndicate archers were instantly incinerated. Their avatars turned to pixels before they even hit the ground.

Out of the towering pillar of magma stepped a monster that made the Ironfang Alpha look like a house cat.

It stood thirty feet tall. Its body was composed entirely of hardened and flowing lava.

It didn’t have a face, just a glowing and cracked visor of pure white heat.

It carried a massive and molten warhammer that dragged along the ground and left a trench of liquid fire in its wake.

[Zone Boss Spawn: Inferno Behemoth]

[Tier: Gold]

[Level: 50]

[HP: 150,000 / 150,000]

The entire army of Vanguard’s Legacy froze. Three hundred players turned around and stared up at the Level 50 Gold Boss.

"You were saying something about a flawless plan?" Dante asked over the deafening roar of the magma.