Dante stepped into the Wyrmrest Gulch. The purple mist immediately swallowed him.

The chokepoint was a tactical nightmare.

The dirt path was barely twenty feet wide. It was flanked on both sides by jagged and fifty-foot-tall cliffs of solid gray rock.

There was absolutely no room to maneuver, no cover to hide behind, and no alternate path.

It was a perfect and natural kill-box.

Casanova trailed closely behind. His lute was clutched nervously to his chest. "Big Brother, I do not see anyone. It is too quiet."

Dante didn’t reply. His Intuition stat was completely maxed out. He could feel the eighty players waiting for him.

He walked exactly to the dead center of the gulch and stopped.

Up on the cliffs, Danus stared through his spyglass.

The target was standing perfectly still right in the optimal blast radius of the array.

Danus couldn’t believe his luck. Vanguard’s Legacy had failed because they had no discipline.

The Legion of Blades was going to execute this hit flawlessly.

"Trigger it," Danus whispered into his comms.

He twisted the heavy metal cylinder in his hands.

A loud and mechanical whine erupted from the rocks above.

Four hidden focal nodes perfectly positioned around the canyon walls simultaneously activated.

A massive and translucent dome of shimmering silver energy slammed down over the entire gulch. It completely trapped Dante and Casanova inside.

[System Alert: Hostile Guild Array Detected.]

[Nullification Array (Guild-Tier) Active.]

[Debuff Applied: Suppression.]

[Effect: Base Attack Power, Defense, and Speed reduced by 50%. All equipment passives above Silver-tier are temporarily disabled.]

Dante immediately felt the change.

The [Sun-Forged Cuirass] grew heavy.

The passive and warm energy radiating from the gold plating completely vanished. It turned it into a bulky and useless slab of heavy metal.

The ambient heat from the Void-Blight began to tick away at his health again.

His base defense which had been sitting at a monolithic 2,800 instantly plummeted to 1,400.

"My buffs are gone!" Casanova shrieked. He looked at his system interface in panic. "I cannot access my mana pool! The array is blocking my talent!"

"Stay behind me," Dante ordered smoothly.

He didn’t look panicked. He didn’t scramble for the edge of the dome.

"Fire!" Danus roared from the cliffs above.

Eighty Legionnaires stood up simultaneously from their hiding spots along the jagged ridges.

Forty archers drew their bows. Their arrows glowed with armor-piercing enchantments.

Forty mages began chanting. They hurled concentrated lances of frost and fire down into the narrow gulch.

It was a synchronized and devastating barrage. It was executed with perfect military precision.

The sheer volume of projectiles completely blotted out the purple sky.

Casanova screamed. He dropped to the dirt and covered his head with his arms. He fully expected to be turned into a digital pincushion.

Dante didn’t raise his sword. He didn’t use a Zenith-tier skill to escape.

He just stood perfectly still.

The barrage hit him.

The sound was a deafening and continuous roar of exploding magic and shattering iron.

Frost lances slammed into his chest piece. Fireballs detonated against his shoulders. Armor-piercing arrows struck his helmet and greaves.

For ten solid seconds, the center of the gulch was a localized war zone.

When the barrage finally stopped, the smoke and purple mist cleared slowly.

Danus leaned over the cliff edge. A victorious smirk was on his face.

He waited to see the gray ash of a permanently deleted avatar.

Instead, Dante was still standing.

He hadn’t moved an inch.

The [Sun-Forged Cuirass] was heavily scorched and covered in a thick layer of frost and soot. But Dante was completely fine.

Above his head, a massive cloud of overlapping and identical damage numbers slowly faded into the air.

[-1]

[-1]

[-1]

[-1]

The victorious smirk of Danus instantly vanished. "What?"

Down in the gulch, Dante casually brushed a layer of frost off his shoulder.

The Nullification Array had worked perfectly.

It had disabled his Gold-tier armor passives and literally cut his base stats in half.

But Danus had made a fundamental miscalculation. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He had assumed the stats of Dante were standard for a Level 19 player.

Dante had spent billions of credits on the permanent stat-boosting elixirs of Vespera.

He had consumed three [Ironbark Draughts] and the [High-Grade Vitality Elixir]. His base health was sitting at 9,100.

Even with his defense cut entirely in half to 1,400, it was still astronomically higher than the attack power of a Level 15 archer or mage.

The synchronized barrage of the Legion couldn’t breach his base mitigation.

The combat math of the system dictated that if an attack failed to penetrate the defense threshold of an entity, it defaulted to dealing exactly one point of chip damage.

The massive health pool of Dante barely even registered the hit.

"Is that it?" Dante called up to the ridges. His voice was completely calm.

Up on the cliff, the disciplined silence of the Legion of Blades broke.

"Sir, he took zero damage!" an archer panicked through the comms. "The array is active! I confirmed the debuff! How is he tanking this?"

"Reload and fire again!" Danus shouted. His heart pounded against his ribs.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. The array was supposed to make the target mortal.

"Keep firing until he breaks!"

The mages began chanting again. Desperation crept into their voices.

"My turn," Dante said.

He opened his inventory and equipped a new skillbook. It was a cheap and basic green tome he had looted from the Crag-Boars hours ago.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Gust]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: Unleashes a weak burst of forward wind. Can be used to clear low-level environmental hazards or push small objects. Cooldown: 5 seconds.]

He tapped the book and absorbed it.

[Skill Learned: Gust (Novice)]

Dante didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t need it.

He raised his empty left hand. He pointed his open palm toward the steep and jagged ridge where Danus and the archers were positioned.

He activated the skill.

[Skill Executed: Gust.]

The anomaly triggered instantly.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The rush of enlightenment wasn’t about spatial tearing or combustion.

It was the absolute and fundamental mastery of atmospheric pressure.

Dante understood how to manipulate air currents.

He felt the exact rotational velocity required to rip a localized vacuum into existence. He understood how to bend the ambient atmosphere into a weapon of mass destruction.

[Gust has reached Adept tier.]

[Gust has reached Master tier.]

[Gust has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The purple mist in the gulch didn’t just blow away. It was violently sucked inward and swirled rapidly around the outstretched hand of Dante.

[Gust has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Gust has evolved into: Cyclone of Ruin.]

[Cyclone of Ruin (Zenith)]

[Description: Summons a massive and localized F5 hurricane. The sheer rotational force traps all entities within a 100-foot radius in a continuous airborne juggle. Deals 500% Physical Damage per second. Duration: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds.]

Dante didn’t unleash a burst of wind.

He unleashed a natural disaster!

A massive and deafening roar erupted from his palm.

A localized hurricane glowing with the dark purple energy of the blighted mist exploded outward.

It expanded instantly. It filled the entire width of the gulch and shot straight up into the air to reach the top of the fifty-foot cliffs.

The sheer vacuum force of the Zenith-tier wind was absolute.

Up on the ridges, the eighty Legionnaires didn’t stand a chance.

The heavy and disciplined formation was completely shattered. Tanks, archers, and mages were violently ripped right off their feet.

They screamed as they were pulled over the edge of the cliff. They were sucked directly into the massive and swirling vortex of the cyclone.

Danus grabbed onto a jagged piece of rock. His boots dangled over the edge.

"Hold on!" Danus roared into his comms. The wind completely drowned out his voice.

His grip failed.

The Enforcer was ripped from the cliff face. He tumbled helplessly into the air and joined his entire squadron in the violent and spinning vortex.