The heavy iron blast door at the end of the rusted cage slowly ground open.

Dante didn’t step through immediately.

He stood perfectly still and let his maxed-out Intuition stat probe the environment beyond the threshold.

The Abyss difficulty didn’t just strip away the safety nets of the system. It fundamentally altered the baseline physics of the Spire.

The air pressure was completely wrong. It felt incredibly dense like walking through chest-deep water.

Every physical movement required significantly more exertion.

Dante glanced at his stamina bar.

[Stamina: 1,200 / 1,200]

Normally, that was a massive pool. But swinging Zenith-tier skills drained stamina in massive chunks.

If the environment itself was actively increasing the physical toll of his movements, he was going to burn out before he even reached the second floor.

"Aura," Dante said and did not take his eyes off the dark doorway.

"Your healing is infinite, but I cannot rely entirely on you for resource management. If you get banished, I will be stranded with zero stamina in a death zone."

Aura chimed softly and floated a tight circle around his head. She understood.

Dante opened his infinite inventory.

He scrolled past the piles of raw silver, the [Staff of Cinders], and the massive Titan Core.

He was looking for utility.

During the chaotic looting in the beginner forest, he had absorbed dozens of low-tier skillbooks just to get them out of his way.

He found what he was looking for. A simple green-bound book.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Deep Breath]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: A basic physical conditioning technique. The user takes a focused breath, increasing passive stamina regeneration by 5% for ten seconds. Cooldown: 1 minute.]

It was a garbage skill. It was usually ignored by players who preferred to just chug stamina potions during combat.

Dante tapped the cover.

[Skill Learned: Deep Breath (Novice)]

He closed his inventory and took a slow deliberate inhale to activate the skill.

[Skill Executed: Deep Breath.]

The anomaly triggered instantly.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The combat enlightenment was intensely physiological.

The digital lungs of Dante expanded, but the knowledge flooded deeper.

He didn’t just learn how to breathe efficiently. He felt the exact microscopic pathways required to maximize cellular oxygenation.

He understood how to completely optimize the digital lactic acid buildup in the muscles of his avatar.

He learned how to draw ambient energy directly from the atmosphere and convert it into pure limitless kinetic fuel.

[Deep Breath has reached Adept tier.]

[Deep Breath has reached Master tier.]

[Deep Breath has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The chest of Dante heaved. The air around him rushed inward and funneled directly into his lungs with a loud rushing sound.

[Deep Breath has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Deep Breath has evolved into: Breath of the Colossus.]

The system interface updated. The text glowed with a brilliant and steady white light.

[Breath of the Colossus (Zenith)]

[Description: The physiological pinnacle of stamina management. Passive stamina regeneration is permanently increased by 5,000%. The user is completely immune to the ’Exhaustion’ debuff. Active cast: Instantly restores 100% of maximum stamina and cleanses all physical fatigue. Cooldown: 5 seconds.]

Dante exhaled slowly.

The heavy and oppressive density of the Abyss air completely vanished.

His body felt incredibly light as if he had just dropped a hundred-pound backpack.

He took a few practice swings with the [Crimson Edge]. His stamina bar didn’t even twitch.

"Perfect," Dante smiled. "I can fight for hours now."

He stepped through the heavy iron doorway.

The environment shifted the exact millisecond his boot crossed the threshold.

The rusted iron walls dissolved and were replaced by a sprawling and overgrown jungle.

But it wasn’t a natural jungle. The foliage was completely toxic.

The massive towering ferns were a sickly neon purple. Thick vines covered in jagged and dripping thorns hung from the canopy like predatory snakes.

The ground was slick with a layer of glowing green slime.

The air was humid, suffocating, and smelled like rotting meat and concentrated sulfur.

[Spire of Ascension - Floor 1: The Rotbloom Canopy]

[Floor Modifier Active: Toxic Atmosphere]

[Warning: Inhaling the ambient spores applies a stacking ’Necrosis’ debuff. Movement speed is reduced by 5% per stack.]

Dante checked his status bar.

A small green skull icon appeared, then instantly shattered into silver dust.

The [Harbinger’s Grace] passive of Aura completely deleted the environmental debuff before it could even register a single stack.

"Good girl," Dante noted and kept his sword drawn.

The jungle was dead silent. There were no ambient bird sounds or rustling leaves.

Dante walked forward. His iron boots squelched slightly in the glowing green slime.

He kept his eyes scanning the thick purple ferns. The Spire wasn’t going to give him a warm-up.

A massive wet snapping sound echoed from the canopy above.

Dante didn’t look up. He used [Blink Step] and teleported twenty feet to his right.

The spot he had just been standing on violently exploded.

A massive fleshy pod dropped from the ceiling and slammed into the slime.

The pod ruptured and unleashed a torrent of highly concentrated dark green poison gas that instantly killed the surrounding purple ferns.

Out of the gas stepped the first Boss.

It was a horrific amalgamation of plant and monster. It looked like a massive bipedal Venus flytrap.

Its head was a giant snapping maw lined with jagged wooden teeth dripping with thick glowing venom.

Its arms were thick thorny vines ending in razor-sharp scythes.

[Floor Boss Spawn: Rotbloom Terror]

[Tier: Bronze]

[Level: 15]

[HP: 12,000 / 12,000]

Dante frowned. "A Bronze-tier boss on floor one?"

In the standard Normal difficulty, floor one was usually packed with Level 5 trash mobs.

The Abyss tier was throwing a Level 15 Bronze boss right out of the gate.

But the system wasn’t finished.

Four more wet snapping sounds echoed from the dense jungle canopy.

Four more fleshy pods dropped from the ceiling and formed a perfect circle around Dante.

The pods ruptured simultaneously and unleashed four more identical bosses.

"Five of them," Dante corrected himself. "Okay."

He was completely surrounded by five Level 15 Bronze bosses.

The five Rotbloom Terrors didn’t roar. They communicated through a series of rapid clicking noises from their wooden jaws.

In perfect synchronization, all five bosses raised their scythe-like arms and slammed them into the slimy ground.

They didn’t attack Dante directly. They attacked the environment.

The ground beneath Dante violently erupted.

Massive thorny roots shot out of the slime. They twisted and braided together to form a solid impenetrable dome of thick wood and poisoned thorns completely trapping him inside.

The inside of the root-dome was pitch black.

Dante didn’t panic. He stood perfectly still in the dark.

He heard the clicking of the bosses outside the dome. Then a massive hissing sound started.

The five Rotbloom Terrors were pumping their dark green poison gas directly through the gaps in the thorny roots and rapidly filling the enclosed space.

The gas was so thick it actually restricted his vision.

[Warning: Lethal Toxin Detected.]

The system flashed the warning, but the health bar of Dante didn’t drop a single point.

The [Aetherial Nectar] he had bought from Vespera didn’t just grant resistance. It granted absolute and permanent immunity to all poisons.

The lethal gas was literally just bad-smelling air to him.

"They are trying to gas me out," Dante muttered and raised the [Crimson Edge]. "Creative. But boring."

He didn’t want to use [Abyssal Cleave] inside the tiny dome. The spatial fracture might collapse the floor entirely.

He activated his newest offensive Zenith skill.

[Skill Executed: Phantom Waltz]

The avatar of Dante became completely untargetable. He was surrounded by glowing purple invulnerability frames.

He didn’t target the bosses outside. He targeted the massive thorny roots trapping him.

He vanished.

Five deafening cracks echoed in rapid succession.

Dante teleported around the inside of the enclosed space and unleashed five instantaneous strikes of pure kinetic force. Each strike dealt 1,000% physical damage.

The massive impenetrable dome of roots didn’t splinter. It was completely pulverized into fine green mist.

Dante reappeared exactly where he started. He stood in the open jungle totally unharmed.

The five Rotbloom Terrors clicked in visible confusion. Their trap was destroyed, and the target wasn’t dead.

Dante didn’t give them time to recalculate their strategy.

He locked his eyes onto the closest Terror.

He triggered [Meteor Stride].

He vanished in a blinding flash of white light. He left a massive ten-foot-wide wall of superheated plasma cutting straight through the glowing green slime of the jungle floor.

He materialized directly behind the first Rotbloom Terror.

Before the monster could turn around, Dante swung the [Crimson Edge] in a brutal horizontal arc.

The blade sheared cleanly through the thick woody stalk of the neck of the boss.

The massive snapping flytrap head flew into the air and leaked dark green sap.

[-3,500! Critical Hit!]

The boss didn’t die instantly. Its Bronze-tier defense mitigated some of the standard damage.

But it staggered violently as its health dropped into the red.

Dante didn’t bother finishing it off. He let the lingering trail of plasma do the work.

The superheated fire caught the staggering boss and completely incinerated its woody body in a fraction of a second.

[Target Eliminated: Rotbloom Terror]

"One," Dante counted.

The remaining four bosses screeched and completely abandoned their environmental tactics.

They charged Dante simultaneously with their scythe-arms raised for a lethal strike.

Dante just smiled. The Abyss difficulty was supposed to be a meat grinder.

He drew the sword back and waited for them to close the gap.