The heavy bone doors slammed shut behind Lila and Mei, sealing them inside the ruined courtyard.

Across the massive stone expanse, Dante and his three Shadow Clones had successfully baited the towering Wraith-Commander.

The massive Level 25 Gold boss was furiously swinging his spiked greatsword, completely distracted by the four identical targets teleporting around him in a blur of gold and shadow.

The Commander’s buff aura faded from the center of the courtyard as he chased Dante toward the far wall.

"Okay, the boss is isolated," Lila breathed, gripping her wooden staff tightly. "It’s just us and the army."

The army consisted of exactly one hundred Spectral Wraith-Knights.

Without the Commander’s aura, the glowing green ghost-iron armor worn by the Knights dimmed slightly, their attack speed and damage mitigation returning to standard Gold-tier baselines. But standard Gold-tier was still incredibly dangerous.

The Knights didn’t break their disciplined formation. They raised their massive, ethereal greatswords in unison. A deafening, synchronized battle cry resounded from their hollow helmets.

They began to march.

The sound of a hundred armored boots hitting the ruined stone floor was terrifying. It sounded like an approaching avalanche.

"They’re not rushing," Mei observed, tapping the massive cast-iron skillet against her shoulder.

"They’re moving in a phalanx. If we just stand here, they’re going to push us back against the door and crush us."

"We can’t let them close the gap," Lila agreed, her blue eyes narrowing in intense focus. "I can’t cast [Gravity Well] on the entire formation.

The radius is only thirty feet. If I drop it in the front, the backline will just walk over their pinned friends."

"So we need them closer together," Mei deduced, a wide, enthusiastic smile spreading across her face. "You group them up. I’ll knock them down."

Lila didn’t hesitate. She trusted the brawler’s bizarre mechanics.

She stepped forward, leaving the safety of the bone doors. She didn’t chant. She raised her wooden staff high above her head and focused her localized mana pool.

[Skill Executed: Singularity]

It wasn’t a standard, flat gravitational press like [Gravity Well].

The air directly in the center of the marching Wraith-Knight formation violently warped.

A tiny, pitch-black sphere materialized about ten feet off the ground. The sphere wasn’t an explosive. It was a localized, highly concentrated black hole.

The gravitational pull was absolute and entirely horizontal.

The discipline of the Wraith-Knights instantly shattered.

The front two rows of the phalanx were violently ripped completely off their feet. They didn’t just stagger; they flew backward, sucked directly into the gravitational pull of the tiny black sphere.

The back rows were yanked forward, their ethereal boots sliding uselessly across the stone.

The heavy, clanking sound of ghost-iron armor slamming together echoed across the courtyard as dozens of Knights were forcibly compressed into a massive, tangled cluster directly beneath the [Singularity].

They were completely trapped, pulled so tightly together they couldn’t even raise their greatswords to attack.

"I’ve got thirty of them grouped!" Lila yelled, her face pale with the sheer effort of maintaining the massive mana drain. "I can’t hold it for long!"

"Thirty is a good start!" Mei cheered.

The Hua Nation brawler didn’t charge forward with her standard skillet.

She activated her highest-tier offensive skill.

[Skill Executed: Colossal Manifestation]

Dante wasn’t the only one who had utilized the [10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier] to evolve the basic [Enlarge] skillbook.

Mei had spent the last two months of the previous cycle doing nothing but hitting things with her pan, and she had manually ground her own size-altering skills to max level.

The massive cast-iron frying pan didn’t just grow. It violently expanded.

The four-foot-wide skillet instantly ballooned into a colossal, thirty-foot-wide disc of indestructible black iron. The handle extended, becoming as thick as a tree trunk.

Mei didn’t struggle with the weight. Her Brawler class specialized in managing blunt-force momentum.

She gripped the massive handle with both hands, let out a joyous, chaotic laugh, and sprinted directly toward the cluster of thirty trapped Wraith-Knights.

"Batter up!" Mei roared.

She jumped high into the air, bringing the colossal skillet down in a devastating, overhead smash.

The impact wasn’t a standard localized strike. It was a massive, compounding AoE explosion.

CLANG!

The thirty Gold-tier Wraith-Knights, already weakened by the crushing gravitational pressure of the [Singularity], took the full, unmitigated brunt of the massive iron pan.

Because they were compressed so tightly together, the blunt-force trauma didn’t just hit the top layer; the kinetic shockwave rippled violently through the entire cluster, multiplying the damage output as they crushed against each other.

The damage numbers popped up in a massive, overlapping cloud of red text.

[-15,000!]

[-18,000!]

[-16,500!]

The thirty Knights were literally flattened against the stone courtyard. Their ghost-iron armor completely shattered.

They didn’t even have time to dissolve into pixels before Mei lifted the massive pan and brought it down again.

CLANG!

"Whack-a-mole!" Pip shrieked happily from the sidelines, watching the slaughter.

The second strike completely zeroed out the health bars of the entire trapped cluster. Thirty Gold-tier mobs violently exploded into a massive, synchronized shower of blue and silver polygons.

[Target Eliminated: Spectral Wraith-Knight x30]

Lila instantly dropped the [Singularity] spell, gasping for air. Her mana bar was sitting at ten percent.

Aura, hovering faithfully above them, let out a soft chime.

[Skill Activated: Resurgence Wave]

The silver pulse washed over Lila, completely refilling her massive mana pool instantly.

"I love that fox," Lila breathed, gripping her staff, feeling the raw energy surge back into her avatar.

The remaining seventy Wraith-Knights didn’t pause to mourn their flattened comrades. The Gold-tier system recognized the devastating synergy between the gravity mage and the brawler.

They completely abandoned their tight phalanx formation.

"They’re spreading out!" Mei yelled, dragging the colossal skillet back to her shoulder. "They’re trying to flank us so you can’t group them up!"

The Knights fanned out across the wide courtyard, charging in a loose, scattered wave. They intended to surround the two girls and overwhelm them with localized, un-blockable damage.

"Let them try," Lila said, her voice dropping into a cold, focused register.

She didn’t wait for them to close the distance. She didn’t use the massive [Singularity] spell.

She began rapidly tapping the stone floor with the butt of her staff, chaining a different localized gravity skill without a single fraction of a second wasted on chanting.

[Skill Executed: Gravitational Anchor]

[Skill Executed: Gravitational Anchor]

[Skill Executed: Gravitational Anchor]

She didn’t target the Knights. She targeted the ruined architecture of the courtyard itself.

Massive, crumbling stone pillars that had been standing for thousands of years suddenly groaned under intense, localized atmospheric pressure.

Lila inverted the gravity around the top half of a massive pillar located right in the path of a dozen charging Knights.

The pillar violently snapped in half. The top section, weighing several tons, was launched horizontally across the courtyard like a massive, stone missile.

The charging Knights didn’t have time to react. The stone pillar slammed into their scattered ranks, crushing six of them instantly, pinning them to the floor.

Lila didn’t stop. She was treating the entire environment as her weapon.

She pulled chunks of masonry from the ruined walls and hurled them across the courtyard with terrifying precision.

She was functionally a telekinetic artillery battery, completely disrupting the Knights’ charge, staggering them, and forcing them back into tighter, manageable clusters.

"She’s a menace," Pip whispered, hovering near Mei’s ear, completely awe-struck. "I take back everything bad I said about the blue hair."

"My turn!" Mei laughed.

The brawler didn’t use the colossal pan this time. The ten-second duration had expired, shrinking the skillet back to its normal, four-foot size.

She didn’t need the massive AoE. She needed speed.

She charged directly into the disorganized wave of surviving Knights.

A Wraith-Knight swung its massive, ethereal greatsword in a brutal horizontal arc, aiming to cleave her in half.

Mei didn’t dodge. She stepped into the strike, raising the cast-iron pan.

CLANG!

The [Perfect Block] passive absorbed 100% of the kinetic impact. The Knight staggered, its weapon bouncing off the indestructible surface.

Mei spun, using the momentum of the block to deliver a devastating backhand swing with the pan directly into the Knight’s helmet. The blunt force shattered the ghost-iron, executing the boss instantly.

She moved like a localized wrecking ball. Block, parry, smash.

She didn’t take a single point of damage. Whenever a group of Knights managed to surround her, Lila would drop a quick [Gravity Well] to pin them, and Mei would casually smash their heads in.

It was absolute, undeniable synergy. The squishy support class was locking down the entire battlefield, and the brawler was safely executing the immobilized targets with an indestructible gag item.

"Look at all this loot!" Pip shrieked, flying frantically across the courtyard.

The tiny red dragon was practically vibrating with greed. The Gold-tier mobs were dropping massive amounts of silver coins, high-tier ethereal crafting materials, and glowing weapons.

Pip was vacuuming everything up before it could hit the ground, completely ignoring the chaotic battle raging around him.

Within ten minutes, the massive courtyard was entirely clear.

The one hundred Gold-tier Wraith-Knights were gone. The stone floor was pulverized, and the ruined pillars were completely shattered by Lila’s gravity artillery, but the two girls were standing unharmed.

[Target Eliminated: Spectral Wraith-Knight x100]

Mei wiped a smudge of digital soot off her cheek, resting the frying pan on her shoulder. She looked at Lila.

"Okay, I admit it," Mei grinned. "You’re not just a squishy healer. That gravity magic is ridiculous. You hit harder than the pan."

Lila flushed slightly, leaning on her wooden staff. "It only works because you’re holding the frontline. If they got close to me, I’d be dead in two swings. I don’t have Dante’s absurd armor stats."

A massive, localized explosion echoed from the far side of the courtyard.

The two girls turned their heads.

Dante had successfully dragged the Wraith-Commander to the far wall. The massive boss was currently roaring in absolute fury, wildly swinging his spiked greatsword at the three Shadow Clones.

Dante, the real one, was standing casually on a ruined balcony overlooking the fight, watching his clones slowly chip away at the Commander’s health bar. He hadn’t even drawn his own sword.

"He’s not even fighting," Lila muttered, entirely unsurprised. "He’s just letting his cape do the work."

"Boss!" Mei yelled across the courtyard, waving her pan. "We finished our side! Do you need us to come smash the big guy?"

The Wraith-Commander heard the shout.

The towering boss stopped swinging at the clones. It slowly turned its massive, horned helmet toward the entrance of the courtyard.

It looked at the completely empty expanse where its hundred-man army had just been standing.

The glowing green fire in the Commander’s eye sockets violently flared. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

[Boss Mechanic Triggered: Phantom Cavalry.]

"Uh oh," Pip squeaked, immediately hiding inside Mei’s tunic. "That doesn’t look like a standard aggro shift."

The Wraith-Commander didn’t charge Dante. It didn’t swing at the clones.

It raised its massive, spiked greatsword high into the air and let out a deafening, terrifying horn blast.

The ruined courtyard began to violently tremble.