Endless Extraction in a Game-Like World

Caelus tilted his head. It looked incredibly shady, but a permanent +3 Combat Score was too good to pass up. He refused to believe a Mythical grade item would give lethal side effects. Having no card on hand, he popped the cork, poured a handful into his palm, and dry-ate the powder.

The instant the sugary powder hit his tongue, a bolt of lightning fired straight through his brain. His vision immediately warped into vibrant, pulsating colors.

[Status Effect Applied: Euphoria]

[Combat Score: 8.0 -> 11.0]

"Hey... Caelus?" Sylvia waved a hand in front of his face.

He stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes. "Why, hello there, beautiful stranger! I am Caelus Kross. It is a pleasure to meet you."

Sylvia tilted her head in pure confusion.

"Hey, It’s rude to ignore a dashing gentleman!" Caelus grumbled, crossing his arms with an exaggerated pout. "Is it because I am ugly? Do I need a haircut?"

"What happened?" Sylvia asked, thoroughly bewildered.

Caelus burst out laughing, pointing directly at sky. "Look! The sky is still blue, and the ground is made of marshmallows!"

Sylvia’s lips twitched. "What exactly was in that powder? Maybe we should skip the Ascension for today. You are completely out of your mind."

"Nonsense, pretty lady! I am strong! I am invincible!" Caelus pumped his fist into the air. He summoned his status window. The glowing screen looked like a blurry rainbow to his eyes, but he slammed his hand onto the Ascension button without an ounce of hesitation.

[System: Initiating Ascension Quest...]

Sylvia instantly received the party prompt.

[System: A party member is undergoing Ascension. Would you like to join?]

"You idiot..." Sylvia sighed deeply. Looks like she had to babysit him. She clicked accept.

[System: Now commencing teleportation.]

The world spun, and they vanished.

"Ooooh. My head feels like jelly," Caelus blinked, giggling as he swayed on his feet.

Boom!

A deafening explosion rang out mere feet away.

Caelus slowly turned his head. NPC soldiers in green combat suits and Kevlar helmets rushed past them, firing heavy assault rifles. Above, sleek fighter jets tore through a crimson sky, dropping payloads onto the shattered earth. The world smelled of sulfur, blood, and gunpowder.

"This place..." Sylvia murmured. Then, both of their eyes locked onto a colossal behemoth in the distance.

It was a towering nightmare. In the dead center of the beast sat a twisted humanoid torso, directly connected to a massive, bulbous lower body supported by eight bladed arachnid legs. It was the size of a three-story mansion.

A thick purple barrier covered its carapace. Artillery shells and gunfire continuously pelted it, completely failing to leave a scratch.

[Ascension Boss: World-Eater Dark Lord (Fragment)]

[Level: 21]

[Combat Score: 20.0 (Iron II)]

[HP: 10,000/10,000]

"A Combat Score of 20?!" Sylvia’s red eyes went wide. She immediately stepped in front of Caelus with a protective stance. "No way. We cannot beat this right now. It is a death sentence!"

Caelus was not in the right state of mind to fight. Or at least, that was what she believed. Yet he currently wore a deadly, locked-in expression.

"Just a measly 20 CS?" Caelus abruptly grinned, his red eyes sparkling with pure delusion. "Fear not, fair maiden! I am Thor, the God of Thunder! I shall smite this overgrown spider with my mighty hammer!"

Sylvia did not know whether to laugh or cry seeing this.

She watched in utter helplessness as Caelus drew his dagger, which he evidently thought was a hammer, and shot toward the apocalyptic boss with a massive, goofy smile. It was as if the brutal warzone around him was just a sunny playground.

Sylvia hesitated no further. Concerned primarily for his safety, she watched him charge so fearlessly and shrugged. "If we die, we will just enter the death cooldown anyway."

Boom!

"O’ divine lightning, heed my call! Smite this ugly fellow!" Caelus yelled. He activated his Projection Frame. Despite his hallucinating state, his muscle memory was flawless.

The Euphoria made his body feel light, frictionless, and completely devoid of fear.

[Skill Activated: Lightning Singularity]

Golden-black lightning sparked through his mind. Sylvia simultaneously deployed her Origin Blessing from the rear. His critical scaler surged, his eyes turned fully draconic, and thunder blazed across his body as the legendary skill flooded his synaptic system.

Blrrr!

His vision drastically slowed to a crawl. In the next microsecond, he perceived a condensed beam of dark energy shooting directly toward his face. It was barely an inch away.

Whoosh!

[Talent Activated: Projection Frame]

His figure blurred out like a glitch in reality. If he were just a fraction of a second slower, the beam would have vaporized his head.

[Skill Activated: Thunderclap]

Boom!

He slammed his hands together mid-air, sending a shockwave of sonic force crashing into the boss’s flank.

[Status Effect Applied: Chaos Erosion]

Seeing his debuff land, Caelus immediately pressed the advantage. He shot toward the boss, the Godmammoth Dagger gleaming with lethal intent. He rushed in to strike the joint of its arachnid legs. However, out of the corner of his eye, a purple light flared.

[System: The Ascension Boss has triggered ’Temporal Reversal’.]

[System: Status Effects ’Chaos Erosion’ and ’Thunderclap’ have been cleansed.]

Shrkrrk!

The boss roared with deafening, beastly might. The humanoid torso glared down and pulsed a ring of dark energy. Caelus was blasted backward by the shockwave, but Sylvia swiftly shot forward, catching him mid-air and landing gracefully.

[Debuff Applied: You will lose -5 HP per second.]

[Debuff Applied: You will lose -5 MP per second.]

[System Warning: Healing Potions and Mana Potions are currently disabled.]

Sylvia was hit with the exact same domain effect. She could literally feel her life force draining into the poisoned air.

"This monster... How many broken skills does it have?" Sylvia glared at the behemoth with a cold, bloodthirsty smile. Even with the lethal debuff tearing at her health, she was unfazed. She rushed in without warning, unleashing all of her skills one by one.

[-1,000 HP]

Even after unleashing a perfectly executed combo, she barely shaved 1,00 HP off its massive health pool!

Her plan to use blessing effects to leech HP was completely failing. Temporal Reversal was an incredibly annoying passive ability reserved for top-tier bosses. It constantly cleansed foreign debuffs, and Life Leech was considered a debuff on the target. Luckily, she had a resistance shield, making her fare better than Caelus, who relied entirely on the standard shield generated by his Mod.

Caelus had completely stopped attacking. He stood a few yards away, staring at the giant spider with rapidly blinking eyes.

He noticed the glowing red bar in the corner of his vision. His HP was rapidly depleting. At this rate, he would die just by standing there.

"But... a true hero never runs from a battle!" Caelus’s eyes suddenly burned with blazing, anime-protagonist determination.

He observed the beautiful girl fighting the colossal beast all by herself.

How shameful! He was letting the damsel in distress do all the heavy lifting! As an unparalleled ally of justice, he had to be the one to guide her to the path of victory!

"Pretty lady! Fear not, I am coming to your rescue!" Caelus abruptly exclaimed, his frame blurring into motion. His drug-addled brain knew exactly what to do.

Sprinting forward, he leaped high into the smoke-filled sky and aimed his palm squarely at the boss’s humanoid chest.

[Skill Activated: Plasma Nuke!]

A blinding miniature sun pierced the gloomy battlefield as the payload detonated. The concussive blast swept Sylvia off her feet, but Caelus blurred downward and caught her just in time.

He placed her safely behind a trench, then immediately rushed straight into the burning crater. The smoke had barely cleared, but he reached the screeching boss without hesitation.

Brrrt!

[Skill Activated: Lightning Singularity]

A terrifying, condensed beam of golden-black lightning shot from his hands, piercing directly through the boss’s carapace.

The World-Eater let out an agonizing shriek.

[Critical Hit!]

The boss possessed no Mod shielding or resistance barriers. Its only true advantages were its lethal area debuff and Temporal Reversal.

A massive chunk of HP evaporated from the beast’s health bar.

Caelus did not stop there. He began to rapidly carve into its legs with his dagger. The boss retaliated fiercely, summoning dark spears from the sky and raining them down upon Caelus to push him back. His shield kept the lethal spears at bay, and Caelus just kept swinging with deranged intensity.

[-182 HP]

[-173 HP]

[-153 HP]

[-173 HP]

[-173 HP]

The Euphoric effect made him completely numb to physical pain. He maintained a wide, manic grin as he continued his relentless slaughter. Every time a spear grazed his shield, his also Mod reacted with each consecutive weapon hit.

[System: +1 Radiance Stack]

[System: +1 Radiance Stack]

[System: +1 Radiance Stack]

[System: +1 Radiance Stack]

[System: +1 Radiance Stack]

The instant he hit the fifth Radiance Stack, he entered the Aegis State. His movement speed increased exponentially. Combined with the Synaptic Overclock buff from his Lightning Singularity, his reaction time reached an incomprehensible level.

Boom!

His shattered shield also begin to regenerate at 5 points per second. Seeing this, Caelus grew even more overconfident.

[Skill Activated: Aura Density]

He channeled his Aura directly into his legs and launched himself into the air for a plunging strike.

Boom!

The instant his blade connected, a blaring red warning materialized in his face.

[Ding!]

[System Warning: Your HP is about to hit zero. Please consume a Healing Potion immediately.]

Caelus did not care. He just laughed loudly like a maniac.

[Ding!]

[System: Your HP has reached zero.]

Caelus’s health pool hit zero from the constant environmental drain, but this was not the end of his run.

[System: Golden Light State of Mod ’Golden Light’ has been activated.]

Shnn!

[HP: 0 -> 5]

His HP forcefully locked at five, no longer going down. The lethal drain debuff was instantly cleansed due to his character state essentially resetting. His euphoric drug trip was also completely purged from his system, snapping him back to reality.

And for exactly one whole second, he was completely immune to all damage!

Right now, he had zero CA remaining and his Mod’s revive effect did not restore energy. But he did not need it.

Caelus’s face turned cold.

He pushed his body far beyond its physical limits. Sonic booms erupted as the panicking boss tried to impale him with a dozen dark spears, but the invincibility frames rendered the attacks useless. Caelus was dealing catastrophic physical damage. He still retained the Synaptic Overclock buff, and his dynamic vision tracked the boss’s core perfectly.

He jumped high into the sky. His red eyes locked onto the beast’s humanoid head, and he shot down toward the ground like a meteor. His Godmammoth Dagger jagged brutally into the beast’s skull, burying it to the hilt.

No matter how much combat score it had, as long as it had an HP bar, it can die and right now in his immune state, it couldn’t do anything to him.

Immediately, a notification rang out.

[System: Ascension Boss Defeated.]

[System: Ascension Quest Complete.]

[Rank: Iron I -> Iron II]

[World Level: 1 -> 2]

[System: You may now collect the rewards for completing the Ascension Quest.]

The apocalyptic warzone around him shattered like glass. He and Sylvia, who had been exactly one second away from hitting zero HP and triggering her own revive passive, were teleported back to a serene, empty place of pure silence.

Caelus collapsed onto his back, heaving a massive sigh of relief.

It was finally over.