Chapter 78: The Leviathan of the Void
The Void-Leviathan shrieked.
The sound was not physical; it was a devastating psychic pressure wave that bypassed the mortal army’s golden holy armor.
In the Vanguard, thousands of Level 30 Royal Guards collapsed, clutching their helmets.
Their eyes rolled back as the Level 60 Gold Tier boss shredded their sanity.
[System Warning: Psychic Assault Detected!]
[Target: Allied Vanguard (Morale Critical)]
"Hold the line!" Lyra yelled, raising her silver broadsword. The Dawn Saintess poured her radiant holy mana into a massive, shimmering dome of light, trying to shield the screaming soldiers from the mental onslaught.
Lucifer didn’t move to help them. He didn’t draw his ruby-red longsword.
He had brought thirteen million mortals to slaughter the low-level swarms and feed his Fate Energy tax. He had brought the heavy artillery for the Leviathans.
"Dragoons," Lucifer commanded smoothly over his comms rune. "Execute."
The Aether-Steel Dragoons hovered silently behind the collapsing Vanguard. They were massive, black-metal centaurs, twenty feet tall, powered by humming magitech thrusters. They had no souls. They had no minds to break.
The psychic scream washed over their thick Aether-Steel armor and did absolutely nothing.
The Dragoons moved in perfect unison. They did not break formation. They glided forward, their blue visors tracking the massive, slithering monstrosity floating above the spatial highway.
"Open the ranks!" High Ranger Celeste roared from her dire wolf, desperately shoving the panicked mercenaries aside to create a corridor for the machines.
The Dragoons smoothly bypassed the screaming mortals. They formed a tight, horizontal wall of black steel directly in front of the Leviathan.
The boss ignored the machines. It opened its massive, circular maw, preparing to unleash a second, more lethal psychic wave to finish off the human army.
"Overdrive," Lucifer ordered.
The five thousand Dragoons responded instantly. Their hovering blue thrusters pitched up into a deafening, high-frequency scream. The flames turned blinding white.
They did not fire their shoulder cannons. They lowered their ten-foot-long magitech lances. The tips crackled with highly concentrated, volatile blue lightning.
The Dragoons charged.
The sheer speed of the massed cavalry charge displaced the heavy gray fog of the Umbra, creating a massive, localized vacuum.
The Void-Leviathan realized the threat a fraction of a second too late. It snapped its jaws shut and tried to slither upward, its thick, black Umbral Ore plating glowing with defensive spatial magic.
CRASH.
The impact was catastrophic.
Five thousand heavy Aether-Steel lances slammed simultaneously into the Leviathan’s massive, armored underbelly.
The raw physical mass of the machines, combined with the blinding speed of the Overdrive thrusters, hit the boss with the force of a falling mountain.
The thick, jagged Umbral Ore plates did not shatter immediately. They groaned under the immense pressure. But the Dragoons did not stop.
The crackling blue lightning on the tips of their lances detonated.
It was a synchronized, point-blank discharge of raw aether-energy. The lightning bypassed the physical armor, surging directly into the Leviathan’s nervous system.
The Gold Tier boss convulsed violently. A horrific, bubbling shriek escaped its maw. The electric shock paralyzed its massive, slithering body in mid-air.
"Keep pushing!" Lucifer commanded, his void-swirling eyes locking onto the struggling beast.
The Dragoons did not pull back. They drove their thrusters harder, their white-hot engines melting the invisible spatial highway beneath them.
They physically pushed the paralyzed, dreadnought-sized monster backward through the air.
SCREEECH.
The Umbral Ore plating finally gave way. The thick black scales snapped loudly, exposing the pulsating, dark purple flesh underneath.
The ten-foot lances drove deep into the Leviathan’s underbelly, tearing massive, jagged wounds.
Thick, highly corrosive black blood rained down over the Dragoons. The acid hissed violently against their Aether-Steel armor, but the metal was forged in a Absolute Zero quench.
It held firm, completely ignoring the chemical burn.
"Now," Lucifer stated smoothly. "Fire."
The five thousand Dragoons, still pinning the massive beast with their lances, raised their left shoulders.
They fired their heavy aether-cannons at point-blank range, directly into the open, bleeding wounds.
The volley was absolute devastation. Blinding blue fire erupted inside the Leviathan’s body. The monster’s internal organs were instantly vaporized by the sheer, concentrated heat.
The Leviathan thrashed wildly, its massive tail whipping around in a desperate, dying spasm. The tail slammed into the right flank of the Dragoon formation, throwing a dozen heavy machines fifty feet into the air.
They crashed onto the invisible highway with a deafening clatter of dented steel, but they did not break.
The boss let out one final, gurgling roar.
The aether-fire burned a massive, glowing blue hole straight through the center of its body, blowing out its spine and exiting through its back.
The Leviathan went completely limp. Its massive, dead weight slipped off the crackling lances and crashed heavily onto the spatial highway, shaking the entire dimension.
[Boss Eliminated: Void-Leviathan (Level 60 - Gold Tier)]
[Experience Gain Suspended: Mortal Level Cap Reached.]
Silence fell over the Vanguard. The psychic pressure vanished instantly.
The thousands of Royal Guards and mercenaries, previously screaming on the ground, slowly lowered their hands from their helmets.
They looked up in absolute awe at the massive, steaming corpse of the Gold Tier boss, and the silent, black-metal centaurs hovering triumphantly over it.
Lucifer did not celebrate. He sheathed his longsword.
The Carnage Core on his hip pulsed violently. The massive, high-density death energy of a Level 60 boss rushed into the artifact, feeding his Warlord aura.
He opened his system interface.
[Loot Acquired: 50,000 lbs Raw Umbral Ore]
[Loot Acquired: 1x Leviathan Spatial Core (Mythic Material)]
[Soul Tithes Harvested: +500,000]
Lucifer smirked. The harvest was perfectly efficient.
He didn’t manually collect the massive plates of black armor ripped from the beast.
He used Gravity Crush to condense the loose Umbral Ore and the glowing purple spatial core, sucking them directly into his Dimensional Vault.
"The Vanguard is secure," Lucifer announced over the comms rune. "The beast is dead. Get the mortals back on their feet. The fog is clearing."
He turned to Elara. The Valkyrie stood beside him, her Twilight wings folded. She had not drawn her spear. She hadn’t needed to.
"They are flawless executioners," Elara noted, looking at the Dragoons pulling back into formation. "They took a hit from a Gold Tier boss and didn’t even dent."
"They are machines," Lucifer said smoothly. "They do not feel pain. They do not know fear."
He looked deeper into the Umbra. The massive corpse of the Leviathan had anchored the chaotic magic of the area, thinning the dense gray fog slightly.
"The map is updating," Lucifer stated.
He projected the tactical data from his four thousand invisible Void-Stalker Phantoms. A massive, glowing blue structure appeared on the map, roughly three miles ahead. It was not a floating rock or a monster nest.
"There is a ruin," Lucifer observed, his void eyes narrowing. "It is not a chaotic reflection of the mortal plane. It is organized. It is symmetrical."
"The Arcane Empire," Elara breathed, recognizing the architectural signature. "The Precursors built outposts in the Umbra before they vanished."
Lucifer didn’t hesitate. He mounted his Nightmare Steed.
Let’s march forward!