God of Zero Cost

The cold draft from the rift smelled of old iron.

The Bor Shade moved with a heavy, rattling slide. His long-handled bronze pickaxe rose. The metal point caught the torchlight. He lunged.

The heavy bronze head chopped downward. It tore a clean vertical plane straight through the smoky dark.

Ethan didn't try to block it with his arms. His low baseline Constitution couldn't take a direct vertical hit. He used his Agility. He sidestepped right, his bare heels skidding through the loose wadi shale.

The pickaxe slammed into the unpaved dirt. White limestone dust exploded outward in a blinding cloud. The stone floorboards vibrated beneath Ethan's feet, the violent shockwave traveling straight up his ankles.

The sub-boss swung the handle sideways. The shaft whipped around like a heavy wooden bar.

Ethan threw his left forearm up. His rawhide-wrapped shield arm took the glancing blow.

Crack. The impact felt like a blunt bronze plate hitting his bone. The doubled health pool of his Unyielding Frame passive absorbed the kinetic momentum, keeping his left arm from fracturing, but the brutal hand-shock sent a sickening wave of heat tearing through his shoulder. He staggered back two paces, his teeth grinding as his chest throbbed with a deep, heavy ache.

The phantom stepped closer, raising the heavy pickaxe again to finish the kill.

Ethan backed up his base heel. He couldn't play defensive.

He dropped his core weight low. He stopped fighting the weapon with his chest muscles. He tucked the olive-wood handle of his mace tight against his ribs, treating the top-heavy glass cudgel like a twenty-kilogram body he had to pivot over his centerline.

The sub-boss lunged again. The bronze pickaxe cut an arc through the dark.

Ethan pivoted.

He executed a tight, whip-like snap-rotation of his hips. The rotational torque of his core whipped the heavy glass club upward in a brutal, rising shovel-hook. The entire kinetic force of his fifty-four Strength came straight from the unpaved dirt, transferring through his heel to the apex of the turn.

The trajectory flattened to perfection.

The mace's glass-teeth bit straight into the underside of the Bor Shade's ash-veiled throat. The collision triggered a violent, frame-stuttering hit-stop that froze the pixels for a split second as the razor-sharp amber jewel shards ground through the ancient burial shrouds, shattering the spectral neck joint into white bone fragments. The target's cackle choked out into a dry, hollow gasp as its health bar took a massive critical deletion.

The sub-boss’s stance broke completely. The towering phantom collapsed into a heap of old metal and gray ash.

Ethan’s arms throbbed with a heavy vibration. He didn't stand tall in a victory stance; his knees buckled instantly, his frame collapsing onto the loose shale as he coughed up a throatful of dry, calcified chalk dust. His left forearm was entirely numb, the rawhide wraps frayed and stained with the dark grease of the wadi floor.

Every single breath felt like a dull spike driving into his ribcage. He lay flat on his back for five full minutes, his eyes tracking the dark cave ceiling while his expanded health parameters slowly stabilized under the Unyielding Frame terrain buffer.

He had survived, but he was completely out of breath.

Ethan dragged himself over to the ash pool to claim the drop. He pulled out a heavy, green-patinated bronze scale helm socketed with a glowing plaque of translucent, blood-red gems: [The Crescent Moon-Scale of Shalem].

He didn't put it on. He ran his thumb across the polished carnelian stone, tracking the sharp weight of the bronze frame. It was a magnificent piece of elite medium armor, but it was forged entirely of processed metal.

Ethan wrapped the helm tightly in a piece of leftover rawhide canvas and slid it straight into the bottom of his scout pack next to the salvaged scales.