Chapter 120: Rewriting Physics
Instead of reaching the apex of the jump and falling back down, the Behemoth’s hooves struck the empty air with a loud, thunderous crack. The green Anomaly code flared. The game engine hitched, aggressively calculating the collision. The beast found solid footing on the ambient moisture in the air and kept running.
They were literally sprinting up an invisible staircase into the sky.
The wind ripped past them as they rapidly gained altitude. The ruined city of Valerius shrank into a tiny brown smudge far below. Within minutes, they broke through the first layer of thick gray ash and entered the lower storm front.
The air up here was violent, constantly flashing with ambient lightning.
"Targets sighted," Isolde announced, pointing her staff.
Cruising through the storm clouds were massive, flat silhouettes. They looked exactly like oceanic manta rays, but they were the size of commercial airplanes. Their skin was a dark, crackling blue, and lightning violently jumped between the tips of their wide wings.
[Cloud-Ray]
[Level: 70 | Elite]
[HP: 1,200,000 | ATK: 12,000 | DEF: 4,000]
"Twelve thousand attack," Levi noted, keeping the Behemoth steady on the cloud floor. "And a ten-level gap means a fifty percent Level Suppression penalty. This is going to be a heavy fight."
The Cloud-Ray’s Defense was 4,000. His Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse ignored 30% of that. That dropped the ray’s effective Defense down to exactly 2,800.
His permanent Total Attack was sitting at 7,464.
"Two thousand, three hundred and thirty-two damage per basic strike," Levi calculated. "Against a 1.2 million health pool. It’s a grind, but the Lifesteal will keep us topped off."
He didn’t wait for them to notice him. He steered the Behemoth directly toward the nearest pod of three Cloud-Rays.
"Platinum Ward of the Abyss!" Levi shouted.
The massive, 10,110 HP dark-matter shield erupted, expanding to cover the entire Behemoth and Isolde.
The Cloud-Rays shrieked. It sounded like tearing metal. The three massive beasts banked sharply in the air and fired thick, concentrated beams of pure lightning directly at Levi.
The lightning smashed into the black-hole shield.
[-3,858] [-3,858] [-3,858]
The math checked out. 12,000 Attack minus Levi’s 1,254 Defense was 10,746. Cut in half by his 50% damage reduction passive, the incoming damage was roughly 5,373. However, since magic bypassed standard armor scaling slightly differently, the final hit registered at 3,858 per beam.
The three hits shattered the 10,110 HP shield instantly, bleeding a tiny chunk of damage into their shared 101,800 HP pool.
But the shield’s passive reflection triggered. Twenty percent of the unmitigated attacks rebounded, slamming 2,400 True Damage straight back into the rays.
Levi stood up in the saddle and launched himself into the air.
He landed directly on the broad, crackling back of the lead Cloud-Ray. The beast thrashed, trying to shake him off.
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
The skill damage pushed through the 50% suppression penalty, chunking the ray for roughly 8,162 damage. It wasn’t a massive hit, but the 20% defense shred applied immediately.
Levi locked his boots onto the slippery blue hide and went to work. He swung the Platinum scythe in a brutal, high-speed blur. With his attack speed, he was landing four 2,332-damage hits a second. His 25% Lifesteal instantly erased the chip damage they had taken from the lightning, locking their shared health pool right back to a perfect 101,800.
Isolde hovered below them on the Behemoth, perfectly executing her artillery protocols.
[-5,000 True Damage] [-5,000 True Damage]
Her white Anomaly blasts slammed into the underbellies of the other two Cloud-Rays, keeping their aggro and chunking their health bars.
The aerial hunt was absolutely chaotic. The Cloud-Rays dove and barrel-rolled through the storm, trying to electrocute Levi. Levi just kept hacking, carving deep gashes into the beasts to maintain his true damage bleed.
It took nearly twenty minutes of relentless striking, but the health bars of all three beasts finally synced up.
240,000 HP. Exactly the 20% execution threshold.
"Soul Harvest."
Three massive, pitch-black spectral guillotines materialized in the stormy sky. They dropped simultaneously, perfectly decapitating all three Level 70 Elites.
The massive beasts shattered into millions of glowing blue polygons, dropping the required bundles of white Cloud-Silk right into his inventory.
Three dense crimson auras ripped out of the sky and slammed into Levi’s chest.
[Supreme Harvester triggered 3 times.]
[Cloud-Ray’s primary stat is VIT (3,300).]
[You have plundered 3% of its core stat.]
[Gained +300 VIT permanently!]
Levi landed gracefully back on the saddle of the Behemoth as the polygons faded.
He felt a massive surge of durability flow into his avatar. He immediately checked his stats.
His permanent Vitality jumped from 1,204 straight to 1,504.
The system rapidly recalculated their shared health pool. 1,504 Vitality multiplied by 20 was 30,080. Add his 100 flat armor bonus. Then add Isolde’s massive 50,800 base Anomaly health and the 25,000 bonus from the Mythic rings.
The new number locked into place on his UI.
[Shared HP: 105,980 / 105,980]
"One hundred and five thousand health," Levi grinned, patting the Behemoth’s neck. "We’re basically a walking raid boss now."
He looked up. Just past the storm front, he could see the bottom edges of the massive floating islands that made up the Aether Skies.
"The silk is secured," Levi told Isolde. "We don’t even need the saddle. We’re breaching the cloud layer right now."
***
The Behemoth’s massive hooves smashed against empty air with the sound of a thunderclap.
It shouldn’t have been possible. They were miles above the surface, running straight up an invisible incline into the upper atmosphere. But every time the heavy armored beast took a step, Isolde’s green Anomaly code flared beneath its hooves, instantly rewriting the game’s collision tags. The ambient moisture in the clouds briefly solidified into a hard surface, giving the mount perfect traction.
"This is completely stupid and I love it," Levi laughed over the roaring wind.
He gripped the reins tightly as the Behemoth broke through a dense, crackling layer of purple storm clouds. The freezing rain and jagged lightning of the lower atmosphere whipped past them.
Behind him, Isolde held onto his waist. Her arms were wrapped securely around his Obsidian Carapace armor. She wasn’t glitching anymore. Since forging the Mythic tether, her physical rendering in the game was flawless.
"The structural integrity of this code injection will only hold for another ninety minutes," Isolde said. Her voice didn’t have that weird, robotic buzz in his head anymore. She sounded like a normal girl shouting over a storm. "The server is already running background checks on our elevation data. We need to reach the next zone before the system forces a hotfix and drops us."
"We’re almost there," Levi said. He pulled back on the reins.
The Behemoth let out a low, rumbling growl and burst through the final layer of thick, gray ash.
The violent storm instantly vanished.
Levi blinked as bright, artificial sunlight washed over his visor. They had officially breached the cloud layer.
Welcome to the Aether Skies.
Levi pulled the mount to a halt, letting it stand on a solidified patch of mist. He looked around. The view was absolutely staggering.
The Aether Skies wasn’t just a zone. It was a massive, sprawling archipelago of floating islands. Giant chunks of earth and stone hovered in the sky, suspended by glowing blue Aether currents. Waterfalls flowed off the edges of the islands, spilling down into the clouds below. Massive, rusted iron chains the size of highways connected the larger landmasses together.
But Levi wasn’t looking at the scenery. He was looking at what the players had built.
"Look at that," Levi muttered, his eyes narrowing. "They actually did it."
Docked around the central hub of floating islands was a massive fleet. There were hundreds of flying galleons. Some were made of dark enchanted wood, while others were plated in heavy iron. They hovered on the blue Aether currents just like ships on the ocean.
Hanging from the masts of these ships were massive, brightly colored flags. Levi recognized the emblems immediately.
The golden sun of Solar Lance. The red shield of Crimson Aegis. The black anvil of Ironclad.
These were the mega-guilds. The same guilds that used to rule the surface cities like kings. When the reality-merge started dropping high-level Abyssal monsters into the streets, they didn’t stay and fight. They liquidated all their assets, pooled their money, and bought into the new Guild Castle system.
They literally moved to a different atmospheric layer just to hide.
Isolde looked over Levi’s shoulder. Her gray eyes scanned the massive armada. "I count exactly five hundred and twelve active vessels. They have established a naval blockade."
"A blockade?" Levi asked. "Blocking what?"
"The flight paths leading to the Level 80 zone," Isolde pointed toward a dark, swirling storm front hovering behind the fleet. "The Storm-Reaches. It is the only route to the higher tiers of this continent."