Chapter 126: The Storm-Reaches, Aerial Hunt
The green light wrapped around his boots, draining 2 Mana a second. It fed 15 HP back into the pool. It was a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the lightning damage, but Levi didn’t care. With nearly a hundred and six thousand health, he could sit in this storm for almost a full minute doing absolutely nothing before he was in any real danger.
"Structural integrity of the gravity path is holding," Isolde said. She was sitting right behind him on the saddle, her arms wrapped around his waist. "But the environmental damage parameters are aggressive."
"Let it hit us," Levi smirked. "We’re going to heal it back as soon as we find a target."
He spurred the Behemoth forward. They charged deeper into the dark, roaring clouds. The thunder was absolutely deafening, masking the heavy hoofbeats of the mount.
"Targets sighted," Isolde announced abruptly. She pointed her wooden staff straight up into the storm.
Levi looked up.
Diving out of the black clouds was a pod of massive, flying reptiles. They looked like wyverns, but their scales were made of dark, crackling storm clouds, and their wings were lined with pure, jagged electricity. They didn’t flap their wings; they surfed the lightning currents.
The system threw up the glowing red nameplates.
[Storm-Wyvern]
[Level: 75 | Elite]
[HP: 3,000,000 | ATK: 18,000 | DEF: 6,000]
"Three million health," Levi read the stats out loud, shaking his head. "And eighteen thousand attack. The developers really hated solo players."
He didn’t panic. He ran the math. It was the only way to survive.
He was Level 61. The Storm-Wyverns were Level 75. That was a massive fourteen-level gap. that triggered a brutal 70% Level Suppression penalty.
’Alright, break the armor down,’ Levi calculated rapidly. ’Wyvern Defense is 6,000. My Platinum scythe ignores 30% of that. Thirty percent of 6,000 is 1,800. That drops their effective Defense down to 4,200.’
He checked his permanent Total Attack. He was sitting at 7,620.
’One thousand and twenty-six Final Damage per basic strike,’ Levi thought. ’Against a three million health pool. This is going to be a long flight.’
He materialized the massive Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse into his right hand. The dark blade hummed, reacting to the heavy static in the air.
"Keep the Behemoth steady!" Levi shouted to Isolde.
He didn’t wait for the Wyverns to dive bomb them. Levi stood up on the saddle, bent his knees, and launched himself directly off the back of the running mount.
He shot up into the stormy sky, flying straight toward the lead Wyvern.
The massive beast shrieked, opening its jagged, lightning-filled jaws. It didn’t try to bite him. It unleashed a point-blank, concentrated beam of pure white lightning directly into Levi’s chest.
Levi didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t have his 50% damage reduction necklace anymore. He just took the hit squarely on his Obsidian Carapace armor.
The VR pain engine sent a horrible, burning shockwave through his entire body.
The system processed the math instantly. Wyvern Attack was 18,000. Levi’s current Defense was 1,554.
[-16,446]
The heavy red number exploded across his screen. His massive Shared HP pool dropped from 105,980 straight down to 89,534. Combined with the 2,000 True Damage ambient lightning ticking away in the background, his health bar was actually moving.
But Levi just grinned.
He crashed directly onto the broad, crackling back of the lead Wyvern. His Gold-tier boots slammed into the scales, locking onto the beast’s spine. The Wyvern thrashed violently, trying to shake him off into the empty sky.
"You hit hard," Levi grunted, gripping his scythe. "But I heal harder."
"Hollow’s Guillotine!"
Levi dumped 100 Mana from his 9,160 pool. The Platinum scythe erupted in a blinding mixture of dark-gold energy and pure white light. He drove the blade straight down into the Wyvern’s back, ripping it backward in a massive cone of destructive force.
[-6,741]
The number wasn’t huge, but it applied the broken shield debuff, shredding 20% of the Wyvern’s remaining armor.
More importantly, it triggered his weapon’s passive. The Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse boasted a massive 25% Lifesteal.
Twenty-five percent of 6,741 was exactly 1,685.
[+1,685 HP]
The green healing numbers popped up instantly. Levi didn’t stop. He yanked the blade out and started a relentless blender of basic physical attacks. He hacked into the thick scales, swinging the heavy blade three times a second.
[-1,026] [+256 HP]
[-1,026] [+256 HP]
[-1,026] [+256 HP]
Because his attack speed was so ridiculously high, he was easily ripping thousands of health points back into his Shared HP pool every few seconds. It wasn’t enough to instantly heal the 16,000 damage hit he took, but it completely stabilized his health bar against the ambient lightning.
The scythe’s passive bleed triggered. The tiny teardrop icon popped up over the Wyvern’s health bar, ticking for 5 true damage per second.
"Isolde!" Levi yelled over the howling storm. "Bring the rain!"
Down below, riding the Behemoth across the invisible cloud-floor, Isolde raised her wooden staff. Her blank, gray eyes locked onto the massive flying reptiles.
"Artillery protocols engaged," Isolde stated calmly.
A blinding pulse of white light shot up from her staff, smashing directly into the underbelly of the Wyvern Levi was riding.
[-10,000 True Damage]
Levi blinked. He looked at the massive red number floating in the air.
"Ten thousand?" Levi muttered. "When did you start hitting that hard?"
"My Anomaly code is passively absorbing ambient Aether data from this atmospheric layer," Isolde replied, her voice broadcasting clearly into his helmet. "My True Damage scaling is increasing exponentially in this environment."
"I love this game," Levi laughed.
The Wyvern shrieked in agony, barrel-rolling through the black clouds in a desperate attempt to throw Levi off.
Levi just dug his boots in harder, gripping the spine scales with his left hand while hacking relentlessly with his right. The aerial hunt had officially begun.
***
The lead Storm-Wyvern violently banked sideways, diving straight through a thick cluster of purple lightning in a desperate attempt to fry the parasite riding on its back.
Levi didn’t let go. He rode the massive beast like a surfboard, keeping his boots locked onto the crackling scales.
The ambient lightning blasted him.
[-2,000 True Damage] [-2,000 True Damage]
His Shared HP bar dipped, but he just kept swinging his Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse. Every single strike carved 1,026 Final Damage out of the Wyvern’s health pool. His 25% Lifesteal forcefully ripped health back into his system, keeping his bar floating comfortably around the 90,000 mark.
He wasn’t doing massive burst damage, but he didn’t need to. He was the tank.
"Hit him again, Isolde!" Levi yelled, ducking as the Wyvern’s tail whipped past his head.
Below them, tracking the chaotic aerial dogfight from the back of the galloping Behemoth, Isolde pointed her wooden staff upward.
"Calculating trajectory," Isolde stated flatly.
A blinding beam of pure white Anomaly energy shot through the black clouds and slammed directly into the Wyvern’s chest.
[-10,000 True Damage]
The massive red text exploded in the sky. Because Isolde’s True Damage entirely ignored the 70% Level Suppression penalty and the Wyvern’s 6,000 Defense, her blasts were absolutely devastating.
The beast’s 3,000,000 HP pool was steadily melting.
2 million. 1.5 million. 800,000.
But the lead Wyvern wasn’t alone.
Four more Storm-Wyverns dove out of the dark clouds, shrieking like tearing metal. They swarmed Levi, snapping their massive, lightning-filled jaws at him.
One of the Wyverns managed to clamp its teeth down on Levi’s arm.
The VR pain engine sent a horrible, crushing pressure through his bicep.
[-16,446]
His Shared HP pool violently dropped, falling into the 70,000 range.
Levi gritted his teeth, yanked his arm free, and swung his scythe in a wide horizontal arc, catching two of the incoming Wyverns in the face.
[-1,026] [-1,026]
"I need some breathing room!" Levi shouted. "Isolde, spread the damage!"
"Acknowledged," Isolde replied. She didn’t drop a Gravity Well—the targets were moving too fast in a three-dimensional space—but she started rapid-firing her staff.
White beams of Anomaly code peppered the sky. She hit all five Wyverns, ripping 10,000 True Damage out of their health pools with every cast.
Levi focused entirely on surviving. He turned into a glitching black shadow on the back of the lead Wyvern, parrying snapping jaws and dodging point-blank lightning breaths. He kept his 5 DMG/sec True Damage bleed active on as many targets as he could reach, holding their aggro perfectly.
The fight was a chaotic, high-altitude meat grinder.
Levi watched the lead Wyvern’s massive red health bar floating above its head.
700,000. 650,000.
"Almost there," Levi muttered, his real-world arms burning from the relentless swinging.
The health bar ticked down.
600,000 HP.
Exactly twenty percent of the Level 75 Elite’s maximum health.