"Fire."
The word left Lucifer's lips. Miles away, atop the jagged cavern cliffs, one hundred Cryo-Vanguard snipers pulled their triggers in perfect unison.
The resulting sound was a singular, deafening thunderclap. One hundred armor-piercing ice rounds shattered the sound barrier.
They crossed the subterranean chasm in a fraction of a heartbeat. They punched through the remaining shards of the cathedral's stained-glass windows, tracking straight for the floating Lich.
At that exact moment, the Carnage Core on Lucifer's hip reached its absolute limit. The cursed artifact had spent the last hour gorging on the souls of half a million Deep Gnomes, the Cultists, and the two High Necromancers. Now, it drank the overflowing, ambient death magic of the Lich's charging Death Cloud.
The black glass shattered its outer shell. A blinding, blood-red light erupted from the core.
[System: Carnage Core fully charged! 100,000 / 100,000]
[Active State Unlocked: Absolute Carnage]
[Effect: Grants 100% True Damage to user and all allied forces within command range. Ignores all armor, immunities, and magical barriers.]
The red light shot upward, linking Lucifer to his snipers on the cliff. Mid-flight, the hundred ice rounds transformed. They turned from pale blue to a violent, glowing crimson.
Lord Vane saw the incoming. The Lich did not panic. He simply diverted a fraction of his massive mana pool, raising a dense, tier-five emergency barrier of hardened shadow to protect his skull. He expected the physical bullets to bounce off.
He was wrong.
The crimson rounds struck the shadow barrier. The True Damage enchantment ignored the magic entirely. The bullets passed through the barrier as if it were made of thin air.
They slammed into Lord Vane.
The impact was catastrophic. Red-hot ice shattered the Lich's ancient bones. Bullets tore through his regal finery, blowing massive holes in his ribcage, his shoulder joints, and his floating spine.
Vane shrieked. It was a high, metallic sound of pure agony.
His concentration snapped. The Death Cloud, boiling near the cathedral ceiling, lost its magical containment.
The swirling vortex of green and purple nightmare destabilized. It stopped gathering power and simply collapsed.
"It's falling!" Sarah cried out.
Chunks of concentrated necrotic acid and pure death magic rained down like meteors. Where the drops hit the bone pews, the furniture instantly dissolved into hissing puddles of gray sludge. Where it hit the stone floor, it burned deep craters.
"Hold on," Lucifer commanded.
He activated the Zephyr's Grace Emblem. God-like speed flooded his muscles. He grabbed Elara with his right arm and scooped Sarah up with his left.
The world slowed to a crawl. Lucifer pushed off the shattered altar. He moved like a bolt of black lightning.
He zigzagged across the melting cathedral floor. He dodged a massive glob of purple acid by a fraction of an inch. He slid under a collapsing pillar of bone, his boots kicking up sparks on the stone.
Elara raised her silver shield, projecting a golden dome over them to deflect the smaller splashes of toxic rain.
Sarah buried her face in Lucifer's chest, her starlight pulsing to heal the minor corrosive burns stinging Lucifer's exposed armor joints.
Lucifer did not stop moving. He ran up the wall of the cathedral, flipped backward off a stone gargoyle, and landed cleanly near the melted iron doors of the vault. The ceiling above the altar completely caved in, flooded by the dissolving Death Cloud.
The rain of death lasted for ten seconds.
Then, the magic dissipated. The cathedral was completely ruined, reduced to smoking craters and melting bone.
Lucifer deactivated the emblem. He set Elara and Sarah down.
"Stay here," Lucifer ordered.
He drew his longsword. The blade hummed, completely saturated with the red light of the Carnage Core.
In the center of the ruined cathedral, Lord Vane was trying to crawl.
The Legendary Lich was a broken mess. His lower spine was gone. His left arm was severed at the elbow. His rusted crown lay in a puddle of acid. The purple fire in his eye sockets flickered weakly.
Vane dragged himself toward the open archway leading out to the toxic lake. He extended his remaining skeletal hand.
He chanted a desperate, broken spell, trying to siphon the green sludge from the water to rebuild his shattered body.
Green liquid began to float up from the lake, slithering through the air toward him.
Lucifer walked across the smoking floor. His heavy Warlord boots crunched loudly in the quiet room.
Vane turned his skull.
"You cannot kill me," Vane rasped. The fear in his voice was unmistakable. "I am bound to the Abyss. My amulet is hidden beyond your reach! If you strike me down, I will simply return!"
Lucifer stepped onto the Lich's outstretched hand. His heavy iron boot crushed the ancient finger bones into powder. The siphoning spell immediately broke. The green sludge splashed harmlessly onto the floor.
"No, you won't," Lucifer said.
He looked down at the pathetic creature. The Warlord's Sovereign's Weight pinned Vane to the floor. The physical gravity was so intense it began cracking the Lich's remaining ribs.
"Your amulet doesn't matter," Lucifer stated coldly. "True Damage doesn't just cut bone. It cuts the soul."
Vane's jaw unhinged in a silent scream. The purple fire in his eyes flared one last time.
Lucifer raised his longsword high. He brought the blade down.
The crimson steel pierced the center of Vane's skull. It drove straight through the bone and pinned the Lich's head to the solid stone floor beneath him.
A blinding flash of red and purple light exploded from the point of impact. The True Damage enchantment surged through Vane's magical network, hunting down the invisible tether connecting his soul to his hidden phylactery. The magic burned the tether away, erasing the Lich's existence across all planes in a single strike.
Lord Vane shattered into a pile of fine, gray dust.
[Boss Eliminated: Lord Vane, The Legendary Lich]
[Calculating Experience...]
The explosion of dark, condensed soul energy from the Zone Boss erupted outward in a massive shockwave.
It did not fade into the air. It rushed directly into Lucifer's chest.
His soul, anchored by the regressor's timeline, met the incoming energy.
[Divine Talent: Apex Multiplier Activated!]
[Applying 10,000x multiplier to Boss Experience Yield...]
Lucifer gasped. His back arched as a column of pure, white light blasted out of his body, punching a hole straight through the cathedral roof.
The sheer volume of mana flooding his system was incomprehensible. It felt like swallowing a star. His Warlord core expanded, cracked, and reformed a dozen times in a single second.
A cascade of blue system interfaces completely blinded his vision.
[Level Up! You are now Level 26.]
[Level Up! You are now Level 29.]
[Level Up! You are now Level 32.]
[Level Up! You are now Level 39.]
[Level Up! You are now Level 46.]
...
[Level Up! You are now Level 50.]
The alarms in Lucifer's head blared. The notifications turned from blue to a flashing, warning yellow.
[System Alert: Mortal Level Cap Reached!]
[Experience gain suspended. Further leveling requires a Class Transcendence or a Dimensional Key.]
[All Base Stats have reached maximum mortal threshold.]
[Mana Capacity: Archmage equivalent.]
[Physical Strength: Titan equivalent.]
The column of white light faded. Lucifer lowered his head. He breathed out, and a cloud of pure, condensed mana escaped his lips, freezing the air in front of him.
He opened his eyes. The violet rings in his irises were now thick and glowing with absolute power. He clenched his fist.
The air around his gauntlet distorted, unable to handle the physical pressure of his maxed-out stats. He was Level 50. He had hit the ceiling of the mortal world in a matter of weeks.
Lucifer looked down at the pile of dust that used to be a Legendary Lich. He kicked the rusted iron crown aside.
Elara and Sarah walked up behind him. They navigated carefully around the puddles of acid.
Elara stared at Lucifer. She could sense the monumental shift in his power. As a Valkyrie, she recognized the pressure. It was the same pressure she felt when standing before the lesser gods of her realm.
"You have ascended," Elara said softly. Her golden eyes were wide with a mix of awe and deep respect. "Your mortal shell is overflowing."
"It is," Lucifer agreed. His voice vibrated with raw mana.
Sarah looked at the ruined cathedral. Her starlight aura pulsed weakly, but she managed to stand on her own. "The dark magic is fading. The Cult is destroyed. The mind-control tethers outside are completely gone."
Lucifer turned his back on the ashes of the Lich. He sheathed his longsword. The Carnage Core on his hip powered down, returning to a dormant, black glass state. Its job was done.
"The fortress is ours," Lucifer said. He looked toward the melted iron doors of the vault. "Now, we claim the spoils. Let's see what the Lord of Decay was hiding in the dark."