The creature that stepped out of the dimensional tear was not a wolf. It was an apocalyptic nightmare given physical form!
RRRROOOOAAARRR!
The Doom Howl Wolf stood twenty feet tall at the shoulder. Its fur was composed of jagged and razor sharp obsidian shards that absorbed the ambient light. This rendered the beast as a terrifying silhouette of pure darkness. Its eyes were twin pools of localized and swirling hellfire. Thick and corrosive saliva dripped from jaws large enough to swallow a tank whole.
[Entity: The Doom Howl Wolf (Level 30)]
[Status: Server-wide Fear Debuff Applied (-20% Stamina)]
It was Level 30! It radiated an aura of pure and unadulterated malice that physically weighed down on the players. It applied a server wide fear debuff that instantly drained twenty percent of everyone's stamina.
The ten thousand players in the valley froze. The petty guild rivalries and the bounties and the screams for the head of Sebastian all evaporated in an instant. They were replaced by the primal terror of being at the bottom of the food chain.
Sebastian stood completely unfazed just thirty yards from the towering behemoth. He merely tilted his head.
"Needs a bath," he noted clinically.
The Wolf King threw its massive head back and roared!
BOOM!
It wasn't a standard audio file. The roar was a concussive wave of kinetic energy. The sound physically tore through the front lines of the player blockades. Ear drums popped. Screens blurred with red warning filters. The sheer force of the shockwave threw dozens of heavy Guardians backward into their own teammates and shattered formations like bowling pins.
"Hold the line!" Viper screamed. Panic finally bled into his arrogant voice. "Tanks front! Healers spam your spells! It is just a big dog so bring it down!"
"Lions! Focus fire!" Baron_K yelled. His voice cracked an octave higher than usual. "Ranged DPS hit the eyes!"
The guilds snapped out of their shock and unleashed hell. Hundreds of low level spells like pathetic fireballs and weak ice shards and tiny lightning bolts rained down on the massive beast. Hundreds of arrows bounced harmlessly off its obsidian fur.
The damage numbers of the game floated into the air.
ping. ping. ping.
[-1]
[-0]
[-2]
[Resisted]
The Wolf didn't even register the attacks. It looked down at the swarm of players aggressively tickling its ankles and its hellfire eyes narrowed.
It lunged!
CRUNCH!
The resulting slaughter wasn't a fight. It was a harvest.
The Doom Howl Wolf slammed its massive front paws into the Crimson Skull vanguard. The heavy iron shields of the Level 10 tanks folded like wet cardboard. The physics engine shrieked as character models were violently crushed into the dirt and their health bars instantly deleted.
[-5000 (Overkill!)]
The beast snapped its jaws and caught three Golden Lion players mid stride. It violently shook its head and tossed their mangled and half rendered avatars high into the air.
Splash…..
Digital blood sprayed in massive and geyser like arcs painting the grass a sickening red.
"Healers! Heal me!" a severed Berserker gurgled. His torso was lying ten feet away from his legs.
"I am out of mana!" a Cleric sobbed. He desperately waved a wooden stick at the carnage.
The beast spun around. Its massive and spiked tail swept across the battlefield. It cleaved through a dozen players like a scythe through wheat. It sent them flying into the treeline with the sickening crunch of shattered digital bones.
Sebastian stood with his arms crossed. He watched the absolute massacre with mild amusement.
"Dumbasses," Sebastian shook his head. "They grouped up the tanks. They missed the aggro pull. And they are trying to beat a Level 30 healing factor with weak trash spells. They really don't read the patch notes."
He watched as Viper the proud guild leader of the Crimson Skulls tried to execute a heroic leaping strike. The Wolf didn't even look at him. It just swatted Viper out of the air with a casual flick of its paw. The guild leader hit the ground so hard he bounced and instantly rag dolled into a death animation.
Smack!
[Player 'Viper' has died.]
Off in the distance Sebastian saw Valerie. The Blue Rose guild was smartly retreating as they realized the battle was entirely unwinnable. Valerie was throwing hard light barriers over her fleeing guildmates. Her face was pale with the realization of how incredibly weak they all truly were.
The Wolf let out another concussive roar. It prepared to charge into the fleeing masses and finish the job.
"Alright," Sebastian sighed. "Show's over. Time to go to work."
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't yell a battle cry. He simply tapped into his mana pool and activated the conceptual law he had evolved in the alleyway of Novice Village.
[Skill Activated: Void Walk]
Vwoooom.
The vibrant and bloody chaos of the Valley of Echoes instantly vanished!
The deafening roars and the screams of dying players and the bright flashes of useless magic all ceased to exist. The vision of Sebastian plunged into the muted and monochromatic greys and absolute blacks of the parallel dimension. He became entirely intangible like a ghost stepping out of phase with the reality of the server.
He began to walk forward.
In the physical world the Wolf was still rampaging and tearing through the Golden Lions. But in the Void everything was silent.
Sebastian walked directly through the battlefield. He stepped right through the torso of a panicking Golden Lion player. He walked through a massive and lingering pool of the corrosive acid breath of the Wolf completely unaffected. He possessed absolute physical and magical immunity. To the hit detection logic of the server he simply was not there.
He didn't run. He strolled casually and navigated the chaotic meat grinder like a man taking a leisurely walk through a park. He bypassed the screaming tanks and the crying healers and the frantic guild leaders.
He reached the epicenter of the slaughter!
The Doom Howl Wolf was rearing back on its hind legs. It was preparing to unleash a massive and localized ground slam that would undoubtedly wipe out the remaining fifty players trapped in its immediate radius.
Sebastian stepped directly into the space where the massive front paws of the Wolf were about to land.
He looked up at the towering and obsidian monster suspended in its attack animation.
SNAP!
[Skill Deactivated: Void Walk]
With a mental twitch Sebastian toggled Void Walk off.
Color and sound and the smell of digital gore violently rushed back into his senses. The deafening roar of the battlefield hit his ears.
He was standing entirely unarmored directly between the descending paws of the Wolf and the terrified players on the ground.
The hellfire eyes of the Wolf King snapped down! The advanced AI of the monster immediately registered the sudden and impossible manifestation of an entity directly in its kill zone. The beast actually hesitated. Its attack animation stuttered for a fraction of a microsecond as it tried to process how a player had bypassed its aggro radius.
Sebastian didn't flinch. He didn't dodge. He stood perfectly still and looked up at the apocalyptic beast with his cold and deadpan eyes.
"Sit the fuck down, dog," Sebastian said, his voice hard.