BOOM!
The ground didn't just shake. It convulsed.
Sebastian woke from his trance not because of a system alert. The stone floor beneath him buckled. Dust rained down from the high vaulted ceiling of the Obsidian Fortress's keep. The rhythmic hammering of Galleon in the courtyard had stopped. Replaced by a sound that resembled the tearing of wet metal—a screeching, biological roar that vibrated in the teeth and marrow.
He stood up. His joints popping. The mana exhaustion that had plagued his real-world body was still a dull ache in the back of his mind. His avatar was fully recharged though. The [Void Ocean] passive had done its work. His mana bar was full. Humming with the potential energy of a small star.
"Zero!" Valerie's voice cracked over the guild chat. Filled with a panic she'd been trying desperately to suppress. "The gate! You need to get to the gate! Baron_K... he summoned something!"
Sebastian didn't run. He walked to the balcony of the keep. Looked out over the courtyard.
The scene was chaos. The blue shimmer of the Guild Barrier was flickering violently. Rippling like water struck by a boulder. Outside the walls, the "Anti-Cheat Alliance"—or what remained of the Golden Lion and Crimson Skull guilds—had regrouped. They weren't charging blindly anymore. They were standing back. Cheering.
Looming over the fortress walls was a monstrosity that shouldn't have existed in this stage of the game.
It was a Siege Beast. A towering amalgam of stitched flesh. Rusted iron plates. Dark magic. It stood forty meters tall. Its skin a patchwork of grey, necrotic hide that oozed yellow pus. Massive staples held heavy iron plating onto its forearms and shoulders. Its head was a helmet of steel fused directly into the skull. With a singular, glowing red eye that swept across the ramparts like a searchlight.
[Monster: Iron-Stitched Behemoth (Siege Class)]
[Level: 40]
[HP: 2,000,000 / 2,000,000]
[Trait: Structure Breaker - Deals 500% damage to walls and barriers.]
"Pay-to-win trash," Sebastian spat. Looking at the creature. Baron_K must have spent a fortune in real-world credits to buy a high-tier Summoning Scroll from the black market. Likely an item meant for a future expansion.
The Behemoth pulled back a fist the size of a cargo van. Hammered it against the Guild Barrier.
BOOM.
The impact sound was deafening. The blue dome buckled inward. Cracks appearing in the energy matrix.
"The barrier is at 40%!" Valerie screamed from the ramparts. She was casting [Fireball] after [Fireball] at the creature's face. The spells merely blackened the metal plating without dealing significant damage though. "Zero! We can't stop it! It has two million HP!"
Sebastian vaulted over the balcony railing. [Sky Walk] caught him in mid-air. He descended into the courtyard with the grace of a falling feather. He landed next to the forge. Where Galleon was frantically tightening bolts on a massive, ugly contraption mounted on a stone plinth.
It didn't look like a weapon. It looked like a mistake.
The barrel was made of [Star-Metal]. A dull, light-absorbing grey alloy that seemed to drink the light around it. It was twenty feet long. Wrapped in coils of copper and conductive silver. The base was reinforced with the bones of the [Doom-Howl Wolf]. The marrow still pulsing with a faint red light. At the breech of the weapon, a complicated array of [Frost Cores] was humming. Venting freezing white mist that kept the mechanism from melting under its own potential.
"Is it done?" Sebastian asked. Ignoring the second impact that shook the fortress to its foundations.
Galleon wiped grease and sweat from his beard. The Dwarf's eyes were manic. Bloodshot. Wide with the terror of a man who knows he's built a sin against nature.
"It's done," Galleon rasped. Patting the cold metal. "The 'God-Killer' Mark I. But it's hungry, Boss. Hungrier than anything I've ever built. You hook yourself up to this, and if your mana regen dips for even a microsecond, the feedback loop will turn your brain into soup."
"Let me worry about the fuel," Sebastian said. He placed his hand on the interface panel at the rear of the weapon.
[System: Experimental Siege Weapon Detected.]
[Name: Mana-Conducting Railgun (Prototype)]
[Requirement: Infinite Mana Source or Divine-Tier Battery.]
[Warning: Usage may result in catastrophic environmental damage.]
"Perfect," Sebastian whispered.
Another crash. The barrier shattered.
The sound of breaking glass echoed across the valley as the blue dome disintegrated into sparkles of light. The Siege Beast roared. A wet, gurgling sound of triumph. It stepped forward. Raising its massive fists to smash the Obsidian Gate. Behind it, thousands of players roared in victory. Ready to flood the castle. Slaughter the defenders.
"Aim it," Sebastian commanded.
Galleon cranked a heavy iron wheel. The gears groaned. The long barrel of the railgun shifted. Angling upward. The Dwarf peered through a sighting lens made of a polished diamond.
"Target locked," Galleon grunted. "Center mass. But Boss... there's a mountain behind it."
"I know."
Sebastian closed his eyes. He opened the floodgates of his soul.
The [Void Ocean] passive usually provided a steady, overwhelming stream of mana. Now Sebastian grabbed that stream. Forced it into the weapon.
Hummmmm.
The railgun began to vibrate. The copper coils glowed cherry red. Then white. Then a blinding, electric blue. The Frost Cores hissed violently. Pumping liquid nitrogen through the veins of the weapon to keep it from vaporizing. The air in the courtyard grew heavy with static electricity. Valerie's hair stood on end. Small rocks began to float off the ground.
"Conversion rate... 10,000 Mana per second," Galleon shouted over the rising whine of the capacitor. "It's not enough! Give me more!"
"More?" Sebastian grit his teeth. He felt the drain. It felt like someone was siphoning his blood through a fire hose. "Take it all!"
He pushed. He dumped 100,000 Mana into the chamber in a single pulse.
The barrel of the railgun didn't just glow. It became transparent. The physical matter of the metal unable to contain the sheer density of the energy within. A ball of compressed, unstable plasma formed at the breech. Spinning so fast it looked like a solid sphere of light.
Outside, the Siege Beast brought its fists down on the gate. The iron doors buckled.
"FIRE!" Sebastian roared.
Galleon pulled the lever.
There was no recoil. The physics of the weapon were beyond kinetic force.
THOOM.
A beam of azure light, no thicker than a man's torso, erupted from the barrel. It moved at a fraction of the speed of light.
The beam passed through the open gate. It hit the Siege Beast in the chest.
There was no explosion. Not immediately. The beam simply punched a hole through the monster. It vaporized the armor. The necrotic flesh. The reinforced bone. The magic core powering it. The beast didn't fall backward. It was erased from the inside out. The energy expanded instantaneously upon contact. Turning the two million HP behemoth into a cloud of atomic dust.
The beam didn't stop there though.
It continued. It tore through the ranks of the players standing behind the beast. Fifty. A hundred. Five hundred players vanished in the blink of an eye. Their avatars disintegrated before they could even register the pain.
The beam struck the obsidian cliff face on the far side of the valley. Three kilometers away.
CRACK-BOOM.
The sound finally caught up. A shockwave flattened everyone in the courtyard.
Valerie scrambled to her feet. Coughing in the dust. She looked out through the shattered gate.
The Siege Beast was gone. Only its feet remained. Fused to the glassed earth. A trench, ten meters wide and glowing with molten lava, had been carved through the valley floor. Cutting a swathe through the enemy army.
In the distance... the mountain was missing a chunk. A semi-circular bite had been taken out of the cliff. Collapsing tons of rock into the valley below.
Silence. Absolute, terrified silence.
The surviving players of the Golden Lion and Crimson Skull guilds stared at the devastation. They looked at the smoking trench where their friends used to be. They looked at the disintegrated World Boss summon.
Sebastian slumped against the railgun. His face pale. Sweat dripping from his chin. His mana bar was regenerating rapidly. The mental strain was immense though.
He projected his voice. Amplifying it with the last dregs of his energy.
"The tax," Sebastian said. His voice cold. Echoing off the canyon walls. "Just went up."
The clatter of weapons hitting the ground was the only response. It started with one player. Then ten. Then hundreds. They dropped their swords. Their staffs. Their shields. They didn't run this time. They knew they couldn't run from a weapon that could delete mountains.
They knelt.