Chapter 237: The Royal Guard Clashes, A Bloody Courtyard

The alarm siren blared endlessly across the inner sanctum of Theria.

Dante stood completely exposed in the massive gateway. The [Veil of the Unseen] was entirely shattered by the True-Sight Totems, rendering him highly visible.

He didn’t look worried. He gripped the dark bone hilt of [Voidsever], the jagged black blade resting casually on his shoulder.

"Intruder!" the Captain of the Royal Guard bellowed. The massive lion-kin warrior wore gleaming gold plate armor that radiated a deep, corrupted dark magic. The green static of Silas’s admin-level mind control burned aggressively in his eyes.

[Entity Identified: Blood-Mane Captain]

[Tier: Dark Demon (Elite)]

[Level: 50]

[HP: 150,000 / 150,000]

"Eliminate the anomaly!" the Captain ordered, pointing a massive golden halberd directly at Dante.

The entire courtyard erupted into motion. Over a hundred elite Royal Guards, all Level 50 Dark Demons, charged simultaneously. They moved with flawless military discipline, forming a tight, overlapping half-circle to completely box Dante into the gateway, cutting off any avenue of escape.

Dante didn’t try to escape.

He needed to clear the courtyard as fast as mathematically possible before Silas realized the distraction was over and secured the Chaos Orb in the vault below.

Dante didn’t open his party interface. He used a localized mental command.

"Aura," Dante whispered. "Erebus."

Two tiny spatial rifts tore open simultaneously near his shoulders.

The Mystic Sovereign materialized on his left, her silver light pulsing softly. The Half-Soul Celestial stepped out on his right, dragging her massive Mythic-tier backpack.

"The shiny men look angry," Erebus noted flatly, taking a bite of a meat bun.

"They are," Dante agreed. "Stay behind me. Aura, keep me topped off."

He didn’t wait for the guards to close the distance. He needed to drop his health to maximize his damage output, but doing it while surrounded by a hundred endgame elites was incredibly risky.

He triggered the berserker buff.

[Skill Activated: Blood Sacrifice]

Dante voluntarily burned 90% of his massive 35,500 health pool. The agonizing drain ripped through his avatar, dropping his health to a fragile 3,550 HP.

The trade-off hit instantly.

[Attack Power increased by 900%.]

The Blood-Mane guards saw his health bar plummet. The Gold-tier AI recognized the massive vulnerability.

"He is weak! Strike now!" the Captain roared, lunging forward with a brutal, overhead chop of his golden halberd.

Dante didn’t dodge.

Aura pulsed.

[Skill Activated: Resurgence Wave]

The massive, percentage-based heal washed over Dante, instantly refilling his health bar back to maximum before the Captain’s halberd could even connect.

Dante raised Voidsever, executing a flawless, casual parry.

CLANG!

The impact shook the courtyard. The Captain’s halberd violently recoiled, the massive Level 50 boss stumbling backward, completely overpowered by the sheer kinetic force of a parry backed by a 900% attack power boost.

"You guys rely way too much on armor," Dante said smoothly.

He triggered [Asura’s Heart].

His attack speed and movement speed doubled. His critical hit damage locked at 300%. His base attack power skyrocketed past 40,000.

He was a extinction event.

He didn’t use a massive, flashy Zenith-tier skill immediately. He needed to group them up to maximize the efficiency of the slaughter.

Dante raised his empty left hand.

[Skill Executed: Cyclone of Ruin]

Because of [Chrono-Shift], the Zenith-tier wind skill triggered instantly, without a mana cost.

The localized F5 hurricane exploded into existence directly in the center of the charging Royal Guard formation.

The heavy, gold-armored lion-kin didn’t get sucked into the air. They were Level 50 Dark Demons; their cosmic weight was too dense to be casually juggled by a standard wind spell.

But the hurricane wasn’t meant to kill them. It was meant to disrupt them.

The massive, dark purple vortex violently pulled the guards inward, dragging them off-balance, crushing their organized shield wall into a chaotic, tightly packed cluster of flailing limbs and golden armor.

"They’re grouped," Dante noted.

He didn’t hesitate.

He gripped Voidsever with both hands and stepped directly into the edge of the hurricane.

[Skill Executed: Abyssal Cleave]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

The spatial fracture condensed along the edge of the jagged black blade. The primordial greatsword devoured the ambient light, turning into a localized singularity.

Dante swung the massive weapon in a brutal, horizontal sweep, aiming directly into the center of the trapped cluster of guards.

[Passive Activated: Absolute Severance. 100% Armor Ignored.]

[Passive Activated: Predator’s Eye (100% Critical Hit Chance).]

The black shockwave erupted from the blade.

It didn’t just hit the guards. It passed cleanly, flawlessly through the heavy gold armor, the massive shields, and the dark magic barriers of over forty elite Level 50 mobs simultaneously.

The Zenith Protocol’s combat engine completely froze.

The math resolved.

[-3,600,000! OVERKILL!]

[-3,600,000! OVERKILL!]

[-3,600,000! OVERKILL!]

The damage numbers didn’t pop up individually. They formed a massive, solid block of glitching red static that entirely obscured the hurricane.

The forty Blood-Mane guards didn’t stagger. They didn’t roar in pain.

They were instantaneously, flawlessly vaporized.

The heavy gold armor and massive halberds turned into gray ash. The elite guards exploded into a massive, synchronized shower of blue and silver polygons, completely deleted from the courtyard in a single swing.

Dante canceled the hurricane. The dark purple vortex collapsed, leaving a massive, perfectly smooth crater in the white marble floor.

The surviving sixty guards, who had been pushing up from the rear, stopped dead in their tracks.

The green static in their eyes flickered violently. The mind-control programming was actively fighting against the sheer, unadulterated localized terror of watching half their legion get erased in one hit.

The Captain, who had barely survived by being knocked backward from the initial parry, stared at Dante in absolute horror.

"What... what are you?" the Captain stammered, dropping his halberd.

"I’m on a tight schedule," Dante replied flatly.

He triggered [Phantom Dash].

He vanished in a flash of white light, materializing directly behind the panicked Captain. The sonic boom stunned the massive lion-kin instantly.

Dante didn’t swing Voidsever. He didn’t need a Zenith-tier execution for a single, stunned target.

He raised his dark purple gauntlet and casually grabbed the Captain by the back of the neck.

He squeezed.

The 200% simulated pain feedback of his [Asura Vanguard] aura triggered.

The Captain let out a horrifying, wet scream of absolute agony. The Level 50 boss thrashed wildly, his health bar dropping rapidly under the unmitigated crush damage.

Dante tightened his grip.

[-150,000! Critical Hit! OVERKILL!]

The Captain’s neck snapped. His health bar vanished. He exploded into blue pixels, leaving a pile of high-tier gold armor on the pristine white marble.

Dante turned his attention to the remaining sixty guards.

They didn’t charge. The death of their commander and the overwhelming psychological pressure of the Asura class completely broke their resolve.

"Run," Dante suggested softly.

The Royal Guards didn’t need to be told twice. The mind-control completely snapped. They threw their massive golden weapons onto the marble floor and sprinted away, scattering into the various corridors of the inner sanctum, desperately trying to escape the anomaly.

Dante didn’t chase them. He didn’t care about clearing the courtyard perfectly. He only cared about the vault.

He sheathed Voidsever, the black blade dissolving back into his wrist.

He turned around.

Erebus was sitting on the edge of the newly formed crater, happily swinging her legs, completely unbothered by the massacre. Aura was floating nearby, looking slightly bored.

"You guys are terrible backup," Dante joked softly, walking past them.

He ignored the massive piles of dropped gold coins and elite gear littering the courtyard. He didn’t have time to vacuum it up. Silas was already inside.

He marched straight toward the massive, heavily fortified iron doors at the far end of the courtyard, marked with the Royal Crest of the Beast-Emperor.

The doors to the subterranean vaults.

The heavy iron portals were blown completely off their hinges, lying ruined on the marble stairs leading downward into the dark.

"Silas didn’t knock," Dante noted, drawing the [Dawn-Breaker Blade] for illumination.

He descended the wide, spiraling stone staircase, his iron boots echoing loudly in the silent, dark shaft. The air grew significantly colder, smelling of ancient dust and heavy, localized magical suppression.

He reached the bottom of the stairs.

The corridor leading to the main vault chamber stretched for several hundred yards. It was perfectly straight, lined with towering stone pillars.

It looked completely empty.

But Dante’s Intuition stat was pinging violently, a sharp, incredibly aggressive warning that made his skin crawl.

He stopped, raising his hand to halt Erebus, who was happily skipping down the stairs behind him.

"Don’t move," Dante commanded.

He activated [Dragon’s Insight].

His vision shifted to the analytical grid, overlaying the dark corridor with glowing lines of system code.

Dante gasped, taking a slow step backward.

The corridor wasn’t empty.

It was absolutely laced with thousands of tiny, incredibly thin, glowing green tripwires. They crisscrossed the entire hallway, forming an impenetrable, localized laser grid from floor to ceiling.

But they weren’t standard magical traps. They weren’t designed to deal fire or frost damage.

[System Identification: Administrator Deletion Code]

[Warning: Fatal System Hazard. Contact will result in instantaneous, un-resurrectable True Death. Bypasses all invulnerability frames and passive revive mechanics.]

"Silas," Dante whispered, his voice tight.

The Guild Master hadn’t just relied on the Royal Guard to slow Dante down. Silas had used his Enforcer privileges to actively rewrite the localized code of the hallway. He had laid a trap forged entirely from the Arch-Administrator’s raw deletion protocol.

If Dante took a single step, if a single pixel of his avatar touched one of the glowing green threads, the Zenith Protocol would instantly, permanently erase his account.

He couldn’t teleport through it. The system explicitly blocked spatial displacement through administrative barriers. He couldn’t fly over it. The threads reached the ceiling.

He was completely boxed out.

And at the far end of the corridor, sitting in the center of the massive, open vault chamber, Dante could see Silas.

The Enforcer was standing in front of a glowing pedestal, reaching out to grab a massive, pulsing orb of brown and gold energy.

The [Primal Earth Core].

Silas looked up, spotting Dante standing at the edge of the laser grid.

The Guild Master smiled. It was a vicious, triumphant expression.

"You’re too late, Dan," Silas’s voice resounded down the corridor, amplified by his admin privileges.

"You can’t cross the code. And in ten seconds, I will merge this core with my administrative crystal. I will become functionally immortal. And then I will personally delete your entire guild."

Silas reached for the orb.

Dante didn’t panic. He didn’t scream in frustration.

He looked at the thousands of glowing green threads of deletion code. He looked at Silas.

Dante sheathed the Gold-tier broadsword.

He held out his right hand.

"You keep forgetting," Dante said softly, his red eyes burning intensely. "I have the anti-virus."

[Voidsever] materialized in his grip. The pitch-black blade hummed aggressively, the glowing white veins of the [Source Code Fragment] actively pulsing with localized, systemic authority.

Dante gripped the dark bone hilt. He didn’t swing a Zenith-tier skill.

He just stepped forward, dragging the massive, jagged black blade directly into the glowing green laser grid.