Chapter 101 – The Obsidian Focus.

The mist of the Gluttony valley cleared early that morning, giving way to a sky the color of burnt copper.

Diana met Boran by the city's east exit. The old tracker no longer coughed as he walked. The man's breathing was clean and rhythmic, and his strides across the packed earth were considerably firmer after five days of taking the ninety-five percent pure infusions prepared by the Commander.

This time, Boran led the trek beyond the thorn hills, entering the Sulfur Plate Rift (Level 45-47).

The terrain was rugged, formed by steps of gray limestone covered in yellow crusts of solid sulfur. Small vents in the ground hissed jets of hot steam that made the eyes sting if one stood downwind.

Boran stopped at the edge of a three-meter drop, crouching behind a rock ledge and pointing down to the dry gravel bed:

“Down there,” the old man murmured. “The beast the city's blacksmiths seek most for forging heavy shields.”

In the center of the clearing, excavating a sulfur fissure with broad iron claws, was a Rift Volcanic Armadillo (Level 46).

The monster was three meters long and shaped like an armored tank. Its back was completely plated in interlocking slabs of gray sulfur stone five centimeters thick, so dense and compact they resembled cast-iron armor. The creature's head remained tucked almost entirely within its carapace, leaving only its blunt snout exposed as it churned through the gravel.

The appraisal from [Command Eye] confirmed the monster's durability:

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[ARMORED BEAST APPRAISAL]

- Target: Rift Volcanic Armadillo (Level 46)

- HP: 2,400 / 2,400 | MP: 150 / 150

- Attributes: Strength: 44 | Vitality: 56 | Agility: 25

- Properties: Runic Sulfur Carapace (Reduces Slashing, Blunt, and Ice damage by 60%).

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“Stay on the upper ridge, Boran,” Diana instructed, descending the stone drop with short, quiet steps.

***

Ten meters from the creature, Diana activated [Arcane Domain Aura] and unleashed her opening rotation.

Mana Prison + Arcane Ice Lance!

Translucent chains erupted from the ground around the armadillo's paws, while the blue ice spike struck the side of the monster's carapace with full force.

CLANG!

The result was disappointing.

Diana's ice, which had easily pierced drake scales in the Second Circle, shattered into white powder against the sulfur plates without opening a single deep crack in the shell.

The monster pulled its four legs and head into its shell in the very same second, curling into a flawless two-ton sphere of armored rock.

The armadillo's carapace began spinning across the gravel, accelerating into continuous rotation until it shot in a straight line toward Diana like a high-speed iron wheel.

Diana used [Arcane Teleportation], flickering eight meters to the left.

The stone sphere hurtled past where she had stood, slamming into the rock wall with a crash that dislodged chunks of gravel from the cliffside.

Shards of stone and sulfur crust flew through the air, slicing the sleeve of Diana's jacket and grazing the side of her neck.

Diana's health bar dropped from 550 to 520 HP.

The creature lost none of its momentum. It ricocheted off the rock face with the force of the collision and spun back in Diana's direction, without exposing its head or paws by even a millimeter.

Diana tried the [Orb of the Arcane Storm]. Electricity blanketed the stone sphere, but the inorganic sulfur plating grounded the static charge directly into the earth without slowing the monster's roll.

[Greed's Flame] enveloped the shell, searing the outer layer of gravel, but the heat took too long to penetrate the stone's thickness while the monster kept bouncing off the rift walls in relentless charges.

Diana needed pinpoint thermal penetration. A concentration of heat so dense and needle-thin that it could bore through the carapace's seam at a single point before her mana ran out from dodging.

***

It was at that moment of pressure that Diana's Archdemon body responded.

As the Commander channeled fire mana into her chest to stoke Greed's Flame, she felt an unfamiliar heat rise through the base of her skull, radiating directly into the two obsidian horns upon her head.

The golden grooves running along the horns began pulsing with vibrant light.

Diana grasped the anatomy of her new race in a flash of intuition:

The horns were not mere decorative bones of nobility. They functioned as natural conductors and lenses for high-density mana. The two sharp obsidian tips could channel and compress elemental energy into a single focal point without thermal dispersion.

Diana set her feet into the gravel, planting her boots firmly in the dirt.

She did not retreat as the armadillo's armored sphere lined up its final straight-line charge from five meters away.

Diana focused one hundred points of pure mana straight into her horns.

The gold within the obsidian grooves flared with incandescent brilliance, directing the energy toward the two sharp tips above her brow. The heat concentrated into a pinpoint the size of a sewing needle between the twin horn tips.

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[NEW RACIAL SKILL UNLOCKED!]

[Obsidian Horns' Igneous Focus - Level 1]

- Type: Concentrated Piercing Pure Fire Attack.

- Effect: Fires a fine beam of extreme heat that ignores 70% of the target's Physical Defense at the point of impact.

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“Pierce it,” Diana hissed through her teeth.

At the millisecond the two-ton sphere reached two meters away, the twin tips of Diana's horns released their concentrated mana.

PZZZZT!

A thin, dazzling beam of white fire blasted from the obsidian tips with the hiss of a blowtorch slicing through steel.

The beam struck precisely along the articulation seam between the monster's third and fourth sulfur plates.

The stone melted instantly under the focused heat. The fire beam bored through the five-centimeter shell as if it were hot wax, piercing straight into the armadillo's heart and vaporizing its internal organs in a blast of scalding steam.

The sphere's rotation stopped that very instant.

The Level 46 Volcanic Armadillo uncoiled its limp body onto the gravel floor, venting one last puff of black smoke through the open wound in its carapace, slumping dead upon the red earth.

***

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[ENEMY DEFEATED: RIFT VOLCANIC ARMADILLO (LEVEL 46)]

- Experience Gained: 850 EXP.

[SYSTEM: YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!]

- DIANA HAS REACHED LEVEL 39!

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Diana released a slow breath through her mouth, feeling the horns on her head cool down gently as the gold in the grooves returned to its customary dull sheen.

The light of evolving to Level 39 washed over her body for two seconds, mending the small cuts on her neck and restoring her HP to full.

Diana allocated the points of her new level with her usual mathematical discipline:

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[ATTRIBUTE ALLOCATION - DIANA (LEVEL 39)]

- Progression: Level 38 -> Level 39 (5 Free Points).

- Class Passives (+3 INT, +2 PER, +1 WIS): Applied.

- Allocation:+3 Free Intelligence (163 + 3 + 3 = 169 INT! + 20 from Crown = 189 INT!), +2 Vitality (55 -> 57 VIT -> HP reaches 570 POINTS!), +2 Perception (74 + 2 = 76 PER!), +1 Wisdom (33 + 1 = 34 WIS!).

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189 Intelligence with the Crown of Sovereignty.

Level 39 achieved. Only one single level remained to reach the milestone of Level 40.

***

Boran climbed down the rock drop with hunting knife in hand, approaching the armadillo's carcass.

The old man stopped before the cleanly melted hole in the sulfur shell and looked at the black horns on Diana's head with silent respect.

“I've never seen a caster use their own horns as a thermal focus cannon...” Boran commented under his breath.

“That is what they are for,” Diana replied, wiping soot from her forehead. “Cut away the intact sulfur plates and extract the Level 46 core.”

Boran worked quickly, prying loose six flawless mineral armor plates and the creature's thermal fat pouch.

At midday, they returned to the Iron Cauldron Outpost. Diana sold the sulfur plates directly to a heavy-armor smith in the south sector, bringing in 15 pure Silver Coins with the +30% Commander's Loot bonus.

She paid the daily wage of one silver coin to Boran, who offered thanks with a respectful bow.

With the loot revenue and the guide's fee settled, the total balance in the faction vault adjusted to an untouched 383 Silver Coins and 50 Bronze (38.35 Gold Coins).

Diana walked back to The Smoking Boar Tavern, touching the cool tip of her right horn with her fingers.

The new body held tools she was still learning to master.

Level 40 was a single step away. And the Commander of Greed was ready for the next hunt.