System Anomaly: The Sin of Greed[LitRPG/Prog Fem/Anti-Hero]

The four-meter-thick ice wall sealed the crypt opening with a sharp crack that cut off all sound from the outside world.

Inside that small, dark tomb, Kael, Aurelia-Elysia, Seraphina, and the unconscious Rhea were shielded from shrapnel and crushing gravity.

Outside, in the center of the vast Iron Throne Chamber, Diana stood completely alone.

The Commander wiped the blood from her mouth with her torn leather sleeve, feeling her chest burn beneath the dented Dragon Chestplate. Her health bar read 380 hit points, and her mana pathways carried roughly eight hundred points remaining.

Ahead of her, the Level 40 Ancient Steel Titan dragged its two-ton hammer across the stone, throwing off sparks. On the flanks, the two Level 39 Resonator Archmages hovered with recharged quartz scepters, preparing to restart the magic destabilization frequency.

Diana did not wait for the three monsters to organize into formation.

She knew fighting defensively against two static casters and a kinetic shock warrior was certain suicide. The only chance of victory lay in the immediate annihilation of the flanking mages to clear room for maneuvering.

Diana took a deep breath, focusing one hundred points of mana into the soles of her boots.

Arcane Teleportation.

With a bluish snap, Diana vanished from the ground and reappeared half a meter behind the first Resonator Archmage.

The Level 39 monster tried to turn its scepter to raise a repulsion barrier, but Diana was faster. Her black obsidian claws dug into the collar of the archmage’s robe, jerking the skeletal head backward, while her black steel dagger descended in a dry, ruthless strike straight into the creature’s neck joint.

Predatory Strike!

CRACK!

The black steel blade pierced the runic stone at the nape of the mage’s neck, severing the central mana flow. The first Level 39 Archmage emitted a hiss of static and disintegrated into gray dust before touching the ground.

But the second archmage did not miss its reaction window.

The creature’s quartz scepter flashed with a blinding emerald-green glow, firing a concentrated point-blank repulsion shockwave right into Diana’s flank.

Diana tried to twist her body in midair to evade, but the spell’s impact slammed into her right ribs with the force of an iron sledgehammer.

The Commander was hurled against the granite floor, tumbling across the gravel for ten meters, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs.

Diana’s health bar dropped from 380 to 290 HP.

Diana did not stay on the ground for a single second. She rolled over her shoulders, using the fall’s momentum to push up onto her knees, thrusting her open left hand toward the second mage.

Greed’s Flame + Dual Arcane Arrow!

A flare of black fire intersected by two colossal beams of blue light erupted from Diana’s palm, crossing the ten-meter distance and slamming directly into the second Archmage’s chest before it could conjure another spell.

The magical impact obliterated the mage’s structure into glowing ashes.

Both static casters were dead.

***

Only the Boss remained.

The Level 40 Ancient Steel Titan did not hesitate over the loss of its supports.

The five-meter automaton took a colossal stride that sank the granite floor beneath its iron boot, swinging the two-ton hammer in a low horizontal sweep.

Diana did not attempt to block. It would be madness to take the blow of that weapon without Kael’s shield.

She leaped backward the instant the hammer swung through. The weapon’s head cut the air with a deafening whistle, and the wind kicked up by the blow gouged splinters from the stone floor where Diana had been standing a tenth of a second earlier.

Diana landed on the gravel and held out her left hand.

Mana Prison!

Translucent chains burst from the ground and clamped around the Titan’s shoulder joints, locking its kinetic gears for four seconds.

The monster froze mid-motion.

Diana used the window of immobility to unleash the offensive arsenal she had mastered in the Second Circle:

She fired an [Arcane Ice Lance] into the bend of the automaton’s right knee, freezing the joint into a thick crust of ice, followed by an [Orb of the Arcane Storm] that crashed down onto the creature’s iron head, blasting its faceplates into showers of electric sparks.

The Titan’s HP plummeted below one thousand points.

But on the fourth second, the Mana Prison seal expired.

The Titan forced its internal engines with all the physical Strength it possessed. The ice around its knee shattered under the metal’s brute pressure, and the automaton charged forward with its lead shoulder like a blind battering ram.

The hammer’s long haft caught Diana on the left shoulder during her dodge.

The Dragon Chestplate held against the edge, but the sheer mass of iron dented the silver scales, and the impact slammed Diana against one of the chamber’s central columns with brutal violence.

The granite column cracked from top to bottom with the collision.

Diana’s health bar plummeted from 290 to 140 HP.

Diana fell to her knees at the base of the column, coughing up a mouthful of hot blood that stained the gray stones of the floor. Her peripheral vision went dark for two seconds, and her left arm burned with the agony of strained muscle fibers.

***

The Titan dragged its iron feet, closing in on the column where Diana was trapped.

The monster’s metal shell was fractured all over by ice and black flames, its health bar hovering below four hundred points, but its five-meter frame was still more than enough to crush the fallen girl’s body against the stone.

The automaton raised the two-ton hammer with both mechanical arms, gathering all the remaining kinetic energy in its gears to deliver the final strike that would cleave the entire hall in half.

Diana looked at the hammer suspended in midair.

Her mana was below two hundred points. Her body burned with pain, and she knew she could not channel another teleportation jump in time to clear the dispersal radius of that shockwave.

She looked toward the back of the chamber, in the direction of the fissure sealed behind the ice wall where Kael, Aurelia, Seraphina, and Rhea were locked away.

Diana did not weep. She felt no panic.

The Commander raised her head crowned with obsidian horns and the amethyst circlet, drew in all the air her wounded lungs could hold, and let out a shout with the full power of her Archdemon voice, a clear and mighty roar that cut through the stone of the entire dungeon:

“RHEA! KAEL! AURELIA! SERAPHINA!”

The echo of her voice made the granite vibrate:

“IF I FALL HERE, RHEA TAKES COMMAND OF THE ARCANE GREED FACTION! NO ONE BOWS TO THE NOBLES! NO ONE SELLS THE BASTION! YOU GO TOGETHER ALL THE WAY TO THE THIRD CIRCLE!”

On the other side of the frozen barrier, the desperate sound of fists and staves banging against the ice echoed faintly, but Diana did not look back.

***

Diana poured everything left of her existence into that final second.

She activated her supreme skill:

GREED COMMAND - WILL OF THE SOVEREIGN!

Golden light from the thirty-six gold coins in the vault erupted from Diana’s chest, elevating her Intelligence and magical power to the highest peak she had ever experienced in her life.

Diana thrust both hands straight toward the open chest of the Titan bringing down its hammer.

GREED’S FLAME + DUAL ARCANE ICE LANCE!

Ice spikes and black flames impaled the internal gear core of the Level 40 Titan at the precise millisecond the hammer’s two-ton head collided with the granite floor at Diana’s feet.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The clash of forces was apocalyptic.

Diana’s spell shattered the Level 40 Titan’s mana core from the inside out, zeroing out what remained of the monster’s life in the very same second.

But the kinetic shockwave of the falling hammer struck the chamber’s ancient foundation.

The granite stone beneath the feet of Diana and the boss’s iron corpse did not merely crack. It collapsed completely.

A gigantic crater thirty meters across opened in the center of the throne hall, revealing an endless, bottomless black chasm plunging far beyond any known map of the Second Circle.

***

The lifeless body of the five-meter Titan plummeted into the dark abyss like an iron anchor.

And Diana, with no footing beneath her boots, insufficient mana to cast teleportation, and a body exhausted from battle, was pulled down by the gravity of the collapse alongside tons of gravel and broken stone.

Across the hall, the crypt’s ice wall broke apart under the earthquake’s tremor.

Kael, with his broken arm strapped to his chest, and Aurelia-Elysia rushed in terror to the edge of the smoking crater, gripping the stones to peer down.

“COMMANDER!” Kael screamed, his voice torn with dread.

“DIANA!” Aurelia reached out into the void, weeping in despair.

But there was nothing to be seen.

Down below lay only the absolute, cold darkness of a pit of no return.

Diana plunged through the void in free fall alongside the ashes of the defeated boss.

The wind lashed her face, and the pain in her chest gave way to a deep, soft numbness spreading through her tired limbs.

The System interface hovered before her eyes in shimmering black gold, recording the final experience from the Level 40 monster before the lights faded:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

[ANCESTRAL STEEL TITAN (LEVEL 40) DEFEATED]

[SYSTEM: YOU HAVE LEVELED UP...]

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Diana slowly closed her eyes.

The Commander of Greed lost consciousness amid the dark wind, falling into the unknown depths of Hell, while the Second Circle was left behind high above the abyss.