The Abyssal Bishop towered over the lake of green magma.

The Level 60 Epic Boss was a horrifying mockery of the High Pope. Its six massive bone-scythe arms thrashed wildly and splashed highly corrosive lava onto the blackened shores of the crater.

The corrupted golden halo behind its swollen head pulsed with intense sickly necrotic light.

"Filth!" the Bishop roared. The voice was a wet gurgling distortion of holy hymns. "The Light rejects you! The dark consumes you! Surrender your flesh to the choir!"

[System Warning: Boss Aura Active.]

[Debuff: Sermon of Decay. Continual Mana Drain and Health reduction to all entities within 100 meters.]

Lucifer felt the immediate pull on his Archmage core. The necrotic aura was trying to siphon his mana and rot his flesh simultaneously.

"It’s draining us!" Celeste yelled over the bubbling magma.

The High Ranger fired three aether-tipped arrows in rapid succession. The glowing shafts slammed into the Bishop’s massive swollen chest, but the explosions barely scratched the thick mutated papal robes.

"The armor is fused with Abyssal magic," Elara warned. The Twilight Sovereign hovered a few feet off the ground and her violet-flaming spear was ready. "Standard physical damage won’t pierce it.

The halo is generating a continuous mitigation shield."

"Then we break the halo," Lucifer stated smoothly.

He did not charge directly into the magma lake. He activated Zephyr’s Grace.

Lucifer became a blur of dark motion. He sprinted around the edge of the crater and moved so fast he appeared to be teleporting.

He dragged the Bishop’s attention away from Celeste and Elara.

The colossal monster turned its mutated head. It raised two of its massive bone-scythe arms and swung them down in a brutal sweeping arc. It aimed to crush the Warlord against the rocky shoreline.

"Void Step," Lucifer commanded.

He vanished a microsecond before the scythes hit the ground. The impact shattered the black rock and sent a geyser of green magma into the air!

Lucifer materialized fifty feet in the air directly above the Bishop’s corrupted golden halo.

He raised his right hand. The Gauntlet of the Void King crackled with fierce pitch-black lightning.

"Gravity Crush," Lucifer whispered.

He targeted the space directly inside the halo. The intense localized singularity slammed down and attempted to crush the magical construct into dust.

The Bishop shrieked. But the halo did not shatter!

The necrotic magic flared violently and actively fought the Void’s gravity. The halo bent and groaned under the immense pressure, but it held firm.

The Bishop swung its four remaining arms upward and attempted to skewer Lucifer out of the sky.

Lucifer dropped. He deactivated the spell and allowed gravity to pull him into a rapid freefall. He dodged the sweeping bone scythes by inches.

He landed heavily on a jagged rock jutting out of the magma lake and his boots absorbed the impact.

"The shield is too dense," Lucifer noted with his void-swirling eyes locking onto the boss. "The halo is feeding off the ambient Abyssal fire in the crater."

"I can cut it!" Elara shouted.

She launched herself into the air and her Twilight wings beat hard. She flew directly toward the Bishop’s face and her spear burned with violet fire!

The Bishop did not swing its arms. It opened its massive unhinged jaw.

"Kneel!" the monster bellowed.

A concentrated beam of pure corrosive green soundwaves erupted from its mouth! It was a physical wall of acoustic force infused with death magic.

Elara raised her silver shield, but the force of the blast was staggering.

The soundwave slammed into her and threw the Twilight Sovereign backward through the air.

She crashed into the far side of the crater and her armor ground against the black rock.

"Elara!" Celeste yelled and drew another arrow.

"I am fine!" Elara responded instantly and pushed herself back to her feet.

Her Mythic Void-Weave armor absorbed the necrotic damage effortlessly. But the sheer kinetic force had completely halted her advance.

The Bishop laughed a horrifying wet sound. It raised its six arms and prepared to unleash a massive area-of-effect spell to boil the remaining magma and flood the shores!

Lucifer gripped his ruby-red longsword. The Carnage Core pulsed violently. He was calculating the exact moment to use Spatial Rend to tear the monster’s arms off.

Before he could act, the air above the crater shimmered.

It was not a dark jagged Umbral rift. It was a perfectly smooth blindingly bright projection of pure silver light!

A colossal translucent figure materialized in the sky directly above the Abyssal Bishop!

It was Lyra!

The Dawn Saintess was not physically there. She was sitting safely on the Spire of Celestial Convergence fifty thousand feet above them.

But she had used the immense power of the Wonder to astrally project her consciousness and her holy aura directly onto the battlefield!

The projection was massive and towered over the Level 60 boss. Lyra’s six wings of holy fire and dark matter flared brilliantly and cast a blinding twilight glow over the entire crater.

The Abyssal Bishop stopped laughing. Its six arms froze in the air. The monster looked up at the colossal projection of its former student.

"Saintess..." the Bishop gurgled and its mutated voice dropped into a confused terrified whisper. The residual human soul trapped inside the beast recognized her.

Lyra’s astral projection looked down at the grotesque twisted form of the man who had once been her mentor. Her dual-toned eyes did not hold pity. They held absolute unforgiving judgment.

"You worshipped gold. You hid in the dark. And the dark consumed you," Lyra’s voice echoed across the crater.

The sound was not loud, but it possessed a divine resonant frequency that completely shattered the Bishop’s Sermon of Decay debuff!

Lyra raised her astral hand. She pointed a single glowing silver finger directly at the corrupted golden halo hovering behind the Bishop’s head.

"The Light revokes your authority," Lyra declared.

She unleashed a massive concentrated pulse of Twilight magic!

It did not look like a fireball. It looked like a solid beam of moonlight and shadow. The beam struck the corrupted halo.

The clash of magic was instantaneous! The necrotic green fire fighting the holy light shrieked. But Lyra was a Tier 5 Primordial Entity operating through a Wonder. The Bishop was only Level 60.

The power gap was insurmountable!

The corrupted golden halo shattered into a million pieces of dull useless lead!

The massive transparent mitigation shield protecting the Bishop instantly evaporated. The monster roared in agony as the sudden loss of its magical anchor caused its swollen mutated flesh to violently blister and boil!

[System: Boss Mitigation Shield Destroyed.]

[Source: Astral Projection (Dawn Saintess)]

[Target Vulnerable.]

"Now, Lucifer!" Lyra’s voice echoed over the comms rune.

Lucifer did not hesitate!

He did not run across the rocks. He did not use Void Step to teleport.

He activated the Gauntlet of the Void King.

"Spatial Rend," Lucifer commanded.

He grabbed the air directly in front of him and pulled. He did not tear a portal. He physically pulled the spatial coordinates of the Abyssal Bishop toward him!

The forty-foot-tall monster shrieked as the very fabric of reality dragged it forward. The massive beast was yanked out of the magma lake and flew helplessly through the air directly toward the rocky shoreline where Lucifer stood.

Elara was already moving.

The Eclipse Valkyrie launched herself from the far side of the crater and flew on a perfect intercept course. She did not aim for the chest. She aimed for the joints.

As the massive Bishop flew through the air, Elara swung her violet-flaming spear in a rapid blurring series of strikes!

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

Her spear severed three of the monster’s massive bone-scythe arms before it even hit the ground! Purple corrosive blood sprayed across the rocks.

The Bishop crashed heavily onto the shoreline and rolled violently toward Lucifer. It tried to push itself up with its remaining three arms and its jaws snapped desperately.

Lucifer stepped forward.

He raised the ruby-red Blade of Ruin high above his head with both hands. The Carnage Core flared and flooded the True Damage steel with blinding pure crimson light.

Lucifer brought the sword down.

The strike was absolute. The ruby-red blade cleaved straight down through the top of the Bishop’s mutated skull.

It sliced through the thick bone, the brain, and the fused papal armor.

Lucifer drove the sword all the way down to the monster’s waist and perfectly bisected the upper half of the Epic Boss!

The Bishop’s shriek abruptly cut off.

The two halves of the massive grotesque body collapsed outward and hit the black stone with a heavy wet slap. The True Damage instantly purified the Abyssal rot. The monster’s flesh dissolved into rapidly evaporating white ash.

[Boss Eliminated: The Abyssal Bishop (Level 60)]

[Experience Gain Suspended: Mortal Level Cap Reached.]

Lucifer ripped his sword free from the dissolving ash and sheathed it smoothly.

He looked up. The colossal astral projection of Lyra hovered for a moment longer with her dual-toned eyes locking onto Lucifer with fierce pride.

Then, the projection shimmered and faded. It returned the crater to the dim green glow of the magma lake.

"Flawless execution," Elara noted and landed gracefully beside him. She wiped a smear of purple blood from her silver cheek. "The Saintess shattered the shield, and you brought the target to the blade."

"It was efficient," Lucifer agreed quietly. He turned his void-swirling eyes toward the magma lake.

"The boss is dead, Commander," Celeste said and walked up behind them. The High Ranger slung her bow over her shoulder. "But the crater is still full of lava. We cannot dig through that to find the vault."

"We don’t need to dig," Lucifer stated smoothly.

He walked to the very edge of the rocky shoreline. The intense heat of the bubbling green magma washed over his dark armor.

Lucifer raised his right hand. The Gauntlet of the Void King crackled with thick violent arcs of black lightning.

He targeted the bedrock beneath magma.

"Absolute Crush," Lucifer commanded.

He unleashed a massive continuous wave of localized gravity directly into the center of the lake!

The effect was catastrophic. The immense crushing weight of the Void magic slammed into the molten rock.

The green lava did not splash. It was violently forced outward and pushed away from the center of the crater by an invisible impenetrable cylinder of gravity!

The magma parted like the Red Sea!

A massive perfectly circular fifty-foot-wide tunnel of empty space was carved directly through the liquid fire.

The gravity well pushed the lava back and revealed the solid unburned black bedrock at the very bottom of the lake.

And set into the bedrock was a massive perfectly preserved heavy iron door covered in ancient glowing gold runes!

The Royal Vault.

"The door is exposed," Lucifer announced and kept his hand raised to maintain the massive gravitational displacement. The black lightning on his gauntlet pulsed steadily.

"The pressure is immense," Elara warned and looked at the towering walls of bubbling green lava held back by the invisible gravity field. "If you drop the spell, the magma will collapse instantly." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"I won’t drop it," Lucifer promised softly.

He turned his void-swirling eyes toward Elara and Celeste.

"Move," Lucifer ordered. "We are going down. The World-Anchor is waiting."