BANG——!!!
A deep, bone-rattling impact detonated at the top of the thirty-meter cavern like a thunderclap.
Mo Fan's Rising Dragon Uppercut—every drop of Qi and blood, every ounce of pent-up humiliation, every bit of [ Bone Armament ] amplification compressed into a single point of contact...
It landed dead center on the Bat Lord's ugly, barb-covered face.
CRACK.
With a sickening sound of shattering bone, the Bat Lord's armored skull caved inward under the terrifying explosive force.
Dark green venom-blood mixed with obsidian-black bone fragments detonated outward in all directions, showering Mo Fan from head to toe.
SKREEEEEE——!!!
But the vitality of a peak Tier-1 demonic beast was something else entirely.
Even after taking a face-caving blow like that, it didn't drop dead on the spot.
The agony obliterated what remained of the Bat Lord's sanity and sent it into a complete, frothing frenzy.
It let out a shriek that didn't sound like anything living should make. Its massive body thrashed and convulsed violently in midair.
Those talons—capable of shredding stone and metal—raked wildly through the air, trying to tear apart the thing clinging to its face.
"Trying to shake me off? Dream on."
Mo Fan had landed the hit, but he was thirty-plus meters in the air with nothing beneath his feet.
If this creature threw him clear, a free-fall from this height onto solid rock would wipe his HP bar in one shot.
In that razor-thin instant—
Mo Fan's hands became a pair of welded iron clamps. All ten fingers drove deep into the hard scales and flesh of the Bat Lord's neck.
He locked both legs around the creature's torso and held on like a bloodthirsty octopus latched onto a whale, refusing to let go no matter how violently it rolled.
BOOM. BOOM.
The maddened Bat Lord, realizing it couldn't shake the parasite off its back, did something spectacularly vicious.
It abandoned all pretense of controlled flight.
With Mo Fan still clinging to it, it climbed like a fighter jet in a death spiral—then drove its own back straight into the dense cluster of jagged stalactites at the cave ceiling.
It was going to grind Mo Fan to paste between its body and the rock.
BANG.
First impact.
Mo Fan felt like a cream-filled biscuit being fed into a hydraulic press.
The stalactites raked across his back with brutal force—even through the [ Bone Armament ], several deep, bleeding gashes opened up instantly.
[ Warning: High-altitude crush/impact damage received! ]
[ HP -15 ]
BANG.
The second impact was worse.
A sharp stalagmite ground across his shoulder blade in a shower of sparks. The pain made him hiss sharply through his teeth.
[ HP -20 ]
"You want to play it like that?! Fine—I'll give you everything you've got coming!"
The repeated agony didn't break Mo Fan. It woke something up in him instead.
His eyes went bloodshot. He stopped purely absorbing the hits.
In the gap before the Bat Lord could line up its third ceiling run, Mo Fan's right hand released the neck and shot out to grab the base of the Bat Lord's left wing.
Right where Mo Yan's cold iron sword had punched through earlier—leaving that deep, ragged gash.
"Break."
A sound tore out of Mo Fan's throat that didn't belong to a human being.
He channeled every last drop of Qi and blood remaining in his body into both arms, planted his right foot hard against the Bat Lord's spine...
Seized the fractured bone structure at the edge of the wound with both hands, and wrenched outward with his entire upper body as a lever.
RIIIIIP——
Flesh tearing. Bone snapping. A sound that crawled under the skin.
In the midst of the Bat Lord's thrashing, ceiling-grinding frenzy, Mo Fan—through sheer, monstrous physical force—tore the Bat Lord's entire left wing nearly clean off.
Skin, muscle, and bone, all of it.
A torrent of scalding black blood erupted like a burst pipe and drenched Mo Fan completely.
Then, as if he felt nothing at all, he drove his fist down again. And again. Hammering relentlessly into the Bat Lord's ruined, blood-soaked wing.
AWOOOOO——!!!
Wing destroyed. Skull caved in.
The once-untouchable apex predator of the underground finally burned through the last ember of its savage life force.
It let out a final cry—desperate, furious, and utterly defeated—and those ruby eyes went dark.
The massive body seized up in midair and went completely still.
Then gravity took over.
Man and beast, soaked in blood and tangled together, plummeted from thirty-plus meters like a massive kite with its string cut—falling fast toward the hard stone floor below.
Wind screamed past his ears.
"Well. I'm about to become a pancake."
Mo Fan watched the ground rushing up toward him.
The brutal intensity of the fight, combined with the constant upkeep of [ Death Vision ] and [ Bone Armament ]—even with his double Mana pool, he was running on empty.
He couldn't squeeze out enough Mana to cast Bone Armament as a shield even if he tried.
At that life-or-death instant—
The skeleton squad on the ground moved.
They had no emotions. They didn't know fear.
But carved into the core of their logic was a single highest-order directive: absolute obedience and protect the master.
BOOM.
Summon No. 004—which had been on standby—launched itself like a heavy bulldozer running at full power, charging directly beneath Mo Fan's fall trajectory.
Its massive frame dropped into a half-crouch, tilting the broad, heavy, slightly curved bear-skull back-plate upward—turning itself into an enormous shock absorber.
At the same time—
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two streaks—one black, one white—shot upward.
Mo Yan and Summon No. 003 launched from either side, rising to meet Mo Fan mid-fall.
They extended jade-bone arms and claws—ignoring the enormous Bat Lord corpse entirely—and caught Mo Fan's falling body with everything they had.
BANG——!!!
The full kinetic force came crashing down.
Both of Mo Yan and Summon No. 003's arms let out an immediate, agonized crack-crack-crack of fracturing bone.
Hairline fractures spread across their skeletal frames in dense webs. Even the soul-fire in their eye sockets flickered, nearly snuffed out.
But they held.
At the cost of shattering themselves, they absorbed the bulk of the impact—and brought Mo Fan down onto 004's broad back-plate in one piece.
RUMBLE.
Summon No. 004's four limbs sank half a foot into the ground. Its thick bones groaned.
But that wall-of-a-back-plate held against the killing blow.
The dust settled.
The Bat Lord's enormous corpse crashed into the ground several meters away, punching a crater into the stone. It didn't move again.
"Cough... cough... cough..."
Mo Fan lay spread-eagle on 004's steady back-plate, chest heaving, gulping down lungfuls of blood-tinged air.
He looked at Mo Yan and 003 beside him—bones fractured, arms still locked in the catching position—and couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face.
Wide. Unrestrained. Absolutely delighted.
"...Well done, guys."
The words had barely left his mouth.
The System panel on his retina erupted—as if celebrating this kill that had dragged him back from the edge of death—in a cascade of chiming notifications that rang like music.
[ System Settlement: ]
[ Cross-rank kill—Peak Tier-1 BOSS: Netherstone Bat Lord (LV. 10). ]
[ Massive EXP Awarded: +1000 XP! ]
[ Current EXP: LV. 9 (1800/2600) ]
Golden leveling light washed over Mo Fan's entire body.
The gashes torn open by rock during the aerial battle, the internal damage from the shockwaves—all of it flushed clean under that soft radiance.
Knitting shut, scabbing over, and falling away as his condition slowly began to recover.
But Mo Fan wasn't satisfied yet.
He forced himself upright and fixed his gaze on the Bat Lord's massive corpse nearby.
Hovering above it was a soul remnant—deep green shading into violet, far larger and more solid than anything he'd extracted from a demonic beast before...
Radiating a rich, high-tier energy signature.
"Just one more bite."
Mo Fan's eyes burned with hunger. Without hesitation, he raised his right hand toward the soul remnant and curled his fingers into a loose grip.
[ Undead Sovereign · Devour! ]
Szzzt——
The enormous mass of soul energy surged into Mo Fan's soul sea like a river being swallowed whole.
The sensation of his soul being stretched to its absolute limit—almost painfully full—was exquisite.
Mo Fan felt his Soul Strength (CPU) spiking in a wild, uncontrolled climb, and the experience bar that had just been sitting there started sprinting forward again, driven by the surge of pure, refined energy.
[ Devoured Peak Tier-1 soul remnant. EXP +800 XP ]
[ Soul Strength: 70! ]
Mo Fan stared at the experience bar, watching it climb.
This was the qualitative breakthrough he'd been waiting for.
"Go. Push through. PUSH THROUGH."
The bar surged.
(1800/2600) → (2600/2600) → LV. 10!
The moment the soul energy finished absorbing and the experience bar finally, gloriously, slammed into the maximum—
[ Congratulations, Host. Level Up! ]
[ Current Realm: LV. 10 (Peak Tier-1) ]
Then something deeply strange happened.
[ Current EXP: LV. 10 (MAX/MAX) ]
The progress bar—which should have reset after hitting Level 10 and started climbing toward the next realm—didn't appear.
Instead, it froze hard at the LV. 10 ceiling. Then its color shifted.
The vibrant, living blue drained away and was replaced by a dead, cold gray.
No further experience could be gained. Completely locked.
"What the—?!"
The manic joy on Mo Fan's face froze solid. He stared for a moment, wondering if the System had crashed.
"Are you kidding me? Did I just lose my internet connection? What kind of game locks your EXP?!"
Then—
A System notification tone rang out. Not the familiar chime from before. This one was cold. Mechanical.
And it carried a weight of absolute authority that pressed down on him like a physical force.
A special quest window—flickering with dark gold light—materialized directly in the center of Mo Fan's vision, sudden and imposing.
[ WARNING: EXP has reached the Tier-1 level cap. ]
[ Conditions met... ]
[ Tier-2 Breakthrough Quest—UNLOCKED. ]