Constantine checked his Status Window.
He was currently Level 85, with three Recovery Potions remaining.
His Skills were also available.
'First things first…' He reached for a Major Recovery Potion and drank it without responding to the Litch.
He was going to need everything he had in the upcoming battle.
'This will be tough…'
Constantine knew Litches.
In Eccles Accel, the Litch was designed specifically to punish Players who had invested entirely in one damage type.
High physical resistance and high magical resistance—both operating simultaneously, each layer covering the other's blind spots. Most Players ran Floor 5 with a balanced party of four for exactly this reason.
He had a handful of Skills and two Recovery Potions after the one he'd just used.
'The weak point is the Phylactery,' he thought, circling to keep distance. 'Always.'
Every Litch in Eccles anchored its existence in a Phylactery—a fixed object housing its core essence.
Destroy it and the resistance framework collapsed entirely.
The problem was finding it.
Phylacteries weren't marked. They looked like part of the Litch until you knew what to look for, and the Boss protected the location aggressively once it understood you were targeting it.
The Litch's first move was a volley of green flame bolts that tracked movement and corrected mid-flight.
He activated Ghost Step and stepped out of their path.
The bolts curved toward his new position.
He moved again before they arrived.
'Tracking projectiles. Ghost Step counters them, but burns duration.'
He tried Dark Blast from range.
The bolt detonated against the Litch's robes and scattered across the surface without penetrating. Magical resistance absorbed it at the outer layer without visible effort.
Physical approach was worse.
He closed distance under Ghost Step and drove a Ghost Fang Dagger into the gap between robe and arm, aiming for the structural joint.
The blade met something that wasn't bone and wasn't armor—a reinforced spiritual density that stopped it completely.
He retreated before the staff came down.
The impact crater where he'd been standing was half a meter deep.
Level 83 from the follow-up that caught him exiting stealth.
'Both resistances confirmed. No shortcut available.'
He stopped attacking and started watching.
For the next several exchanges, he kept distance and let the Litch cycle through its offensive options—tracking bolts, staff slams, a chaining cold effect that dragged at his movement even through Iron Bones.
He deflected, dodged, and repositioned without returning fire, using Null Zone only to interrupt chains before they stacked.
He was looking at the chest region.
A Phylactery was either worn on the body or embedded in the weapon. The staff's tip glowed from the moment the Litch rose—static light, unchanged during the entire fight. Enhancement material, not animating essence.
That left the body.
He forced a different angle on the next exchange, throwing Null Zone at the Litch's feet to interrupt a tracking bolt chain and circling hard right to catch the robes mid-shift.
There!
A dull, barely-visible luminescence beneath the surface—not at the robe's exterior but deeper, a point of density at the Litch's sternum that didn't behave like the surrounding material.
It caught the air differently when the robe moved.
'Phylactery. Center chest.'
He had the location.
Getting there was the separate problem.
The staff's reach kept him from the close engagement needed to target a specific point on the chest, and standard Dark Blast dispersed before penetrating the resistance layers at depth. He needed a full-charge Dark Blast released at close range directly on the Phylactery site.
It used maximum force and minimum dispersion, released the instant he surfaced from Ghost Step before the Litch could respond.
He was going to take a significant hit doing it.
He began the setup.
Ghost Step carried him across the chamber at an angle that put the Phylactery directly in his exit line.
The charge built slowly—full Dark Blast burned longer than a burst, and in stealth, duration was a countdown he couldn't override.
The chamber temperature dropped sharply as the Litch began sweeping the room, sensing him despite the concealment.
He surfaced and fired.
The full-charge bolt hit the Phylactery site at close range and the result was completely unlike every previous contact.
The outer resistance met the force and strained visibly.
"Urghhh!"
The Litch recoiled—a full step backward—and the luminescence at its chest flickered.
Then the staff came down in a wide arc.
Iron Bones absorbed half. The other half dropped him four Levels instantly.
Level 79.
He hit the floor and came up with a Recovery Potion already open.
One left after this one.
The Litch raised the staff again and he threw Null Zone at its feet, killing the chain before it released.
Four seconds.
He used every one to close distance and drive the Ghost Fang Dagger directly into the flickering Phylactery site—dark energy component making direct contact with the cracked essence beneath.
"Gehekeieurur!"
The Litch made a sound that wasn't speech.
He backed away and reset.
The final sequence was the hardest sustained fight of his existence in this world.
The Litch abandoned tracking projectiles entirely and shifted to area denial.
It was a spatial disruption that moved across the chamber floor and cold chains that stacked slowing effects with each successive hit.
The staff impacts also targeted zones rather than positions.
Constantinw couldn't stand still anywhere.
He burned through Ghost Step and Null Zone in tight alternation just to survive the offensive rotations, surfacing between them only long enough to hit the Phylactery site with whatever Dark Blast charge he'd managed to build.
Each hit cracked the surface further.
Level 75.
He drank his last Recovery Potion.
The Litch's movements were fractionally slower now—the Phylactery's degradation affecting its operational ceiling. He pressed the advantage without mercy. Ghost Step for approach, full charge on exit, Null Zone to suppress the counterattack, retreat before the chain stacked again.
The Phylactery's glow stuttered.
He stopped retreating.
Full charge built while in stealth, released at zero distance directly into the fracture site with everything remaining.
The Phylactery's light went out.
The Litch stopped moving.
Then it came apart—very quietly.
Its dreary and dark robe empties, with its staff dropping, and bones settling on the chamber floor.
The green fire in its sockets faded last.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
The chamber was quiet.
Drops scattered across the floor—Skill Crystals, equipment pieces, Gem pouches, things Constantine couldn't fully catalogue from where he stood—and he looked at them without moving.
He checked his Status Window.
—Level 100!
Below it, where nothing had been before, a new prompt waited.
[Achievement: Level Cap Reached]
{Select one: Advance Class / Change Race}
Constantine looked at it for a long time.
He exhaled slowly.
"Finally."