Streamer Skumnut has pulled off what might be the most absurd boss kill in ELDEN RING history, defeating Maliketh, the Black Blade using nothing but bare fists as part of his ongoing "Nothing run," a self-imposed challenge that bans every piece of equipment in the game.
The rules are exactly as unforgiving as they sound. No shields. No armor. No talismans. No buffs. No spells. No physick. No Torrent. No consumables. Nothing. Skumnut posted the full breakdown on Twitter on July 26, 2026, confirming the world-first kill alongside a clip that makes the whole thing look equal parts hilarious and genuinely impressive.
What the nothing run actually looks like in practice
Here's the thing: watching the Maliketh clip is the fastest way to understand just how absurd this challenge is. The footage is mostly dodging, rolling, and sprinting in wide circles while Skumnut's character, dressed in something that barely covers the essentials and sporting a shock of bright green hair, takes the occasional swing at one of Elden Ring's most punishing late-game bosses.
Maliketh hits hard under normal circumstances. Bring a full build and you still feel the pressure of his second phase, where he coats his blade in the Black Flame of Death and starts draining your maximum HP with every hit. Walk in with zero defense and every single attack is a one-shot threat. The fight took Skumnut over three hours and two deaths to complete.
Two deaths in three hours, bare fists only. That is the world we live in.
The FromSoftware challenge community keeps raising the floor
Skumnut is not a newcomer to this kind of content. He built his audience specifically around wacky Elden Ring challenges, and the nothing run is the latest in a long line of self-imposed restrictions that the FromSoftware community has turned into a competitive art form. Bare fist runs, no-hit runs, level 1 runs, and sub-hour speedruns have all become legitimate categories with their own dedicated runners.
What separates the nothing run from most of those is the sheer completeness of the restriction. A level 1 run still lets you equip armor. A no-hit run still lets you use a sword. Skumnut stripped out every single mechanical crutch the game offers and kept going anyway.
His reaction after the kill sums up the remaining road ahead: "It only gets worse, boys. Technically there's only two real bosses left. So although it's going to get worse, it's almost over."
Two bosses left. Both of them are, by any reasonable measure, harder than Maliketh.
Why this matters beyond the spectacle
The nothing run is a good reminder of how much depth FromSoftware built into Elden Ring's combat systems. The fact that a determined player can reach the final stretch of the game using only punches is less a comment on the game being easy and more a comment on how thoroughly the community has mapped every dodge window, attack pattern, and positional exploit the game contains.
What most players miss when they watch these clips is the volume of failed attempts that precede any world-first moment. Three hours on a single boss with only 2 deaths sounds manageable until you consider how many earlier sessions ended with the run intact but the streamer's sanity slightly more frayed.
The Elden Ring challenge community keeps finding new floors to push through. If you want to follow the run to its conclusion or get deeper into the game's mechanics, the ELDEN RING strategy guides cover everything from boss patterns to build theory for players who prefer their characters to actually wear clothes. For broader challenge run coverage and gaming news, the guides hub is worth bookmarking as Skumnut closes in on the finish line.
