[Extreme Aggro Swap]

Inside the instance, the 18 bosses had their aggro split among five players. The aggro targets were scattered everywhere, and the chaotic scene was overwhelming. Looking up, beams from the bosses’ wild eye attacks filled almost the entire field of view. Bubble Dragon, who was acting as the tank, stood frozen in place, so startled by the crisscrossing beams that even the hand holding his shield was trembling. He felt like he might drop dead at any second.

The team’s HP bars fluctuated wildly like a roller coaster, and Bubble Dragon turned back in panic, only to see that the team’s sole healer was as steady as a mountain.  

Surviving this really wasn’t easy!

While running, the group barely maintained a fragile stability, surrounded by blinding light effects everywhere.

“Can we force a kill?” Mage Alt 123 turned to look at Ice God.  

Rich Bro happened to be nearby. Hearing this, he took a quick glance at the boss’s HP: “Very hard. Its health and defense are too thick. It’s not easy to kill.”

The boss’s HP looked manageable on the surface, but once it entered its frenzy state, its attacks got stronger and its health effectively thickened.

When the Ice God boss entered frenzy, Mage Alt 123 immediately realized that, given the current overall strength of their team, if even one more boss went berserk, they wouldn’t even get a chance to safely deal damage.  

The best strategy at this point was to have a few people pull the aggro of the other bosses away, so the rest could safely finish off the Ice God.

But the difficulty was extremely high.  

If they went down this route, it meant they’d have to keep doing it this way for the rest of the fight.  

No matter how good the players were at positioning and dodging, as time went on, the chances of making a mistake would only increase.  

This instance probably wasn’t meant to be fought this way. The intended method was most likely to kill the bosses one by one following the proper mechanics.  

But how could they figure out the mechanics under this chaos?

Mage Alt 123 — who was actually Fierce Tiger 123 (Top player on the Wonder Zoo Leaderboard) — fell into deep thought.  

“I’ll take command. First, you guys—”  

Before he could finish, he suddenly caught sight of a person leaping across the corner of his vision. Cycle of Eternity’s movement speed was extremely high, and he stirred up a gust of wind as he passed by. Mage Alt 123 reacted quickly, instinctively jumping high to dodge, and threw out a skill to block the rebound.  

“What the hell! Why’d you run over here—?!”

Zhou Sui calmly said, “You’re second on the aggro list.”

Mage Alt 123: “?!”

Turning around, he realized that because of the skill and attack he had just used, he had accidentally pulled the boss aggro off Zhou Sui!  

This Cycle of Eternity guy calculated that using a block skill would raise aggro and deliberately brought the boss to him!

In an instant, only one boss remained following Cycle of Eternity, while the heavy burden of kiting shifted onto Mage Alt 123.

Mage Alt 123 sprinted and turned his head: “!”

He has high damage output, so is it his fault that the hate comes second and he has to bear the burden?

Others: “?” ‘Big shot! Where’s the command? Why did you stop talking halfway?’

In the team channel, only breathing sounds were left. No one was giving commands, and it felt like a scattered mess.

Zhou Sui’s action speed was very fast. Almost as soon as he took the hate, his body leaped and dodged the oncoming beam. His peripheral vision caught sight of the distant cushion. Above the cushion, there was a statue of a god, motionless, with murky yellowish light in its eyes. Zhou Sui ignored the strange gaze, avoided other incoming damage, and jumped straight onto the cushion. In that instant, the airflow around him seemed to slow for a moment.

Slack Bro and the others happened to see this. When they saw Cycle of Eternity stop, they couldn’t help but gasp.

[The Loyal Believer, the Earth God has heard your prayer.]

The incense around the cushion gathered, forming a light shield next to it. The beam following Zhou Sui hit the shield and immediately dissipated.

“F*ck?” Slack Bro almost tripped over his feet. “What’s going on?!”

The others in the main hall naturally also saw this. The deadly beam actually stopped right in front of the cushion!

Rich Bro squinted, carefully looking at the cushion placed under the incense altar. “I didn’t expect it, but this cushion is actually handwoven, oh, and it even has gold thread embroidery!”

“These gods really have taste.”

Bubble Dragon: “?”

‘Bro, is this really the time to be admiring the god’s taste?’

The others instinctively looked towards the other cushions. Those items were quite unremarkable in the bright hall, but at this moment, a protective shield appeared around them. The closest Mage Alt 123, upon seeing this, looked at the cushion nearest to him. His peripheral vision noticed Cycle of Eternity from the cushion. Thinking back to the person’s recent action, Cycle of Eternity had deliberately switched the hate to ensure that the beam he was carrying had only one attribute before acting.

—-

At the same time, the viewers outside the live stream were also stunned when they saw this scene—

There were a lot of things in the dungeon, and cushions were common in temples. Moreover, many players in other live streams had run past cushions before without triggering anything. But in this live stream, where only eight people were present, and it was a single-tank team, they actually triggered a mechanism that other newbie teams hadn’t triggered!

[What the heck?]

[These cushions are part of a mechanism?]

[Is this the first hidden mechanism to be discovered?]

The news about the discovery of a dungeon mechanism in the low-level newbie area spread quickly throughout the game world, and the live stream’s popularity surged dramatically.

Many players thought the newbie area was doomed to fail, but unexpectedly, a team discovered a mechanism under such circumstances, faster than the teams on the leaderboard! 

Meanwhile, in the dungeon, the attacks from other bosses continued during the downtime. The Ice God boss used a skill to sweep forward, locking onto the weakest spot in the team. The warrior and Daoist had been waiting to observe the situation, but in an instant, the Ice God’s new attack hit both of them, causing the warrior to lose all health due to a positioning mistake!

The team lost a member!

The players and viewers who had been drawn in by the new mechanism saw this situation as soon as they entered. They had just discovered the mechanism, but they already lost a member, meaning that discovering the mechanism had no effect at all! The previously quiet live stream suddenly filled with unusual sounds—

[This team only has eight people, right!? And there’s melee too—if the positioning goes wrong, the melee dies.]

[I just looked at a leaderboard team. They’ve already cleared 3 bosses, but this one hasn’t cleared any. Discovering the mechanism doesn’t help.]

[This mechanism is obviously meant for you to find a place to hide when you’re low on health. I saw the Griffin team, they just pull the beams apart and forcefully push through.]

Players from the Wonder Zoo were busy grinding activities outside, and they saw that the situation in the live stream was a bit complicated. 

On the one hand, they were happy that their lone survivor, Brother Tiger’s alt, had found the mechanism. On the other hand, it seemed like Brother Tiger’s team was struggling.

18 bosses were indeed tough, but with steady output, even the thickest health and defense could be taken down.

There wasn’t enough time in the five-hour window to experiment and figure out the mechanism. Venturing to find it too early could result in losing team members if teammates couldn’t keep up, so it would have been better to play it safe at first and then aim for more changes later.

This was also why many strong teams didn’t risk searching for mechanisms. The best approach was to steadily kill one boss at a time. Every boss killed would reduce the pressure from the beams accordingly.

Ragdoll Cat quietly watched the changes happening inside the dungeon. There were so many live streams, and many leaderboard players too — discovering the mechanism was just a matter of time. 

From the moment this team entered until now, they hadn’t shown any real teamwork. At a glance, it looked like everyone was doing their own thing. The tank, Bubble Dragon, was even standing still, while the rest were running around chaotically, and pets were popping out now and then.

But there was something strange — the team was unexpectedly steady.

No matter how nimble a player’s positioning was, it was almost impossible to account for everything in the environment. A teammate making one wrong move could easily cause a disaster. Yet, even though this team’s health bars looked like rollercoasters, they hadn’t suffered two deaths in a row. This strange balance was being maintained by two people.

One was Cycle of Eternity. His positioning so far hadn’t shown a single mistake. 

Even though the environment he had to move through was bad, he always managed to dodge danger.

The other was Little Bunny 123, the external helper their leader had specially invited. Except for that one warrior who died instantly, every heal from Little Bunny 123 had been perfectly timed.

Ragdoll Cat suddenly said, “These two working together… this team might end up progressing the fastest…”

“Vice captain?” The others reacted, realizing who he was referring to.

The external helper — the one their guild leader from the Wonder Zoo had personally asked for help. 

The players in Wonder Zoo only knew that this person had come to help because he owed their boss a personal favor. Their boss even had Fierce Tiger 123 follow the helper into the newbie area. As for the rest, they didn’t know much. They just knew that the helper had been a close friend of their boss for years.

In fact, the small alt account Little Bunny 123 he was using was part of their guild, but his main account wasn’t famous on the leaderboards at all. At a glance, he seemed like just another completely unremarkable nobody. Before being invited to help by the Wonder Zoo, he had barely any presence at all.

Ragdoll Cat said, “Do you know who published the first guide for the Tiandi Temple on the Divine Tree server?”

“Huh? Wasn’t it Skyward Ascent?” the player replied. “There were even rumors back then that they almost wiped during the first clear because of how insanely hard the dungeon was—”

Ragdoll Cat simply said, “No one knows the terrain of the Tiandi Temple better than that person.”  

In this game, there weren’t just skilled players and pro players — there were also strategy-type players… especially when it came to that person’s strategic planning and tactics.

“Those two are very steady.”

—-

The people inside the dungeon had no idea what was happening outside. Once they lost a member, the pressure on Bubble Dragon’s side instantly increased.  

The Daoist’s rhythm got thrown off too. Rich Bro took a hit and had to use his pet to block another attack for the Daoist.

The excitement in the team quickly turned into tension. Zhou Sui looked back and saw that just as half of his foot left the prayer mat, the surrounding incense smoke suddenly dissipated, and the shield that had formed seemed to be on the verge of collapsing.

Mage Alt 123 and Slack Bro quickly started looking for other cushions to trigger shields, but none of them activated.

Zhou Sui was isolated inside the cushion’s shield, and the aggro from the 17 bosses outside could only be split among the few remaining players.  

In a dungeon like this, losing a teammate could completely mess up the tempo — and once the mechanism handling went wrong, more deaths would quickly follow.

Just as it looked like the beams around Slack Bro were about to hit him, someone who had seemed completely inconspicuous until now suddenly stepped into the cushion’s shield.

The apothecary, who had been quietly carrying the team’s HP all along, had somehow made his way over.  

Right after casting an AoE healing field from his box, he slipped into the cushion’s shield during a gap in his actions — as if he had understood Zhou Sui’s intention, and in the blink of an eye, the two of them were standing together on the same meditation cushion.

This time when Zhou Sui stepped out, the shield didn’t disappear.  

He looked back and saw Little Bunny 123 quickly cast a speed buff on him and said, “Go.”

In a brief moment of teamwork, the person inside the meditation cushion switched.  

When Little Bunny 123 replaced Zhou Sui on the cushion, the Water God boss didn’t chase after Cycle of Eternity again, but instead stayed locked onto the Earth God’s cushion, continuing the attack — as if, as long as someone stayed on a cushion, it could interrupt a boss’s beam attack.

Zhou Sui moved slightly. As Little Bunny 123 held his position, Zhou had already rushed ahead to replace Slack Bro in pulling the boss.  

His attack speed was incredibly fast — within the blink of an eye, he stacked up enough aggro and pulled away two bosses that had been trailing behind Slack Bro!

“Slack Bro, get up there,” Zhou Sui shouted. “Straight ahead.”

Slack Bro blinked in confusion, but following Zhou Sui’s shout, he leapt onto a meditation cushion — except he didn’t just jump on normally; he instantly dropped into a full prostration position.  

At the same time, a light shield activated behind him.

[The Loyal Believer— the Metal God has heard your prayer.]

“Wait — the posture matters too???” Mage Alt 123 was stunned by Slack Bro’s sudden posture.

Rich Bro explained for his buddy, “My bro’s superstitious.”

“These bosses counter each other. You can’t just pick randomly,” Little Bunny 123 said, not wasting a second after stepping onto the cushion. He glanced at the players trying and failing to trigger other cushions nearby: “The basic idea comes from ancient sayings about the Five Elements — bosses have elemental attributes. If you’re being chased by a boss of one element, you need to find the element that counters it. He was being chased by the Water God, so he looked for the Earth God. Earth beats water, so the Earth God can suppress the Water God.”

Everyone immediately caught on: when Cycle of Eternity deliberately pulled away the bosses behind Slack Bro, didn’t that mean the remaining bosses could also be countered like this?

Little Bunny 123 called out, “Daoist, over here.”  

The still-dazed Daoist quickly rushed over and swapped places with the apothecary.

As Little Bunny 123 stepped out, he glanced toward Cycle of Eternity’s side.  

Seeing the beams trailing behind Cycle of Eternity, he instantly understood Cycle of Eternity’s target.  

Their rhythm was perfectly in sync — the moment Zhou Sui finished pulling the beams into position ^[1] The correct cushion , Little Bunny 123 was ready to take over on the cushion, even managing to revive the fallen warrior while he was at it.

Then Little Bunny 123 called over the beastmaster, Rich Bro.  

The two ranged players could now stay on the cushions under shield protection while attacking from a distance — instantly easing the pressure on the battlefield.

Within just a few minutes, he and Cycle of Eternity had stabilized three bosses.

Now that the others understood the elemental interactions, they turned to the remaining bosses.  

There were many color variations on the field — for example, the Water God and Ice God had very similar beam colors.  

But aside from the already-frenzied Ice God, whose skills were obvious, most of the bosses only gave clues through the colors of their beam attacks.  

It was incredibly hard to judge attributes from that alone — yet somehow these two could instantly tell!?

Slack Bro shouted, “Deep red means fire! Light blue means wind!”

Mage Alt 123 blurted out, “How do you know!?”

Slack Bro said, “Just take a hit and you’ll find out. The combat log shows damage types.”

Mage Alt 123: “……”  

‘So basically, all my careful dodging was really, really dumb.’

‘What kind of people are in this group?!’

Mage Alt 123 had played with plenty of leaderboard players before, but this was the first time he’d encountered a group like this.  

There wasn’t a single person officially leading, and yet somehow the group hadn’t fallen into chaos.  

There was Slack Bro running around like a seasoned veteran, the beastmaster off in the distance with an unusually tough pet, and the overly serious Bubble Dragon trio.

Sure, the healers played a big part, but everything still felt just right — holding steady without tipping into disaster.  

The most confusing part was Cycle of Eternity.  

Watching his moves, he wasn’t even using attacks typical for a Qi Ling Village class; he was using weapon-type skills instead.  

In Qi Ling Village, weapon skills were considered the weakest damage-dealing specialization.  

So how the heck was he managing to lock down aggro so firmly, keeping all the boss hate focused right on him?!

Mage Alt 123 couldn’t help but glance at the apothecary Little Bunny 123 and sent a private message—  

But Little Bunny 123 didn’t say much, just replied curtly: Follow him.

Little Bunny 123 was standing on one of the meditation cushions, positioned right in the center.  

That wasn’t by accident — Zhou Sui had noticed Little Bunny 123’s cooperation and deliberately picked a central cushion for him.  

From that spot, a healer could cover most of the temple with their healing skills.

Originally, Little Bunny 123 had set his sights on this position from the start — he’d even prepared to have Mage Alt 123 swap him out later.  

But Cycle of Eternity noticed it.

Which meant this guy wasn’t just mindlessly lighting up shield cushions — he was doing it deliberately.

Zhou Sui swept his gaze around, his peripheral vision catching the different bosses in the distance.  

He locked onto a new target and immediately sprinted toward the boss trailing behind Mage Alt 123.  

He intentionally pulled aggro from several bosses and stacked healing buffs onto himself.

Mage Alt 123 immediately understood what Cycle of Eternity was doing — leaving just one boss for him to deal with.  

Sure enough, once Mage Alt 123 stepped onto a cushion, another shield lit up.  

Mage Alt 123 quickly spotted the issue: “Beastmaster, try to pull a few off him!”

Since the beastmaster’s pet had its own independent aggro system, Rich Bro immediately caught on to what Cycle of Eternity was planning: “If you need tanks, give them to my pet. I can handle three!”

Little Bunny 123 looked at Bubble Dragon in the distance and said calmly, “Pull all the bosses on your left.” 

Bubble Dragon was surprised. “Then I’ll be taking all the damage?” 

“You take seven, and leave the rest to him.” Little Bunny 123 had already seen Cycle of Eternity taking aggro from Bubble Dragon. “He’s not taking the ones on the left.”

Zhou Sui heard the conversation but didn’t look back.  

It was the second time already — this apothecary seemed to know exactly what he was planning.  

…But that was fine.

—-

Meanwhile, in the 4578 livestream room, the viewers who had been expecting a wipe started noticing something strange instead.  

Cycle of Eternity — from the weapon branch of Qi Ling Village — didn’t seem to be playing like one at all.  

In the blink of an eye, he was stacking aggro, pulling beams off others, and maintaining his HP without dying.

Eight-man groups had a set difficulty: it was impossible to light up too many meditation cushions, which meant the team would inevitably be overwhelmed by boss beam attacks.  

And yet Cycle of Eternity was moving incredibly fast, pulling aggro off Mage Alt 123, swapping aggro with the beastmaster Rich Bro, and even forcing the tank Bubble Dragon into action.

[This Cycle of Eternity… he can actually pull that much aggro?!]  

[Qi Ling Village?? What kind of setup is he running?!]

[Holy crap, something’s not right — why does it feel like their HP is stabilizing?!]

Exchanging aggro with so many players like that — if at any point the healer missed a heal or he pulled too much hate, Cycle of Eternity would get instantly killed, and all the aggro would flood toward the rest of the team.

Mass chaos like that would definitely cause a full party wipe.

Inside the dungeon, his figure darted across everyone’s field of vision.  

His weapon case shifted and changed alongside his swift movements, and his steps flowed as smoothly as water. Every step, forward or back, was measured and calculated.

Cycle of Eternity was still swapping aggro, stacking it, and controlling his damage output.  

Every single skill’s damage was finely tuned — it was like he had a crystal-clear understanding of his own actions: how much hate to pull, how to move, how to exchange aggro with the beastmaster and the tank…  

All these tiny details were already handled while he moved.  

The only thing left was results.

And so, in what had seemed like an underpowered, undermanned group, after just one wave of aggro-swapping, the wild chaos of beams on the field suddenly started to die down.  

The party’s HP stabilized, no longer teetering on the edge, and the beams shooting from the surrounding statues slowly became orderly.

There is no chaos!  

What the hell is happening?!

Inside the dungeon, the low, humming background music continued.  

The sounds of skills and players’ calls blended into the surroundings.  

The beams from the statues’ eyes gradually shifted, and the aggro lists changed instantly.  

The once-random beams seemed to settle into distinct lanes.

Outside the dungeon, the spectators watching carefully finally realized:  

The beams weren’t random anymore — the points where the beams lit up had been carefully selected.

There were statues on all four sides of the temple, meaning that if things got chaotic, the beams could completely blanket the whole arena.  

But now, after their adjustments, the beams on either side had been spread apart.

The tank was still holding the aggro of seven bosses, but because of the positioning, the beams and attacks he was tanking were angled in a unified way — all tilted toward one side.

Meanwhile, the other players had shifted toward the center and closer to the tank.  

The warrior was standing right next to the tank, inside another cushion shield.  

With this positioning, most of the beams on the field were locked into fixed, predictable spots, leaving a huge clear area far away from them.

[Oh my god, oh my god, I think I get it now!]

The chaotic party had stabilized:  

The tank, Bubble Dragon, was holding off the damage from seven bosses — and because he was pulling them all in a line, the beam area shrank down to just his zone.  

The warrior and the swordsman (Slack Bro) were DPSing right beside him inside their shield.  

The Daoist was positioned farther away, but since he was ranged, it was fine.  

The healer, Little Bunny 123, was near the center shield healing the team.  

The beastmaster’s pet was pulling beams from another direction, and Mage Alt 124 was DPSing inside a shield.

[Cycle of Eternity is coordinating aggro swaps with the others, splitting the areas and easing the damage pressure!]

[Holy shit, you can actually play it like this?!]  

[So that’s why at the start, the healer had the beastmaster stand the farthest away — if the beastmaster’s pet pulled the aggro, they could control the random-running beams!]

In a flash, the aggro and the beams had neatly separated.  

The tank stood in place tanking seven bosses.  

The beastmaster was far away, controlling the pet to pull three beams.  

Cycle of Eternity was pulling two.  

The remaining six beams were completely canceled out by the shields around the divine statues.

More and more people flooded into the livestream.  

The newcomers froze when they saw the near-frozen scene inside the dungeon.  

Not long ago, they’d just been watching other streams — and even when top leaderboard teams discovered the mechanics, they still had to move constantly to avoid deaths during boss fights.  

No other team had looked this neat and clean!

The beams were all clearly divided, and each player had their own role.  

Once things stabilized, everyone stood inside their shields — the only ones needing healing were Cycle of Eternity and Bubble Dragon.

And all of this had been achieved through Cycle of Eternity systematically swapping aggro with the others.

The players watching the stream grew more and more stunned.  

The complicated mechanics seemed to have been instantly broken down into simple teamwork.

And when do players achieve the highest DPS?  

Of course — when they can stand still and unleash it freely!

Now that they had fully maximized their DPS potential…  

The only thing left was to take down all 18 bosses one by one!