[A Different Strategy.]

Is there anything more stable than standing still to output damage?

By the time Slack Bro and the others realized it, they had already secured a perfect DPS spot. Throughout the entire process, the only sounds in their ears were the occasional reminders from Little Bunny 123 and Cycle of Eternity, telling them when to swap aggro or where to move. Once everything stabilized, the chaotic dungeon mechanics had already taken on a completely new form.

“This is enough?!” The warrior, who had died once earlier and was worried about dragging the team down, now looked at his position in disbelief. “Such a perfect spot for DPS!”

What just happened? How did it all suddenly turn around?

Slack Bro: “Just go for it.”

“Go! Haven’t you had enough of being chased around for two hours?”

Of course they were fed up! Who wouldn’t be, getting chased from start to finish by 18 bosses’ laser beams? Now, given such a great chance to unleash DPS, all their new and old grudges shifted onto the bosses. As Slack Bro raised his blade, Mage Alt 123’s spell arrays were already stacking one after another, slamming into the bosses!

The raging gods seemed to gradually calm down. The high-damage beams from the 18 gods kept coming, but six players were now protected inside the shielded mats, greatly easing the healer’s burden. Once survival pressure dropped, every DPS could finally focus fully on dishing out damage. The Ice God, whose HP had already fallen below 50%, became the team’s top priority.

In the middle of their assault, a golden rooster suddenly landed at the front of the group. It opened its beak and let out a loud crow, sending wave after wave of sonic attacks crashing into the bosses.

Mage Alt 123: “Whose rooster is this?!”

“Ah?” Rich Bro, busy handling distant bosses, replied, “It’s mine! It’s my highest-attack pet!”

Mage Alt 123: “…You running a farm or something?”

He raises a cow and a rooster! And that crowing—who would even tame a pet like that?!

Slack Bro: “It’s great, the power of nature!”

Rich Bro threw him a look across the battlefield, full of mutual understanding: “Bro, you really get it. My dream is to retire and own a planet as a landlord.”

Slack Bro: “My dream is to find a place to slack off and be a salted fish.”

‘You’re seriously talking about dreams in the middle of a dungeon run?!’ Mage Alt 123 nearly misplaced his array, twitching at the conversation. He glanced at Cycle of Eternity and Little Bunny 123 in the distance, calmly unaffected by the noise—‘legends, honestly, to be able to endure teammates like these.’

Cycle of Eternity, unaware of Mage Alt 123’s thoughts, had long muted allied battle sounds to better hear the game’s environmental audio. As for the new rooster, he only noted that its DPS was actually pretty decent.

The rooster joined the team with unexpectedly high combat power. The warrior and Daoist nearby wisely chose to stay silent, because they realized that not only was the rooster decked out in dazzling luxury, but its battle strength was actually catching up to theirs.

As they poured on the damage, they could see the Ice God’s HP rapidly dropping. No matter how high its defense against physical damage was, it couldn’t withstand the team’s steady and relentless assault.

When the Ice God boss’s HP instantly hit zero during its berserk phase, everyone who was focused on outputting damage momentarily blanked out under the rooster’s crowing. Then they heard Little Bunny 123’s voice ring out in the team chat: “Get ready to reposition.”

Bubble Dragon was a little slow to react at first, but then saw Cycle of Eternity start moving.

Once a boss was taken down, it was time to readjust the elemental counter mechanics and rotate aggro again. This had already been accounted for in Cycle of Eternity’s plan. As Bubble Dragon zoned out for just a second, Cycle of Eternity had already stolen the next boss’s aggro from his threat list. “Switch to this one.”

Mage Alt 123 was about to rush forward to help, but then saw a few support buffs land neatly on Cycle of Eternity. He clearly didn’t need backup.

The bosses that Bubble Dragon had previously held aggro on were neatly lined up in a row. Now that the Ice God was down, it was just a clean handoff to the next one. With bosses lined up, they could clear them in sequence, killing one while leaving the next as a new anchor point—turning the whole fight into a super efficient clearing pattern!

At the beginning, they had been limited to only using single-target skills. But now, with fewer bosses and fewer laser beams, and with the surroundings cleared out, they were free to unleash all sorts of abilities without restriction…

The entire dungeon felt like a prearranged chess game. The only ones actively moving the pieces were Cycle of Eternity and Little Bunny 123, while Bubble Dragon was just being used as a tool by the two of them…  

Bubble Dragon’s feeling was seriously frustrating!

He is supposed to be a big DPS carry! Why is he stuck just standing still?!

Mage Alt 123 spoke up: “Is there anything we can help with?”

Cycle of Eternity, having just received buffs from the healers and cleanly switched aggro, replied smoothly: “Maybe just hit faster?”

He glanced at the DPS meters and added, “It’s a bit slow.”

“That shouldn’t be happening.”

Mage Alt 123: “?”

As those words landed, the whole group of DPS standing inside the shield, rooted in place: “…”

These lines, though said casually, were devastatingly effective.

For the next half hour, everyone gritted their teeth and went all out. They steadily burst down four bosses in a row without a single death—and even the rooster delivered 100% of its potential DPS!

—-

Meanwhile, in the Tiandi Temple, the top-progress team was the one led by Skyward Ascent. There were six regions across the server currently pushing through the dungeon, with Skyward Ascent’s main team in the lead. Following closely behind were groups like the Griffin team and other top-ranking squads.

The high-level zones were making blazing progress, and the Tiandi Temple dungeon was also steadily advancing. By the time three hours had passed, many players saw that Chaos Suppression’s progress had reached (3/6)—meaning three out of the six zones had already cleared the Tiandi Temple dungeon!

There were three zones left. Two of them were in high-level areas, where powerful players were still making steady pushes.  

But the biggest problem was the newbie server zone!

“At this rate, we should have a full clear soon, right?”  

“Unlikely. The high-level zones are fast because they have top players carrying them. Haven’t you seen how miserable the newbie server’s progress looks?”

In the high-level zones, players had better stats, more skills, and stronger teammates. The teams could afford more mistakes and approach the dungeon calmly.  

But it was completely different in the newbie zones—most teammates were newcomers, heavily restricted in what they could do. Even small alt teams from top-ranked guilds weren’t progressing fast.

The Griffin alt team, currently ranked third on the leaderboard, had 4 elite players from Griffin Exploration Company and 8 others who were well-known names on the newbie server.

Even with that lineup, their progress wasn’t as fast as people had hoped.

After entering the dungeon, the Griffin alt team immediately engaged the bosses, using a two-tank, two-beastmaster split to manage the laser beam mechanics, while the rest focused all firepower on the bosses.  

Although they kept losing members during the fight, they had brought two healers, and their resurrection cooldowns barely kept up. They managed to clear four bosses in a row.

Watching this play out was enough to send shivers down the spines of the viewers.  

At first, they had assumed that even a leaderboard team would sail through easily, but even the Griffin team ran into trouble. They were pushing through bosses with brute force, but as the number of bosses decreased, the remaining bosses’ damage output started to skyrocket!

It was only then that players inside the dungeon realized the true problem:  

In this dungeon, the bosses shared the total attack power across them.

When there were many bosses, each one didn’t hit that hard, but there were lots of skills to deal with.  

When fewer bosses remained, their individual damage ramped up massively!

When the alt team’s leader realized what was happening, the nearby bosses, now in berserk mode, started hitting harder too—and worse, they started using boss skills that had never appeared before in the original Tiandi Temple!

The skills from the earlier bosses could be predicted and countered because they were inherited from the previous version of the dungeon.  

But six of the bosses in the Temple were completely new.

Unfamiliar boss mechanics combined with tripled skill damage instantly wiped out three players from the Griffin team!

[This newbie zone is way too scary!]

[The worst part is that a full team wipe gets you ejected—there’s no room for trial and error. One mistake and you’re done.]

[It’s a server-wide event, so I guess high difficulty is expected… Feels like the newbie zone is heading for a wipe.]

[If the entire raid wipes, is the dungeon considered cleared?]

Leaderboard players kept a close watch on the dungeon’s overall progress.  

The high-level zones had strong players tanking the difficulty, but just looking at the newbie zone gave everyone a headache.  

Seeing the Griffin team lose three members made the severity of the situation very clear. Their brute-force approach had backfired—fewer bosses meant higher damage and unfamiliar mechanics.  

It was almost as if the official designers of the Divine Tree Dungeon had anticipated that players would try to brute-force their way through, and had built this boss damage-sharing mechanic precisely to counter that strategy.

“The Griffin alt team is going to flip out, they’re going to wipe.”

“They picked the wrong classes. I’ve been saying for a while that they have too many repeated classes, their flexibility isn’t high.”

“But right now, theirs is the team with the most elite newbie players. Even Skyward Ascent didn’t send any alts to the newbie village.”

All the players in and outside the dungeon immediately realized that this dungeon was no simple task. The sudden increase in damage difficulty caused teams who had miscalculated their strategy to keep losing members. In less than half an hour, the team’s numbers were reduced to just around two hundred viewers, with less than two hours remaining on the event timer.

Progress across the whole server had stalled, while the Chaotic Power still ravaged the Divine Tree Continent, watching as successful teams wiped one by one… All players watching the battle couldn’t help but feel nervous. Then, just at that moment, the progress in the newbie zone dungeon shifted. The progress on Suppressing the Divine Statue jumped from (5/18) to (6/18)!

Did someone kill a boss?

Players quickly found the team who had cleared a boss in the hundred-odd live streams, and upon clicking in, they discovered that the viewers in this stream included elites from top-ranked teams like Skyward Ascent, Wonder Zoo, Hidden Immortal, and others.

These were the big names they hadn’t seen in other live streams, and they were now all watching this relatively low-popularity stream!

Upon a closer look, players noticed familiar names like Mage Alt 123 and Little Bunny 123?  

Some players immediately recognized the naming pattern of Wonder Zoo’s alts. Could this be an alt team from Wonder Zoo? They were shocked, quickly scanning through the other IDs and realizing they were unfamiliar.

And when they took a moment to really observe, they saw what true organization looked like!  

This 8-player team had lost no members, their progress was faster than any other team, and they had already cleared 6 bosses!

In no time at all, (6/18) jumped to (7/18)!

At this rate, they would clear all 18 bosses in the newbie zone soon!

The dungeon was advancing rapidly, and once they figured out how to handle the mechanics, things were progressing smoothly. Unlike the Griffin team, which was restricted by the need for brute force, the team in 4578 Live Stream was adapting and pushing forward more comfortably. As the number of bosses decreased, the damage per boss increased, but most of their DPS stayed protected by the shield, reducing the healer’s burden significantly.

Compared to the teams ignoring the mechanics and suffering continuous member loss, this team was steadily following the rules, and they had no significant health pressure at all… They soon overtook other teams that had been at the front in the dungeon and surpassed the Griffin team to become the fastest team!

—-

But the players inside the dungeon had no idea. They were still focused on output.

“We just need to clear these monsters to complete the dungeon, right?” Bubble Dragon looked at the others in the team, his first time participating in an epic dungeon, feeling both nervous and excited.

Slack Bro said, “I heard the epic rewards are huge.”

Rich Bro: “Will they drop pets you can’t buy with money? Catching pets all over the world is just too difficult!”

Mage Alt 123 looked at these inexperienced players and said, “…Don’t worry, for events like this, the rewards for clearing the dungeon are far greater than any special events.”

The other two players in the team were silent. Mage Alt 123 was a bit surprised and glanced at Cycle of Eternity. He noticed that the other person hardly spoke at all. Thinking about how his Wonder Zoo vice-captain had been paying attention to Cycle of Eternity, Mage Alt 123 wondered if he should try to get closer to him. Just then, he saw Cycle of Eternity shift directions.

Cycle of Eternity didn’t follow Bubble Dragon’s aggro order. Instead, he skipped over this boss and locked onto a more distant one!  

This approach of skipping the nearer boss and targeting the more distant one would greatly increase the difficulty of aggro management and team risk. Mage Alt 123 paused for a moment and glanced in the direction of Little Bunny 123, only to realize that Little Bunny 123 had also started moving along with Cycle of Eternity.

—-

The players in the live stream didn’t quite understand, but the top-ranked players who had been watching this stream for a while immediately realized the issue. The Griffin team had just wiped, and the reason for their wipe was high damage combined with unfamiliar mechanics. Cycle of Eternity’s positioning wasn’t wrong at all. He skipped over bosses that had never appeared in Tiandi Temple before!

Tiandi Temple was already a dungeon thoroughly explored by players since launch, and the mechanics of the 12 randomly respawning bosses were well-known.  

However, the remaining 6 bosses, which had never appeared in Tiandi Temple, were ticking time bombs. Brute-force teams didn’t have the luxury of choice. They had to attack under high-pressure conditions, and their aggro was unstable. They couldn’t afford to pick their bosses, so when they encountered unfamiliar mechanics, the pressure skyrocketed.

But this team was different. They had a stable output environment and used the principle of attribute counteracting.  

In such an environment, the commander and players could quickly adjust. They were willing to waste a little more time to leave the unfamiliar bosses for last.

“This Cycle of Eternity… his gameplay is too strong.”  

“What build is he using? Is there such a tanky build in Qi Ling Village?”  

“No way! I’ve seen him block a lot of damage!”

“I feel like their strategy is the right one. It’s different from the strategy in the advanced areas.” Ragdoll Cat, after observing for a while, noticed the issue. Using attribute counteracting to leave the tough bosses for last would usually lead to insufficient attributes and result in losing protection. But up until now, this team’s shield was working perfectly… This indicated that their strategy from the start should have been this way—first, gradually clear the 12 original bosses using attribute counteracting, and then leave the 6 new bosses for last.

Meanwhile, the Griffin alt team in the newbie zone, due to time constraints, used brute-force methods, which turned out to be a trap set by the Divine Tree dungeon’s mastermind.

This was very difficult. With so many bosses shooting beams, accurately finding the target Celestial Statue and guiding the team in orderly attacks was something that even elite players in the rankings could fail at. They had seen the doubled damage from fewer bosses in other streams, and this team was handling the immense pressure of leaving the 6 new bosses alive.

The two core players in the team must have a plan.  

So the question is, what does this strategy lead to in the end?

—-

Inside the dungeon, Zhou Sui quickly completed the latest aggro switch. As the bosses decreased, the positions of the remaining bosses became clearer. At this point, observing the location of the Celestial Statues allowed him to see how well these statues were positioned, as if the game had purposely arranged it this way.

As the number of bosses decreased, his teammates had already gathered in a single shield, and the opposing shield counters were nearly gone.  

There was no absolute difficulty, only potential mechanisms. He had learned this when he encountered the mainframe years ago in the Gathering Camp, so when he noticed the need to avoid those 6 unknown bosses, the dungeon’s mechanism gradually became clear to him, and he knew he had made the right guess.

However, as he continued to follow the plan step by step, memories involuntarily came to mind.  

It felt like being lured into a trap, much like the things the mainframe did in the Gathering Camp three years ago… but not everything was exactly right.

The number of visible bosses on the interface was decreasing, and fewer shields were available for the team to stand on… When the last regular boss was cleared, the team saw the task completion bar for (11/18) disappear.

The sound of the wooden fish chants grew quieter, the players’ figures became smaller, and dark air currents swirled into the remaining six Celestial Statues. Then came a loud ringing of a bell! The team, originally immersed in the joy of nearly clearing the bosses, was caught off guard by this sudden change. They watched as a giant Celestial Statue crashed down in front of them, and the surrounding grand hall was blown apart like fragile paper, as if a mirage had shattered.

Slack Bro had never seen such an ugly boss: “What the hell is this thing?!”  

Rich Bro: “…I feel like I’m going to puke.”

In front of them stood a Celestial Statue with a grotesque appearance. It was covered in black gas, forming an ugly body. The body was mostly shrouded in a cloud of smoke, which intertwined with the Divine Tree above the dungeon, as if it was drawing nourishment from the tree.

—-

The number of people in the live stream increased, especially after the overall progress of the entire server reached (5/6), making the newbie area the only remaining part of the progress.

After Cycle of Eternity and the other players cleared the 12 bosses first, all other players currently progressing in the dungeon in the newbie zone were announced to have failed the challenge. The progress to suppress Chaos was completed at (6/6)!

In line with the main storyline driven by all the plot players before, nothing happened when the elite teams cleared the other 5 areas. However, it was only after the players in the newbie area cleared the 12 bosses that the true appearance of the Divine Tree appeared before everyone.

The massive Divine Tree in the game world above clearly showed the figure of the Chaos Statue, and at this moment, both inside and outside the dungeon were synchronized. Only when they saw the anomaly in the sky did they realize the seriousness of the situation. Meanwhile, a task prompt for [Divine Tree: Collapse] appeared on their task list.

[What the heck, there’s still a boss?]  

[The dungeon didn’t give any hint after finishing, the big shots waited for so long to leave, who knew there was a follow-up challenge in this dungeon!!]

“The strategy is different. They left 6 new bosses that hadn’t appeared in the Tiandi Temple, while the other teams cleared those bosses early.” A player in the live stream immediately realized the difference. The six major regional dungeons had similar modes, and other elite teams used the method of clearing bosses, but they didn’t leave these 6 bosses, so they didn’t trigger the new phase.

Surprisingly, the Divine Tree game didn’t provide any reminders and only revealed this point after the other teams who cleared it first had unknowingly left the instance. This resulted in only the last team to clear it discovering this, leaving the other high-level area players who had cleared it earlier with nothing to do but stare in disbelief!

An even more serious problem arose. It turned out that only one team entered the final dungeon level — the team that completed it last:  

The newbie team!

—-

[Tiandi Temple (Chaos Statue)]  

[The talented ones faced numerous hardships and uncovered the false appearances of the twelve statues, discovering the six false gods hidden within, and the source of all evil, the Chaos Statue!]  

[Task Objective: Chaos Statue (0/1)]  

[Survival Challenge Participants (8/8)]

The Chaos Statue looked down, its black-and-white eyes sweeping over all the players in the dungeon!  

“Fall back!” Little Bunny 123 said coldly.

Hearing the voice, the other members of the team quickly ran backward, while the beams falling from above were extremely fast, twice as fast as the beams they had seen before. When they hit the ground and swept across, they instantly knocked down two players! The Daoist and the warrior didn’t even react before dying instantly, while the others fled in panic, their health rapidly dropping into the danger zone!

Little Bunny 123’s group healing skill landed among the players, instantly bringing everyone’s health back up. “Stay away from the boss.”

“Aggro!” Little Bunny 123 reminded.

Bubble Dragon tried to grab the shield to pull the boss’s aggro, but before the boss stopped, after the beams, it raised one of its arms and slammed it down. The ground cracked open, and the flying debris shattered, damaging the terrain.

With that slam, all of Rich Bro’s pets were killed, and the health that everyone had just managed to raise was quickly drained again… This boss, nearly violent compared to the previous eighteen, seemed to have entered a berserk state. Zhou Sui swiftly dodged the attack, his weapon transforming again in his hands, and he reacted quickly to strike at the boss, instantly stealing its aggro!

The boss, which had been attacking recklessly, was now properly redirected, allowing the others to catch their breath.

“Spread out, go to the back!” Mage Alt 123 shouted sternly.  

Slack Bro sprinted away, pulling along Rich Bro, who was still confused. The two of them were the first to avoid the boss’s heavy attacks. Bubble Dragon tried to rush over to steal the aggro, as the tank, it was his responsibility to take the aggro, but unexpectedly, as soon as he took the aggro from Zhou Sui, the next second the boss slammed down and instantly killed him!

“Bro, what happened to you?” Slack Bro turned around and saw that their main tank had been instantly killed.  

Rich Bro instantly got goosebumps. “No way, the tank got one-shot!”  

Bubble Dragon couldn’t believe it. “I feel like I’m made of paper…”

[Survival Challenge Participants: 5/8]

With Bubble Dragon on the ground, the boss’s aggro shifted back to Zhou Sui.

The moment Zhou Sui grabbed the aggro, he felt an unprecedented burden. The boss’s surroundings were emitting a foul-smelling incense, and in just a few seconds, a layer of negative status was stacked on him. The incense nearly enveloped the boss, meaning anyone who got close to the boss would get this status.

[Confusion: Your movement ability is limited!]

This was a problem. Zhou Sui realized this issue quickly. Skills that could be avoided by dodging were manageable, but large area-wide skills were unavoidable. Players affected by this status would have reduced attack and movement abilities, making it harder to dodge skills.

“The skill has an instant death judgment, touch it and you die, avoid the skill.” Little Bunny 123 had already seen through the boss’s skill mechanics and said coldly, “Dodge the skills, I’ll clear the debuff for you.”

The instant death judgment had nothing to do with defense or health; if you got hit by the skill, you died. Zhou Sui’s usual skill block wouldn’t help here.

Little Bunny 123 didn’t revive the three people lying on the ground. In the case of instant death judgment, revival skills became extremely important. He quickly cleared all the negative statuses from Zhou Sui, treating him like the main tank.

The Confusion status was still spreading, and Slack Bro and Mage Alt 123 quickly found positions further back for damage output. Rich Bro resummoned his pets.

The huge, ugly statue of the god was partially eroding into the void Divine Tree, its disgusting body like a giant rock hovering above them. Its hands, covered in black bubbles, emitted a foul stench and forcefully shattered the ground.

When everyone locked onto the boss and started attacking, they suddenly realized —  

This statue didn’t have a health bar.