[Fatal point]

The air was thick with the scent of incense, mingled with a putrid stench. The cracked ground revealed that where walls once stood, there were now jagged, torn edges—like paper ripped apart. Beyond those edges, the other side resembled a starry sky, where the grotesque monster intertwined with the ethereal shadow of a divine tree, forming an impregnable colossus.  

“Why doesn’t this monster have a health bar!?” Slack Bro exclaimed, “This is way too overpowered!”  

No health bar meant there was no clear end to the challenge. This was the first monster in the Divine Tree game since its launch to appear without a health bar. It gave players no time to react. After its initial attacks missed, it raised its hand again, smashing toward the target of its aggro.  

A massive hand formed from condensed energy descended like a mountain, casting a huge shadow that enveloped the players below.  

Zhou Sui chained multiple dash skills to barely escape the shadow’s range. The scattered incense mist began stacking onto the other teammates, and Slack Bro and the others immediately noticed their bodies slowing down. Where they could once move two steps, now they could only manage one. Weapons felt heavier, and for casters, spell-casting speed was doubled!  

“This casting speed is a death sentence!” Mage Alt 123 cursed.  

Zhou Sui had just dodged the giant hand from above when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the energy clusters on the boss’s body ripple like bubbles. His pupils flickered: “Defend!”  

Defend what?! The teammates looked up in confusion.  

The grotesque energy clusters on the boss’s body swelled and burst, releasing a rapidly spreading dark mist that not only applied debuffs but also instantly slashed everyone’s health bars by half. At this exact moment, a group heal skill landed on the party, perfectly timed with the energy burst, pulling everyone’s health back above the danger line just as they were about to hit zero.  

Zhou Sui paused, turning to see Little Bunny 123, the healer, landing a perfectly timed skill on him.  

An incredibly precise health recovery, turning everyone’s health bars from critical to safe!  

The others, expecting a wipe, were stunned to find the situation stabilized. In such chaotic circumstances, the healer had somehow held onto a group-saving skill.  

“Brother Bunny, your health management is unreal!” Slack Bro gasped in awe.  

Little Bunny 123, the healer, stabilized both the party’s and Zhou Sui’s health with two skills, then followed up with a dispel that cleared Zhou Sui’s debuffs. Zhou Sui glanced at the team: he had three stacks of positive buffs, while his teammates had at least one or two each… This healer hadn’t dropped a single buff even in such chaos!  

—

[Holy crap, this healer is insane—no one’s died!]  

[So clutch!]  

In a situation like this, a group heal wasn’t something a single skill could pull off. Divine Tree players familiar with Qi Ling Village knew this well.  

In Qi Ling Village’s two main branches, apothecaries were called support nurses because their utility skills far outnumbered their healing ones, often making it hard to output high healing in combat. Yet this party’s healer had applied defense and healing amplification buffs to everyone, combining them with healing skills to unleash a tide-turning burst of healing at the critical moment.  

The players suddenly realized something: this party didn’t have many mechanically skilled members, and earlier they’d even struggled with aggro swaps. But this healer had made no mistakes from the start of the dungeon to the boss’s transformation, single-handedly keeping seven people alive—despite being a support nurse with relatively low healing output!  

Instant-death mechanics and persistent debuffs had everyone watching the stream on edge. Seeing the absurdly long debuff timers on the players made their scalps tingle—it was like running a marathon with excessive weight!  

The live stream’s audience grew larger, with comments flashing across the barrage.  

Leaderboard players lingered in the stream for a long time, their group chats exploding with new messages. Even members of the recently failed Griffin team flooded into the stream. Seeing the remaining five people and the difficulty of the challenge, many of them frowned—the situation didn’t look good.

“The team composition isn’t great; it’s tough to fight. It’d be better with a speed-type tank.”  

“Beastmaster and formation master both have short legs—once aggro gets chaotic, it’s deadly.”  

When the streamer Xiaoyao Xian entered, he didn’t expect to see Cycle of Eternity. He still remembered this ID from the Qingshan Academy incident, but as soon as he joined the stream, his attention was drawn to Cycle of Eternity pulling aggro. Pulling aggro as the Qi Ling Village class!? What kind of build is this guy running?!

The mechanics seemed simple, but in reality, three different mechanics would repeat within ten seconds, accompanied by debuff attacks.  

The healing pressure was immense, and positioning demands were sky-high… Yet this boss’s aggro had fallen onto a Qi Ling Village DPS with no reliable aggro-holding skills. This was an inherent disadvantage compared to a tank, who’d have defensive and rotational skills, and it was easy for high-output DPS players to steal aggro later on.  

At this stage, chaotic aggro was fatal.  

—

The boss with no health bar continued its relentless attacks. After the energy burst didn’t wipe anyone, the chaos statue locked onto Zhou Sui, the aggro target, and unleashed a beam attack. Three types of attacks came in rapid, orderly succession. The players’ skill cooldowns couldn’t keep up, and the boss’s attacks followed one after another.  

Zhou Sui quickly pulled the beam away from the group, the ambient sounds of the environment mixing with the surging noise of the energy clusters on the boss. While running, he realized the boss was charging up its next skill. The situation was extremely difficult.  

Used to solo play, Zhou Sui now recognized the difference between the Divine Tree game and the Gathering Camp. This wasn’t a monster that could be solo-killed. The energy burst could still be countered with healing, but the beam and palm attacks were instant-death mechanics. The frequent attacks left him no room to turn and strike the boss.  

Dodging skills wasn’t an issue for him, but if he turned to probe the boss, he’d risk bringing damage near his teammates, putting unnecessary pressure on the team.  

This dungeon required three distinct roles: a healer to sustain health, a main tank to kite aggro from a distance, and DPS to probe and deal damage.  

“Slack Bro,” Zhou Sui suddenly called out.  

“Huh?” Slack Bro snapped back to attention. “What’s up, Brother Zhou?”  

Among the group, Little Bunny 123, the healer, tilted his head slightly toward Zhou Sui’s voice when he heard him speak, pausing his skill as if listening.  

“You take the run,” Zhou Sui said curtly.  

“Sure, I’ll—” Slack Bro started to agree before the realization hit him. “Wait, what!? I’m running???”  

In response, the figure that had been keeping the boss’s aggro away from the group suddenly changed direction. Before the others could react, Cycle of Eternity had already redirected the boss’s aggro toward them. Rich Bro and Mage Alt 123, hearing this, immediately stopped attacking and stepped back a few paces, leaving a wide open space around Slack Bro.  

Zhou Sui glanced at the healer, about to say something.  

But Little Bunny 123 seemed to know his plan, switching skills instantly. An aggro-clearing skill landed on Cycle of Eternity, followed by a strengthening buff applied to Slack Bro!  

Slack Bro: “?”  

In less than fifteen seconds, Zhou Sui had brought the boss close to Slack Bro. By then, Little Bunny 123’s aggro-clearing skill had come off cooldown again. A buff-clearing effect landed on Mage Alt 123, and the aggro of the top two players on the threat list was cleared. Naturally, the boss’s aggro shifted to Slack Bro.  

Slack Bro’s instincts kicked in. The moment the boss locked onto him, he bolted. “Damn it! Bro, you gotta give me some prep time!”  

—

[Holy crap, the healer chained two cooldowns to clear aggro? Just dropped the high-threat DPS like that!]  

[Aggro swap, my god!]  

—

With Little Bunny 123 clearing aggro and Cycle of Eternity swapping aggro, the battlefield dynamics shifted instantly. Players inside and outside the dungeon barely had time to process it before Slack Bro was already sprinting away. As a Sui Xing City swordsman, he had flexible attack range and a balanced kit, but that didn’t mean he could handle being the main tank: “I can’t do this!”  

“If you can run, you’re fine,” Zhou Sui said.  

Slack Bro turned just in time to see a skill coming his way. His body reacted faster than his brain, dodging with a sidestep and running without looking back.  

Mage Alt 123: “…” 

Damn, he really can run.

A beastmaster’s aggro could be lowered by dismissing and resummoning their pet, and the formation master could rely on the healer’s skills to dispel effects. In this situation, as long as Slack Bro occasionally used a skill and stayed alive, aggro would remain firmly on him. This made him a main tank who wouldn’t lose aggro as long as he could keep running.  

Zhou Sui hadn’t initially considered this strategy, but his teammate was a healer capable of maintaining buffs throughout the fight.  

And once he no longer needed to kite aggro, he had a chance to figure out this boss!  

“Beastmaster, cancel your pet when aggro’s about to shift,” Little Bunny 123, the healer, said quickly. “Formation master, go all out on DPS—aggro won’t get messy.”  

Mage Alt 123 hesitated, wondering where to aim without a health bar, but in the next second, he saw a figure move faster than him. Cycle of Eternity leaped from his side, chaining three lightness skills to land directly on the boss.  

Bro?! You just jumped up there!  

—

[Holy crap!]  

[That’s too far—group heals won’t reach that range!]  

At this moment, the energy clusters on the boss began to swell, and everyone’s attention sharpened. The unavoidable burst attack swept through again!  

Cycle of Eternity, positioned on the boss, took the full brunt of the energy burst, his health plummeting to 10%. But at the same time, a continuous healing marker appeared on him, stabilizing his health and bringing it back to 50%!  

Everyone was stunned by Cycle of Eternity’s move. To maintain reaction speed and heal at such a critical moment—with only 10% health, a single debuff could’ve killed him—yet he still dared to climb higher.  

“He’s looking for the mechanics,” Ragdoll Cat, who’d been observing, was the first to realize. “No health bar means there’s another mechanic at play.”  

He could keep climbing since aggro was on Slack Bro, meaning the beam and palm attacks would only chase Slack Bro. The only challenges Cycle of Eternity faced were the debuffs and energy bursts, but as long as he could track his health, he could anticipate and react in time!  

—

Inside the dungeon, Zhou Sui continued climbing, following the boss’s swaying body upward. As he passed a gap, he noticed a glowing buff on himself and glanced down to see the healer at the boss’s feet.  

Without needing prior coordination, the healer calmly managed the distance between them, seizing the chance to apply a continuous healing effect.  

But the healer’s dispel skills were limited and could only be used on Slack Bro, who was kiting aggro, not on Zhou Sui.  

The confusion debuff heavily slowed his movement speed, but for Zhou Sui, it was just another form of weighted training. In the holographic world, everyone’s physical stats were tuned to peak condition, so the confusion debuff merely brought his abilities down to a normal human level… which happened to be the state he was most accustomed to.  

With the healing kicking in, Zhou Sui turned and leaped higher. His weapon crate switched to a scythe, allowing him to propel himself upward with a burst of leverage, reaching an even higher position.  

All mechanics had a logic to them. The absence of a health bar meant the clear condition lay elsewhere. The key was whether the game’s mechanics would wear down the players first or if the players could find a breakthrough. This style of pushing players into a corner with mechanics was typical of the mainframe, and Zhou Sui felt a rare sense of familiarity. The tougher it got, the more he needed to search for the answer.  

Suddenly, his scythe grazed the surface of an inflating energy cluster on the statue’s body, and the cluster, which should’ve rapidly coalesced, slowed by a second.  

Zhou Sui’s gaze locked onto the spot, noticing a subtle change among the swelling energy clusters.

When the weapon struck a certain spot, the energy cluster’s recovery speed slowed.  

The recovery speed should be uniform, so the spot that slowed down was the key.  

“Over here,” Zhou Sui called out. “Attack where I am.”  

Mage Alt 123 looked up, struggling to spot Zhou Sui’s figure among the mass of energy clusters. “Bro, you say that, but there’s no lock-on target up there…”  

The height difference was too great, and the boss’s massive size clearly obstructed the teammates’ vision.  

Zhou Sui shifted his movements, his weapon suddenly slashing downward at a specific spot, tearing open a wide gash.  

He switched his skill to Serpent Venom Water, a single-target attack with the highest damage over time among his regular attacks, enhanced further under continuous combos. The sustained effect of Serpent Venom Water slowed the energy cluster’s recovery even more, and the gash became starkly visible to the players below.  

“Holy crap! I see it!” Mage Alt 123 snapped to attention, immediately tossing a few skills toward Zhou Sui’s position, hitting the gash dead-on.  

The combined attack caused the massive statue to tremble. The part where it connected to the Divine Tree began to shake, revealing the organic tissue rooted and growing into the tree.  

“Damn! This ugly thing’s growing on the Divine Tree!” Slack Bro turned back and caught sight of the grotesque scene.  

The torn opening was only a small section, but it revealed the statue’s pulsating organic tissue hidden beneath the energy clusters. This tissue clung to the Divine Tree, its vein-like tendrils slowly siphoning something, sending chills down everyone’s spines.  

[You have uncovered the secret of the Chaos Statue!]  

There was still no health bar indicator, but under every player’s gaze, a small crack suddenly appeared where the statue connected to the Divine Tree. The players instantly realized: this boss having no health bar made sense because it was feeding off the Divine Tree’s nutrients. As long as the Divine Tree didn’t wither, it had endless vitality… meaning the boss’s clear condition was to sever all its connections to the Divine Tree.  

—

[How did Cycle of Eternity figure it out?]  

[There’s no attack prompt on these energy clusters!]  

Exactly—no attack prompts. To all players, those clusters were practically part of the background, impossible to pinpoint with a lock-on… While other players avoided the inflating and shrinking energy clusters, Cycle of Eternity had found the connection point between them and the Divine Tree, which blended into the background.

—

The boss’s weak point was exposed, and its attack frequency surged instantly!  

Little Bunny 123 noticed something and glanced at Slack Bro. “Swordsman, move.”  

Slack Bro looked up to see the swelling energy clusters on the boss, accompanied by an eye-beam attack shooting straight at him. He dove into a roll, narrowly dodging the lethal beam by a hair’s breadth—almost getting one-shot. Scrambling to his feet, he bolted. “This is harder to run than forest terrain!!!”  

The live stream audience held their breath, but the next second, their hearts leaped again.  

Right after attacking Slack Bro, the boss’s energy clusters exploded instantly, leaving no time to react.  

The sweeping mist knocked back those nearby several steps, and everyone’s health plummeted catastrophically, caught off guard with no chance to respond, dropping the team’s health to 5%!  

5%! They were on the verge of a wipe!  

With everyone’s health teetering on the edge of death, Little Bunny 123, the healer, chained three skills in rapid succession. Two group heals landed back-to-back, green healing seeds bouncing between the party members. At the critical moment, he managed to pull their health back from the brink!  

After stabilizing the team, he triple-jumped onto the boss, tossing a recovery skill to Cycle of Eternity up high, securing the entire party’s health once more!  

—

[Holy crap, he actually pulled it back—this healer is unreal!]  

[Cycle of Eternity was so close and didn’t die—their reaction speeds are insane.]  

But the fight was getting tougher. Once the boss’s weak point was exposed, the intervals between its skills halved, meaning they could face 2-3 mechanics in just 10 seconds. In a normal dungeon, players would’ve raged at this kind of design, but this was a server-wide epic dungeon, and its difficulty was daunting enough to scare most away.  

The mechanics were either instant-death or halved team health—something not just anyone could handle. The entry barrier alone locked out most players.  

Leaderboard players watched the situation, deep in thought. While others saw difficulty, they analyzed coordination and possibilities.  

Private group chats among leaderboard players exploded, filled with calculations of skill mechanics.  

The attack patterns were tricky, and healers’ support-oriented skills leaned more toward utility than massive healing. No matter how skilled a player was, in a single-healer setup, skill cooldowns wouldn’t keep up. Squishy classes would eventually die to the escalating skill damage, and no matter how well the healer performed, death meant waiting for a revive.  

If this party had even one more healer, things would be much easier, but with only a single healer, cooldowns would inevitably get stuck over time.  

“Who are these players?”  

“Just ask Wonder Zoo, right?”  

Leaderboard players began messaging Wonder Zoo, inquiring about Little Bunny 123 and Cycle of Eternity.

Wonder Zoo’s players were quick to deny any connection with a triple disclaimer. Sure, two of the IDs in the party belonged to Wonder Zoo alts, but in reality, only Fierce Tiger 123 was actually part of the run.  

The healer was an unknown ringer brought in by their leader, and Cycle of Eternity, who discovered the mechanics, was someone their vice captain was interested in but hadn’t yet added as a friend… In truth, this party had nothing to do with Wonder Zoo!  

Meanwhile, the top ten leaderboard teams stayed silent, and even the failed Gryphon team was quietly observing the dungeon, all watching without a word.  

With the boss’s weak points exposed, the overall difficulty of the dungeon mechanics spiked. The boss’s massive size meant it had numerous connection points to the Divine Tree. The severed points didn’t reconnect, and as the DPS in the dungeon pushed hard, clearing about a third of the entanglement points, the boss’s frequent skills struck again!  

[Oh no, the healer’s skills can’t keep up!]  

Zhou Sui applied a skill to himself and glanced downward.  

The healer, Little Bunny 123, finally used his revive skill at this moment, bringing back the tank, Bubble Dragon. He hadn’t revived anyone despite earlier opportunities.  

Bubble Dragon stood up, dazed, then heard the healer say, “Group damage reduction.”  

His body reacted faster than his brain. Bubble Dragon immediately popped a damage reduction skill, standing in front of several teammates as the energy cluster exploded. This time, their health only dropped by 50%!  

—-

[?! Holy crap!]  

[He revived the tank for damage reduction!]  

—-

Rich Bro looked up and said, “Bro, don’t attack the boss—just focus on damage reduction.”  

Bubble Dragon felt the pressure piling on. “O-Okay!”  

The warrior and formation master still lying dead on the floor suddenly felt the ground was pretty cozy—at least they weren’t dragging the team down.  

The boss kept shuddering, preparing to unleash its next skill.  

“We need to speed up,” Zhou Sui said. From the start, he’d been tracking the boss’s skill tempo. Before they found its weak point, they could manage, but as they kept destroying connection points, the boss’s mechanics sped up. Initially, skills had a 6-7 second gap; now, each skill came less than 3 seconds apart.  

This meant the slower they cut through, the more frequently they’d face skills, until they’d be too busy just trying to survive.  

He looked up to the higher points, leaving the lower ones to the two casters below. They had to split up.  

[Cycle of Eternity is still climbing higher!]  

Zhou Sui changed direction, diving into the energy clusters on the boss from another angle, heading even higher.  

Bubble Dragon’s return eased the strain of the healer’s skill shortage. As a tank, he could only focus on damage reduction—his attack skills generated too much aggro. Rich Bro and Mage Alt 123 noticed the issue too, not daring to slack off. The moment Cycle of Eternity pinpointed a connection point, their skills rained down on his position.

The air mass shifted wildly, with the boss’s eye beams, palm slams, and the occasional incense debuff hitting them.  

Looking up, paired with their skill effects, not only did their necks ache from craning, but their eyes felt like the boss had slapped a debuff on them too!  

“I’m definitely flaming the mainframe when I’m out of here,” Mage Alt 123 groaned, eyes stinging, glancing at the beastmaster suffering beside him. “Who the hell gave this boss so many effects? Don’t you think—”  

He turned his head and froze, spotting glasses perched on Rich Bro’s face.  

Mage Alt 123: “?”  

Rich Bro, mid-frenzy, adjusted his glasses. “Bought ’em in the shop. Dungeon doesn’t block the cosmetic store. Skyforge Glasses. Grab a pair.”  

One pair cost 998 in the shop—nearly the price of a few gear pieces. Glancing at Rich Bro’s lavish equipment, Mage Alt 123 winced and closed the store.

Damn, this guy’s loaded.  

Suddenly, a tremor shook the heights. The rift torn between the boss and the Divine Tree gaped wider. Mage Alt 123 snapped his head up. At some point, Cycle had reached the peak where the two ^[1] the boss and the Divine Tree connected—they were fighting from below, while Cycle of Eternity attacked from above!  

—-

[Why’s it speeding up?!]  

“It’s gravity! The boss is physical, clinging to the Divine Tree. When it cuts from above, the broken rift gets pulled by the boss’s own weight!”  

Ragdoll Cat exclaimed, “He even accounted for that!”  

This team’s biggest issue from the start was its size—low DPS and only one healer.  

With just three people dealing damage… a long fight could drag them to death. Cycle of Eternity must’ve realized this, so he was hunting the optimal way to crack the mechanics. In other games, you wouldn’t see this level of detail, but the mainframe’s simulations followed basic logic, including gravity as a factor in skill mechanics!  

Players wouldn’t sweat details like that, but Cycle of Eternity did—like he was used to this kind of combat.  

—-

Up high, Cycle of Eternity was completely out of healing range, relying solely on his three self-heal skills.  

“Don’t worry about me,” Zhou Sui said without turning. “I’ve got red pots. If I can’t hold, I’ll drop down.”  

The big red potion Rich Bro gave earlier had a short cooldown, long healing, and a regen effect.  

Little Bunny 123 glanced at the figure vanishing into the air mass and adjusted his position.  

[Connection point’s down to half!]  

Unnoticed, the boss’s link to the Divine Tree had been whittled to half under the trio’s onslaught.  

At the same time, a progress update popped up in the dungeon:  

[Chaos Statue Suppression (50%/100%)]  

This progress bar signaled the strategy was viable. Right now, six players were still alive!  

“Slack Bro, keep running!” Rich Bro shouted, tense.  

“It’s a pity for a swordsman not to play tank,” Mage Alt 123 said, eyeing the guy sprinting in the distance. Never seen anyone run like that.  

Slack Bro was panting: “Crap, my legs are getting sore.”  

Others: “?”  

Bro, now’s not the time for that!  

The group found their rhythm, their judgment and attack power sharpening. With Cycle of Eternity hammering from the top, the pace seemed to surge even faster.

The progress bar kept climbing, hitting 80%. Suddenly, the boss shuddered. Less than two seconds after a beam skill ended, it unleashed a palm slam. The rapid attack caught Slack Bro, who’d run most of the course, with nowhere to dodge—he became a casualty under its hand!  

The healer reacted fast, tossing a threat-clear buff onto Mage Alt 123: “Tank, pull aggro.”  

Bubble Dragon snapped up the threat: “Got it!”  

As aggro shifted, the healer revived Slack Bro, topping off his health: “Get out of there.”  

But the boss, at 80% progress, gave them no breathing room. Skill gaps tightened further. Just when everyone thought they had two seconds before the next hit, the air mass above exploded again. In mere moments, Slack Bro stood, then fell again, barely managing two steps forward.  

This attack, paired with a debuff, dropped Bubble Dragon and Slack Bro to the ground.  

Slack Bro died cursing: “What the hell! Is this boss enraging already?!”  

Strange colors flickered on the boss’s body. As the air masses shrank and swelled, its grotesque form faintly glowed red, confirming Slack Bro’s words.  

No health bar, and this thing still had an enrage phase!  

—-

The livestream audience was stunned. At this stage of the dungeon, every move was critical—players couldn’t afford a single mistake.  

Then, someone pointed out a fatal flaw:  

[Healer’s out of resurrection skills.]  

No more revives. The team had zero margin for error now.