[“Why are you retreating?”]

Translator: I am planning to change ‘Xiaoyao Xian’ to ‘Carefree Immortal’.

[Wait, I just saw other people still streaming Stage Two? The Sanctum and Team #3 are still on Stage Two!]

[The Wonder Zoo has already reached an Evil God?!]

[Didn’t some lore players say recently that god-class monsters are the most mysterious in all Exploration Dungeons?!]

[Whoa, isn’t this the first Evil God to appear after the Tiandi Temple descended into chaos? That’s gotta mean high rewards!]

[Which team is Collective Prosperity again?!]

At the same time, in the high-level zone, the keyword “Evil God” immediately drew the attention of many players near the Tiankong Tree area. In an instant, players heading to the Mirror Maze Town increased significantly. Although the lore dungeon was inaccessible, the Mirror Maze Town was located in a Chaos Zone to the east of the Tiankong Tree in the high-level zone, and players could roughly pinpoint its location.

In the Exploration Dungeon system, dungeons related to deities were constantly monitored by top-ranking players.

In the blink of an eye, the area outside Mirror Maze Town was swarming with players. All of them stared covetously at Liuli Town, clearly targeting the rewards brought by the Mist God.

The Hidden Immortal squad, who were on good terms with the Wonder Zoo, noticed the growing crowd around Mirror Maze Town and immediately tried to contact the Wonder Zoo players. But all messages sank into silence. Xiaoyao Xian frowned.
“This is bad. Feels like all these players are here for the Evil God.”

Scanning the surroundings, the Hidden Immortal squad spotted no fewer than ten leaderboard teams. Since the opening of the Exploration Dungeon in the high-level region, this was the first time so many top teams had shown up. It showed just how significant the “Evil God” clue was to professional players.

“Where’s the Wonder Zoo?”

“No response!”

—-

Inside the shrine, all the players were stunned by the sudden announcement and the scene before them in the dungeon.

But they had no time to check the announcement details. Urgent dungeon prompts interwove with mist lines. In the shrine’s countless bronze mirrors, a vast, indistinct being was swimming, and all the mist threads originated from it!

Zhou Sui’s eyes locked onto something, and he suddenly shouted—

“Use CC ^[1] Clear debuffs cleanse, fall back!”

The mist threads burst forth from the mirrors again. Startled, players used crowd-control cleanses and backed away.

A mass-dispel skill landed at just the right moment. Little Bunny cleansed negative statuses off most nearby players. But the dispel only worked once—no sooner had it removed the mist threads than more immediately surged forth.

“Break the mirrors!” Little Bunny shouted.

Zhou Sui was already taking action. However, the mirrors here were different from the ones outside—these couldn’t be broken!

Haba Dog even tried blocking the mirror with other objects, only to realize the moonlit courtyard was drenched in an unstoppable, misty glow. The mist here was nothing like what they’d seen in the second stage— “The mirrors can’t be covered.”

“What the hell, that’s cheating!” Slack Bro shouted in shock. “It’s hiding in the mirrors—how are we supposed to fight this?!”

Fierce Tiger yelled, “Who said there was just mist?! This stuff drains blood!”

Not only was the boss in the mirror untargetable, but the mist threads also acted like blood-sucking parasites, draining players’ HP rapidly. In a flash, death notifications popped up from those drained dry.

“What the hell? Instant death? This boss’s drain is insane!” exclaimed a dead player.

Rich Bro added, “Feels like we’re jelly. One suck and we’re done.”

“No good—my healing CDs can’t keep up!” cried the Wonder Zoo’s healer, who had healed many large groups but never seen anything like this. “Big heals, AoE heals, even basic attacks can’t outpace the HP loss. I can only try to keep our core members alive. We need a strategy, or it’s a wipe.”

As soon as he said that, two more players dropped dead in an instant. The drain far outpaced any healing, and it didn’t stop. Unlike normal bosses that had skill cooldowns, this one had been draining for nearly 30 seconds straight without pause. Players’ CC cleanses and invulnerability skills were nearly all used up.

Zhou Sui glanced at his remaining skills—he had few survivability options left and was relying entirely on dodging. He quickly evaded an attack, scanning the terrain with sharp eyes. In the bronze mirrors, lines of light flickered—he spotted an angle and turned sharply to look back.

At the shrine’s entrance, the elder and child etched on the door were glowing more brightly than before. In the dim lighting, their faces began to resemble the old man and child who had first guided them into the town—clearly signaling something.

That was the brightest place in the shrine. The flames on either side of the door weren’t ghostly blue but warm and luminous.

The light from the door was different.

“Head for the door,” Zhou Sui instructed.

Everyone in the team was critically low on health, all tethered by threads, barely holding on thanks to the healer’s buffs. At any moment, they could all collapse and be done for.

The moment they heard the instruction, they immediately activated their movement speed skills and charged toward the shrine’s door. In just over ten seconds, half of the 17-person team had fallen. Looking up, they saw Cycle of Eternity was already near the entrance!

How could this guy be so fast?!

As soon as Zhou Sui, the first to arrive, got close to the door, he felt a wave of warmth envelop him. The thread of mist tied to his body dissolved instantly under the shrine’s light and disappeared as mist.

He was right!

Little Bunny followed closely behind and decisively stacked healing buffs on the healer from the Wonder Zoo team—prioritizing the teammate with resurrection skills. Then, he unleashed a group heal that boosted the health of several players in the rear. “We’re running out of time. The threads are pulling them back.”

Players tethered by mist threads couldn’t run fast at all.

Zhou Sui even used his own healing skill. As he glanced at his teammates, he spotted a few people still far behind. Without hesitation, he pulled out a tool from his bag and yanked the slowest player, Rich Bro, toward him.

Rich Bro, moved to tears: “Brother Zhou!”

Fierce Tiger: “!” We’re both mages—why didn’t you save me!

The mist thread on Rich Bro was broken, with part of it transferring to Zhou Sui. Zhou Sui noticed a status effect flash across his body, but it disappeared in the next moment as the light from the shrine door burned away the mist thread.

What was that status effect?

Zhou Sui looked back, his mind racing through the cooldowns of the team’s healers.

No time left. The others behind would die.

Ragdoll Cat shouted: “Black Bear!”

At this moment, a tall figure suddenly appeared nearby. The Wonder Zoo team’s healer, Black Bear, roared as his body surged in size. Muscles bulging, he leaped forward and slammed down behind the rest of the team, like a solid wall blocking the countless mist threads from reaching them.

It was a mutated skill from his talent tree: maximum health, maximum defense.

Zhou Sui looked over in surprise. What kind of skill is that?!

Slack Bro: “Damn, what is that?!”

Assassin Little Panda: “Nine-second real man—this is Big Bear Bro’s favorite skill.”

Black Bear, voice booming like a bell, body as solid as a rock: “Keep running.”

In this moment, Frog felt like he’d seen a god descend: “Bro, you’re so manly!!!!”

A special mutated skill—Wonder Zoo team’s healer Black Bear’s signature move. It allowed his body to massively expand in size for a short burst of high defense and HP. In many PvP scenarios, this move earned him the title of a “punching-bag healer”—less agile than the nimble type, but built to take hits. Right now, his massive body blocked the surrounding mist threads, allowing the remaining players to escape to the shrine entrance.

Under the glow of the elder and the child by the shrine door, the boss’s attacks could no longer reach them. The team finally got a moment to breathe.

The mist threads retreated, silence returned, and the ghostly flames inside the shrine vanished.

Then, the elderly man on the shrine door painting finally spoke: “You’ve arrived.”

The players: “…”

‘We nearly died out there, and now you speak?’

Haba Dog: “Please, elder—go ahead.”

“The Liuli Town once worshipped the divine tree and its god. But ever since the Mist God’s invasion, everything changed. It seized the town, consumed its people, and turned them into mist beings…” The elder’s cloudy eyes could no longer discern reality, but his hoarse voice echoed through the shrine, slowly recounting the tale of the town—

The one who had taken over the shrine was the Mist God, an evil deity born of chaos power. It destroyed faith, devoured belief for its own power, and later became insatiable—moving on from belief to consuming human flesh and blood.

Those mirrors were the Mist God’s medium for feeding.

Almost all the townspeople were wiped out—their flesh devoured, their bodies transformed into undead mist beings. Because Liuli Town was shrouded in the Mist God’s power, it eventually vanished from the Divine Tree Continent. The elder and the child were once townspeople who had hidden in the shrine. Protected by the last vestiges of faith from the divine tree, they became lingering souls. They later used the Liuli Monkeys—creatures that occasionally appeared in the surrounding forest—to spread word of the town’s fate, hoping gifted ones would come to their rescue.

“Earlier, when I guided you into the town, I was discovered by the Mist God.”

The old man sighed, “Fortunately, you found the shrine.”

“To make it here, you all must be people of exceptional talent.”

“I believe in you.”

After hearing this part of the story, the players fell silent—Was that… flattery?

Haba Dog, looking solemn, gave a deep bow to the elder painted on the door and said sincerely, “Please rest assured, we’ll see it through.”

The others: “…”

Slack Bro carefully tugged at the assassin beside him. “Is your team leader always like this?”

Assassin Little Panda, as if used to it by now: “…Our leader’s empathy is a little strong.”

The Mist God.

The players present fell into thought. Deity-type instances were always related to the main story. Especially now, since the main plot had begun mentioning the Divine Tree being damaged by Chaos, and its power dissipating, then dungeons involving evil or false gods like this one were definitely tied to the main narrative.

Even aside from the plot, based on mechanics and difficulty alone, the rewards for this instance might be very different.

“Those mist threads are essentially a form of light. When exposed to stronger light, their presence weakens,” Little Bunny observed the surroundings. The outer shrine hall where the shrine’s entrance stood was quite far from the mirrors and the inner sanctum, making it a good hiding spot—but also meant they couldn’t launch any attacks. “It’s a temporary safe zone, more like a disengage point.”

Bosses that could be disengaged mid-fight gave players more room for error.

Ragdoll Cat didn’t rush to reengage the boss. Instead, the three healer classes took turns using their resurrection cooldowns to revive players who’d died en route. During this time, they also tested the boss’s skills. The biggest threat remained the mist threads. Once one latched onto a player, without healing, it could drain a high-level player’s health within five seconds. Lower-level players fell even faster. It also applied debuffs like slow, making resistance nearly impossible.

Second, the boss hid within the mirrors and couldn’t be directly targeted. Attacking the mirrors didn’t work.

Third, every 15 seconds, the boss would cast an illusion skill. Inside the moonlit zone, players’ skills would randomly be sealed.

As expected, all the skills the Wonder Zoo team and Little Bunny had speculated about were present: divine-type monsters, illusion abilities, and even mist-lines resembling sacrificial rituals… It was even more troublesome than anticipated. To crack this, their first priority was neutralizing the mist thread mechanic.

The players were left speechless by the intensity of the story and mechanics. Meanwhile, Zhou Sui wasn’t particularly interested in the plot. He crouched, eyes scanning the environment. Once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he used the shrine’s light to observe details hidden in the shadows.

There was something that had been bothering him.

Just a few steps away, he seemed to notice something. Moving slightly, he stepped out of the protective range of the door painting.

The surrounding mirrors seemed to stir again in response to his movement. Ragdoll Cat, still following the plot, noticed him and was just about to speak when Little Bunny suddenly raised a hand to stop him. His gaze locked onto Cycle of Eternity moving in the darkness, and he instantly understood what he was doing.

He was approaching the mirrors!

The Wonder Zoo team’s apothecary stepped forward, attempting to cleanse Cycle of Eternity’s debuffs.

Little Bunny stopped him: “Don’t cleanse him. He’s testing skills.”

Once the player entered the boss’s range, the mirrors and the skylight’s moonlight resonated again. Mist threads burst out, targeting Cycle of Eternity—just as he’d anticipated. As the threads approached, the sharpest scythe in his kit was already unsheathed. He used fire-based skill Incense Ash Fire along with Serpent Venom Water, slashing through the mist threads connected to the mirrors.

Other players looked on in confusion—what is he doing?

“Give me a hand,” Zhou Sui said aloud.

While everyone wondered what kind of help he needed, Little Bunny—still standing in the shrine’s safe zone—stepped forward a few paces. The others saw something being thrown from Cycle of Eternity’s side. Before they could see what it was, the apothecary had already reached out and grabbed it—

It was the other end of a mist thread.

In the darkness, Cycle of Eternity held one end of the thread.

As Little Bunny caught the other end, the threads from the surrounding mirrors stopped attacking and remained still.

The two stood together in the darkness, the thread between them glowing faintly and clearly linking them.

At the same time, a [Drain] debuff appeared on both their bodies. Ragdoll Cat quickly noticed something was off. He checked their statuses and found that the debuff showed:
[Cycle of Eternity is draining power from Little Bunny 123].

The thread could be cut and used by players?!

When Zhou Sui saw the status, he realized that the fleeting effect he’d noticed earlier while rescuing Rich Bro wasn’t an illusion. Ever since the second stage, when he’d cut through mist chains that didn’t disappear, he had suspected they had more than a single use. Back then, when the mist figures formed, it was all due to the mist connections between them. Even now, the boss drained players’ health through the threads.

To the boss, draining the players was necessary—so [Drain] would appear.

Zhou Sui was observing when he suddenly noticed Little Bunny approaching through the darkness. As he turned his head slightly and took a subconscious step back, the other abruptly halted.

“Why are you retreating?”

“No reason.” Zhou Sui froze in place.

Without moving closer, Little Bunny slid his status panel toward him.  

“Check the panel.”

Only then did Zhou Sui realize he meant to share his status. He stepped closer and saw clearly that his HP bar had shrunk—while his had increased… their health had equalized. The values were exactly the same.

Little Bunny, watching him observe seriously, added, “It’s not just HP. Attributes are starting to shift, too.”

“Then why are the two of you experiencing drain?” Fierce Tiger asked, puzzled.

Little Bunny replied, “Level difference. I’m two levels higher than him.”

In their 5-person party, Zhou Sui was the lowest at level 35, while Little Bunny was level 37.

For players, differences in level and attributes were enough to enable the [Drain] effect… The dungeon was filled with subtle hints—clues deliberately left behind to point toward this fact. The difference—the gap—was crucial.

“No wonder the pre-dungeon storyline required forming a mixed-level team,” Ragdoll Cat mused, quickly grasping the core mechanic. “The signs of veterans carrying newbies in the second stage already hinted at it. The instance nurtures lower-level players by channeling from higher-level ones. It’s the difference that triggers the Drain effect. This is a shared thread.”

Haba Dog sorted through the dungeon’s general plot—this was probably one of the Mist God’s abilities.

Devouring the townspeople’s flesh and blood was just a version of this—another process of stripping something away. The boss’s consumption and deprivation mirrored the mechanic they now faced. The consumption mechanism indicated the boss could absorb players’ HP—i.e., the Mist Thread skill.

In the second phase, the use of mist, moonlight, and mirrors to create mist figures had already hinted to the players that mist = creation. Mist was directly tied to the boss. In reality, the mist “embryos” split off from the boss, then regenerated into mist figures through the delivery mechanism of the threads.

In the third phase, the elder and child from the shrine door mural appeared, echoing the guide who first led them into the town. The clearly visible age gap—and the fact that these residual souls hadn’t been devoured by the boss and could still guide players—was another clue: parties with level gaps could bypass the mechanic.

Plus, in the pre-dungeon story, the mainframe even suggested mixed-level teams. It all made sense now.

Little Bunny said, “Let’s test what happens when players of the same level connect with a thread.”

Prompted by this, Zhou Sui threw the thread toward Slack Bro, who instinctively caught it.

However, with only a tiny level difference, the mist thread was extremely fragile—it snapped almost instantly with the slightest pull.

Little Bunny understood: “The bigger the difference, the stronger the thread.”

Conversely, the smaller the difference, the more unstable and fragile the connection. It was basically useless.

Ragdoll Cat continued observing. The fact that threads between players could have effects was a subtle mechanic—especially in the chaos of so many other mist threads, it was easy to miss. Cycle of Eternity was excellent at noticing details. While other players were busy dodging death, he had already begun focusing beyond the immediate goal—no detail escaped him.

No wonder their team leader had chosen Cycle of Eternity as a partner immediately after watching the Tiandi Temple video.

In early dungeon exploration, it was always the small details that proved fatal.

“Pair up, everyone,” Haba Dog suggested. “It’ll help more people survive.”

He glanced at the age gap between the elder and the child on the door painting, and said cautiously, “The stronger the thread, the more damage it can reduce.”

Among high-level players, level differences were minimal. Within the Wonder Zoo team, the best-case difference was only one level. Higher-level players could barely pair with members from team 3145. They managed to form 8 pairs—though 2 of those pairs had extremely weak threads… and since the Wonder Zoo team had one extra member, one person was left unpaired.

“You go solo—use stealth,” Ragdoll Cat instructed the Assassin Little Panda.

Assassin Little Panda: “…Okay.”

So assassins are always the orphans, huh?

Frog patted Little Panda on the shoulder. “Good luck, bro.”

Finally, it isn’t his turn to be the odd one out!

Now that they understood the threads could be used to mitigate damage, all players preemptively connected and wrapped the threads around themselves. But doing so revealed a new issue: the threads were fully shared. This sharing caused HP and other attributes to equalize between both players.

This meant that the stronger player’s attributes would be reduced to raise the weaker player’s attributes. Player attacks wouldn’t break the thread—but distance would.

Where they’d once been free to roam the entire field, they now had to stay tightly bound to their partner. Threads were powerful, but they also restricted movement. Worse yet, if a thread broke, both players would suffer HP loss.

Still, everyone had no choice but to bind themselves. Compared to restricted movement, the threat of the Mist Thread was far greater.

“This thread is basically tying us down!” Slack Bro shouted. “We can’t run like this! What do we do if it snaps?!”

Frog: “…Bro, your life or your mobility—what’s more important? You’re here to fight the boss, not dodge it!”

“Stand in pairs, keep your positioning tight, and don’t let the thread between you snap.”

Ragdoll Cat reminded everyone: “Reconnect immediately if the line breaks. If more than five of us wipe, use the retreat gate on this side to disengage.”

As soon as they tied themselves with the threads, the players immediately felt restricted and had to reposition. No wonder the game encouraged spaced-out movement.

Not only did they need to prevent their own thread from breaking, but they also had to avoid being affected by other players’ movements.

Fierce Tiger: “But there’s one problem… Where’s the boss?”

“Then let’s force it to show itself.”

Zhou Sui said, “Isn’t it mist?”

The players: “…”

Zhou Sui clearly saw the team composition: two formation masters, two Daoist priests, and two beastmasters. Magic-type classes had the most elemental skills, which just happened to cover all parts of the shrine. The boss was called the Mist God—if it’s mist, it must be vulnerable to water and fire.

Burn the mirrors with fire, flood them with water. As soon as the players heard that, they remembered the second phase and threw every skill they had containing those two elements at the mirrors around them. Ice and fire raged at once as the Daoists and formation masters unleashed their spells.

Right then, a strange mist began curling out of the mirrors. It wasn’t steam from fire and water colliding—it looked more like condensed moonlight, gradually forming into a giant octopus-like monster. Its massive body coiled in the mist high above, occupying the rafters of the shrine, with countless tentacles plunging into the mirrors and then emerging from other mirrors.

At this moment, the entire shrine became the boss. It loomed menacingly over the players, with 98% HP showing overhead.

As soon as it appeared, everyone knew they had figured it out correctly.

Fierce Tiger glanced at the combat log: “This monster—water and fire skills have bonus effects!”

[Delicious Food, Fierce Tiger 123]
Targeted!

Before he could finish speaking, an attack shot out from a mirror and instantly killed him!

Rick Bro linked with Fierce Tiger instantly dropped to critical HP, saved only by Little Bunny’s emergency heals: “Almost flatlined there!”

Slack Bro: “?”

Fierce Tiger: “My skills got sealed!”

At this moment, Ragdoll Cat rushed forward. The boss was entrenched in the rafters—it had visible eyes, which meant it had facing. As the shield class, he immediately grabbed all aggro, forcing the boss to turn toward the left half of the room. “AOEs are based on direction—stay away from me.”

Everyone scattered to avoid the skills and study the mechanics. The Mist Threads and the boss were no longer the issue—the problem now was the attacks.

Within 30 seconds, the boss used three distinctly different skills:

Single-target Mist Thread strike—appeared from a random mirror, highly unpredictable, lethal.

Large-area AoE—slammed the ground, caused massive party-wide damage.

Moonlight curse skill—worked with the skylight/moonlight, inflicted random debuffs that seal player skills.

The AoE could be managed by controlling the boss’s facing and only occurred about every 10 seconds, so it was manageable. But the Mist Thread + skill seal combo was far more dangerous. Players were linked by shared threads—if one got hit and didn’t get healed fast enough, both could die.

Little Bunny kept count: “It’s coming. Rotate dispels by group.”

The single-target mist thread strike came every 30 seconds, in sync with the moonlight skill.

Black Bear: “I’ll go first.”

[Delicious Food, Fierce Tiger 123]
Targeted again!

This time, Fierce Tiger got dispelled just in time and backed off while using damage reduction. But the thread darted out behind him and pierced him again.

[Player Fierce Tiger 123 has died.]

Everyone: “?”

Rich Bro, his partner, again dropped to critical HP and barely survived. “Bro, can you not drag me into your deaths? I’m really stressed!”

Fierce Tiger: “…My bad.”

They used the second resurrection cooldown. Fierce Tiger revived again, and now three healers kept an extra eye on him.

But things were looking grim. The physician class’s resurrection skill had a 2-minute cooldown, while the apothecary’s was 5 minutes. That meant in 5 minutes, they only had 3 revives available ^[2] Already used 1. If someone got targeted every 30 seconds and died, the healing team wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Everyone waited in tense silence for the third targeting.

Then—
[Delicious Food, Cycle of Eternity.]

Everyone immediately turned to look at Cycle of Eternity. A thread leapt out in an unpredictable arc. In less than a second, it had reached behind him. Everyone thought he was done for—but Cycle of Eternity suddenly ducked low and leaned back, dodging the attack by a hair’s breadth!

He dodged it!

Everyone was stunned.

“Didn’t you look at the team channel?” Slack Bro asked.

In the team chat, at some point, someone had posted a diagram. It was a simple sketch, clearly drawn using the in-game system. It marked out the position of every mirror and showed the key zones and the arc range of the attacks. Sender: Little Bunny 123.

While everyone has been testing mechanics with Cycle of Eternity earlier, this guy has mapped out every mirror’s position already?! So fast?!

Zhou Sui glanced at the diagram out of the corner of his eye and had moved into position early. There were no mirrors on the ground near him, and the drawing marked the approximate Mist Thread danger zones. Once he heard the thread’s activation sound, he used directional prediction to dodge sideways. Risky, but about a 50% success rate.

But… he hadn’t completely avoided it just now.

He quickly checked the combat log and saw that the skill had deducted HP—this meant it wasn’t a true instant-death mechanic. True one-hit-kill mechanics wouldn’t show HP deduction, just instant death.

“What’s the verdict?” Little Bunny asked.

Zhou Sui’s mind spun quickly, analyzing: “It’s not a true instakill.”

His thread partner was Haba Dog—a warrior class with high HP and physical attack, making him the ideal teammate. But when the Mist Thread skimmed Zhou Sui’s arm, it still shaved off half his HP—HP that had come through the shared thread from Haba Dog.

Judging by how the grazing hit took away half his HP, this damage seems to be based on twice the team’s average HP—or even higher. That’s why squishier players like Fierce Tiger and Rich Bro instantly drop to critical. The damage seems to scale with the team’s composition.

The players in the group were quick-witted. Cycle of Eternity had just proven the skill was dodgeable—it was all a matter of prediction.

Zhou Sui: “How’s the targeting determined?”

Little Bunny: “Completely random.”

Haba Dog had also been observing: “Aggro, HP, damage taken, and DPS all aren’t factors in being targeted.”

The next targeting came—this time, it landed on the main tank, Ragdoll Cat.

Ragdoll Cat reacted instantly, popping a large shield. The beam was about to pierce him but got blocked by the shield skill!

Ragdoll Cat: “Shield can block it, but the cooldown is way too long. Double tanks can’t cover every one.”

Fierce Tiger: “Only shield skills work. Damage-reduction doesn’t. It won’t absorb enough.”

So only blocking-type shield skills were effective.

During their brief exchange, another targeting appeared. Everyone braced themselves—this time it was Frog. The moment Frog saw his name light up, his brain blanked—he couldn’t recall the diagram and reflexively used a blink skill. But he accidentally dashed in the same direction as the beam, and ended up getting directly skewered!

The rest of the team: “!”

Blinking was a gamble. Damage-reduction was useless. Was it really this hard to dodge?

[Player smqw555888 has died.]

Blinking moves you a short distance forward—but only if you don’t move with the beam. And with so many mirrors around, blinking into one just guarantees instant death. Everyone looked at the boss’s HP. There was no pattern. And the hardest mechanics to deal with are the unpredictable ones—those are always the wipe points.

[Delicious Food, Black Bear.]

The voice rang out again. This time, the other shield user in the group reacted fast and dropped a shield right onto the targeted healer—saving him.

“No shield left for the next one,” the shield warned.

Black Bear: “Healer’s got a healing shield—I can protect one person.”

Healers had limited revive skills. Tanks’ big shields had cooldowns. Healers had medical barriers. Warriors had their own protective shields. But none of these skills could reliably stop a 30-second recurring target-beam. People would have to die. And the team’s mages didn’t have any shielding skills at all.

Zhou Sui glanced at the boss’s health. Several minutes had passed, and they had only shaved off 4% of its HP. Meanwhile, the boss’s mechanics kept piling on the pressure, disrupting their DPS. With so many interruptions, their damage output was plummeting. And this was still just the early phase of the boss fight—at this rate, they’d wipe from attrition.

HP deduction… Then Zhou Sui suddenly thought of something and shouted: “Haba Dog—drop your thread!”

Haba Dog backed off, and the thread connecting him snapped.

[Delicious Food, Fierce Tiger 123]

Another targeting. Everyone turned to look at the unlucky Fierce Tiger.

Zhou Sui suddenly called to someone else: “Rich Bro—grab it.”

Rich Bro wasn’t sure what “grab it” meant, but instinctively reached out—and caught one of the threads.

“Fierce Tiger, don’t dodge!” Zhou Sui ordered sharply.

Fierce Tiger had just used all his damage-reduction. His movement paused mid-dodge—what?! Don’t dodge!?

At this moment, the beam shot out from the mirror, and as it pierced Fierce Tiger—suddenly, the blood loss stopped short.

Three people in the team suddenly lost a massive chunk of HP. The healer panicked, quickly scanned the group—three of them were standing there at critical HP, but no one had died.

They survived!?

Little Bunny’s group heal landed, quickly bringing their HP back up!

Everyone looked closer—and noticed the change was centered on Rich Bro. That was the line Cycle of Eternity and Haba Dog had intentionally disconnected earlier. And now, there was a second line on Rich Bro!

Because Rich Bro was a higher level than Zhou Sui, a new energy-drawing chain had formed between the three of them. It split the beam’s damage! The shared thread mechanic wasn’t limited to just two players—multiple players could link up!

Ragdoll Cat’s eyes narrowed slightly. Before, everyone had been spread out to preserve positioning, and with level differences, it was hard to link up. The clue from the mural of the child and old man made it even harder to realize a three-player chain was possible!

When did Cycle of Eternity figure this out!?

No—it wasn’t that he figured it out. He was deliberately stress-testing the mechanic.

[Delicious Food, Fierce Tiger 123]

Fierce Tiger: “!”

‘No way. How unlucky can I be?! It can’t randomly pick me this often!’

“Fierce Tiger—grab the thread!” came Haba Dog’s voice.

Fierce Tiger turned and grabbed his line. The two of them had a one-level difference. As he grabbed it, the thread formed a new link: from Cycle of Eternity → Rich Bro → Tiger → Haba Dog. A four-player damage-sharing thread!

The beam pierced through the players again. All four of them took massive damage—dropping to 30% HP—but none died!

Fierce Tiger suddenly felt like he had ascended: “!”

The rest of the team stared at the crisscrossing mist thread. Damn, it’s a Russian nesting doll of damage sharing!