30 minutes later...
[Your raid team has slain the Mini Boss: King Duram of the Drowned!]
[Your raid team has slain the Mini Boss: King Malrik, the Regretful!]
[Your raid team has slain the Mini Boss: King Varan the Hollow!]
[Your raid team has slain the Mini Boss: The Two Kings of Fla and Frost!]
[Your raid team has slain the Mini Boss: Queen Althissa of Thorns!]
After an intense 30-minute series of encounters, including near-deaths, clutch heals, and one accidental friendly fire from a chard Benjamin which they absolutely roasted him for, the final tomb shuddered open.
BZZZ!
The ground trembled, the floor splitting apart to reveal a stairwell descending into a buried throne room beneath the reliquary.
It is there that the true monarch, the Naless King, sleeps.
But as they prepare to descend, the sound of rattling chains and weeping choirs echo through the chamber.
Then, from the darkness below, a ssage scrolls across the HUD.
~----~
[Phase 4 Initiated: The Spiral of Testimony!]
["Warning: Entry is irreversible."]
~----~
"That confirms it," Jonathan muttered. "There is no Naless King, King Varan the Hollow is the main boss here after all".
Without a word, they continued moving.
Even their jokes reduced now because they could tell that after Phase 3, they won’t have the leisure for petty jokes anymore. The dungeon was getting harder.
They entered a room.
The room they’d entered was shaped like a vast cylinder, as if they’d stepped into the inside of an ancient tower turned on its head.
And stretching infinitely upward, coiling like the body of a sleeping dragon, was the Spiral of Testimony; a staircase carved from ethereal light and astral stone, suspended in a void of floating parchnts, drifting quills, and shattered hourglasses frozen mid-spill.
There were no walls, only constellations mapped in runes, glowing softly. So pulsed, so scread; every step up the spiral was an act of rembrance.
A giant, spectral inscription hovered above the base.
["Only the worthy may ascent the Tower of Truth. Only those who have lived... may rewrite ti."]
"Sounds catchy". Benjamin muttered with a grin.
No one replied him.
As the group took their first step onto the staircase, the dungeon shifted into a vertical gauntlet. Waves of enemies didn’t rush at them though.
Instead, the past did.
KABOOM!
All hell broke loose as the raid party pounced on the dungeon monsters that were supposed to pounce on them.
Like before, they didn’t need any body to lead them. As soon as the beings of Phase 4 of the SSS-Rank dungeon erged, they approached them with instinctive knowledge of which class was better suited to deal with them.
And so, they hunted them down with ruthless impunity.
Every few dozen steps, the team was halted and forced to fight echoes of their past; bosses, battlefields, and even fragnts of forr versions of themselves from earlier in the ga.
There were 3 distinct trials in the Spiral of Testimony. The first is the Trial of Origins, a fierce gauntlet where each team mber of the raid party faces their own level 1 self in a 1v1 illusion battle. Weak in stats, but dangerously pure in fundantals.
Then the Trial of Division, where the group is randomly split into four squads of five and forced to solve ti-manipulated puzzles while fending off corrupted NPCs from Warstar’s old beta era.
And finally the Trial of Echoes, a ghostly replay of their very first defeat as a team plays out again; but this ti, the enemies have been scaled to level 100.
They must conquer it to prove growth.
This SSS-Rank dungeon never got tired of finding ingenious ways to end the lives of its challengers. It was hell bent on it even. But this ti, its challengers were not regular players, they were insidiously knowledgeable and extrely powerful.
All the while as they fought against the trials, the environnt kept growing more surreal; quills begin writing battle logs midair, and quotes from the team’s own past echoed in the wind, spoken back to them by unseen voices.
And then, after surviving all the initial threat... the final ascent.
At the summit of the Spiral awaited a floating platform bathed in twilight; a circular observatory with a shattered telescope hanging above like a fallen crown.
There stood Chrono Professor Elyria, suspended above the platform in a dress made of layered scrolls, clock hands, and golden typewriters. Her hair was silver, braided with hourglass chains.
Her eyes? Mismatched, one chanical, ticking slowly... the other, a bottomless black void.
Her voice reverberated without moving her lips.
"Ti doesn’t move forward. It spirals. Around every truth is a thousand lies... and yet here you are, trying to climb higher".
"Then let test your version of the truth".
"See if you’re worthy".
DING!
~----~
[WARNING: You have encountered the Mini Boss: Chrono Professor Elyria!]
[SSS-Rank Boss: Phase 4 End Guardian]
[HP: Five rotating ti cores]
[Core chanics:]
>Tiline Shifts: Every 30 seconds, the battlefield shifts to a different version of itself (Past, Future, Frozen, Fractured)<
>World of Rewrite: Elyria targets one player at random and rewrites their skillset temporarily, turning damage spells into buffs or healing spells into hexes<
>Chrono Collapse (Ultimate): Stops ti entirely for 8 real seconds. During this, each players is isolated into a vision of their biggest regret. They must press a sequence of keys tied to their mory to break free<
~----~
The Grand Monastery of Aetheryos is a new SSS-Rank dungeon, but it was already extrely famous in Warstar circles.
This is because of all its challengers, none had ever passed the Chrono Professor yet. Phase 4’s guardian was the final boss stop for challengers so far.
To make it easier for challengers, the developers showed the core chanics of the mini boss to the challengers, and still, they can’t defeat her.
Can this raid party do it this ti?
These veterans didn’t think about sothing like that. As soon as they set their eyes on the Chrono Professor, they exploded into action.
It was a chaotic battle against the Mistress of Ti and yet they were not wiped out in 10 seconds, giving them the opportunity to settle down.
And once they did, they grabbed control.
A fierce, fast-paced, and brutal battle followed. And like expected, killing the Chrono Professor was not going to be easy.
Genevieve resisted the rewrite of the Mistress of Ti, managing to purify the Fractured Tiline and dispelling all status effects in a clutch mont.
Caleb, after being rewritten into a berserker class used cold logic to counter Elyria’s own ti algorithms, causing her to stutter and lose tempo.
Benjamin, of course, kept on shouting like a maniac.
"I’m never on ti, but this joke? Hehe, right on schedule!" He grinned before detonating a perfectly-tid spelltrap, triggering his unique skill too.
Aria and Noah combined for a heart-stopping mont as both Blademaster and Combat Mage exploded, moving, attacking as one.
Reckless Storm uses Flashcut Delta while Lord Doom launches a spatial lance through a frozen tiline window, causing double piercing damage across two tilines, dealing devastating damage to the Mistress of Ti.
Jonathan and Gabriel managed the defensive aura patterns in sync, swapping barrier timings like seasoned warriors of the clock.
And finally, the powerful boss was in the throes of death.
In her last breath, Elyria looked at them and muttered. "Perhaps... this version of the story was worth rembering".
With that, she disintegrated into stardust and parchnt.
DING!
[Your raid party has received a Ti-Warped Skill Token (×1 each player)]
[Your raid party has received the Chrono-Elyrian Relic (Legendary SS-Ranked Accessory – Adds ’Temporal Resistance’)]
[Unlock: Phase 5 – Chamber of the Bell!]
...
The Spiral of Testimony had been unlike anything they’d faced. Not only did they get the boss kill, but they also got the first clear of phase 4 and the first Chrono Professor Elyria kill.
Now, on a terrace just beyond the summit, the group erged through a glowing portal into a suspended resting point: a wide marble balcony jutting out over a sea of drifting stars, like the edge of creation.
No monsters. No traps, just silence and a calming aurora of blue and gold light filtering through the sky above.
A large obsidian bench stretched along the edge. So of the veterans collapsed onto it. This SSS-Rank dungeon was truly a unique one, as it was the only dungeon with rest points for players.
In this rest point, the group got the chance to leave their Avatars in the ga and wind down back in their villa.
Benjamin flopped down dramatically, arms flailed. "I just fought a younger, dumber version of myself... and he still had better pickup lines".
"And to think we got rewarded with an SS-Ranked accessory for it," he chuckled. "I guess this ans, never give up on life, right?"
Aria leaned against a stone pillar, breathing hard but grinning. "Tch. Past or present, you’re still garbage".
Benjamin sighed. "You wound , queen of blunt-force trauma".
Caleb was hunched over a flickering holopad, muttering. "Tiline transitions... randomized input keys... I swear if that boss had one more paradoxical phase I was going to uninstall reality".
Jonathan approached, chuckling, towel around his neck. "You almost did. That paradox loop nearly cooked the servers".
Genevieve sat on the ground, eyes closed, ditating. The threads of Elyria’s illusions still tugged faintly at her mind, though her heartbeat was finally steady. "She wasn’t evil. Just... tired. Like a teacher with no students left".
"It’s crazy how I can relate to her. Bosses in Warstar are so much more realistic these days".
Noah, silent for the most part simply sipped a cup of coffee.
Nightingale walked up to him. "You saw it too, didn’t you? That bell... it’s not just décor".
Noah didn’t look away. "I know. It tolls when sothing ends, or when sothing has to end".
Gabriel stood with arms crossed. "I’ve cleared so wild dungeons in my ti. But I’ve never felt a warning like this".
Jonathan chipped in. "It’s the sound you hear right before silence".
"Or a bad date". Benjamin added.
"Shut up". Everyone glared at him; Benjamin chuckled.
But just then, Nightingale looked at his watch.
"Rest ti’s up guys. Ready yourselves, the next trial begins".
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