Chương 105: Two Minutes Is Forever

The central mistake would have been treating the Second Dream Incarnate as the boss. Meno knew better by the time he reached the center. The real boss was the fruit timer: one hundred twenty uninterrupted seconds, no damage, no second bite if some champion clipped him with a stray spell. The flying calamity was moving terrain, the champions were defensive resources, and Break Infernal was the only reason he had any right to exist here.

Viewers: 5, 184, 902 Meno rode the Gravewurm toward Naraltan's hazy middle until the storm thickened enough to make the blue stone pulse under him. Lightning hit more often here. Old impact scars webbed the ground in blackened channels, and shattered trees leaned away from the center as though something had exploded there over and over. Naraltan's usual silence pressed harder with every flash: light, impact, and the next warning pulse under the mount.

He dismissed the Gravewurm to be more sneaky, then moved on foot with False Wings and Splitwing until the first distant shape resolved into white wings. The Second Dream Incarnate hovered above the center of Naraltan, three stories tall, golden eyes burning, scripts flickering across its bare monk-like body. It already had company. Four champions fought it, their movements made it clear they had stopped pretending individual pride mattered.

Bruuwol, the Korka warrior, held the front with a huge sword and stubborn timing. Azttur, the Faol shaman, hopped between spikes and lightning scars, four arms working through defensive rituals. Zezvero fired heavy crossbow bolts from long range, smoke-head twisting as he repositioned after every shot. Chululu appeared and vanished along the calamity's wings, her daggers carving sparks from skin that should have deleted her for being near it. Meno stayed outside combat and watched.

coward arc research mode dont charge he is learning rare brain usage"It's called tactical information gathering," Meno said.

"Very different from coward arc." The calamity's cycle came fast enough that naming each attack barely helped. Lightning ran down its feet before every step-punch. Its wings folded, then snapped open into a dash that crossed long range almost instantly. When the golden eyes flared, Zezvero's whole body locked into a kneel until his own passive broke him free. The downward chop teleported Chululu in front of the fist, and only Azttur's sudden stone wall kept her from becoming paste. Then came the spike rain.

Golden circles overlapped across the ground in a wide field around the calamity. Champions scattered. Azttur built an earth elemental over Bruuwol and Zezvero, while Chululu shadowstepped between falling stakes with less margin than Meno liked to see. The spikes did not form inside the calamity's own occupied space. Its shoulders and upper back were not exactly safe, only less targeted than everywhere else. Meno waited while the champions began losing.

Zezvero got forced into the kneel effect, recovered too late, and took the wing dash across his side. The Smovo rolled through blue dust and came up with his mail torn open. Azttur burned another defensive summon to stop the next spike field, and Bruuwol's red self-heal ticked against damage that kept arriving faster than it could repair. Meno needed them alive. Every champion still standing was another body the calamity could punch instead of him. The problem was fruit.

Several natural bolts hit nearby ground and left only crawling tendrils. One struck a tree too far away, but the trunk cracked apart without charging for some reason. Waiting forever would let the champions wipe and give him nothing. He needed to manufacture a fruit spawn. The calamity already had the tool. The lightning javelin. Meno moved in from the side and stopped with a leafless tree directly behind him in relation to the Second Dream Incarnate.

He fired Cannon Infernal, dealing almost nothing, but almost nothing was still enough to put his name on the boss's hate list. The calamity turned with insulting speed, and a golden javelin formed in its hand, lightning crawling over the shaft. This better work. If the lightning crawling over that javelin did not count for charging the tree, the whole plan was about to become expensive trash. Meno waited for the throw to commit, then manually triggered Break.

Doubled Action Speed hit his body like the first clean breath after drowning. He launched sideways with False Wings. The javelin punched through the tree instead of him. The trunk lit from root to branch, and an apple formed in the split glow, round, blue-white, and bright enough to make every champion notice at once. Meno spent his second False Wings kick redirecting into the tree, caught the fruit with his left hand, then burned the third kick toward the calamity. The blade of Vervenzal's Verdict flashed.

His Pursuit helmet converted the swing into a pale projectile, and when it hit the boss's lower wing, Meno charged himself straight to it. By the time he landed against the Second Dream Incarnate, fruit in hand, he had the highest aggro in Naraltan. fruit HE HAS IT timer boss run everyone saw Meno kept the Essencefruit steady in his non-weapon hand, triggered the consumption timer, and watched the count appear in the corner of his vision.

[Essencefruit Consumption Started: 120 seconds] Taking damage cancels consumption. His first hit landed, and Meno broke Chain on purpose. Speed doubled through him as he took the first bite, cold lightning bursting across his tongue. Then he used Pump Infernal, let sixty-six Chain flood in, and immediately spent it with Madness Infernal to store one Detonation. HE IS RIDING IT not a mount calamity backpack strat hit it with the stool The first punch came before Meno found his footing.

A massive arm blurred through the glow, too bright and too close to track properly. Meno saw the shoulder shift, guessed wrong, and only survived because Break speed carried him under the swing instead of away from it. Wind tore over his back. The Essencefruit lurched in his left hand, and his boots skidded down a ridge that might have been spine, wing base, or some angelic nonsense nobody expected anyone to stand on. He struck the nearest surface with Vervenzal's Verdict. Chain. Break.

His body snapped faster for one second, and he used it to climb the boss instead of fall. Another invisible motion slammed through the space beside him. Meno felt the impact through scale, cut once into the calamity's shoulder, broke again, and shot along the upper back before the next wing twitch could peel him off. The champions were doing something below, probably several terrible things at once, but he could not afford to check.

All his attention belonged to the next foothold, the next hit, the next break, and the fruit locked in his left hand. His attacks dealt no damage, which was the point. The calamity's body became a hostile surface for refreshing speed: wing ridge, shoulder, upper back, the side of its ribs when it rolled too far. Every clean hit gave Chain, and every break turned that pathetic contact into movement. The Essencefruit remained in his left hand, not food so much as a live ritual object with a countdown attached.

Vervenzal's Verdict stayed in his right. The Essencefruit stayed pinned against his left palm because letting go meant resetting the timer. He braced it through impacts, slides, and ugly grip corrections, keeping constant contact while his right hand kept finding the next useless hit for Chain. The calamity refused to become a mount. It snapped into a wing dash and rolled midair, trying to scrape him off its back.

Meno lost contact, spun free, and used a one-legged Splitwing correction to slip under the wing instead of into it. Pursuit refreshed a heartbeat later, and he fired at the boss's shoulder. The charge slammed him back onto the calamity badly. His ribs hit scale, the fruit bucked in his hand, and he trapped it harder against his palm before chopping once into the boss's back before Break speed expired. New champions arrived before the timer reached twenty seconds.

Raku came first, the Harku mage on that six-legged giraffe mount, already raising a hand for linked lightning. Another Lonachi rogue appeared from nothing on the far side of the boss. A second Smovo archer stopped at long range and aimed at Meno instead of the calamity. They did not queue. Raku wanted the fruit. The new rogue wanted Meno's back. The archer waited for a clean shot. Bruuwol, Zezvero, Azttur, and Chululu still wanted to survive the winged calamity currently trying to flatten all of them.

At the ten-second reset, Meno used Pump Infernal again. This time, he spent thirty-three Chain on Cleave Infernal and struck the calamity as the main target. Infernal Marks flashed onto every nearby champion, thin red-black chains appearing on Bruuwol, Chululu, Zezvero, Azttur, Raku, and the new arrivals. For one tempting second, he tried to keep attacking and rebuild toward sixty-six Chain. Bad idea. Without constant Break Infernal, the world sped up against him. A wing dash forced him to move.

Raku's first lightning net began forming around the calamity, and a stray strand nearly clipped his foot. Meno broke manually, abandoning normal Chain Detonation on the spot. The marks could stay because he could not safely cash them out. From then on, every ten seconds had a simpler rule: Pump Infernal, Madness Infernal, store one Detonation, break, and return to hit-Break movement.

The stored Detonations would not trigger the marks, but they gave him an emergency collapse tool, and that mattered more than perfect damage math. He was not here to win the fight. He was here for Essence. At thirty-four seconds, the calamity's eyes flared while Meno looked forward. Sleepless Grip resisted the kneel effect, and Meno felt the glove's protection vanish into a ten second cooldown. That told him what came next. The forced teleport punch was still available.

The calamity's arm rose, golden light forming around the downward chop, and Meno could not resist the movement this time. So he stopped attacking and prepared for the destination. The raid mechanic triggered, and Meno appeared in front of the calamity's fist with the fruit in one hand and death filling his view. Before the punch landed, he fired a Pursuit projectile at Zezvero behind the boss.

The projectile hit the Smovo's shoulder, and the helmet charge yanked Meno sideways through the edge of the calamity's reach. Mid-charge, he kicked with both legs using False Wings, canceling the pull and reversing back toward the boss. The fist hit the ground where he had been. Zezvero cursed in metallic smoke-language and fired back at nobody useful. Meno slammed onto the boss's lower wing, struck once, broke Chain for speed, and climbed.

INSANE helmet save animation cancel tech forced punch dodged fruit timer still going Viewers: 6, 312, 448 The spike rain came next. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Golden circles overlapped across the entire area below in a wide radius. Champions scattered, and several failed. One new Lonachi got impaled through the thigh and vanished into shadow before the second stake landed.

Bruuwol ate two spikes under a gray defense skill, while Azttur's neck snapped back and forth as all four hands built a shield too late to protect everyone. Meno climbed directly between the calamity's wings, where the ground-targeting system could not place circles inside the boss's own body space. That did not make the back safe. The calamity twisted, rose, and slammed its wings downward, trying to throw him into the falling spikes around it.

Infernal movement became climbing: tap with sword, break, run three steps across shifting skin, keep the Essencefruit sealed against his palm, tap again, break. The speed burst let him cross the calamity's rolling back faster than the boss could remove him, but only barely. When it shook him loose, he kicked back with False Wings. When it spun in place, he turned the launch into a somersault, avoided the rotating body, and landed on its back again. From outside, it must have looked smooth.

From inside, it felt like sprinting across moving razors with one thought hammering through his head: do not drop, do not drop. A punch clipped Chululu during a teleport slash, and the edge of the spike field caught her escape, dropping her below 10% HP. She was still marked, and Meno had five stored Detonations by then, almost six. If he released into her, she might die, and Pull Infernal from the first impact would drag every other marked champion into the same location for the remaining blasts.

kill her RELEASE NOW PULL THEM DO IT For one long second, the play tempted him. Then he saw the problem. If he pulled all his distractions into one cluster, the calamity's next mechanic could wipe several of them at once. Even if the Detonations failed to kill through the level gap, the boss would finish what he started. He needed wounded champions alive and angry, not dead and replaced by empty space. So he kept the Detonations stored. Essence over XP.

Zezvero fired an orange-tinted burning projectile straight above Meno, and everything about it looked like a big no-no. It was aimed at the space he would have to cross, so Meno hit the calamity once, broke Chain, and dropped below the raid boss on purpose, putting its body between himself and the blast as the arrow exploded. The calamity punched fast. Meno did not dodge sideways. He let his body fall forward, hit the ground prone, and skipped off the stone before kicking with False Wings.

His head angled forward into a roll, his body straightened, and he jumped backward into another kick that carried him toward the boss without looking at it. He caught the calamity's back by almost nothing. BOSS SHIELD he hid under the raid boss this is not normal gameplay calamity umbrella strat Twelve seconds later, Chululu saved him without meaning to. Raku fired a linked lightning net upward, trying to cut off Meno's path along the left wing.

Chululu lunged for the calamity's shoulder at the same time, dagger-first, and the wing shifted to swat her away. That tiny change opened a gap in the net, and Meno slipped through it with a one-legged False Wings kick. At seventy seconds, the battlefield began collapsing. The original champions were bleeding resources. Bruuwol's self-heal was spent, leaving him below half HP. Azttur had burned earth, air, fire, and something green that grew thorny roots around his own leg for protection.

Zezvero had stopped aiming at Meno and focused entirely on surviving. The newer arrivals were injured too, while the calamity tracked Meno more and more because he refused to stop using it as terrain. The spike rain returned. Golden circles bloomed across the ground, stake markers overlapping until the battlefield below became a carpet of incoming punishment. Champions scattered back from the boss, but Meno stayed between the calamity's wings, standing in the only safe spot created by the monster's own body space.

As soon as the final stake fell, golden light caught Zezvero and teleported him into the punch line. Meno dropped from the boss, kicked the Smovo out of the hit with False Wings, then used the rebound to launch himself back up. He caught the calamity's spine by almost nothing. HE SAVED HIM PBG bodyguard resource management let him die coward The Pump Infernal storage loop kept ticking every ten seconds, adding one held Detonation after another until the count reached ten.

That should have felt good, but the number of useful distractions kept falling. He needed the champions alive, angry, and somewhere other than directly in his face. Then three champions converged on him at once. Raku's copies spread around the calamity. The second Smovo aimed from below. A Lonachi rogue appeared on the wing ridge ahead of him, daggers glowing red, and at the same moment, the Second Dream Incarnate folded its wings for another dash.

Meno could not keep the fruit, dodge the champions, and stay attached, so he spent the bank. He released the stored Detonations. The first one struck Chululu near the calamity's shoulder and burst in a medium-range cloud of faint black smoke. It did not explode the marks because stored Detonations did not count as normal Chain Detonations, which meant the marks stayed active. That mattered immediately.

Pull Infernal yanked every previously marked champion in range toward Chululu while Chululu herself stayed where she was. Bruuwol, Raku, Zezvero, the Lonachi rogue, the second Smovo, triggered defensive cooldowns, and tried to get out before the raid boss noticed the free buffet. The raid boss noticed. The Second Dream Incarnate chased the compressed group with a golden fist, and Meno got one tenth of a second before the second stored Detonation hit Chululu first, then the rest.

Black smoke burst across his vision again. Release broke Chain, and Break Infernal triggered. Meno used the speed to crawl higher as the pull triggered again. The champions almost escaped, then snapped back toward Chululu. They almost escaped again, then snapped back again. Raku's copies tangled with each other. Zezvero's smoke trail bent backward mid-flight. Bruuwol planted his feet and still slid across the stone. Chululu tried to flee from the center of the disaster, but every 0.

1 seconds, another Detonation landed on her and dragged everyone else right back into her personal space. CHAIN PULL cluster bomb level gap real they got big DEF The smoke made Meno's own position worse. Each stored blast hazed the calamity's back, covered wing twitches, hid shoulders, and turned every foothold into a guess.

He stabilized with tiny hits, ugly breaks, and False Wings corrections while the Essencefruit stayed locked to his left palm and ten Detonations turned the battlefield below into a champion washing machine for a second.

"Detonation is visibility debuff," Meno said. By the time the final smoky blast faded, nobody had died because every champion had burned something big to stay alive. The huge level gap held, but the group came out half-broken, cooldowns spent, and running for their lives while the calamity tried to punch them into loot confetti. Meno used the speed burst to leap off a wing spike, strike the boss's back, break again, and remount the raid boss before the dash threw him clear.

Sleepless Grip triggered a heartbeat later, saving him from the forced-movement teleport attack trying to rip him into the next punch. The final fifteen seconds became pure timing. No Detonations. No safe plan. Only the hit-Break loop. Meno struck the calamity, broke, moved, struck again, and used every hostile surface available. A falling summon counted. A champion's shield edge counted when Bruuwol got thrown past him.

Once, he tapped Raku's copy with the sword, then threw his legs forward into a horizontal midair posture so False Wings could fire backward instantly. He broke the Chain, blasted clear before the clone burst into sparks, and used Pursuit charge a heartbeat later to snap back onto the boss. Every missed strike threatened the speed window. The Essencefruit was almost consumed.

His left hand maintaining palm contact while being thrown across a level one hundred-plus calamity death zone had crossed past absurd into something he could no longer think about. He kept the fruit sealed to his hand because the timer demanded it. He moved because stopping meant death. Sleepless Grip came off cooldown near the end. Meno needed a predictable instant, so he turned toward the calamity's golden eyes on purpose. The kneel effect triggered. Sleepless Grip resisted it.

For one protected heartbeat, the boss committed to a failed control mechanic instead of choosing a random attack, and Meno held the fruit steady until the last second cleared. [Essencefruit Consumed] [Essence Acquired: 1] world first essence ESSENCE ACQUIRED timer beaten raid boss backpack worked do not do a second one A lightning javelin formed immediately. Meno kicked away with False Wings before it launched, the javelin missed him and every useful tree. Nothing charged. Nothing spawned.

Fifteen minutes of ugly attempts followed. The plan only worked if he stayed on the calamity long enough to survive the champions, then bailed toward a tree at the exact moment the boss chose a javelin. That sounded almost reasonable, but it was Naraltan. Champions kept stealing aggro. The calamity kept choosing punches, dashes, spike rain, and wing slams instead. When javelins did form, Meno was usually on the wrong side, too low, too high, or busy not dying to Raku's lightning nonsense. He tried anyway.

Hit, break, jump off. Realize the boss had turned toward someone else. Kick back. Remount. Repeat until RNG answered. When it finally happened, it happened by accident. Zezvero drew the javelin, the angle broke wrong for everyone, and a tree happened to sit behind the line. The golden shot punched through the trunk, and blue light climbed from root to branch. A second Essencefruit began forming, and Meno launched toward it before the glow finished taking shape. Every champion close enough tried to stop him.

Raku's lightning bent toward the tree. Zezvero fired from below. Chululu disappeared into shadow. Meno reached the branch first, clamped the new fruit in his left hand, and kicked upward with False Wings just as Chululu shadowstepped onto him. For one instant, she was on him. Then gravity won. As Chululu started to fall, Meno twisted, aimed his last False Wings kick toward Zezvero to avoid Raku's lightning net, and sent a Pursuit projectile into the calamity.

The kick carried him clear, the projectile hit, and the helmet charge ripped him back onto the boss before the champions could finish collapsing on the tree. Viewers: 7, 028, 119 The second attempt went cleaner because the first one had beaten a route into his nerves. Hit, Break, move, survive the ugly gap before the next hit. Every ten seconds, Pump Infernal fed Madness Infernal and added another stored Detonation to the bank.

Spike rain came more than once, and each time, Meno was between the wings before the first circle finished forming. The next stretch blurred into maintenance. The champions adapted by the end of the second cycle. They stopped trying only to kill him and started trying to separate him from the calamity. That was smarter, and much more dangerous. If he lost the boss's body as a hostile surface, his speed loop would fail, and a single stray hit would cancel the fruit. Raku created the key problem.

The Harku mage split into five and built a linked lightning net around the calamity during a wing dash, blocking every obvious jump path. Meno had already marked the real mage and its copies with Cleave Infernal while striking the boss. His stored Detonations sat at six, not enough to kill, but enough to break formation. He released into one clone. Pull Infernal collapsed the spread, dragging the copies and real caster out of their careful spacing.

The remaining blasts tore through the compressed group, destroying three copies and snapping the net open. The real Raku tumbled backward, alive, furious, and no longer positioned to clip him. Meno slid beneath the calamity's wing, struck once, broke, and completed the second consumption with his shoulder scraping along glowing script. [Essencefruit Consumed] [Essence Acquired. Total: 2] The next thirty minutes became a routine only because dying would have been simpler.

A natural lightning strike spawned the first fruit, and Bruuwol took it. Meno did not even get a chance to contest. The whale bastard grabbed the Essencefruit and ran, pulling three champions after him and leaving Meno with fewer distractions than before. The others stayed near the calamity for reasons that were either tactical, stupid, or both. They had seen the javelins charge trees. They knew more fruit could appear here. They also had Azttur healing them just enough to keep the whole terrible experiment alive.

After that, RNG treated Meno like a personal enemy. Javelins kept missing trees. They burned through empty air, cracked stone, clipped shields, and vaporized summons while Meno burned movement, attention, and patience trying to make one useful angle happen. Stay on the boss. Watch for a trunk. Jump off. Realize some champion had stolen aggro. Kick back. Remount. Dodge the wing. Dodge Raku. Dodge Chululu. Dodge Zezvero. Dodge the boss. Repeat until his brain felt like it was being stirred with a fork.

The champions kept watching him while trying to survive, which made everything worse. They knew what he wanted now, and every fruit attempt became a contest before the fruit even existed. Meno stopped stacking up detonation Releases and started treating them as battlefield editing tools. One at a time. Pull a marked archer into a punch. Drag a melee champion back into Chululu's orbit. Collapse a spell formation under spike rain.

Drop pursuers into a dash line, then use the boss, a champion, or anything with a hitbox to remount before the whole plan noticed it should not work. The Infernal Marks from Cleave Infernal persisted until combat ended or until he managed a true maximum Chain hit, which almost never happened inside the survival loop. Sixty-six Chain might as well have been a mountain while he needed to break every second. Infernal was not giving him clean damage.

A javelin finally hit bark after so many failures that Meno almost missed the color change. Blue light crawled up the tree, and he launched before the fruit finished forming. Raku's lightning bent toward him, Zezvero fired from below, and Chululu stepped out of shadow near the branch, but Meno reached it first.

He clamped the Essencefruit to his left palm, kicked upward to ruin Chululu's angle, and sent a Pursuit projectile into the calamity so the helmet could drag him back onto the only cover large enough to matter. When the third Essencefruit finally completed, his left hand was still sealed around it, the calamity was still trying to remove him from existence, and half the battlefield had spent the time proving that survival was mostly spite with cooldowns. [Essencefruit Consumed] [Essence Acquired. Total: 3] ESSENCE THREE third fruit secured professional fruit farmer Bruuwol still running"Okay," Meno said.

"This is getting a bit much to maintain." Champions began waiting near likely trees. Some ignored the calamity entirely until fruit formed. Others attacked his route instead of his body, trying to knock him off the boss before he could start eating. The Second Dream Incarnate itself rolled earlier, climbed higher, and used wing dashes whenever Meno reached the space between its shoulders. Every repetition got harder. At roughly sixty minutes into this mess, Meno went for a fourth fruit.

Viewers: 7, 641, 880 His mind had been tracking one-second speed windows, ten-second Pump Infernal resets, Sleepless Grip cooldown, Pursuit cooldown, fruit consumption, champion positions, lightning pulses, spike fields, javelins, and boss movement without a clean pause. The fourth fruit sat in his left hand. Eighty seconds had consumed. Then eighty-five. Ninety. Meno struck the calamity's upper wing and manually broke Chain, but he moved before the hit fully registered.

The speed burst arrived a fraction late, and he waited for a cleaner angle without admitting that he was waiting. The one-second bonus expired between contacts, slowing the world at the exact moment the calamity formed a lightning javelin. Meno dodged like the speed was still there, but his body answered at normal speed, and the javelin hit him in the chest and erased him. [You have died.] [Death Penalty Applied: -400g] [Essencefruit dropped.] deleted speed ran out fourth fruit gone 3 Essence though log out bro Meno respawned beneath a green-leaved tree with shaking hands. Three Essence sat permanently in his status, real and impossible to argue with. The fourth fruit was gone, and continuing would turn mistakes into a pattern. He had been awake too long, fought too long, and forced his brain through too many one-second windows.

"Okay," Meno said.

"I really need to sleep. Been up for over twenty-four hours. My brain is fried. Infernal is good." Infernal had not restored old Swing Master. It had not brought back Chain Madness, Panic Pump, Break Surplus, or the ugly rhythm he had built from level one. But it had let him survive inside the zone calamity chaos for over an hour, which meant it was not weaker in any simple way.

infernal giga evade zdps but can't be touched sky death testing complete never nerfed YOU NEED TO SLEEP"Infernal is giga defense," Meno said.

"There is no way I am trading this crazy Action Speed bonus. I still need to test the actual damage profile on something more reasonable." Meno logged out. The X7 opened, and the apartment hit him with quiet air and his own pulse in his ears. Then he cleaned up, set his stream to restream Oxy, and collapsed into bed before thought could turn into another plan. Three Essence. Dozens more needed. When he woke up, he would have to get better, or the next session was going to be long and painful.

Maybe if he stacked Detonations on the calamity for a full day, he could one-shot it. Maybe. He would need a better capsule for that, though. A real one. Something that could keep his body alive while his brain cooked itself. Meno drifted off before he could fully commit to something that would enrage every player in Veyrath.