Chapter 177 Hidden Daggers and warning of the descendant

“Enuma Elish!!!”

Accompanying a world-shattering red storm from the fully-maxed King of Heroes, a long string of exaggerated damage numbers popped up, and the BOSS’s first health bar was instantly depleted!

However, before the viewers in the livestream could even start cheering, the BOSS’s twisted mechanics poured a bucket of cold water over everyone.

The moment the afterimage entered its second phase, the burning chains on its body lashed out violently, and a scarlet halo instantly enveloped the entire field.

[Hint: Enemy boss phase transition triggered skill ‘Parting Formation’! The Servant with the highest current attack power on your field will be forcibly retreated and cannot be redeployed for the remainder of this battle!]

“Whoosh!” The King of Heroes, who had just finished his ultimate and was still posing on the high platform, didn’t even have time to say a line before he was turned into golden light and forcibly kicked out of the game!

“Holy crap! Permanently banned?”

“What kind of scummy phase-transition mechanic is this! It just straight up scraps your strongest main DPS. How are we supposed to clear the remaining health bar?!”

“Old Thief Kirito is targeting single-carry lineups, right? Are us casual players who only have one five-star heavy hitter supposed to even play the game?!”

The chat exploded instantly.

Faced with this sudden turn of events, PD merely twitched the corner of his eye, and then a smile belonging to a true whale curled at the corners of his mouth.

“This mechanic would indeed cause casual players to collapse on their first run. Even if you read a guide, you’d have to rely on calculating attack power to deploy a high-attack sacrificial pawn in advance to bait out this ban skill, or force a dual-core lineup.”

“But Old Thief Kirito probably miscalculated one thing—what I lack the least is fully-maxed heavy hitters!”

Following PD’s domineering declaration, he waved his hand and slammed another trump card he was holding onto the battlefield.

It was the second five-star core he had recruited on the road with all his assets—[Jeanne dArc Alter]!

Also with a maxed Noble Phantasm! Also a level 100 ultimate stat monster fed with Holy Grails!

“You scrapped one of my nukes, so I’ll just throw another one down!”

“Roar, La Grondement Du Haine!”

As soon as Jeanne dArc Alter landed, raging hellfire instantly swept across the battlefield, clashing head-on with the Demon God Pillar afterimage of the BOSS’s second phase.

“Bang—!”

Under this inhumane ‘money power’, that massive BOSS symbolizing the embers of humanity finally let out an unwilling roar and collapsed with a boom.

[Battle Victory]

It wasn’t until the settlement screen popped up that PD let out a long, heavy breath.

“Brothers, winning this one wasn’t easy. All my trump cards are spent.”

PD wiped his sweat, his gaze inadvertently sweeping over the [Unsent Strawberry Cake] lying quietly in the collection tab on the clearance settlement screen.

In the collection’s description, there was only one short, tear-jerking sentence:

“That person once promised that after everything ended, he would personally bake a strawberry cake and give it to that girl. Unfortunately, the fire in the oven went out.”

Looking at this sentence, the livestream, which had been celebrating the stat-check victory, suddenly went quiet.

PD also remained silent for a long time; his face, usually full of laughter, rarely showed a complex emotion.

“So that’s how it is… This third ending isn’t about fighting some Demon God Pillar at all, but about that ‘lingering regret’ in our hearts because the doctor couldn’t come back.”

He sighed, “Old Thief Kirito, I’ll give you credit for this. I’ll accept this cake on Mash’s behalf.”

Just as PD was forcefully clearing the third ending with the power of money, and players across the internet were immersed in mourning for the doctor…

The livestream of the lore-hunting pro, Charles, was unusually silent, eerie, and even permeated with a spine-chilling creepiness.

Charles didn’t pursue “lucky runs” or “stat-checks” like other streamers.

From the game’s launch until now, he had spent nearly thirty hours in the roguelike mode, consciously attempting various tricky routes and negative options, trying to unearth the world-building fragments hidden by Oriole at the bottom of the game.

Hard work pays off.

In a recent exploration run, Charles encountered an extremely malicious option in a rare event node called [Frigid Rift].

The system demanded he hand over all the Mana Prisms currently in his possession in exchange for a negative collection item with a terrifying debuff—[Pale Branch] (experience points gained from all subsequent battles reduced by 50%).

If it were an average player, seeing such a scummy option that not only instantly bankrupts you but also ruins future upgrade resources, they would undoubtedly choose the other safe option and bail without hesitation.

But who was Charles?

As the internet’s number one lore-hunter and a masochistic roguelike specialist, when he saw this desperate option that could be called “official feeding of excrement”, he didn’t break down; instead, his eyes suddenly erupted with fanatical light!

“Brothers! I’m way too familiar with this routine! The more outrageous the cost and the more infuriating the debuff of such a hellish collection item, the more information it hides behind it. This is definitely the key to unlocking the ultimate hidden ending!”

Charles shouted confidently in the livestream, and then, amidst the chat spamming “Chu is crazy” and “a pure masochist”, he decisively emptied his pockets and clicked that option without hesitation, even with a hint of impatience.

Immediately following this, on the eve of the fifth floor, he stepped into a hidden event node called [Blind Spot of the Phantasmagoria Tube].

In the holographic scene, there was no monster attack.

The oppressive dungeon illusion surrounding him suddenly receded like a tide, and Charles found himself standing in an extremely twisted, dilapidated “Chaldea Central Control Room”.

The entire control room was empty, save for the center of the hall, where that massive holographic pseudo-globe—[chaldeas]—which should have been emitting a faint blue light to observe the Earth’s next hundred years, was currently flashing with frantic red garbled code.

As Charles approached, the [Pale Branch] he held as a cursed collection item seemed to resonate strongly, transforming into a blinding white light that sank directly into the globe.

The next second, a mutation occurred!

Accompanied by a piercing siren that made one’s heart crawl, a patch of deathly white spots, like vitiligo, suddenly appeared on the surface of that beautiful blue planet.

Subsequently, the white spots spread at a speed visible to the naked eye, and in just a few seconds, it swallowed most of the virtual Earth into a spine-chilling, ghastly white!

A cold, intermittent, synthesized mechanical voice echoed in the empty control room, each sentence striking the player’s heart like a heavy hammer:

“Warning… Unknown mass interference detected… Source determination: Star Sea (Universe).”

“Pan-Human History observation… Interrupted. Surface environment… Being rewritten…”

Following this, the alarm stopped abruptly, and the ghastly white globe shattered with a boom, turning into a brand-new collection item that fell into his inventory!

It was a weird geometric broken branch with a surface so smooth it defied the laws of physics, emitting a ghastly white halo.

[warning of the descendant]

[A gaze from beyond the Star Sea. It does not belong to the Age of Gods, it does not belong to Pan-Human History, and it does not belong to this planet. When it takes root and sprouts, all causality, civilization, and life will be wiped of their color and return to absolute ‘blankness’.]

[Effect: Damage dealt by our side to “Unknown Threat” targets increases by 50%, but the stage field of view will be severely compressed.]

Looking at this item description filled with explosive information, Charles’s breathing in the VR pod stopped for a beat: “Doesn’t belong to this planet? Return to absolute blankness? Just how big of a pit did Oriole hide at the bottom of this game?!”