The battlefield was chaos incarnate.
The very air rippled with scorching heat, ash, and the guttural roars of monsters clashing with steel and skill. Lian stood bloodied and bruised, his cycle now mounted with jagged plating and a mounted mana cannon salvaged from the wreckage of a fallen vehicle. Beside him, Demist grunted, swinging his great axe through the torso of one of the boss's clones—a wretched mirror of the original, its body crackling with darkened energy and scorched demonic runes.
But this was only its second death. It screamed as it dissolved into ash, and Lian knew it would rise again.
"All of them need to die five times?" Lian spat blood and wiped it from his face. "Who designed this boss? The literal devil?"
"No," said Alya grimly, clutching her bleeding side. "Worse. The System."
A shadow fell across them. The main body had returned—hovering, massive, cloaked in obsidian armor laced with blood-red energy. Its mouth split into a skeletal grin. Each time it died, it came back faster, smarter, more attuned to the weaknesses of the group.
This was its third form.
It had already killed two survivors.
"Move!" shouted Jin, the future-knowing survivor. He hurled a canister from his pack—a gravity-warping mine—that exploded mid-air, warping the space near the boss's face and throwing it off balance just long enough for Lian and Demist to strike together.
"[Fortune Trigger: COIN FLOOD!]" Lian shouted. His talent shimmered, activating a skill he had never used before—powered by the absurd accumulation of coins across time. Dozens of golden wheels shot out from his body, slicing into the enemy's form. Each coin multiplied as it struck, compounding their damage.
And still... it did not fall.
The main boss laughed. "You are entertaining. But entertainment dies eventually."
From its shadow, a new clone erupted. A fourth one.
"No... they're reproducing?" Alya gasped. "No—this is a mechanic we weren't told about!"
Jin's eyes widened. "This... wasn't in any of my futures."
Suddenly, the ground cracked open beneath them. Giant blackened roots, pulsing with cursed energy, surged up and whipped across the battlefield. One slammed into Lian, hurling him against a cliff wall. His screen blinked red.
> [Health: 23/100]
[Fractured Ribs. Internal Bleeding. Critical Condition.]
He gritted his teeth and forced himself up. A survivor screamed—cut down by one of the resurgent clones. That was three survivors gone. The battle was eating them alive.
But Lian had learned one thing in this world: Survival demanded defiance.
He activated his final fallback:
> [Talent Fusion: Coin Multiplier + Road Survivor]
New Fusion Talent: Fate Diver – Fortune Override
A swirling storm of golden threads coiled around him. His wounds began to mend—not through healing, but through rewinding. For a single minute, he could undo any action that would lead to death.
He took off on the cycle, now blazing with elemental wheels he'd forged through past battles.
Speed: 500%
He zipped through the battlefield like a comet of vengeance, slashing through the fourth clone just as it formed—interrupting its full emergence. A risky gamble.
Demist followed in his wake, drawing the boss's attention with a barrage of war cries and seismic axe strikes. Alya, pushing past her pain, invoked a forbidden spell she'd saved for years—one that stole part of her own soul to bind the target's movement for exactly 4.5 seconds.
It was just enough.
Lian reached the boss's chest. The place where the core always regenerated from.
"Goodbye," he whispered, thrusting a coin-enchanted spear deep into its core.
The boss erupted in screams—and died.
> [Main Boss Phase 3 defeated.]
> [Warning: Phase 4 initializing...]
A new energy began to rise. More ancient. More horrifying.
The battlefield wasn't done. Not yet.
But neither was Lian.
---
To be continued in Chapter 72…