Chapter 64

After the orb fell, Hexi, battered beyond recognition, collapsed with it. It barely managed to lift its ragged body and staggered toward the platform. With great effort, it sank onto the throne.

As soon as it sat down, handmaidens emerged from behind the platform and began fixing its appearance. They combed its hair, mended its shredded dress, reapplied its makeup, and replaced its cloak and accessories.

Hexi closed its eyes, looking weary as it let their hands work over it. By the time they were finished, it had regained the same lofty image from the beginning. Sitting upright with its hand gripping the throne’s armrest, it gazed down at everyone with eyes that carried even greater arrogance than before.

The maids brought the crown from the altar and placed it on its head. The moment the crown rested on Hexi’s brow, the red carpet that stretched from the entrance to the platform vanished, replaced by a black-and-white mosaic pattern like interlocking tiles.

“Ah, damn it.”

Someone muttered. Probably everyone felt the same way. It was the one pattern from Phase 3 no one wanted to face.

Nobody dared to move. All eyes stayed on the floor. Then, starting from the entrance, parts of the ground began to flip over. Black, white, white, black—tiles overturned in no clear order, leaving players scrambling in confusion.

The tile beneath your feet could flip at any moment—or not. Even if you leapt to another, there was no guarantee it would stay solid. The only way to avoid relying purely on luck was to find one of the seesaw-like platforms fixed at the center. If you balanced on one of those, you wouldn’t fall.

Players hurriedly stomped on tiles around them. A flipping tile stayed firm underfoot, but a seesaw platform wobbled when stepped on, making it possible to tell them apart.

Blaine and Aslan naturally moved toward Theo. The three stuck together as they searched for a stable platform.

Chased by waves of overturning tiles, they finally landed on one that shook beneath their step. Without hesitation, the three climbed onto it, adjusting their balance to keep it steady.

With a clattering sound, surrounding tiles flipped here and there before the movement stopped only at Hexi’s throne. Survivors quickly took stock of their numbers.

Fortunately, not too many had fallen yet. But this was only the beginning. They had to endure and keep as many alive as possible until the pattern ended.

Everyone spread out. Clustering together risked a mass wipeout. The entire audience hall had to be used.

After a brief silence, the floor began flipping again—this time from the platform outward. Players moved in perfect coordination, scrambling to find safe ground.

The cycle repeated again and again. Sometimes they found a wobbling platform in time. Other times, they were lucky and happened to stand on one that didn’t flip.

The only relief was that Theo, Blaine, and Aslan were all still alive.

When the tiles clattered again, the three were calm. They had already secured a safe platform. Watching other players scramble desperately, they noticed two of them panicking, their expressions stricken with fear.

They had survived this far, but the thought of falling now at the end drove them into desperation. Normally, you struggled until you could do no more, then accepted defeat. But instead of surrendering, they chose to cling fanatically to life.

Their darting, frenzied eyes locked onto a single spot—Theo, Blaine, and Aslan’s platform.

The moment their gazes met, Theo thought, No way…. But it was exactly that. The two hurled themselves forward with reckless determination and dove onto the platform.

“Crazy bastards!”

Aslan cursed in shock. The platform immediately lost balance, tilting toward Blaine. Startled, Blaine instinctively reached out his hand.

But no one took it. Instead, a hand shot under his arm and pushed him upward. His body was suddenly lifted, and his field of vision rose.

“?”

Blaine’s face went blank, unable to understand what just happened. Then a familiar voice called up from below.

“You okay?”

Looking down, he saw Theo staring up at him. Only then did he realize what had happened. Theo, who had been standing in the center of the platform, hadn’t just grabbed him to stop him from sliding—he had picked him up outright.

Blaine was bigger and taller, yet Theo, without even a change in expression, was holding him aloft as if he were a child. Heat rushed to Blaine’s face. The fact that Theo had protected him made his heart surge with joy and emotion. Blaine smiled, insisting he was fine, his face flushed. Theo only nodded. Aslan, moving closer to the center to stabilize the tilting platform, glanced up at Blaine in surprise before rounding on the two who had recklessly jumped in.

The culprits looked pale as they finally realized what they had done, bowing repeatedly with desperate apologies.

Theo ignored them entirely. Once the platform steadied, he gently set Blaine back on his feet. Blaine landed with a reluctant expression, clearly disappointed to be put down.

The floor pattern had claimed quite a few more players. Falling didn’t mean they were incapacitated—it only meant they were trapped beneath the pitch-black floor. They wouldn’t be able to rejoin the battle until Hexi was defeated.

Looking satisfied, Hexi rose from the throne and stepped down from the platform. The fight itself wasn’t particularly remarkable. After its crown was destroyed with relative ease, the third pillar manifested a relic, and a third chain dropped down.

Hexi moved to the center of the audience hall where the chains had gathered. With magic, it began pulling them up. The ground shook as a massive chest, shackled by three chains, emerged from the floor.

It was lavish, adorned with countless jewels. As it rose, the relics on the pillars began to shine. At the same time, one of the chains snapped.

Hexi halted its pull and turned its gaze over each of the pillars in turn, then moved toward the first one.

It would wander at random, trying to smash the relics. Worse, players could only remove the relics if Hexi itself targeted the pillar. The strategy was simple but deadly: protect the relics from Hexi, extract them from the pillars, and use them to reseal the sword.

Phase 4 had its own unspoken rule. Supporters were divided into three teams according to party order, with the final tenth party acting as reinforcement for whichever team faced Hexi directly.

Just before Hexi reached the first relic, Aslan charged and intercepted it. Blaine cast spells from a safe distance, while Theo erected a Veil that covered the relic and the sword.

As Hexi fought Blaine, Aslan, and others, Theo slipped in, pulled the relic from the pillar, cloaked himself in the Veil, and moved unseen toward the sword.

Normally, anyone holding a relic would draw Hexi’s concentrated attacks. But cloaked in the Veil, Theo evaded its notice.

The first relic was used almost too easily. Theo emerged again and surveyed the situation.

But then Hexi let out a furious scream. Deprived of the relic, it smashed the first pillar to pieces and stormed toward the third.

As it moved, a barrier sealed around the first pillar, trapping its team inside. They could only watch helplessly as the battle shifted to the third.

Theo suddenly wondered if he could bypass the barrier using Stealth. Half-doubting, he tried it.

In an instant, his body slipped into the Veil. He walked straight toward its edge and emerged near the sword. Glancing between the first pillar and the sword, he let out a dry laugh. Then he dove back into the Veil, returning inside the barrier—and pulled out all of his trapped teammates.

The first team stormed into the battle at the third pillar. The sudden reinforcement startled the third team, but they quickly rallied with the extra support.

The third relic was used in the same way. Hexi then turned on the second pillar, and another barrier formed near the third. But once again, Theo slipped in and rescued everyone, allowing them to pile into the second battle.

The second relic fight ended almost anticlimactically. Once all the relics were used, the chains binding the half-raised chest snapped, and the sword sank back into the earth.

Hexi, stunned, looked over everyone once more. With a lofty air as if masking its disappointment, it climbed the platform, passed the throne, and vanished behind it.

The moment Hexi disappeared, the heavy doors of the audience hall creaked open, and the dungeon-clear notification flashed above every player’s head.

The arduous raid was finally over. Everyone exchanged words of thanks and congratulations as they left the dungeon. In the lobby, Theo checked rewards alongside Blaine while chatting idly with Aslan.

Even in the lobby, the greetings from fellow raiders didn’t stop. Theo accepted the endless words of thanks absentmindedly, without realizing something—he didn’t notice the looks behind those greetings. The gazes directed at him were full of questions about his damage output, but the ones aimed at Blaine were fixed entirely on his back and the cloak hanging from it.