Chương 42: The Brake Between Dreams

Meno entered the raid again and stopped before the first shifting tile. The Lost Temple did not care that he had learned its first joke. Ivory and gold squares slid across the marble floor, rearranging the path every time his eyes started trusting one route. Solving the floor alone did nothing. Still, when a room was built out of traps, gaps had to be found piece by piece.

"Stool tech first," Meno said. Chat reacted like it had smelled smoke. stool? stand not stool ban speedrun oh no he brought altar trash lamp stand meta Meno pulled the Morgra Ritual Stand from his inventory. It came out heavier than he remembered. The frame stood almost half his height, with three black legs meeting at a small circular center and two prongs rising into the cradle where the Crown-Sight Eye had once hovered.

The eye was gone now, leaving the thing inert in his hands, warm only from old magic and theft. [Morgra Ritual Stand | Type: Unclassified]"Still unclassified," Meno said.

"Beautiful." He threw it onto a golden tile. The stand clanged once, settled on three legs, and did absolutely nothing. No death beam, no dream-pattern misstep, no system complaint. The tile under it stayed gold and murderous, but the stand did not count as a player, a corpse, or an object important enough for the raid to punish.

"Here goes nothing." He jumped onto the stand. For one breath, every muscle in his body prepared for instant death. His boots landed on the small circular middle section, his weight rocked the three legs, and the gold tile under the stand gleamed up at him like it had been cheated. He survived. STOOL TECH he lives ground contact check this raid is cooked report stool Meno crouched on top of the stand, balancing with the Rune Spire angled over one shoulder.

"Interesting," he said.

"The stand blocks the ground effect." That answered one question and opened ten uglier ones. A safe tile substitute mattered only if he could use it under pressure. The stand was heavy, awkward, and wide enough to catch on his legs if he panicked. He could not walk the raid by carrying a stolen ritual tripod from tile to tile. The question was how to make it useful. Meno hopped back to an ivory tile, waited through the next floor shift, then moved toward the central doorway again.

He reached the second-ring threshold without dying. The second ring curved left and right ahead, pale marble and gold inlays disappearing around the inner wall, quiet except for the memory of the chain boss that had deleted him before he could react. This time, Meno did not step in. He lay down on the safe threshold with his chest flat against the marble, the Rune Spire set beside him. The shifting tile field began inches from his hands.

He pulled the Morgra Ritual Stand from inventory but did not let go, gripping one of the upper prongs while he slowly slid the three-legged base forward. One foot crossed onto the next tile. Metal screamed from the right. The Chain of the First Dream blasted through the ring lane like a train with a grudge, links taller than his torso shrieking over marble. Meno yanked the stand back into inventory just before impact. The chain did not stop, retarget, or reverse.

It thundered past the doorway and kept going around the ring like it had already accepted the schedule. Meno stayed flat, cheek against cold marble.

"Okay," he said.

"This is interesting." it didn't aggro stand bait so what now?

"Maybe it's possible to cross the boss room to the next area if baited right." He extended the Morgra Ritual Stand again. The chain arrived almost immediately, screaming down the ring. Meno pulled the stand into inventory a breath before impact. The Chain blasted past, committed and furious. Meno set the stand back onto the same tile, and this time the Chain did not curve around the ring like a serpent.

Metal shrieked against marble, blue-violet sparks tearing grooves through the floor, and the whole ring vibrated as if the temple itself hated sudden braking. The links bunched for one terrible heartbeat. Then the Chain reversed straight back toward the stand. Meno yanked the stand into inventory again, and the boss rushed past the doorway in the opposite direction. He breathed through his teeth.

"The break is key," he said, still lying flat against the threshold.

"It has momentum. There's a gap in the timing where it has to stop to reverse. The key thing the AI messed up here is the boss is triggered like a trap, not aggro." AI messed up he says live ban sentence trap boss BeadGuard 2 incoming Meno did not look at chat. He kept testing. Stand out. Trigger. Chain rush. Stand back. Chain passes. Stand out faster. Chain stops sooner, reverses harder. Stand back. Chain passes the other way.

He repeated the sequence until the rhythm started making sense in his hands instead of just his head. The faster he cycled the stand, the shorter the brake and the slower the reverse speed. That seemed useful until he realized the gap was also shorter. Waiting longer made the stop bigger, but the reverse became violent, and violent meant less room to be wrong.

"The brake is the real gap," Meno said.

"If I wait until the last possible moment between pulling the stand back and placing it again, I get the longest stop." The Chain screamed past, hit the trigger again, and shrieked into a reverse.

"But that makes the reverse faster. So the opening isn't during the rush. It's not even after the rush. It's the brake. The boss has to spend momentum before it can change direction." He kept increasing the delay. One count. Two. Two and a half. Three. At three and a half, the chain did not brake. It disappeared around the ring, and when Meno placed the stand again, the Chain came crashing from the other side at full speed, having completed the loop. Meno pulled the stand back just in time and went still.

"Good. Too long means it finishes route." He put the stand away and let the information settle. If he removed the stand and jumped into the ring from the door, that was essentially the same thing as placing it. He became the stand. The trigger would read him, the chain would commit, and he had to cross during the brake before the reverse or full loop killed him. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Another thought arrived, much riskier.

If he went the other way and aimed for minimal brake distances, he could probably keep poking the Chain with the Rune Spire while resetting its intro trap sequence. The boss would rush, brake, reverse, brake again, trapped in its own trigger logic. If the Spire reached far enough, maybe the raid boss could be stun-locked by a Level 29 player lying on a doorway with stolen stool. Meno kept that thought to himself and did not try it. If it worked, he would need to spend it immediately before the AI fixed it.

That was not an experiment to burn for chat while undergeared and unprepared. That was ban-worthy. The kind of thing he might try later, if the reward was large enough. For now, he needed the skip. Meno crouched instead of going prone. He placed the Morgra Ritual Stand at the edge of the ring lane and held his breath while the boss came barreling from the right. At the last possible moment, he pulled the stand into inventory. One. The Chain screamed past. Two. Blue-violet sparks tore the marble as it braked. Three.

Meno jumped. False Wings caught under his boot immediately, and he kicked forward hard. The second air-step came almost at once, driving him farther over the shifting tile field. He landed on an ivory square, felt it begin to slide under him, jumped again before it could betray him, kicked twice more, and threw himself flat. He hit the far side of the ring on his stomach. The Chain rushed down the corridor behind him, close enough that the wind of it dragged his hair and rattled the Rune Spire against the marble.

Meno lay there with both arms spread, breathing into the floor. Then he lifted one hand.

"First boss skip confirmed." HE DID IT CHAIN SKIP TRAP BOSS BYPASSED guilds wake up crownfall in shambles this is why patches happen FIRST BOSS????? Viewers: 163, 507. Meno pushed himself up slowly and looked ahead. The third ring looked similar at first: circular passage, nested inner temple, shifting ivory and gold tile pattern, pale marble and gold ridges curving under high dark arches. The difference was layout. No door waited straight ahead.

He had to go left or right, and the ring curved in a half-circle toward whatever guarded the next doorway.

"Okay," he said.

"Outer ring trash, skipped chain, third ring choice. Raid map is probably nested circles. Smaller and smaller until Vervenzal." He went left first. The tiles kept shifting, and the Rune Spire made every hop slightly awkward. He stayed on ivory, used short False Wings kicks only when the pattern forced distance, and kept the Morgra Ritual Stand ready in case stool tech became less stupid and more required. The left side ended at another door leading deeper.

Five smaller humanoids stood in front, closer to normal human height than the monks and almost modest compared to the raid's other insults. They wore skin-tight sewn leather armor, panels stitched together with pale thread that looked too much like scar tissue. A golden chain wrapped around each waist like a belt, and all five chains connected inward to a central golden ball hovering between them. [Hostile: Choir-Sewn Pilgrim | Type: Dream-Bound Humanoid | Threat:??? | Trait: Shared Wound] Behind the five stood a much larger figure: three times their size, a shining suit of empty plate armor holding a huge sword point-down. Nothing moved inside the armor, and no eyes glowed beneath the helm. It stood like a statue that had already found everyone lacking. [Hostile: Prayerless Knight | Type: Dream-Bound Armor | Threat:??? | Trait: Kneel Command] Meno stayed well outside pull range.

"Shared Wound," he said.

"Either they all share damage, or they split damage, or the middle orb casts something when one gets hit. Maybe they spin down the corridor like a religious blender. I hate all versions." religious blender pull it hit orb knight kneels you do not kneel six pack good luck"The knight is obviously slow attack, crowd control, maybe forced kneel into sword. No thanks." He backtracked carefully, tile by tile, and went right. The right side ended in a similar wall with a door leading farther inward.

Three monsters guarded this one. Meno placed the Morgra Ritual Stand on a nearby tile and climbed on top of it before observing, because apparently he had invented a safe scouting stool and then failed to use it for ten minutes.

"Should have done this earlier," he muttered. The first enemy was a book. A large floating open tome hovered in front of the pack, pages turning by themselves in a wind that did not touch anything else. Gold-black writing crawled across the paper, rearranging whenever Meno tried to follow a line. [Hostile: Sleepless Page | Type: Dream-Bound Caster | Threat:??? | Trait: Page Curse] Behind the book knelt a half-naked giant with golden inscriptions carved or burned across its chest.

Its head hung forward, hands resting on its thighs, body still enough that it seemed asleep or dead until the markings pulsed faintly. [Hostile: Kneeling Vessel | Type: Dream-Bound Humanoid | Threat:??? | Trait: Delayed Awakening] Beside the Vessel stood another suit of empty golden armor, normal-sized this time and without a visible weapon. Its hands hung open at its sides. [Hostile: Gilded Remnant | Type: Dream-Bound Armor | Threat:??? | Trait: Empty Vow] Meno crouched on the stand and studied them.

The Vessel looked like a triggered extra enemy. Kill the wrong target, stand in the wrong area, cleanse the wrong debuff, and the giant would wake up and wipe the raid. Empty Vow meant nothing useful by itself, which made the Remnant dangerous. The Page was the obvious caster, probably wide-area debuffs. This pack looked the most promising. A normal raid would never burst the book first if the giant woke on book death.

The intended strategy was probably to kill the Remnant, manage curses, then handle the Page, then deal with the Vessel when the condition allowed. Meno did not need to pass. He needed one kill. If the book could die before the Vessel woke, that was the target, but first he had to confirm whether the Vessel reacted. Meno stepped off the stand onto an ivory tile and put the stand away. Viewers: 231, 884.

"Testing pack," he said.

"Do not call this a pull. Pulls imply a plan." He dashed forward across ivory, waited for the next shift, then jumped to keep spacing clean. The Rune Spire extended in a long, ugly thrust and poked the Kneeling Vessel in the chest. [Compound Swing | Chain: 1 | Damage: +10%] The blade touched the golden inscription and rang against it. Zero damage. The Vessel did not move. Meno kicked backward with False Wings, landing on ivory as the book's pages flared.

[Curse Applied: Do Not Strike Twice] Hitting the same target twice in a row inflicts heavy holy damage. The Gilded Remnant started walking toward him. It did not run or draw a weapon, just stepped forward slowly with both empty hands slightly raised, like it wanted to hug him in the most judicial way possible.

"Nope." [Chain Broken: Stop] Meno skipped backward, jumped once, kicked twice, and kept retreating until the Remnant reached a certain distance from the book. It stopped immediately, turned, and walked back to its position. The leash was medium range, which meant no dragging them to the chain boss. The curse faded after several seconds. Meno went back in. This time, he struck the Sleepless Page. The Rune Spire tip scraped across the open book, drawing a thin line of sparks and black ink.

Its health bar dropped to 99. 9 percent. Barely. But it moved.

"Damage confirmed." The Page glowed. [Curse Applied: Do Not Jump] Taking an airborne action inflicts heavy holy damage. Meno's knees bent on reflex, and he stopped himself so hard it hurt.

"Annoying." The Remnant walked toward him again. Meno moved only by stepping between ivory tiles, no jump, no False Wings, no airborne correction. The floor shifted under him twice and nearly boxed him into gold, but the pack reset before the pattern trapped him. The curse faded, and he went again. Poke the Page. Disengage. Read curse. Reset. The third pass repeated Do Not Strike Twice. The fourth gave him something better.

[Curse Applied: Do Not Stand Still] Remaining stationary too long inflicts heavy holy damage.

"That one's fine." He kept moving as the Remnant walked forward, circling between ivory tiles until the leash pulled it back. The fifth pass gave him the last version. [Curse Applied: Do Not Speak] Casting any abilities inflicts heavy holy damage. Meno frowned.

"It says speak, but it means abilities. Rude wording." DON'T TALK stop streaming silence streamer page knows Meno ignored the emotional splash damage and repeated the test one more time. Do Not Jump again. The Page had a small pool of AOE rule curses. Tome stayed still after casting. The Remnant leashed. The Vessel slept. The pack did not call the other pack. Good enough.

"Okay," Meno said.

"Tome mapped. Time for the Remnant." bad idea friendzone vow poke it science Meno waited for the curse to fade, then dashed in with the Rune Spire angled low. He struck the Gilded Remnant once across the chest. [Compound Swing | Chain: 1 | Damage: +10%] The hit rang clean. Pain snapped back through him in the same amount. [Damage Reflected: Empty Vow | 100%] Meno hissed and jumped back on instinct, then saw the Page flare. [Curse Applied: Do Not Stand Still] He kept moving, which made ignoring it easy.

The Remnant walked after him, empty hands raised, silent and patient. At one chain stack, the reflected damage had barely mattered. At two hundred stacks, he would cut himself in half so hard the raid might applaud. He reset the pack and let the Remnant return to its post.

"That is not great." reflection armor heal check brine would love this Meno stood on an ivory tile just outside the pack's range and watched the Page turn another gold-black page. The Remnant was a heal check, or a shield check, or a raid mechanic that required someone else to eat reflected damage while a support cleaned them up. The Vessel was still waiting for whatever woke it. The Page had rules, but rules could be played around, and its health had moved. Meno's first hit against it had taken almost nothing.

Almost was not zero.

"Maybe," he said. no yes tome kill 231k viewers for book slap read a book for once Meno lifted the Rune Spire and watched the long blue-green rune path catch the temple light.

"The tome looks doable."