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A shrill bird cry accompanied by the beating of wings echoed through the void as the Beast of the Apocalypse shot off a barrage of multicolored beams of light, which flew upwards into the air before twisting downwards and coming crashing down of the heads of the brave fighters who had dared to stand against it.

But by this point, it was just white noise to the fighters, as the zone of protection magic spells and delayed heal bombs went off to restore their hp after the blast. They’d all seen the monster’s attack patterns so many times that they could avoid them in their sleep… some of them even might be.

“Keep it up! We’re in the home stretch!” DuffleMan420 shouted to his team as the raid boss’s HP pull dipped below one hundred million. A massive amount of health, but only a sliver of the total quantity, so small as to be invisible on the display.

[Beast of the Apocalypse - HP: 92,745,842 / 10,000,000,000,000,000]

The challenge raid boss, put into the game as a joke, with 10 quadrillion HP. It had been meant to be a boss that could simply not be beaten, as even with the 200 people permitted to challenge the boss, all with top tier equipment, it was calculated to take 6 whole days of non-stop playing in order to beat it.

However, 8 years after it was first introduced to Sword Star Realms, that invincible titan was going down.

The battle had gone on for 8 days, with part of their forces being forced to take breaks to eat and sleep, some even had to attend to real world problems during this crucial battle, their characters standing still in the middle of the warzone as their players were away, requiring them to be defended.

Days of planning and weeks of preparation, gathering enough potions and the right equipment to counter the boss’s attacks. All if it was finally paying off. Their goal was in sight.

...But they were too confident, believing they knew the boss’s every trick. They should have known that in all MMORPGs, the strongest bosses always have one last Final Form.

The moment the boss’s HP dropped below the 10,000,000 mark, it let out a piercing scream and entered a damage immunity phase.

The massive bird which took up nearly a tenth of the arena suddenly erupted into a multicolored sun. Some of the players began to cheer, not realizing that things were not over yet. Not until the rainbow mass turned a dark purply black, waves of the dark aura pulsating out from the mass over the entire group. The aura cleared to reveal a human sized figure with eight black wings growing out from behind it, covered in jet black armor.

[Beast of the Apocalypse has transformed into Raiser: Angel of the End Times]

Instantly, all 200 player characters collapsed to the ground unable to move as all of them suffered a sudden paralyzation effect.

In SSR, the paralyzation effect stopped all movement, attacks and magic, leaving those affected almost completely helpless. Though the players didn’t yet panic, as the effect didn’t stop them from accessing and using items from their inventories, and each of them had multiple stacks of Cure-All potions for just such an occasion.

But no sooner did they use the Cure-All than they were hit by another pulse of energy and the paralyzation effect was reapplied.

“What the hell is this shit?”

“Is it planning to just lock us down?”

“Come on, I have 95% resistance! What giv… oh hell.”

The players’ annoyance fizzled as they went into the battle logs and saw what they were up against.

[Raiser: Angel of the End Times casts Inevitability: 400% chance of Doom and Paralyzation on all targets]

[Raiser: Angel of the End Times casts Inevitability: 400% chance of Doom and Paralyzation on all targets]

[Raiser: Angel of the End Times casts Inevitability: 400% chance of Doom and Paralyzation on all targets]

‘Doom’.

The incurable status effect that would kill the infected players in 300 seconds if the caster was not killed first. After the days of struggle, they now only had 5 minutes to finish the fight, lest all of their work would be like dust in the wind.

Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. 10 million damage wasn’t anything to a group of 200, but now they were all locked down by the monster’s paralyzation effect. They could cure the effect, but even if they did, it would just be stacked again instantly.

Like all status effects, the odds of it hitting where (base chance) - (target’s resistances).

So in order to even have a chance of resisting even a single instance of the effect, they would need at least 300% paralyzation resistance.

It was absurd. Up until that point, no skill had ever had more than a 150% chance of paralyzation, and even Tier 9 equipment only offered +25% resistance a piece on a high roll.

The players started to lose heart. Screaming and cursing as they realized that all of their efforts were for nothing.

Why the hell would the game devs do something so unfair? Was the boss’s stupid large HP pool not bad enough already?

But before they could fully give in to their despair, a flaming arrow shot through the air and struck the raid boss in the back, followed by several others.

One player, a female figure with long, bright red hair still stood, a bow blazing red with the effect of her ‘Bonded Spirit’ as she shot arrow after arrow.

“The Sleepless Queen! She can still move!” One of the many fighters shouted, the slightest hope in his voice.

CrimsonRaven, one of the leaders responsible for the raid, there were few who hadn’t seen her at one point or another. Throughout the raid, she had gained the nickname, the ‘Sleepless Queen’ due to the fact that she had not once taken a break to sleep.

But how was she still able to move?

“Is this the best you got!? Don’t underestimate my equipment!” The young woman shouted her taunt at the raid boss.

Her equipment!

The CrimsonRaven was decked out in a full set of God-Tier equipment.

Tier 10, or God-Tier, equipment that was so rare that even if you grinded for 1,000 hours, you still might not see one. Not only that, there were no direct pay-to-win methods of getting it, nor could they be traded between accounts.

A player with two such pieces of equipment was worthy of envy, but the CrimsonRaven didn’t meanly have two pieces, she had a full set.

Head, Chest, Leggings, Belt, Mantle, Boots, Gauntlets, Earrings, Rings x2, Shield, Sword, Bow.

Thirteen pieces in all, and several of them had rolled not just Paralyze Resistance double the max roll value for Tier 9 equipment, but also the God-Tier unique enchantment ‘Resist All’. With a total of 350% Paralyze Resistance and a Resist All of 80%, she had more than enough to resist the boss’s effects.

But would she have enough DPS to finish off the Boss before the timer runs out?

Her first volley of arrows had hit the angel head on, but after the boss had determined CrimsonRaven to be the only threat, it started to take evasive maneuvers. 

Unlike the massive bird from before, the small, fast flying enemy was a nearly impossible target for the bow. Though at the same time, it didn’t appear as though the boss was going to willingly go into close quarters, content to rain down spells on the single active enemy. Was it programmed to try to run out the clock?

Seeing that the bow was useless, the people’s final hope switched tactics.

“Branwen, cancel Weapon Merge. Activate Spirit Merge.” She said, holding the bow out in front of her.

Out of the bow came a gold and red phoenix, the size of a large eagle, which circled the woman’s character once before plunging into her body.

As her Bond merged with her, red feathered wings stretched out behind CrimsonRaven, who then took to the sky in order to pursue boss, putting her bow away and drawing out her sword and shield.

The battle became a dance in the sky, with the raid boss attempting to disengage while firing back high damage single target spells, while CrimsonRaven flew in hot pursuit, swinging about her sword and shield to deflect projectiles and do as much damage as humanly possible.

The captive audience watched with bated breath as the timer slowly counted down as the HP counter on the boss grew lower and lower. 

Could she do it? Could the Sleepless Queen carry them across the finish line?

It looked as though she was on track to win it all, but then suddenly, unexpectedly, her damage numbers started to tank.

“What's going on? Why is she getting weaker?”

“It’s the buffs! She hasn’t had buffs recast on her!”

The various buffs that had been cast on her by the support class players had started to run out, but with all of the casters still paralyzed, they couldn’t be reapplied.

The first place to see a hit was her damage output, but soon the haste, barrier and shell buffs started to fade away as well. Making it more difficult for her to keep up and causing her to take more and more damage.

“No. Come on. I’m soooo close.” She growled as she pushed herself forward in her seat, willing for it to make her reach in the game just a little bit further. 

A firebolt flew towards her, too fast to dodge, and she was forced to take in on her shield. Her Royal Valkyrie Class’s Mana Shield took the brunt of it, but both her HP and MP were knocked dangerously low. Instinctively, she hammered on her hotkeys to use her potions, only for her to come to a horrible realization. 

“I’m out of MP potions!? Now!? You’ve got to be kidding me!?” 

With her fight becoming a 1v1 and her support healers out of the picture, she had been forced to use potion after potion to recover after every hit. Not only that, the constant use of her Mana Shield and her Bond’s Flight ability were extremely MP costly. Within three minutes, she had used as many potions as she had used within the past two days, and her supply, which should have been more than enough, was out.

At this rate, she wasn’t just not going to deal enough damage in time. She was going to get KOed. 

[Received trade request from DuffleMan420]

CrimsonRaven blinked in surprise at the message, not completely understanding it at first before realizing what was going on.

While they were locked out of doing any sort of actions, the other had access to their normal interface.

Disengaging for a moment, she opened up the trade window and quickly had what must have been every consumable item that the rest of the raid party still possessed dumped unceremoniously into the menu, including dozens of single use scroll items for applying high level buffs.

[Do you accept this trade? Y/N]

Grinning to herself, she quickly accepted.

Seconds later, her MP was back at full and she was rushing back into the fight.

In a show of skill, she used her motion controls to swing her sword and shield at her enemy while at the same time using the normal buttons to access her item menu screen, applying every buff and oil in the entire inventory.

She was back at full power and pressed forward with everything she had.

“No sleep.” “No sleep.” “No sleep!” “No Sleep!” “NO SLEEP!”

What started as a single voice grew into a rolling chant as the other cheered her on.

“Let’s finish this!” CrimsonRaven shouted with the Angel having just over one million HP remaining. She tossed her shield aside and took on a two-handed stance. “Final Skill of the Valkyrie!” Her body glowed with a blinding white light before she flashed forward, through and past the raid boss. “Chosen of the Slain.”

[Chosen of the Slain: Do a single strike of 30,000% radiant damage on a three second delay. All damage ignores defense. Cooldown 1 day.]

Time seemed to stop as the young woman dramatically sheathed her sword. Then, the boss exploded into what appeared to be a thousand shooting stars.

“Ha. Not even close.” She said with a grin as the Doom curse faded, with 12 seconds still on the clock.

[You have beaten Raiser: Angel of the End Times]

Cheers erupted from the other Raid Party members as they all celebrated their victory.

Some laughed, some cried, some shouted taunts to the devs, others ran to the bathroom and an entire quarter of the party broke out into synchronized dancing.

After 8 days, they had made the impossible possible.

The CrimsonRaven smiled to herself as she looked up at the Game World sky, watching the shooting stars flying back. She basked in the glow of the victory.

“One hell of a show you put on there.” DuffleMan420 said, smirking as he came up beside her. “You should have cut it closer.”

“I’m not that arrogant.” She scoffed in reply.

“Sure you aren’t.” He said teasingly, before stretching out his arms and giving a long yawn. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my eyes open much longer. How about you? Are you going to finally get some sleep?”

“You know I don’t sleep.” She replied flatly. “...I’ll log off for a while. Maybe see the sun for a change.”

“The sun? What’s that?” DuffleMan420 joked before waving goodbye, his character disappearing as he logged off.

CrimsonRaven rolled her eyes before opening up her menus, ready to log off herself, when a new message appeared.

[Would you like to Ascend? Y/N]

Ascend?

Did this game have a New Game+ mode? That wasn’t something common in MMOs.

She’d never heard of such a thing in any of the patch notes, but then again, the devs hadn’t expected anyone to ever beat this Raid. If that was the case, it's probably something that wasn’t finished properly. It might even corrupt her character.

She pondered the message for a bit before shrugging her shoulders.

Why not? She’d just beaten the final challenge in the game. It wasn’t like there was anything else for her to do in it.

So she accepted the offer, and her display went black.

---

After a few moments, she started to be able to see and hear things again… only the quality of the image and audio were so bad that she couldn’t make anything out. Something was definitely happening around her and she thought she heard something like the muffled sounds of a baby crying, but she couldn’t exactly tell.

Like she thought, this part of the game had never been finished.

She let this unfinished cutscene run for a few seconds to see if it would fix itself before sighing to herself. Maybe she should turn on the subtitles.

She opened up her menu to try to go into the options, but found that her interface now looked a lot different from before and that the options tab was now missing… along with the log out option. She also didn’t have the ability to skip the cutscene. Plus, her status had changed completely. 

Name: Scarlet Wright	Age: 0	Race: Human
Level: 1	EXP to Next level: 100
Bond: None	Bond level: N/A
Class: None	Class level: N/A
Health: 2	Mana: 1	Stamina: 1
Strength: 0	Fortitude: 0	Dexterity: 0
Finesse: 0	Agility: 0	Reflexes: 0
Intelligence: 0	Wisdom: 0	Charisma: 0
Deception: 0	Artistry: 0	Magic: 0
Hereditary Bonuses:  Tier 2 Business Manager (Father) - provides a small bonus to learning money management based skills. Tier 4 Spirit Weaver (Mother) - provides a moderate bonus to learning cloth based skills.
General Skills: None

Great. Just Great. She’d have one hell of a bug report to write up after this. Maybe if she was lucky she could get her old character back in one piece.

Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about it now, and she had just realized that she was suddenly feeling hungry… like, really hungry. So she might as well just leave it going while she hops out and grabs a bite to eat.

...Um… Why do her arms feel so funny? She can’t seem to reach her helmet…

A deep sense of wrongness started to spread through her as she came to a realization.

She FELT something touching her.

Panic started to spread through her and she cried out… or continued to cry. The sound of the crying baby. It was… it was her!

‘No! This can’t be happening! This isn’t right!’

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