The entire team stared at the rune's description, eyes wide.

A summoning rune…

"It's a one-time use!" Leeroy grumbled after a long pause, still trying to salvage his pride. No one dignified it with a response.

They'd just fought the thing. They knew exactly how tough that level 65 Skeletal Reaver was. Before Ethan arrived, Leo had shouted in alarm that if he'd still been a Shield Tank, he wouldn't have survived three hits. The level difference was too great. A tank relied on Block and Parry, and those stats were easily negated by a higher-level foe.

The Brewmaster was different. He ate the damage wholesale. No block, no parry—every bit of damage went into the Stagger pool to be mitigated or purged. He did have a Dodge buff, though. Every hit he took added a stack, granting a 20% chance to avoid the next attack. It stacked. So, worst-case scenario, he'd eat five hits and the sixth would be a guaranteed Miss. His single-target skill, Phantom Kick, also granted a stack on hit.

The real unknown was the Stagger pool's cap. Could a boss's ultimate ability fill it instantly and blow through it? That would require real combat testing. Even Leo didn't know; he couldn't find a UI element showing the pool's actual numerical value. He had no idea how much damage was stored when he hit Severe Stagger, or if there was any warning beyond that.

Ethan scooped up the rest of the loot. Aside from the rune, everything else was junk in their eyes. A few Silver and Gold pieces, but the level requirement was too high. Unusable now meant worthless. The rest was just coins and potions—nothing special. This monster was essentially a preview of future speed-run content. The rune was a rare drop, but a guaranteed one for this first kill.

For this layer, Ethan didn't bother looking for another fissure. That had been to bypass the guards posted at the main entrance on upper floors. There were no guards here yet. He led them straight toward the primary exit.

He took point, pulling aggro with his massive defense, dragging a near-map-wide train of skeletons behind him. The others kept their distance, following in the cleared wake of his bony parade. Each layer of the Uncharted Catacombs was smaller than the last. After about ten minutes, Ethan's voice came through the raid channel.

"Heads up, entrance ahead. I'll pull the train away. Leo, you're point man for the descent to the seventh. Get ready."

Acknowledgments chimed back. Soon, a black pit with descending stone steps appeared ahead. Ethan led his skeletal entourage on a wide arc past it. The team sprinted for the hole.

Leo went first. The others followed. Ethan would loop back, herd the monsters to block the entrance—same old trick.

He kited the horde, tightening their formation until they were a packed, clattering wall over the entrance, leaving only a sliver of space. Two more tight loops, then he judged the distance.

'Now.'

He triggered the Leap ability on his boots. The massive Bear-form body launched into the air, passing over the heads of the clawing, gnashing Skeleton Champions below. As he began to descend, he activated the secondary effect.

"Double Jump!"

He kicked off seemingly nothing, altering his trajectory. The landing point was now the top step of the entrance. He shifted to Panther Form the moment he touched stone, hit Swift Stride, and bolted down the stairs into the darkness.

---

Fifth Layer.

An ocean of bones chased a panicked army of tens of thousands.

"What the hell?! Why are they all piled up at the entrance?!"

"Damn game mechanics! Is this even fair?"

"Stop bitching and run! The moment they touched us, every Shield Tank got insta-gibbed!"

"The guild leaders on the front line are all dead! What do we do?!"

"What can we do? Hey—stop shoving, you assho—AGH!"

Chaotic reports flooded the alliance chat. Someone was pushed and tripped, instantly swallowed by the skeletal tide. Those at the back heard the screams and immediately reversed course, sprinting back the way they came.

The fifth layer became a scene of pure pandemonium, a desperate stampede back toward the fourth. Out of nearly eighty thousand players, only about twenty thousand 'lucky' souls made it back to relative safety.

A single encounter had wiped out over half the allied forces from Blackridge.

Orders came down: Hold position at the chokepoint between the fourth and fifth layers. Wait for the dead. No one dared attempt a corpse run here; they were forced to release and resurrect at the graveyard. That came with a thirty-minute resurrection sickness debuff.

Ethan's little 'gift' had just bought them another half an hour.

---

Seventh Layer.

Leo and the others stood a safe distance from the bottom of the stairs.

"You think the boss will trigger any traps?" Leo asked, squinting into the dark stairwell.

"You think he's you? You're the one who finds every minefield by walking through it. Seriously, back in our unit days, how did you survive crossing hot zones? It's a miracle," Williams shot back, voice thick with disdain.

"Hey! I wasn't EOD! And you were always on point for that! Why didn't you scout ahead here?" Leo's neck flushed red.

"Look. He's coming," Kiara cut in.

Everyone tensed, eyes fixed on the entrance.

A streak of red light—a Panther form trailing a faint, speed-blurred aura—shot down the smooth stone steps. The moment Ethan's paws touched the seventh layer's uneven floor, he felt it. A faint, almost imperceptible vibration through the stone.

'Shit. Trap.'

The Panther form twisted into a rolling dodge.

BOOM.

The spot where he'd just landed erupted. A deafening explosion sent shrapnel and stone fragments flying. None touched him.

But the moment his roll ended, the vibration came again.

"More? A cluster?"

His body contorted like a coiled spring, launching him into a backflip mid-air.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Detonations erupted in a rapid chain. The group watching from afar was stunned. In a matter of seconds, Ethan had triggered no fewer than twenty mines. Yet he took zero damage. Each explosion seemed to propel him to the next evasion; he'd land, sense the next trigger, and be airborne again before the blast. The problem was, every potential landing zone in that area seemed rigged. It was a total minefield.

The mines packed a serious concussive punch. Ethan had no intention of testing their full damage. Even if they didn't kill him, it would hurt.

The mechanism had a flaw, though: roughly a two-second delay between pressure-plate contact and detonation. That window, combined with his heightened Perception, feline agility, and razor-sharp focus, was all he needed.

For five full minutes, the cavern echoed with sporadic explosions and the blur of a black cat dancing through hellfire.

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