Late into the night, You Luoming’s mechanical keyboard clattered with crisp rhythm.
The login screen of *Wuthering Waves* spilled across his monitor, its soft blue light blending with the gentle piano score to bathe his dim room in deep azure.
‘…Symptoms of drowning…
How strange.’ A faint, tender voice murmured the game’s opening lines through his headphones.
You Luoming’s dark eyes showed a touch of exhaustion, bloodshot at the corners.
Expressionless, he clicked his mouse.
[Skip] As a professional account booster for *Wuthering Waves*, You Luoming had memorized every line of the story long ago.
There was no need to sit through dialogue he knew by heart.
His slender fingers danced rapidly over the keys, driving the narrative forward on the twenty-four-inch display.
‘…May I call you Rover for now?’ [Skip] ‘Rover, welcome to Jinzhou City.’ [Skip] ‘Rover, the Tethys System belongs to the Black Shores…’ [Skip] He swept through cutscene after cutscene.
The account’s level climbed, and its stockpile of Astrites swelled.
‘Rover, this is Rinascita, the Land of Echoes.’ [Skip] ‘Rover, please defeat the Final Threnodian and save Solaris civilization once and for all!’ [Sk—] Wait a second.
He had almost skipped past life itself.
What Final Threnodian?
Save Solaris civilization once and for all?
You Luoming rubbed his eyes in disbelief, staring intently at the unprecedented scene unfolding on his monitor.
The sky had been torn into an inky vortex.
Dark crimson lightning flickered within dense, churning storm clouds.
Out of the darkness, a pair of blood-red eyes materialized—glowing like two clusters of eerie ghost-fire.
The gaze felt almost tangible, piercing straight through the screen to strike at his heart.
‘So you’ve come at last, Rover.
Alone.’ Thunder exploded in his headphones, making his eardrums throb with pain.
With the crash of thunder, the crimson eyes drew nearer.
The moment the entity stepped through the spatial rift, high-pitched static hummed from the monitor speakers.
It was a twisted mass of shadows wrapped in arcs of dark red lightning.
Every step it took seemed to swallow the surrounding light.
‘Foolish!
Blind!
Overestimating yourself!’ It stood in place, letting out a bone-chilling laugh as violent gales howled behind it.
“What kind of story easter egg is this?
Or did a developer accidentally push a bug to live?” Outside the screen, You Luoming licked his dry lips, his heart beating a fraction faster.
[Trial character has joined the party] Prompted by the system message, six Rover character icons lined up neatly along the right side of the screen.
Beside each portrait shone a brilliant, dazzling emblem representing a different attribute: Spectro, Havoc, Aero, Electro, Fusion, and Glacio.
Even with the crushing pressure radiating from the Final Threnodian, You Luoming’s eyes couldn’t help but light up.
“All six elements aligned?
If I animation-cancel with myself, wouldn’t I be invincible?” On screen, the Final Threnodian stopped its wild laughter and began pacing slowly at a distance.
At the same time, a long, thick health bar lit up above its head.
‘I know you can hardly wait.
But today marks the end of both you and Solaris.’ “Heh.
Showing a health bar in front of a player?
I wonder whose end it really is.” You Luoming smiled faintly.
Without hesitation, his fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard.
[Switch – Havoc Form] “Let’s make this quick!” Triggered by the Intro Skill, the Rover flashed instantly to the side of the Final Threnodian, launching a close-range assault with a scythe.
Yet the Final Threnodian seemed to have anticipated the move.
Pacing unhurriedly, it evaded every slash by a hair’s breadth.
‘If you had brought Jue, Imperator, and the other Sentinels with you, this might have proven troublesome.’ ‘Unfortunately, you know full well what became of them…’ ‘And you shall be granted the exact same fate!’ As the words fell, a terrifying red gleam flared in the boss’s eyes.
You Luoming’s heart skipped a beat, prompting him to trigger the character’s Resonance Liberation early.
“Wings unfurled, annihilate all laws!” A critical hit number exceeding one hundred thousand erupted like fireworks, yet the Final Threnodian vanished completely from view.
‘Rover, I know everything about your past.’ ‘You have done quite enough for Solaris civilization, foiling our Threnodian plans time and again.’ ‘Even the undercover factions we cultivated in secret were rooted out by your hand, one by one.’ ‘You wanted to shoulder this civilization alone, save every last one of your companions, and play the savior of Solaris…
Heh heh heh…’ A cold laugh like grinding metal rasped through the headphones.
You Luoming knit his brows tightly, adjusting the camera angle to locate the boss, only for his pupils to shrink to pinpricks.
Accompanied by deep, guttural roars, dense swarms of Tacet Discords materialized out of thin air.
The suffocation of the approaching tide was almost unbearable.
Lightwave-class, Breaker-class, Overlord-class, Tsunami-class—hideous Tacet Discords of every shape and rank filled the screen, leaving nowhere to run.
You Luoming set his jaw.
His fingers danced over the keys as he commanded the Rover to unsheathe the sword, meeting the surrounding horde head-on.
Steel clashed against claws, sending brilliant sparks flying, only for them to be instantly swallowed by the darkness.
Relying on a professional booster’s deep understanding of the game’s mechanics, You Luoming’s inputs left afterimages.
Yet the attacks of the Tacet Discords were timed with meticulous precision, pressing him with tremendous pressure.
Dodge, counter, parry—it was like dancing on the edge of a reaper’s blade.
Danger lurked in every frame, sending his blood boiling with adrenaline.
He was like a lone vessel in a hurricane, relying purely on micro-execution to withstand the weight of an entire world.
‘It’s time to end this!’ The chilling laugh echoed once more through the pitch-black arena, mocking the Rover’s futile effort.
Six colossal blood-red eyes opened in the void above the Rover’s head.
In an instant, the hairs on the back of You Luoming’s neck stood on end.
He clicked the right mouse button frantically to dodge, but it was too late.
Three beams of red light pierced right through his character.
Instantly, the Rover’s health bar plunged by half.
On the right side of the screen, three of the six element portraits went gray.
Fusion, Electro, and Glacio could no longer be used.
“Dammit!” You Luoming slammed the desk, his wrist numb from the impact.
‘Rover, when you bear a grand title and fight through one desperate battle after another…’ ‘People take your victories for granted.
They never stop to consider how cruel the struggle was.’ ‘Yet when you fall while carrying that same title, they forget everything you sacrificed and question only your failure.’ The Final Threnodian’s silhouette expanded a thousandfold.
Standing in the distance, its pair of crimson eyes loomed like twin blood moons in the sky, its voice dropping to a glacial chill: ‘You are no god.
You are nothing more than this.
All your struggle is but a useless death throe before the collapse of Solaris!’ With a sweep of its arm, tens of thousands of blood-red eyes snapped open across the darkened sky.
Piercing, mad laughter echoed from every direction.
The horrifying spectacle made You Luoming’s scalp go numb.
With trembling hands, he maneuvered the Rover in a desperate attempt to evade, but two more blood beams found their mark.
The portraits for Havoc and Aero darkened instantly, leaving only Spectro to hold the line.
Behind him, countless beams of blood-light pursued him relentlessly.
The Final Threnodian reached out, grasping a massive dark-red bolt of lightning that cracked through the sky like an abyssal chasm.
Raising its arm high, the crimson lightning spear seemed to cleave the dark sky in two, radiating a divine, terrifying authority.
‘Take your laughable defiance and your precious Solaris to hell!’ The dark-red lightning spear hurled downward toward the Rover, splitting into thousands of dense, crackling rays mid-flight.
To You Luoming, it looked as though the sky itself was collapsing.
There was nowhere left to hide.
He clicked frantically to dodge, only to realize he had lost control of his character.
On screen, the Rover drove his blade upside down into the earth.
The Tacet Mark on the back of his hand and his eyes flared with a brilliant golden light.
A formidable Resonance energy manifested as ancient, intricate waves of light, surging outward from the Rover at the center like a cresting tide, illuminating the entire dark world.
In an instant, everything froze—the lightning spears mere inches away, the crimson beams descending from the sky, and the shrieking hordes of Tacet Discords.
Even the cruel, twisted grin on the distant face of the Final Threnodian locked completely in place.
This was the most absolute authority of the Spectro element—[Time Stop].
“I want to…
stay by everyone’s side…
to walk from the past…
into tomorrow together.
But—” *Is there really a tomorrow left for Solaris?* On screen, the Rover knelt on one knee, breathing heavily.
He relied entirely on the sword plunged into the earth to keep from collapsing.
Countless glowing cracks spread rapidly from the Tacet Mark on his hand across his body, bringing a scorching, burning pain.
Forcing a time stop of such massive scale—with an opponent as powerful as the Final Threnodian—had placed an impossible burden on his body, plunging him into an Overclocked state.
“Where…
where can I find the power to defeat the Threnodian…
Abby?” Abby flew out from the Tacet Mark, looking at the battered Rover with deep concern.
“Are we really going to reset and return to the past again?
Ah!
The frequency in your body is corrupted!
Forcing a reset now is too dangerous—” “There’s no other choice.
Come…
resonate with me.” The Rover exhaled heavily, the glowing cracks gradually climbing up to his neck.
He gently pressed his shattered palm against Abby’s abdomen, channeling the last remaining Resonance power within him— “Threnodians cycle, but civilization endures.” Cracks spread up his cheeks.
No pain showed in his expression—only those golden eyes, blazing with unwavering resolve.