Late at night, Arlan's mechanical keyboard clacked crisply. The wuthering waves login screen, mingling with a piano melody, painted the dim room a deep blue.
'...symptoms of drowning... how odd.'
The soft, opening lines of wuthering waves drifted through his headphones. Arlan's dark eyes, bloodshot at the corners, held a trace of exhaustion as he expressionlessly clicked the mouse.
[Skip]
As a professional wuthering waves account grinder, he had long since memorized every scrap of story; dialogue was unnecessary.
In the room, his slender fingers flew; on the 24-inch monitor the plot zipped past.
'...for now, let's call you Rover, is that all right?'
[Skip]
'Rover, welcome to Jinzhou City.'
[Skip]
'Rover, the Tethys System is the Black Shores...'
[Skip]
Episode after episode was steamrolled; levels soared, Astrite piled higher.
'Rover, this is the land of echos—Rinascita.'
[Skip]
'Rover, defeat the final lament and save the Solaris Civilization once and for all!'
[Skip—]
Hold on—
Almost skipped life itself.
What final lament? Save Solaris Civilization for good?
Arlan rubbed his eyes in disbelief, staring at a scene he had never seen.
The sky tore into an ink-black vortex; crimson lightning flickered within thick clouds.
A pair of scarlet pupils flared in the dark, twin ghost-fires that seemed to pierce the screen and stab his heart.
'You came after all, Rover—alone.'
Thunder exploded in his headset, making his eardrums ache.
With each peal those scarlet pupils drew nearer; when He stepped from the rift the monitor shrieked.
A writhing shadow wreathed in sanguine lightning, devouring light with every step.
'Foolish, blind, overreaching!'
He laughed a skin-crawling cackle, tempests rising at His back.
"Hidden Easter egg? Or some dev's forgotten bug?"
Outside the screen, Arlan licked cracked lips, pulse quickening.
[Trial Resonator has joined the party.]
Six Rover avatars aligned neatly on the right, each glowing with a different emblem.
Spectro, Havoc, Aero, Fusion, Electro, Glacio—
Even under that crushing pressure, his eyes lit up.
"All six elements? I'm my own rotation—unstoppable!"
Inside the monitor the final lament stopped laughing, pacing while a thick health bar blazed overhead.
'I know you're impatient, but today is the end of you—and Solaris.'
"Heh, showing a health bar to a player? Whose end, I wonder?"
He smiled, fingers dancing across the keys.
[Switch – Havoc Form]
"Quick finish!"
Under the Sonata effect, Rover flashed beside the final lament, scythe sweeping for His face.
Yet the monster anticipated, strolling just out of reach.
'Had you brought Sentinel, Imperator, and the rest, you might have troubled me.'
'But you know full well what became of them...'
'And you shall share their fate!'
Crimson light flared; Arlan hurled his Resonance Liberation early.
"Deadening Abyss!"
A 100,000 crit bloomed like fireworks—but the boss was gone.
'Rover, I know your past.'
'You have done enough for Solaris, again and again foiling our lament plans.'
'Even the moles we planted, you rooted out one by one.'
'You sought to shoulder the whole civilization, save every comrade, be Solaris's savior...'
Metallic laughter grated in his ears; he scanned frantically, then froze.
With low roars, Echos poured from the void—Lightwave, Giant Wave, Raging Tide, Tsunami—every size, everywhere.
He knitted his brow, whipped out his swift blade, and danced across the keyboard, carving through the tide.
Steel clashed, sparks flared, swallowed at once by the dark.
Relying on a professional booster's deep understanding of the game, Arlan's inputs blurred into Echos, yet those Echos attacked with such precisely calculated frequency that the pressure on him was immense.
Dodge, counter, parry—again and again—like dancing on the Reaper's blade; danger loomed on every side, yet it made Arlan's blood burn hotter.
He was a lone skiff in a storm, using the utmost micro-control to resist the might of the entire world.
'Time to end this!'
A hair-raising mad laugh rang out again, echoing endlessly through the darkness, as if mocking the Rover for overestimating himself.
Six enormous blood-red eyes opened in the air above the Rover; in that instant, every hair on the nape of Arlan's neck stood on end.
He hammered the right mouse button to dodge, but he was still too slow—three beams of crimson light shot from the eyes and pierced him.
In a single heartbeat, Arlan saw the Rover's health drop by half, and three of the six attribute icons on the right of the screen turned gray.
Fusion, Electro, and Glacial attributes were now sealed.
"Damn it!"
Arlan slammed the desk, his wrist stinging from the impact.
'Rover, when you carry a grand destiny upon your shoulders, after one fierce battle after another…'
'People will only think your victory was inevitable; they'll never imagine how brutal the struggle truly was.'
'But the moment you fall with such a destiny, they'll forget everything you gave and only question the failure they see today.'
The Final lament's form swelled countless times; standing far away, its crimson pupils were like twin blood moons in the sky, its voice icy:
'You are no god—no better than the rest. All your persistence is merely the futile death-throes of the Solaris Civilization on the brink of collapse!'
With a sweep of its arm, the dark heavens opened into thousands upon thousands of blood eyes, and shrill laughter burst from every direction.
The horrific sight made Arlan's scalp tingle.
Trembling, he forced the Rover to dodge for his life, but two more beams of blood light still found their mark.
The icons for Annihilation and Aero attributes dimmed; only Spectro remained, barely clinging on.
Behind him, countless blood rays kept chasing.
The Final lament reached out and clenched the air; a vast dark-red lightning bolt, like a heavenly chasm, appeared in its grip.
It raised its arm high, the scarlet lightning spear splitting the dark sky in two, radiating divine wrath.
'Take your ridiculous defiance—and the Solaris you cherish—and descend to hell!'
The dark-red spear of lightning crashed down toward the Rover, then split into thousands upon thousands in mid-air.
Arlan felt as if the entire sky were collapsing; there was nowhere left to hide.
He frantically clicked the right mouse button to dodge, only to find he had lost control of the Rover.
On the screen, the Rover planted the swift blade point-first into the ground; the Tacet Mark on the back of his hand and his eyes alike blazed with golden light.
Tremendous Resonance power turned into ancient, mystical waves, surging outward from the Rover like a tide, flooding the dark world with radiance.
In an instant—whether the lightning spear before his eyes, the blood rays raining from the sky, or the countless shrieking Echos around—everything froze in place.
Even the Final lament's savage grin far away was locked in stillness.
This was the Rover's most overbearing Spectro power—Time Stop.
"I want… to stay by everyone's side, to walk from the past… into tomorrow—but—"
Yet does the Solaris Civilization truly still have a tomorrow?
On the screen, the Rover knelt on one knee, gasping, barely keeping himself upright with the swift blade driven into the ground.
Countless glowing cracks raced from the Tacet Mark on his hand across his entire body, burning like fire.
Forcing such a vast Time Stop against the mighty Final lament had pushed him into severe overclocking.
"Where can I find… the power to defeat the lament—Abby."
Abby flew out from the Tacet Mark, gazing in worry at the critically wounded Rover.
"Do we have to restart, go back again—ah! Your frequency is contaminated; forcing a reboot now is too dangerous—"
"No choice. Come, resonate with me."
The Rover exhaled sharply; the cracks from the Tacet Mark had reached his throat. He pressed his shattered palm gently against Abby's abdomen, driving the last of his Resonance power:
"The lament returns, yet civilization stands unbroken."
Cracks crawled across the Rover's cheeks; no pain showed on his face—only those resolute golden eyes, shining bright.