The spear penetrated into the skull with a sickening crunch.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[DAMAGE: 203]

[BOSS HP: 5605/8000]

James’s three remaining reanimated wolves tore at the ogre’s throat and chest continuously with savage ferocity.

James fired Necro Blast at point-blank range directly into the ogre’s face, and the death bolt slammed home.

Call of Souls activated from the damage his wolves were dealing to the boss, and dark wisps flowed into him while feeding mana back in small amounts that kept his pool barely above zero.

He fired Necro Blast again and then again, and each bolt hit exposed wounds.

The ogre tried to stand up on its broken leg but couldn’t manage it with its spine damaged and its throat bleeding profusely.

It swung its club wildly in complete desperation while trying to hit anything.

The club connected with two of James’s reanimated wolves and smashed them both to pulp in a single sweep, and their bodies dissolved into shadows immediately.

[BOSS HP: 5234/8000]

The boss still had over five thousand HP remaining despite everything.

The timer showed twenty-eight minutes and forty-five seconds had elapsed.

Barely a minute remained before they missed the record entirely.

James saw more wolf corpses lying nearby on the blood-soaked ground.

He had two empty contract slots now from his destroyed summons.

He activated Reanimate twice more while targeting fresh bodies, and one hundred twenty mana drained from his already depleted pool.

But Call of Souls refilled his reserves almost immediately as his remaining wolves continued damaging the ogre.

Two fresh reanimated wolves rose from the corpses and charged into battle without hesitation.

The entire team swarmed the kneeling ogre in a desperate final push while knowing this was their last chance.

Finn hacked at its back with his axe and each swing dealt massive damage while Blood Frenzy burned through what little health he had remaining.

Aria stabbed repeatedly with a borrowed sword since her spear was embedded in the ogre’s neck, and each thrust found vulnerable spots.

Kael beat the creature with his staff like it was a club, and the impacts broke bones.

Elliot stabbed with another scavenged spear while putting his entire body weight behind each thrust.

James’s four reanimated wolves tore at the ogre from all sides in a coordinated feeding frenzy.

James fired Necro Blast continuously at exposed wounds, and the death bolts slammed home over and over again.

[BOSS HP: 4621/8000]

[BOSS HP: 3879/8000]

[BOSS HP: 2934/8000]

The ogre was dying but it refused to go quietly despite being overwhelmed.

It grabbed one of James’s wolves with its massive hand and literally tore the creature in half with pure strength, and the body dissolved into shadows.

It backhanded Kael with enough force to send him flying, and Kael hit the ground hard before lying motionless and unconscious.

The ogre tried to stand one final time while gathering its remaining strength for a last attack.

Finn drove his axe into the back of its skull with both hands in a two-handed overhead strike.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[DAMAGE: 567]

[BOSS HP: 2367/8000]

It wasn’t enough to finish it.

The ogre was still alive despite the axe embedded in its skull.

It grabbed Finn in both massive hands and squeezed, and Finn’s ribs cracked audibly as multiple bones broke from the crushing pressure.

His health dropped to one percent and he was seconds away from death.

James saw it happening and knew he had to act now.

He used his last reserves of mana that Call of Souls had fed him, and he detonated five corpses simultaneously in a circle around the ogre’s kneeling body.

The explosion was absolutely massive as overlapping blast radii created a firestorm of necrotic energy.

[CORPSE EXPLOSION x5]

[DAMAGE: 1847]

[BOSS HP: 520/8000]

The ogre’s grip on Finn loosened as its strength finally failed.

It dropped Finn’s unconscious body to the ground.

The ogre was barely standing now with its body charred and broken and bleeding from dozens of wounds that covered every inch.

Aria ran up its back despite her dislocated shoulder making climbing nearly impossible, and she drove a dagger she had picked up into the base of its skull.

James’s last two reanimated wolves bit its throat together and tore it open completely in synchronized attacks.

Elliot stabbed it in the heart with his scavenged spear and drove the blade in with both hands using his full body weight.

[BOSS HP: 0/8000]

The ogre fell forward like a toppled building and crashed into the ground with an impact that shook the entire street.

Dead.

The System chimed with notifications that flooded everyone’s vision.

[FLOOR BOSS DEFEATED]

[FLOOR 5 — SUBJUGATION COMPLETE]

[ALL HOSTILE ENTITIES ELIMINATED: 500/500]

[TIME ELAPSED: 29:59]

[MISSION CLEARED]

Then another notification appeared that was different from all the others, glowing gold instead of the usual blue.

[HIDDEN OBJECTIVE COMPLETE]

[CLEAR TIME UNDER 30:00 MINUTES]

[NEW RECORD ESTABLISHED: 29:59]

[PREVIOUS RECORD: 30:58]

The team stood frozen while staring at the notifications and unable to process what they were seeing.

Finn was unconscious on the ground next to the ogre’s massive body while barely breathing, his health sitting at one percent.

Kael was unconscious ten feet away from where the ogre had backhanded him, his staff lying broken in two pieces nearby.

Aria was sitting on the ogre’s corpse while crying from pain and exhaustion and relief all mixed together, her left shoulder dislocated again from climbing.

Elliot dropped his spear and fell to his knees while hyperventilating and shaking uncontrollably.

James leaned against the ogre’s massive body because his legs wouldn’t support him anymore, his broken ribs making every breath pure agony, and his three remaining reanimated wolves dissolved into shadows as his mana reached absolute zero.

They had done it.

Twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

One second under the thirty-minute threshold.

One second faster than the record that had stood for decades.

But two team members were unconscious and might be dying.

Everyone else was critically injured and barely functional.

They were alive but only just barely.

The village around them was completely destroyed.

The gates were shattered into splinters, buildings were burning from fires that had spread during the fighting, and bodies covered every surface in piles.

NPC corpses were mixed with monster corpses until it was hard to tell them apart.

Aria started laughing through her tears, and the sound came out hysterical and broken.

Elliot was shaking so badly that he couldn’t stand even though he was trying to get his legs under him.

James tried to stand up but his legs gave out completely and he sat back down hard against the ogre’s body.

He looked at Finn and Kael lying unconscious, and his heart raced with fear that they might not wake up at all.

Then James noticed something was wrong.

He checked his System notifications while expecting to see the Floor 6 unlock message that always appeared after clearing a floor successfully.

The notification wasn’t there.

He frowned and checked again while scrolling through his interface.

Nothing.

Floor 5 was cleared and the mission was complete and the hidden objective was complete, but Floor 6 wasn’t unlocked in his System screen.

He looked at Aria and Elliot who were the only other conscious team members.

His voice came out hoarse and rough. "Floor 6 isn’t unlocked."

Aria wiped her eyes with her good hand and checked her System screen through the tears that were still falling.

Her expression shifted to confusion. "Mine either."

Elliot checked with hands that were still shaking badly, and he scrolled through his notifications multiple times. "Same here. No Floor 6. Just nothing."

They looked at each other in confusion and growing worry because something was clearly wrong with the Tower.

Then Aria noticed something else that made her go completely still.

She looked around the destroyed village with her dancer’s trained awareness of her surroundings and spatial positioning.

The NPC soldiers scattered across the battlefield were frozen in mid-movement like statues.

One soldier who had been falling was suspended in mid-air as if gravity had stopped working.

Captain Aldric lying on the ground dying from venom was frozen mid-breath, and his chest was neither rising nor falling.

The smoke from burning buildings had stopped moving completely, and the black columns were frozen in place like solid pillars that defied physics.

A piece of falling debris from a collapsed wall hung motionless in the air while defying gravity entirely.

Everything had stopped moving.

Everything except the three of them and the two unconscious team members.

Aria’s voice came out quiet and frightened. "Something’s wrong. We’re the only ones moving."

James looked around and saw it too when she pointed it out.

Time itself had stopped for everything except them.

The blood on the ground wasn’t flowing anymore.

Dust particles hung suspended in the air like they were trapped in invisible glass.

Even the wind had ceased completely, leaving absolute silence except for their ragged breathing.

Elliot’s hands shook worse than before as he picked up his sword again, and his eyes went wide with terror because he didn’t understand what was happening.

James felt it then, a presence descending from above.

Something massive and powerful was coming down from the sky.

He looked up instinctively and saw a figure descending slowly through the frozen air.

It had massive golden wings spread wide on either side, and each feather glowed with holy light that hurt to look at directly.

The figure itself radiated light so bright that it was almost impossible to see clearly.

It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time in a way that didn’t make sense.

The wings spread wider as it approached, and they were easily thirty feet across.

The others hadn’t noticed yet because they were still looking around at the frozen village while trying to understand what had happened to time.

James pointed up with his sword while his arm trembled.

His voice barely came out as a whisper. "Guys. Look up."

Aria and Elliot looked up while following his gesture with their eyes.

They saw the golden-winged figure descending toward them slowly and majestically through the frozen smoke.

The light radiating from its form grew brighter as it got closer to the ground.

The wings spread even wider.

Finn and Kael remained unconscious and unaware of what was happening above them.

The figure continued its descent through the frozen smoke and suspended debris while its massive wings beat slowly without making any sound at all.

It was still distant but getting steadily closer with each passing second.

The light was almost painful to look at directly, but they couldn’t look away no matter how hard they tried.