Team Zero stood among the dead on Floor 9 while nobody moved for a long mont because the fight was finally over.
Finn was still gripping his axe with blood running down his face. Aria sat on a broken barricade and laughed weakly from pure disbelief while Elliot lowered his bow with shaking hands and stared at the empty settlent.
Kael kept the circlet active for a few more seconds before the dark aura fully faded and the divine light disappeared.
Jas stood beside the reanimated ogre while processing the fact that they’d actually survived.
Then the System notification appeared.
[FLOOR 9 CLEARED]
[ALL WAVES CLEARED]
[HOSTILE COMMAND STRUCTURE DESTROYED]
Another notification followed imdiately.
[SIDE STORY CLEARED: HIDDEN CORRUPTION]
[CAUSE OF FLOOR 9 ANOMALY REMOVED]
Then the world-first announcent appeared in all their visions.
[WORLD FIRST CLEAR ACHIEVED]
[FLOOR 9 HAS BEEN CLEARED FOR THE FIRST TI WORLDWIDE]
[COUNTRY OF CLEAR: IRELAND]
[PARTY: TEAM ZERO]
Finn exhaled slowly and spoke first. "We actually did it."
Aria laughed again, though it sounded more like a sob. "Ireland first. Team Zero first. I almost died for it."
Elliot looked stunned while staring at the notification. "World first."
Kael looked down at the circlet in his hands. "It worked."
Jas said nothing at first because he was still processing what this clear ant, but he knew everything had just changed.
The System distributed the floor rewards while Team Zero watched the notifications appear.
[FLOOR 9 CLEAR — PARTY REWARD]
[TOWER CREDITS AWARDED: 10,000 TC PER CHALLENGER]
[PARTY EXP POOL: 20,000 EXP]
[DIVIDED BY 5 CHALLENGERS: 4,000 EXP EACH]
Jas’s TC balance jumped from 61,615 to 71,615 before the MVP calculation even began.
Then the MVP notification appeared.
[CALCULATING MVP...]
[MVP: JAS GANNER]
[MVP REWARD: 20,000 TOWER CREDITS]
[REWARD ITEM: S-RANK ORE ACQUIRED]
[ABYSSAL STAR TAL]
Jas’s TC balance climbed again to 91,615 while the S-rank ore appeared in his inventory. He felt the EXP rise sharply but didn’t level up, which ant he was still short of the threshold for Level 14.
Finn checked his own rewards quietly and nodded once. "Good TC."
Aria smiled at her notification despite the exhaustion. "Ten thousand credits for one floor. That’s more than I made in three months before the reset."
Elliot looked like he’d never seen numbers that high before. "I don’t even know what to do with this much."
Kael focused more on the side story notification than the TC. "The System marked the corruption source as cleared. That ans destroying the statue counted as solving Floor 9’s real problem."
Jas stored the S-rank ore without examining it closely because they were still on the floor and the stream was still live.
The stream interface sat at the edge of Jas’s vision while the chat moved too fast to read properly. The viewer count had crossed one million and kept climbing because Ireland had just achieved the first confird Floor 9 clear in the world.
[VIEWER COUNT: 1,034,902]
[VIEWER COUNT: 1,289,440]
[VIEWER COUNT: 1,617,803]
The stream comnts flooded in faster than Jas could track them.
@DublinClimber92: THEY CLEARED IT.
@GlobalTowerFeed: Ireland just beca the first country in the world to clear Floor 9.
@RaidStatsGuy: World first confird. Team Zero is history now.
@GreenTowerFan: The Necromancer is terrifying.
@PriestWanted: The circlet saved them. Kael kept that aura alive the whole ti.
@CivilianViewIE: I watched the world’s first Floor 9 clear live.
@TowerMarketWatch: The value of that circlet just exploded.
@IrishGuildWatch: Team Zero. Rember those nas.
The public was losing control over the fact that Jas had reanimated the ogre and brought it back to the battlefield. Clips of that mont were already being replayed inside the stream overlay while people called him "the Necromancer" in every comnt. Others praised Kael because the circlet had protected the team from dark corruption for the entire final wave.
Viewers had seen all their faces clearly during the fight, and people were already digging into their backgrounds through social dia and Challenger databases. Forum threads were filling with speculation about who they were, where they ca from, and how an unknown five-person team had cleared Floor 9 when guild teams had failed.
Jas opened the stream chat interface properly for the first ti since activating it, but the questions moved too fast to follow. Viewers were demanding answers about the hidden forest, the statue, the dark aura, the three ogres, and whether other teams had died because they’d missed the real source.
The TRB stream platform highlighted three questions automatically based on donation amounts while the interface showed them at the top of his screen with the donation totals attached.
Highest Donation Question (€75,000): What did you destroy in the forest?
Jas looked at the question and thought about how to answer without ntioning the egg before speaking directly to the stream cara.
"There was a hidden corruption source away from the main battlefield," Jas said. "A goblin shaman was guarding it and channeling power into the waves. Destroying the source weakened the final wave and broke their coordination."
The chat exploded imdiately.
@RaidStatsGuy: Hidden source confird.
@MageUnionWatch: So the battlefield was a distraction.
@FloorNineGraveyard: The other teams never found it.
Second Highest Donation Question (€50,000): Were the ogres being controlled?
Jas answered that one carefully because he didn’t fully understand it himself. "They weren’t being controlled like puppets, but they were being empowered and guided. Their movents changed after I destroyed the corruption source, which ans sothing was directing them."
@TowerWatchIE: Directed, not controlled. There’s a difference.
@PriestWanted: That explains why the priest got targeted first in the other raid.
@GlobalTowerFeed: The corruption was smart enough to prioritize threats.
Third Highest Donation Question (€40,000): Can other teams clear Floor 9 by copying your strategy?
Jas considered that question longer before answering because he didn’t want to give bad advice that got people killed. "They should wait for the TRB’s official report. Floor 9 isn’t just about killing monsters. If a team ignores the hidden source and only fights the waves, they’ll probably die."
The chat went completely crazy.
@RaidStatsGuy: So the waves were a trap.
@MageUnionWatch: Floor 9 is a puzzle floor disguised as a combat floor.
@GlobalTowerFeed: TRB is about to sell this clear data for millions.
@IrishGuildWatch: Every guild in Europe is going to want Team Zero’s full report.
Jas closed the donation panel because he’d answered enough questions and the team was clearly done with being watched.
Jas looked at Finn, Aria, Elliot, and Kael. They were exhausted, covered in blood, and obviously finished with standing in front of over a million people.
He spoke to the stream one more ti. "Team Zero is ending the stream. Thank you for watching."
He didn’t give a long speech or answer more questions because there was nothing else to say.
The interface appeared.
[END STREAM? Y/N]
Jas selected YES.
User Comments
0 comments from readers