Two of my recent media obsessions have been Death Loop and Revolutionary Girl Utena, so I've been thinking about combining them for my submission, the Duels of Swordsworn Academy. A magical school in the vein of Raya Lucaria from Elden Ring, the idea is that all the students are trapped in a time loop by the Rune Lord and the only way to free them is for the Engraved to defeat the Student Council and face off against the Headmaster in a final battle for the fate of the Realm (and also the prom is tomorrow.)
My current idea is that the Engraved has to defeat 4 Unique enemies before unlocking the Delve to face the Headmaster, however they have to do it before the Realm Clock is filled and the time loop is reset, resurrecting the Unique enemies and essentially undoing all their progress except for their Lore Score. As their Lore increases, they gain opportunities to find the Student Council members when they're vulnerable and fight multiple members at once, ultimately making it easier to complete the Realm in a single cycle a la Death Loop.
The big issue here is that the gimmick breaks one of the cardinal rules of RUNE, in that once you kill a Unique enemy, they stay dead, so I'm wondering if maybe the general idea is a little too ambitious and I should default to a simpler Realm Clock?