Gui Guzi pulled back to try and take back the boss's aggro to no avail. Growing increasingly anxious, I pulled out the Heaven-stealing Sword, predicted the boss's next position and activated Thunderous Charge!

Whoosh!

I hit the boss's thigh like a lightning bolt. The thunderous energy circulated throughout its body and stunned it immediately!

Bang!

At the same time, I stomped the ground and hit it three times in a row with War Crush—

2475!

2298!

2364!

After that, I attacked its groin area with Pardon + basic attack on purpose. I mean, it looked like the Desert Giant King’s groin area was covered in a patch of stony skin, so why not?

MISS!

6984!

Heh, not bad at all!

Finally figuring out the boss's weak point, I shouted to everyone, "All archers, aim at its groin area, understand?"

At the distance, Beiming Xue turned as red as an apple. "No I don’t…"

It didn’t matter though. Archers weren’t meant to be this boss's killer, mages were. It was because archers couldn’t penetrate the Desert Giant King’s stone-skin armor with their arrows.

In total, my 5-hit combo hit the boss for over 14000 HP and captured its attention completely. A boss usually attacked the player who did the most damage or healed the most in a party, and right now I was undoubtedly the most hated enemy.

Whoosh!

Fire surrounded the boss as it swung its arms at me. It was yet another double-hit skill. I hurriedly raised my arms to reduce the damage I would take as much as possible. In VR, the amount of damage taken was deeply connected to stats, positioning, distance, and many other factors. Long story short, a player would always take less damage if they blocked an attack with their arms instead of their face.

Bang bang!

4120!

4098!

I could feel the blood in my face draining away after taking over 8000 damage in one go. I quickly attacked the boss twice and used Tenacity of the Dead at the same time, healing myself for over 2000 HP. Behind me, Murong Mingyue and the others also threw all their healing spells on me and dragged me back to full health!

Unfortunately, this setup still wasn’t perfect. I could still die if the boss scored a critical hit on me!

It was at this moment Pure Love put her flute to her lips and blew a melodious tune. Several lines of text immediately appeared in my combat log—

Combat Log: Player "Pure Love" used "Divine Valor", increasing your Attack by 20% (Tactics +59%)!

Combat Log: Player "Pure Love" used "Death Match", increasing your Defense by 20% (Tactics +59%)!

Combat Log: Player "Pure Love" used "Nichang", increasing your critical rate by 25% (Tactics +59%)!

Combat Log: Player "Pure Love" used "Forge", increasing your hit rate by 25% (Tactics +59%)!

……

After the patch update, Tactics also affected the effectiveness of a bard’s buffs, and since bards shared the same Tactics growth as tacticians, the class didn’t grow obsolete. Taking Pure Love’s current level and equipment into equation, her buffs improved my Attack and Defense by around 32%, and my hit rate and critical rate by around 40%. It was pretty amazing all things considered!

My Attack and Defense stats were especially eye-catching. My stats were already pretty high to begin with, but it was downright ridiculous if you factored in the 75% buff from my Martial God, the 10% buff from War Holy Temple and now the 30% buff from Divine Valor. At my current level of attack power, I could hit the boss for over 4000 damage with a single basic attack. High Fighting Spirits and Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun couldn’t help but click their tongues in shock. "Fuck, how the heck is the vice leader so powerful…"

Xu Yang smiled. "That’s just the norm for a top-class CGL Hall of Famer, hahaha!"

Everyone laughed heartily alongside him. The boss fight was now a lot safer since I was just tanky enough to tank the boss, and most definitely powerful enough to keep all its attention on me. Gui Guzi was a fine tank, but his offensive power was so lacking that the boss had run amok like a thirsty wife who had been left hanging for several centuries straight...

Meanwhile, Li Chengfeng jumped into fray himself after acquiring the buffs of another beautiful bard. His sword cut through the boss's stone skin three times in a row!

Clang clang clang!

Three damage numbers appeared above the boss's thigh—

2084!

2174!

1937!

……

Not bad! At the very least, his attack power was way higher than Gui Guzi’s. It was no wonder he managed to solo Laughing At The Heavens and Farewell Song and come out the decisive victor. This dragon warrior was even stronger than I initially imagined him to be!

Seemingly enraged by our success, the boss abruptly raised his arms and let out a throaty roar. A swirl of fiery red clouds appeared on the cave ceiling, and burning rocks suddenly rained from above! It was an AoE skill! A powerful one, no less!

Even worse was the fact that the skill covered nearly one-quarter of the entire cave. Hundreds of players were caught within the attack!

Boom!

A burning rock exploded atop my shoulder and made me feel like my shoulder was being torn apart. At the same time, a huge damage number entered my view—3987!

Scary! If even I with my Magic Resist took this much damage, then how could the rest of our players possibly survive this?

I looked up and saw countless players dying to the skill as expected. Things were especially bad for the archers and the priests, who were one-shot almost the second they were smashed by the falling rocks. The mages fared a bit better since their Magic Shield was strong enough to block one attack, but only one.

For a time it was complete chaos, and the channeled skill wasn’t ending any time soon! A line of text on the window indicated that the skill wouldn’t end until 30 seconds later!

There was no way we could allow this to happen!

I hurriedly swallowed a health potion and shouted to Legendary Brave. "Chengfeng, interrupt the boss now!"

"Mn!"

Li Chengfeng backed 5 yards away from the boss before activating Charge!

MISS!

Oh man, he failed to stun the boss!

Frustrated, I swung my sword like crazy in an attempt to trigger the Paralyzed status to no avail. The Desert Giant King was a high-rank boss, so I supposed it made sense that its resistance was much higher than normal!

I backed away from the boss, and Li Chengfeng read my mind and replaced my original position immediately, keeping the boss busy. He was a true genius!

Whoosh!

I activated my Thunderous Charge, but it was still a MISS. Behind me, even Wolf Fang, a powerful high-level warrior had perished to the skill as well. Growing increasingly anxious, I fired my Thousand Ice Slash and prayed that the Frozen status, however small its proc rate was, would take effect!

Finally, my karma started working again and encased the boss's thighs in ice, interrupting its skill and forcing it to stop. Mn, Thousand Ice Slash was even better than before after it was enhanced!

However, that was all we could do because the blazing heat surrounding the boss's body had been cutting away at our armor all this time. Both Li Chengfeng and I were more or less at our absolute limit, so we both backed away from the boss and shouted at the same time, "Run!"

The boss shattered the ice that was immobilizing it and chased after us as we ran. With only one-third of my health left, I didn’t think that I would endure even one basic attack from the boss!

Thankfully, Murong Mingyue, Moon Dew, and the others weren’t too far away from us. After they healed me back to full with their healing spells, I turned a hundred and eighty degrees around and rushed the boss again. If I wasn’t mistaken, this ultimate skill "Blazing Rock" should have a pretty long cooldown, so we should try to defeat it before it was up again.

Li Chengfeng didn’t join the fight because he felt that his Defense was lacking. Xu Yang and Gui Guzi took this opportunity to ask Li Chengfeng humbly about his footwork technique when he fought against Farewell Song and Laughing At The Heavens earlier. Surprisingly, Li Chengfeng agreed to teach them immediately and started drawing on the sandy floor. He said with a smile, "In a PvP battle, you can’t just charge at your enemies in a straight line. First, you need to identify their objectives and observe their surroundings. You need to predict what they’ll do next and where they’ll be later. After you dodge their attack, you should move to the position you predicted they’d move to and wait for them to walk right into your weapon!"

Chaos Moon nodded. "He’s absolutely correct. Lu Chen did this incredibly well when he was fighting against Farewell Song, Little Piglet, and Shangguan Wan’er. He was always able to predict their moves beforehand and play them like a fiddle. It was so nice to see Little Piglet being surprised…"

Li Chengfeng laughed in agreement. "Yeah, I watched the vice leader’s battle just now, and he absolutely deserved his title as the 12th CGL Hall of Famer and Little Heavenly King!"

Xu Yang grinned. "Farewell Song is the 16th CGL Hall of Famer and Laughing At the Heavens the 18th, but you killed them both with ease as well, didn’t you?"

"Haha, nah, they were just careless, that’s all!"

……

Ten minutes passed in the blink of an eye, and the boss's health had dropped to one-third or so. Behind me, a large group of mages were firing Ice Dragon Howls after Ice Dragon Howls at the boss and deleting its HP at an incredible rate. Well, it was only natural considering there were hundreds of us, and only one boss. The Desert Giant King was also unfortunate that its opponent was the core force of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls and not some random noobs it could trash with ease. With me as the tank, it could do nothing but be destroyed.

"Ahem…"

Seeing that the boss had dropped to low health, I let out a cough to capture everyone’s attention before saying, "Brothers and sisters, please quiet down a little. There’s something I would like to say to all of you."

"Of course." Li Chengfeng smiled. "Speak!"

High Fighting Spirits, Chaos Moon, Xu Yang, and the others also fell silent as well. It was almost as if I was announcing the Code of Hammurabi or something.

……

I cleared my throat again and said, "Warsky Alliance’s leader, Warsky, is at the same level as Farewell Song; Gods of Destruction guild’s leader, Dominating Heaven Blade, is the highest-leveled player in his guild; and Snowy Cathaya’s guild leader, Beauty Lin, is way stronger than everyone else in her guild. However, our guild leader… how should I put it? Eve has to fly all over the globe every day for business, and she barely had any time at all to level up her character. Therefore, I would like Eve to take the last hit on the boss and obtain 50% of the experience. As compensation, Eve and I would stay out of the dice roll and give all the equipment to our core members. What do you all think?"

Li Chengfeng nodded. "I have no problems with that."

High Fighting Spirits shrugged carelessly. "Sure, no one can dispute the guild leader getting the lion’s share of the experience. In fact, giving it to anyone else could cause some dissatisfaction in the guild. That would be sad."

Chaos Moon smiled. "It’s decided then!"

I nodded and looked at He Yi. "When the boss's health drops to less than 2%, I want you to replace me and attack when I tell you to. Do your best to get the last hit, alright?"

"Okay!"

He Yi nodded gratefully. "Thank you, everyone!"

But before anyone could answer her, a system ding stunned all of us to speechlessness—

Ding~!

System Announcement: Player "Wind Fantasy (Sky City)" has successfully defeated the Purple Gold Rank Boss, Envoy of Darkness, and reached Level 100. They have met the criteria to become a Famous General, and they are the third Famous General to appear in China! They have gained Luck +1, Tactics +5, and an exclusive Famous General Skill, "Bombshell"!