“Not today!”

I blocked in front of Chaos Moon and tanked two Soul Arrows in a row. It wasn’t long before I was close to dying!

Chaos Moon giggled at me as she ran. “Lu Chen, it’s your turn to die now…”

Me: “...”

Well, my HP was dangerously low, so it was time to heal myself. I used a Tenacity of the Dead and a health potion immediately!

+6623!

+3500!

Awesome! I wasn’t expecting Tenacity of the Dead to heal me this much! It was because Bombshell had boosted all my stats by 66%!

Obviously, it didn’t mean that we were safe now. The boss was still raining Soul Arrows on us.

We ran like mad until we finally reached the healing range of our Priests. Holy light surrounded us and restored our health quickly as we finally escaped the range of the skill. It was a close one. Chaos Moon’s HP was stuck at 50% or below all this time, so she would’ve died if she was hit by the Soul Arrows twice!

……

The God Dancer had cleared out an entire territory by herself with the super ultimate. Every player within 50 yards of her was killed, including thirty or so of our experts. It was a terrible loss. Of course, the random guilds who were watching from the sidelines suffered even more casualties than us.

It was at this moment a row of Black Cavalry let out a mighty roar and charged the boss. The Level 135 shadow-rank NPCs hadn’t noticed the danger that was surrounding the God Dancer. The next moment, the sky rumbled with thunder, and the rain of arrows slaughtered hundreds of Black Cavalrymen!

“Fuck…”

Li Chengfeng said with wide open eyes, “No wonder this boss is classified as an Earth Rank boss. She’s so powerful that we would’ve lost if we didn’t have Bombshell and the number advantage. I doubt there is any player in the world who can solo her right now…”

I nodded. “Yeah, this Earth Rank boss is beyond our ability to withstand right now. Everyone, hold your ground and wait for the Soul Arrow Rain to finish. Eve, Yiyi, Little Gui, you three have the fastest movement speed, so once the ultimate is over I want you to Charge the boss and drag it over to our side. It would be annoying if some sneaky assassin got the drop on us...”

“Got it!”

Sixty seconds passed quickly. The moment the time was up, He Yi and Lin Yixin pulled out their swords at the same time and charged toward the boss like lightning. Gui Guzi lagged behind slightly because his mount wasn’t as fast as theirs. Finally, the rest of us ran toward the boss on foot. It only had 40% health left, and we hoped to kill it before the final wave appeared!

Swhoosh!

Thunderous Charge left a trail of purple lightning as I crashed into the boss. To my pleasant surprise, it actually worked and stunned God Dancer for a short amount of time! That was lucky!

Everyone attacked with their weapons and removed a huge chunk of HP from the boss.

“Hehe… you lowly mortals…”

Panting heavily, a red glow suddenly enveloped God Dancer’s body. It looked like she was transforming or entering a state of sorts. Suddenly, she faced toward the sky and let out a terrible howl, and the energy contained inside her body spilled out at once. It was truly a shocking sight. God Dancer’s entire body—even the jade flute she was holding—was surrounded by a cyclone of fiery red energy!

Ding!

Combat Log: God Dancer has entered the “Purgatory Transformation” state: +50% Attack, +50% Defense, and all attacks greatly ignore Defense and deal increased damage!

……

“Fuck…” I swore as I interrupted God Dancer’s Flame Blast skill. The next moment, she retaliated by stabbing my shoulder with her energetic jade flute. A terrible pain immediately seared my senses!

18794!

Gui Guzi exclaimed in shock, “Fuck, the boss’s damage just skyrocketed! Wolf Fang, watch out! Don’t let her one-shot you!”

However, Wolf Fang didn’t even get the time to nod before God Dancer let out another shrill howl and stabbed him in the chest with the jade flute!

Put!

49862!

God dammit, it was a critical hit! The boss’s Attack simply exceeded Wolf Fang’s Defense too much, and not even our priests could pull him back from the grave! An extremely peeved Wolf Fang slowly collapsed to his knees and turned into an icy corpse just like that.

That wasn’t all. God Dancer used Flame Blast again, and this time Du Thirteen, Xue Lu and a bunch of archers and mages perished in a sea of flames. There was absolutely nothing they could’ve done to block the attack.

“What should we do?” He Yi looked a bit lost.

The moon appeared in Lin Yixin’s pupils as she smiled daringly. “Don’t worry, Sister He Yi! Just keep sending in the guild’s priests, mages and warriors! The best way to minimize our casualties now is to kill this boss as soon as possible!”

While saying this, Lin Yixin met God Dancer head-on and plunged her dagger right into the kidney area. Then, she swung her Frozen Sword and followed up with a devastating Extreme Break!

I was charging as well because my HP had been restored thanks to Murong Mingyue and Moon Dew. As long as the boss doesn’t crit me, I could more or less survive this battle. I executed the Burning Blade Slash and launched three intersecting sword auras of fire at the boss’ chest, dispersing the fiery cyclone around her and dealing massive damage—

12089!

28774!

35780!

……

Hell yeah! I actually scored two critical hits in a row at a critical moment!

I made up my mind then and activated the God Suppressing Necklace’s special skill, God’s Rage. For 60 seconds, every hit I landed would be a critical hit. It was the strongest boss-killing and PvP skill I had, but I hadn’t used it until now because it never felt like I absolutely had to. Now though, the boss’s HP had dropped to around 30%, and she needed to die as soon as possible for us to even have a chance of defending against the tenth monster wave. If we gave the boss more time to attack us or even treat us to another Soul Arrow Rain, only a handful of us would be alive even if we did beat her in the end.

Swhoosh!

Bloody energy started coating my entire body as the image of a bloody war god abruptly descended from the sky. It looked like I was possessed by a war god or something. When an energy that urged to be released beat wildly inside my body, I knew that every hit I did from this moment would be a critical hit...

At the distance, Chaos Moon, Moonlight Stone, Pure Love and the others all stared at me in astonishment. “WTF is that skill? It’s so cool, Lu Chen’s so handsome right now…”

I stepped forward and used War Crush. I then followed it up immediately with a Pardon and basic attack!

18794!

18772!

18908!

MISS!

32472!

……

The four consecutive hits deleted a small chunk from the boss’s health pool. Without pause, I shouted, “Hold the boss steady for me, Yiyi…”

“Got it!”

While I was withdrawing, Lin Yixin intelligently blocked the boss’s way with her Frostscythe Warhorse. She kept attacking and blocking until the threat was ultimately transferred to her.

I stopped when I was about 10 yards away from the boss. I immediately swallowed a Magic Consumable and restored myself to full health. The boss was still affected by Lin Yixin’s Extreme Break, so it was now or never!

Here I go—Purple Dragon Howl!

“Roar!”

The roar of a gigantic dragon shook the earth as the power of the purple dragon appeared above my head. The skill finished channeling when the energy settled inside the blade of the Heaven-stealing Sword!

“Go!”

I swung my arm mightily and tossed the purple energy at the boss. It hit the boss like a purple lightning bolt and engulfed it completely, dealing an insane amount of damage with every passing second. The only thing worse than the damage numbers popping above God Dancer’s head was her scream—

72980!

71228!

72384!

……

Bombshell, Moon Gaze, Extreme Break, God’s Rage, and Purple Dragon Howl. Together, they lay down the death sentence of the boss. The Purple Dragon Howl was a multi-hit skill, and when used on a single target it could hit up to 15 times in a row. As a result, God Dancer lost nearly 900k HP to the skill. It would seem that God Dancer’s luck was absolutely rotten today. If she was a player like Candlelight Shadow, she would never have given me the chance to restore myself to full and use my strongest trump card. Perhaps this was a fate all bosses shared!

The boss’s HP dropped to 15% in an instant. Morale skyrocketing, everyone in Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls cheered loudly, “Well done, vice leader! Now quickly, the boss is almost red…”

But a helpless smile crossed Lin Yixin’s lips. “Idiot… you should’ve left the skill until the boss’s HP drops to 10% or so. It’s the experience of an Earth Rank boss, you know…”

I heard her comment even though her voice was barely a whisper. I grinned at her and said, “What’s mine will be mine eventually. As for everything else, I’ll rejoice if I get them, but I won’t cry if they pass me by either!”

“Hmph hmph, that’s a fairly moderate outlook on things. Anyway, let’s take out the boss already…”

“Okay, okay!”

……

The fight went on a bit longer, and the boss had more or less lost her fighting spirit. Right now, everyone surrounding the boss were powerful players who couldn’t be one-shot where they stood. Lin Yixin, He Yi, Gui Guzi and Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun were impossible to one-shot as a matter of course, but even I, a mere foot soldier, was out of the boss’s one-shot range. After all, I was Level 123 with 16k base HP—an amount of health the average fighter couldn’t even imagine having right now—God Suppressing Helmet that increased my max HP by 2400, Battle Soul Poleyn and Ring of Windchasing that both increased my max HP by 1500. My equipment alone added 5.4k HP to my already massive health pool!

Of course, Li Chengfeng, Chaos Moon and the others weren’t too far behind me. They also had over 14k base HP.

At the back, Murong Mingyue had mobilized another 100 priests into position to heal us with everything they got. It was because we were the only ones who had the power to grind down the Earth Rank boss bit by bit. We also had Lin Yixin’s Bombshell to thank because this slow tactic would’ve been impossible to execute without sufficient HP.

Bang!

38904!

The boss scored a critical hit with her Flame Blast, and this time it was Gui Guzi who won the lottery. Even with his HP and Defense, he still took almost 40k damage, causing everyone’s mind to go blank for a moment. Thankfully, a green “+19452” also popped above his head, a number that no priest in the entire game could produce right now. It was of course Gui Guzi’s Undying Shield. The skill absorbed 50% of the damage he received as health, and it was absolutely amazing in a battle like this!

Fire continued to burn on the battlefield as God Dancer fought like a god of slaughter from hell. Every time she used her super-long-range Fire Blast, she was able to claim a couple of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls players’ lives. But she was alone and without support in a war of attrition, so the only fate awaiting her was death.

Gui Guzi licked his lips. “Heh, I wonder if the boss will drop an Earth-grade item or two…”