"Holy fuck…"

I was practically salivating as I stared at the stats screen and caressed the craggy but exquisite shoulder armor. What a work of art this was! Not only was the armor super powerful, it had the appearance to match the stats as well. On a female player, the armor looked elegant and graceful. On a male player, I imagined that it would look powerful and unstoppable.

"You done touching yet?"

Lin Yixin looked away from my hand and stared at me. "Does this count as sexual harassment?"

I hurriedly removed my arm from her waist before declaring in a righteous tone, "It’s time to kill the boss, Yiyi! Let us forget all the unhappiness and forge a new era!"

"Bastard…" She curled her lips disdainfully. "You don’t seriously think you can get away with this, do you?"

"The boss is coming out, Yiyi…"

I pretended she didn’t say anything and pointed at the cage. "Do you want to aggro it, or should I? I’m just saying, but your Defense is way higher than mine right now…"

The girl shot me an affectionate glance before replying, "Fine. I’ll aggro the boss while you summon your pet and apparition and prepare for battle."

"Got it!"

……

Lin Yixin rushed forward and broke the lock on the cage in one strike. The next moment, the boss inside the cage let out a fearsome roar and pounced toward her. To our surprise, the boss was a burning tiger with incredible stats—

Heaven-burning Tiger (Immortal Rank Boss)

Level: 194

Everything else about the boss including its skills was hidden. This would be a hard battle for sure!

……

"I’m coming, Little Cheat!"

Lin Yixin ran toward me at top speed as I dropped three Icy Cyclone Domains on the ground to create an advantageous terrain in a hurry. Next, I tried using God Binding Art on the boss and failed to no one’s surprise. The boss's level and rank were incredibly high, so it was only natural that the God Binding Art’s success rate would be pitifully low.

To my surprise, the Heaven-burning Tiger pounced toward me before I even took a step. The first thing it did was to open its bloody jaws and spit me a faceful of fire! It wasn’t called “ Heaven-burning” for nothing!

Whoosh!

The burning flames engulfed me, Lin Yixin, the Phantom Wolf King and the apparition. My entire body felt like they were melting away. It hurts!

90088!

I lost an insane amount of HP even with my Magic Resist. This boss was a bit too OP, wasn’t it?

Lin Yixin was wearing the complete Dark Prison equipment set right now, so she only lost 80k+ HP. Her Magic Resist had surpassed mine, and her max HP was a whopping 300k. In terms of survivability, if we only counted one HP bar with no regen skills, she was way stronger than I was. Of course, it was a completely different story if I were to use the Resurrection Art.

My apparition was the one who fared the worst of all of us. It didn’t have my defensive skills such as Tenacity of the Dead, Ghost Deity Armor, Enhanced Bones and more, so the blast deleted over 170k HP and nearly one-shot it. What a terrifying boss!

Moreover, the Heaven-burning Tiger’s flame breath covered an obscenely wide area; a cone-shaped area with a 40-yard radius to be exact. Thank goodness we were the only combatants around, or this place would’ve turned into a hell on earth already. The flame breath was powerful enough to one-shot over 80% of the elites in this tower, and the only ones who could really survive it were top-class magic knights.

……

"Roar roar!"

The Heaven-burning Tiger roared angrily and looked like it was about to spit yet another flame breath, so I hurriedly ran forward and punched it beneath the jaw with Magic Piercing Punch!

Bang!

Thankfully the skill worked, and while this was going on, Lin Yixin moved behind the boss and destroyed its armor with Extreme Break and Ice Storm. I threw in War Crush and Burning Blade Slash myself, and some of the hits matched with Lin Yixin’s to trigger Intercourse. Together, we dealt almost 500k damage to the boss in one go. The Heaven-burning Tiger had 20 million HP, but with our level of rapport and stats, we could probably take it out in 30 minutes tops. Of course, that was assuming that the boss failed to kill us during this time.

"Roar roar!"

The Heaven-burning Tiger swiped at us repeatedly and dealt between 20k to 30k damage per hit. This wasn’t beyond our limits of endurance because one, I could lifesteal HP with my weapon and two, Lin Yixin’s Dark Prison equipment set gave her increased hidden HP regeneration. More importantly, we abandoned the idea of fighting it head-on and kited it using various skills and techniques. Together, we just barely managed to withstand the boss.

"Roar!"

The Heaven-burning Tiger breathed another sea of fire, and this time, the Phantom Wolf King whimpered and returned to my pet space. Unfortunately, land-bound pets just couldn’t compare to airborne ones such as Lin Yixin’s Ice Dagon Kris even if they shared the same rank, and in this case, Kris’s Magic Resist was so high that a flame breath only dealt 30k+ damage to it. With a max HP of 400k and a super regeneration rate thanks to her draconic lineage, Kris was undoubtedly the biggest variable of this boss fight.

……

Ten minutes passed, and the boss's HP dropped to 70% or so. I had to die once and drop a level to protect Lin Yixin during this time, but it was a small price to keep the both of us transformed Divine Generals in the fight. At the current stage, only a handful of people could even dream of fighting a Level 194 Immortal Rank boss with just two players. After all, a boss at this level could easily deal hundreds of thousands of damage in one hit. Of course most people wouldn’t be able to endure this.

"Throw some Saint Spirit Potions on the floor, Little Cheat! I’m about to run out of potions!" Lin Yixin said urgently in the middle of the battle.

I nodded and dropped two stacks of Rank 10 Saint Spirit Potions on the ground. Then, I ran past the boss and hit its sides with Burning Blade Slash, forcing it to turn around so that Lin Yixin could use this lull to heal herself. After she picked up the healing supplies and drank a Saint Spirit Potion, she rejoined the battle looking as good as new!

Suddenly, a system announcement rang for the entire world to hear—

Ding~!

System Announcement: Player "Warsky (Sky City)" has successfully defeated the Immortal Rank Boss, Heaven-devouring Tiger, and met the requirements to learn Great Earth Transformation! They have become the fifth Divine General of China! They have gained 200/200 Divine Energy Points, Luck +2, Tactics +5, and an exclusive Divine General Skill, "Ghost Banner"!

Ghost Banner: Beseech the power of the Ghost God and steal the souls of your enemies temporarily. All players within 20 yards of the user enter a Soulless state and become stunned for 5 seconds. Skill can only be used every 10 seconds, and each use costs 5 Divine Energy Points. Skill exclusive to Warsky.

……

"Ghost Banner?"

I exclaimed in astonishment, "Of all the people who could become a Divine General, Warsky is the one who won the lottery? This is truly unexpected. This Ghost Banner seems incredibly powerful. I wonder if it’s a guaranteed stun?"

Lin Yixin shook her head. "I don’t know, but we need to kill this boss as soon as possible. Now that the sixth floor boss is dead, it won’t be long before everyone rushes into the seventh and eighth floor. If we’re even a bit slower, someone might show up and snatch the boss away from us. We don’t want that to happen now, do we?"

"Yeah."

Inside the guild channel, everyone was talking about Warsky’s ascension—

Gui Guzi: "God damn, I can’t believe Warsky got ahead of us. Is that Ghost Banner a guaranteed AoE stun? If it is, then it’s OP as hell..."

Chaos Moon: "Man, Warsky is so lucky!"

I asked, "Hey, I know Warsky Alliance killed the boss, but who got the Tiger Soul Essence?"

He Yi: "I don’t know. The battle was so chaotic that I didn’t even see who landed the last hit on the boss, much less the loot. I know that I got Earth-grade wristguards and Gui Guzi got a Heaven-grade ring. As for the Tiger Soul Essence… hmm, according to reliable info, it was taken by Candlelight Shadow. He had exploited a blind spot and fooled our dear Chaos Moon…"

Chaos Moon: "Uuuu, please don’t elaborate any further. It was so embarrassing…"

I laughed. "Well, get to the eighth floor as soon as you can. Lin Yixin and I are fighting the boss right now, and the seventh floor boss is already dead. Cover us as soon as possible so that no one can snatch it from us!"

"No problem. Hang on, you two! We’re coming right now!" He Yi chuckled.

Li Chengfeng: "So, Warsky became a Divine General, huh. I know that that guy has been doing his best to improve his guild and himself everyday. Apparently, Warsky Alliance’s rather average performance during the War of Dawn City had shamed him and driven him to become a better man. The fact that he became a Divine General now means that the balance between our guilds had finally been broken, and that we are no longer the strongest guild in China anymore. Candle Dragon, Snowy Cathaya and Warsky Alliance are all growing at an incredible pace."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah. We all should work hard to defend the name of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls. One day, we will sit on the throne as the indisputable conqueror of Heavenblessed!"

Gui Guzi let out a hearty laugh as he said, "Well said, Boss Broken Halberd! Let’s give it our all everyone! We are the one and only conqueror of Heavenblessed!"

……

I closed the guild channel and focused on the boss after that. There was no doubt that the power balance between the forces of China was growing murkier and murkier every day. Warsky had learned a powerful Divine General Skill that could stun an entire group of people. Not only that, the skill had a cooldown of 10 seconds and a duration of 5 seconds. I doubted that there were many people who could survive an all-out assault during this time. For now, it looked like the only way to beat Warsky was to kill him in 5 seconds after recovering from the stun. Otherwise, it would be a defeat for sure.

Thud thud thud...

Back to the present.

I continued to pull the boss to places and cover for Lin Yixin while I resummoned the Phantom Wolf King and my apparition. Out of all of us, the Ice Dragon Kris was the most reliable variable of the entire fight. It spent practically every moment tearing, biting and spitting its dragon breath at the tiger, like a true boss.

Another 15 minutes passed by in the blink of an eye, and the boss's HP dropped to 20% or so. However, our anxiety was also more or less at its peak. It was because we were worried that someone might show up, steal the boss and waste all our hard-earned effort. While the chances that a Level 194 Immortal Rank boss might drop Immortal-grade equipment was only 1%, it was a different story if I was the one who landed the last hit. Considering the level difference, my Luck stat and other factors, I dare say that the chances of Immortal-grade equipment dropping was as high as 30%. And as for how powerful Immortal-grade equipment might be, one only needed to look at the Necklace of the War God’s Broken Blade hanging around my neck. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Immortal-grade equipment was the factor that defined the strong and swayed the tides of war right now. It was why I didn’t want to let go of this chance if at all possible!

……

Unfortunately, our prayers went unanswered. I swore in my head when a chorus of hooves suddenly appeared behind us. FUCK, someone’s coming!

A group of people emerged from the darkness of the night, and their IDs were all blood-red in color. The newcomers were not part of the Northern Alliance, but they did belong to an enemy guild, Wings of Awakening. I counted around 70 people, and most of them were Fire Lizard Cavalrymen. The axe-wielding party leader was none other than the guild leader himself, Bloody War God!