"Who is it this time?" He Yi turned around to look.

The tide of players galloping toward us carried the emblem of Sunset City on their shoulder. There were two possibilities here. Either the Northern Alliance was so surprised by our attack that the English server failed to match the timing of their assault with the Indian server’s, or they thought that we were so weak that we would barely be able to fend off Flames of War, and that this would be a clean-up operation.

I believed that it was a mixture of both. The previous Nation War had been overwhelmingly in their favor that they believed us to be easy pickings. Barring a few exceptional people, no one imagined that the China server would join forces with the Chaotic 27, Frostsword City, Iron Horse City and the three southeast cities to launch a lightning-fast counterattack.

……

Li Chengfeng gazed at the distance from atop his mount. "The system says that there are around 4 million of them, which is almost their entire playerbase. They truly are the good ‘friends’ of the Vietnamese, aren’t they? I wonder how much they were paid to go this far?"

I rose to my feet, patted away the dust on my butt, and walked up to the others with the girls. I joined them in their army-gazing and said, "Can someone tell me how many Ancient Divine Skills the English server has?"

Chaos Moon did a quick check and exclaimed in surprise, "Just give me a—what the fuck? When did they get an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill? They even have 1 SS Rank and 3 S Rank! That’s 5 Ancient Divine Skill owners in one tiny Sunset City! No wonder they are acting so arrogant!"

I brought up the database and refreshed the data. It was as she said, Sunset City was now the proud owner of 5 Ancient Divine Skills. That being said, only the SSS Rank and SS Rank skill were really a threat—

Odin Slash was an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill with high Attack and wide skill range. Its owner was Soul Slayer, a Level 215 Iron Knight, the leader of the second greatest guild of Sunset City, Blood Soul.

Freya’s Kiss was an SS Rank Ancient Divine Skill that increased all allies’ max HP within 1000 yards by 60%, and massively improved health regeneration. Similar to Gui Guzi’s Shennong the Grass, both skills had their own merits. The skill owner was a top-tier Heroic Bannerman named "Shabby Castle", the leader of the greatest guild of Sunset City, "God Breaker”. He was once praised as the equal of Vienna’s Sorrow as well.

……

"Chaos Moon is right. I would be arrogant too if I was in their place!" Xu Yang cackled.

Gui Guzi hummed for a bit before asking, "Ancient Divine Skills are powerful and ignore Defense[1]. We’re almost certainly going to lose a ton of brothers and sisters to Odin Slash if we try to fight them head-on. Any ideas, Boss Broken Halberd?"

I smiled. "Heavens, Little Gui finally learned how to weigh the scales! You’re correct. Odin Slash is an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill, so it has to be incredibly powerful. Soul Slayer’s Attack stat is between 75% to 85% of mine, so my guess is that his Odin Slash will deal between 700k to 800k damage per person. Here’s the plan. Everyone who has a Roland Bloodknight Card should use it now. You should also prepare two sets of equipment—one with high HP and another with high Defense—and switch between the two accordingly. With enough HP, there’s no reason you can’t survive the enemy’s SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill!"

Lin Yixin chuckled. "I can help with this. Bombshell gives 80% HP, the Roland Bloodknight Card gives 40% HP, and a bard’s buff should give around 50% HP, so that's a 170% HP boost in total. Considering average eighth-promotion cavalryman has a base HP of 300k, it should be enough to tank one Odin Slash!"

I nodded in agreement. "Yes. If you run into the enemy’s Heavenly River Realm player, give us a signal so we can dispatch Beauty Lin’s party to tank a hit. After that, those who are close and believe they’re capable should attempt to kill off Soul Slayer as soon as possible. In fact… we’ll do this together. When the fucker shows his face, we’ll both use our Ancient Divine Skills and wipe the floor with him!"

"Okay…"

"Alright. Get ready for battle, everyone!"

……

Everyone unsheathed their weapons and performed whatever last-minute preparations they needed to perform. On a related note, it was nighttime inside the game. The bright moonlight was reflecting off our weapons and armor, and the Dragonlight Cavalry’s mounts exhaled hot, scalding breaths from their nostrils. Everyone held their breaths and waited for the enemy to approach.

Suddenly, Cute Little Naughty crouched a little and entered stealth mode. She said with a chuckle, "Big bro, I want to see if I can assassinate Soul Slayer outright!"

"Okay. Be careful!"

"Don’t worry, I’ll bring as many assassins as possible and seek him out only after we activate our Traps. If we’re lucky…"

"That’s a good plan. Go get ‘em!"

After the beautiful girl faded into the distance, I clenched my Chill of the Nine Provinces and smiled at everyone on the frontline. "Little Naughty left to assassinate Soul Slayer. We can’t fall behind her now, can we brothers? After the explosive traps are triggered, we’ll charge the enemy and challenge our Sunset City friends to a killing speed competition, shall we?"

Everyone nodded in unison. "Yessir!"

……

Beneath the moonlight, countless cavalrymen could be seen galloping down a slope and charging toward us. Riding at the forefront was none other than our primary target, the former second best player of Sunset City, Soul Slayer. I said former because history had been rewritten from the moment he obtained an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill. How he obtained the skill didn’t matter. What mattered was that he owned it, so it automatically made him the real number one expert of Sunset City.

Soul Slayer was swinging his huge, red blade and laughing like crazy. His eyes bulged visibly with bloodlust. The cavalrymen riding together with him were the ace cavalry of Blood Soul, the Scarlet Blade Cavalry. The mount had a fiery red spike on its head that could be used to attack the enemy’s mount. This was the reason Blood Soul was able to do as well as they did in Sunset City.

"Brothers, let me tell you a joke. Those arrogant country bumpkins from Cyan Earth City thought they could wipe out the elite forces of the China server with just ten million troops. As a result, almost all of them were killed in the forest right in front of you, hahaha! Now is the time for us Blood Soul to show off our might! We will trample the bodies of the country bumpkins and declare war upon the China server! Show them how a noble cavalry fights!"

Eyes brimming with pride, Soul Slayer raised his sword high and shouted again, "Kill them all and crush everything! We are legends!"

He had just finished his speech when the first Trap spell took effect. An explosion instantly engulfed a dozen or so Scarlet Blade Cavalrymen, deleting almost half of their HP and surprising them. Despite the growing chain of explosions, Soul Slayer narrowed his eyes and growled, "Do not panic, people! Those with low health, use War God Recovery to restore your HP! We cannot be deterred by a mere Trap field, can we?!"

His people laughed in agreement.

Fwoop!

Suddenly, a gigantic hole appeared on the ground, and a dozen or so Scarlet Blade Cavalrymen fell right on top of a number of sharpened bamboos. They looked like skewered and barbecued scorpions from where we were.

"Continue, for glory!" Soul Slayer continued shouting to maintain his players’ morale.

……

Finally, they were only a hundred meters away from us.

Thud!

There was a sudden red flash, and Soul Slayer abruptly froze in place. It was Cute Little Naughty scoring a 1.8-second stun on him!

Her red cloak flapped in midair as she twisted her waist, circled around Soul Slayer and scored a great number of hits. Unfortunately she was alone, and Soul Slayer was anything but that.

"Foolish!"

The moment Soul Slayer was freed from the status condition, he immediately reined in his mount and parried a dagger strike. Then, he executed a Blazing Slash!

Boom!

160777!

Cute Little Naughty staggered backward with only 50% or so HP left. Worse still, several of Soul Slayer’s subordinates were thrusting their Barrier Breaks at her. They were clearly disciplined and well-trained, so there was no chance she was going to assassinate Soul Slayer.

I shouted at her, "Force stealth now, Naughty!"

She obeyed and tossed out a fluorescent powder. A couple of seconds later, she just barely managed to escape to safety. Soul Slayer didn’t want to interrupt the entire charge for one assassin, so he simply ignored her and continued charging with his Scarlet Blade Cavalry.

……

"Far Shot, loose!" Beiming Xue ordered.

The Dragonlight Cavalry unsheathed their weapons at the sound of the loosened arrows. Finally, He Yi ordered them to charge toward the Scarlet Blade cavalrymen. When two people meet, only one will emerge the victor. In this case, the one with the greater courage would most likely be victorious!

"Save your Ancient Divine Skills for now! Act only after the enemy Ancient Divine Skill owner has acted!"

Although I was spurring the Ancient Divine Dragon to fly behind the frontline and toward Soul Slayer, he didn’t seem to have noticed me. There were way too many players, and I had made sure to hide my ridiculously shiny WEL MVP emblem with my cloak.

"Die!"

Soul Slayer let out a shout and kicked off his attack with an Odin Slash right from the get go. The sinister image of the great god Odin appeared above his head, and a humongous sword beam engulfed both me and nearly a hundred Chinese players behind me. It was scary to say the least!

Boom!

649877!

I shuddered like a leaf as an incredible damage number rose above my head. I could withstand this because I still had over 1.4 million HP, but the Dragonlight, Zephyr and Kui Dragon Cavalrymen who were caught in the attack couldn’t claim the same thing. Many were injured or straight up killed by the sword beam. We had a plan, but the battle line was simply too long, and Lin Yixin couldn’t pinpoint Odin’s location at first notice.

……

Standing alone amid a floor of corpses, I spurred the Ancient Divine Dragon toward Soul Slayer and used Cold of the Nine Provinces!

Swhoosh!

To my surprise, Soul Slayer was able to react immediately with an invincibility skill!

Xuanyuan Slash!

I activated my own Heavenly River Transformation and fired the Xuanyuan Slash at Soul Slayer. The skill one-shot all the Scarlet Blade Cavalrymen within the skill range, but Soul Slayer actually survived with less than 20% HP. The Ancient Divine Skill had dealt around 1 million damage to him, and apparently he had more max HP than that.

Xuanyuan Slash was the only skill I had that could pierce invincibility, so there was nothing even I could do right now.

Soul Slayer smirked at me. "Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand, right? I am not going to fight you, heh!"

I tried to give chase, but one of the rain of Trapping Nets flying my way managed to trap me. In the end, I could do nothing but watch Soul Slayer as he escaped from my grasp. At this point, it became clear as day that he wasn’t going to engage me if at all possible.

1. E/N: You read it right. Ancient Divine Skills completely ignore Defense now. It was actually mentioned a few chapters back, but I assumed it was Guard, not Defense, because after 100 mentions of them ignoring Guard and invincibility skills, who woulda thought 10 chapters after they left Ruins of the Gods it would suddenly ignore Defense too?