There was a bow twang, and a light blue-colored arrow hit my chest before I could even dodge. That single basic attack actually dealt over 290k damage to me! I could already see that Succubi Queen Leila’s Attack was even higher than Dwarf King Nordin’s. Assuming that Prince Lin Qian’s mentors were only stronger than the next, it was no wonder Lin Qian was able to kill them all. He was the culmination of all their training.

"Little Cheat, keep the boss's aggro on you! Beiming Xue and Lian Xin, use your Shock Arrows and Frozen Domain alternatingly so that Sister Mingyue has the time to heal us!"

Lin Yixin barked out tactical orders while running with the Dragonfrost in hand.

Leila’s beautiful face grew a bit distorted as she fired her skills at me such as Explosive Arrow, Poison Dragon Arrow, Spiraling Arrow Blade and more without pause. In just 10 seconds, she actually dropped my HP to just 25%. What a monster!

I closed the distance between the two of us before executing Burning Blade Slash + Thousand Ice Slash combo. I got really lucky and managed to freeze her for a couple of seconds. While I was stabbing her with Purple Frost Concentration, the Necklace of the War God’s Broken Blade triggered its effect and stunned her for yet another 7 seconds. Murong Mingyue complained as she seized the opportunity to unload all of her spells on me, "OMG, it’s so hard to heal Lu Chen’s 2.45 million HP back to full…"

Lin Yixin giggled. "Sure, but that’s only because the boss we’re dealing with is equally difficult. We would have never beaten Nordin without casualties if not for Little Cheat’s ridiculous HP!"

The Moonchaser Tiger let out an angry roar as she said this. She brought down her Dragonfrost and used Ultimate Strength Break!

Boom!

274840!

It was a very impressive amount of damage. Heavy-armor players could usually exploit the Strength difference and do insane amounts of damage against an Agility-based boss like Leila. If I had Ultimate Strength Break, I would be dealing over 300k damage in a single hit as well. Of course, my Myriad Swords Obliteration could achieve the same amount of damage, so I wasn’t depressed by the loss of choice in the slightest.

……

Bang!

I punched Leila and rendered her Skypiercer void before it ever got to show itself to the world. Then, I brought my foot down and rocked the earth using War Crush. Face becoming even more distorted with rage, she fired Seeking Arrow to hit me only for it to miss thanks to Ghost Spirit Step Art drastically increasing my movement speed, and me zigzagging past her person to break the line of sight. Ancient Immortal Rank bosses weren’t immune to the techniques that would befuddle a player, not to mention that my Ghost Spirit War Boots gave me the necessary speed to pull it off. As a result, Leila’s accuracy was greatly diminished by my repeated usage of butterfly maneuver.

"Damn you! You will all pay the price!"

Suddenly, Leila raised her arm and summoned a terrifying-looking image of a giant devil on her head. The next moment, the giant devil aimed its bow at the ground, let out a howl that sounded like it came from the depths of hell itself, and unleashed the skill: Rage of the Ancient Bow God!

Boom!

A gigantic arrow of light fell from the sky like a meteor and hit the ground with a massive explosion. The massive AoE skill had a diameter of at least 1000 yards, so no one was able to escape the blast!

Intense pain seized my senses as my HP dropped drastically. He Yi, Beiming Xue, Lin Yixin and Guanyue all took massive hits as well—

472983!

659292!

671299!

790294!

912727!

MISS!

MISS!

……

Rage of the Ancient Bow God only hit one time, so Lian Xin and Murong Mingyue managed to survive at the cost of their Magic Shields. I, Lin Yixin, and He Yi took 470k, 659k and 671k damage respectively and survived with low HP, but the same couldn’t be said for Beiming Xue, who was one-shot by a whopping 790k damage. Her eighth-promotion skill, Impossible Escape, didn’t trigger either, or she could’ve avoided the level loss. Pure Love ate the most damage out of all of us because cloth-armor players just had shitty Defense, not to mention that a bard’s spell shield was way weaker than priests’, and couldn’t even be compared to mages’ Magic Shields. Knowing this, Pure Love dropped 3 points to Stamina and 2 points to Intelligence every level. Unfortunately, a total HP of nearly 800k still wasn’t enough to survive Leila’s Rage of the Bow God.

Swhoosh swhoosh...

While Beiming Xue and Pure Love collapsed in a flash of white light, I fired another Burning Blade Slash at the boss and yelled, "Sis, get ready for my Xuanyuan Art! The game is still on, so stay cool, everyone! Massive AoE skill like this shouldn’t have a short cooldown, so let’s try and kill her before she gets another shot out!"

After that, I pointed the front side of the blade to the sky and cried, "Xuanyuan Art!"

Three vortices representing light and new life spun rapidly and healed everyone by 50% HP. I was back at 100% HP instantly, and He Yi and Lin Yixin were almost at full HP as well. Murong Mingyue healed the remaining HP before they rejoined the battle.

I dashed past Beiming Xue’s corpse and picked up a shiny bow from the ground. It was Beiming Xue’s Xuanming Bow, of course. Unlike instance equipment, there was no binding mechanic with the Twelve Divine Armaments. Therefore, it had a chance of dropping just like any other item out there. Without sufficient skill and power, having one of the Twelve Divine Armaments was more of a burden than a boon for the player carrying it.

Inside the party channel, Beiming Xue said urgently, "Uuu, I dropped my Xuanming Bow!"

I chuckled. "Don’t worry, I have it. Just return as soon as possible. The fight’s a lot harder without your crowd-control skills!"

"Mn!"

……

While Lin Yixin and He Yi were using Ultimate Strength Break at the same time to delete the boss's HP, Leila fired a 100%-hit-rate Volley that drilled huge holes into our bodies. The boss's bow-flicking technique was even better than Beiming Xue’s, and every hit dealt at least 200k damage. Forget the likes of Lian Xin or Murong Mingyue, even I was strained beneath the power of the skill.

Pa!

I maneuvered behind Leila and pressed a palm to her back. "God Binding Art!"

The boss exclaimed in alarm, "What are you doing to me, you bastard?"

The skill had failed three times in a row before this, but finally, the divine arms were able to immobilize Leila.

He Yi chuckled as she dashed over with Little Qing by her side. "Finally! Now is the time to hit the boss with everything we got!"

After waving her scepter and healing us back to full HP, Murong Mingyue stuffed her mouth with a magic consumable and said, "I only have 15% MP left, so I’m going to regenerate my MP for a bit. Don’t go ham during this time, okay…"

"Got it…"

……

A few minutes later, Beiming Xue and Pure Love revived, and I tossed the Xuanming Bow into Beiming Xue’s hands. Speaking of which, it had been chaos in the guild channel before Beiming Xue regained her Xuanming Bow—

Xu Yang: "What the fuck? Why is the owner name beside the Xuanming Bow blank? What happened to Lil Beiming?"

Li Chengfeng: "Er, Lil Beiming didn’t drop her bow, did she?"

Gui Guzi exclaimed in outrage, "Who dares to steal Lil Beiming’s precious from her? Brother Thirteen and I will wipe them out right now!"

He Yi: "It’s a Level 280 Ancient Immortal Rank boss called Leila. Sorry, but I don’t think Thirteen or you are a match for her…"

I chuckled. "Calm down, people. Beiming was killed by the boss's ultimate. I’m returning the bow to her right now…"

Li Chengfeng: Lu Chen, the seven of you’re doing a quest at Dragon Domain, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah? What’s wrong?"

Li Chengfeng explained in a serious tone, "Well, Warsky Alliance, Gods of Destruction, Mad Dragon, Flower Room, Pop Culture and more are dispatching their elites to your location right now. It’s because there are rumors that there are S Rank quests to be received at Dragon Domain. Candlelight Shadow himself is leading his main force to Dragon Domain."

He Yi sounded surprised. "Is Candle Dragon targeting the main quests too?"

"No!"

Li Chengfeng smiled slightly. "No, his real goal is the giant dragon mounts. I heard it from Ye Yuse herself. Candle Dragon had been plotting this as soon as a week ago, but they didn’t think that you would still get ahead of them. Anyway, Candlelight Shadow has already departed, and he may even be at Dragon Domain already. That’s what Ye Yuse said anyway."

I replied, "You’ve gotten quite close to Ye Yuse, huh? Are you guys dating or something?"

Li Chengfeng grew embarrassed. "Dude, we’re talking serious business right now. Can you not?"

"This is serious business…"

"ANYWAY, I’m bringing our men to Dragon Domain as well, so see you in a couple hours. Expect your map to turn into one hell of a hot potato shortly after. Everyone wants the reward, but not everyone has the strength to claim it."

"Got it. Be careful, you all."

"Will do!"

……

I activated Dark Pupils and checked our surroundings for a moment. Then, I said in a soft voice, "Watch out, everyone. I just learned that other players have gotten on this map already. We can always trust Snowy Cathaya and Blazing Hot Lips, but the same cannot be said for Candle Dragon, Pop Culture or Warsky Alliance. They will fight us if they notice that we’re killing this boss."

Dodging the boss's attacks via running along a beautiful S-shaped path, Lin Yixin said with a smile, "That just means we have to kill the boss before that happens!"

Unfortunately, Leila’s HP was thicker than expected, and her Attack was deadly enough that there were multiple times we got close to the breaking point. Almost 20 minutes had passed, and we had only deleted 47% of her HP.

Murong Mingyue looked visibly worried. "This isn’t working. Every time Leila hits me with Frightening Arrow, I lose 4000 MP. I only have 5% MP left now, which is not nearly enough to last the whole fight even with Magic Consumables. What do we do? The boss still has over 50% HP. We’re going to die repeatedly like this…"

A priest was a party’s lifeline. If the priest couldn’t heal, then the boss fight was destined to end in failure. It was a conundrum though. On one hand, we were reluctant to abandon the boss. On the other, there was a high chance we would have to die repeatedly before we could finally defeat Leila. I could already imagine us holding an offline meeting and crying together if we lost the Xuanming Bow, Chill of the Nine Provinces, Dragonfrost and more...

……

"Fuck. Are we really going to fail Lin Qian’s final request like this?" I said to myself.

To my surprise, the Succubi Queen’s hourglass figure suddenly shuddered violently. Then, she slowly lowered her bow and stared at me with her blood-red eyes. "What did you say? Lin Qian, he…?"