The ground of Dragon God Cave Third Floor was unnaturally slippery. It was because the Snot Dragons left a trail of slime wherever they wriggled. Moreover, visibility had been reduced even further, to 20 yards at most, which also happened to be the maximum aggro range of a Snot Dragon. Thankfully, I had Dark Pupils. It allowed me to see a bit farther than that and discovered the mobs before they discovered us. Also, the Snot Dragon’s Attack was low enough that even He Yi and Lin Yixin could act as tanks, which reduced the burden on my shoulders by a lot. Most of the time, the Phantom Wolf King, apparition and I acted as the damage dealer of the party.

After nearly an hour of fighting, we collected almost a hundred Snot Dragon Cards and an insane amount of experience. It was a Level 282 fiend-rank mob, but still, even I at my level had accumulated almost 70% experience in total. Open-world maps and even instances rarely yielded this much experience.

……

Crack!

After I beheaded a Snot Dragon and killed it at the same time, Beiming Xue suddenly pointed to the distance and said, "Look over there! What is that?"

There was a glowing blue circle with runes floating above it on the ground 30 meters away from us. It was clearly a magic formation and, assuming that I wasn’t sorely mistaken, a teleportation formation.

Beiming Xue blinked. "It wasn’t there five seconds ago. What triggered it?"

I hurriedly unsheathed my weapon and said, "Weapons out, girls. It’s probably a player’s teleportation formation. I had no idea you could teleport in directly from outside."

Lin Yixin’s eyes glimmered with killing intent. "Nah, this is fine. All we need to do is kill whoever comes out of it."

"You perfectly voiced my thoughts!"

I charged first because I had high HP and high Defense. No matter who this mysterious teleporter was, there was no chance they could one-shot me. The light grew brighter, and the teleportation formation grew noisier. Then, a human shape abruptly took form on the other side teleportation formation and stepped through!

Thud!

Without hesitation, I leaped three meters into the air and brought my Chill of the Nine Provinces right down on their head!

"Ah?"

To my surprise, the figure let out a girlish cry and raised a shiny scepter to protect herself. She actually managed to parry my overhead strike! However, the difference between our Strength stats was too huge, and she was sent stumbling into the wall behind her.

Crack!

The tip of my blade sank into the stone wall as I pressed the Chill of the Nine Provinces against her neck. I asked, "Who are you?"

Instead of resisting, the woman pressed a left palm to my chest and giggled. "Calm down, you. It’s me!"

She then pulled down her cloak and revealed herself to be Stranger of Three Lifetimes! The mage shot me a cheeky smile before asking, "So? How was it? My parry skills have improved, right?"

Words could hardly describe my feelings right now. "The fuck? Momo? You... were you trying to kill yourself? You teleported over to an unknown floor, and you didn’t even turn on your Magic Shield? A Dragonman Blade Devil would’ve cut you to five pieces!"

Stranger of Three Lifetimes pouted. "I forgot. Well, even the best can make mistakes sometimes, right? It’s not too big of a deal though. Eyes Like Water and the others are showing up real soon, so…"

It was as she said. The magic formation flashed a couple more times, and Eyes Like Water and some of the best players of Blazing Hot Lips stepped out into the open. They were a party of ten including Stranger of Three Lifetimes.

……

He Yi walked up to the party with a smile on her face. "How did you guys teleport directly to the third floor? It’s incredible!"

Stranger of Three Lifetimes looked confused. "It’s not that hard? When we entered the second floor and killed our 7th Dragonman Blade Devil, it dropped a teleportation scroll that teleports a maximum of ten players from the second to the third floor. The teleportation formation only lasts 30 seconds, so we had to move relatively quickly."

The magic formation behind us was disappearing as she spoke. We didn’t know about the other players, but we were now sharing a floor with Stranger of Three Lifetimes’ party. After a brief discussion, we decided to split up and go our separate ways. Ancient Sword would be moving clockwise and sweeping the Snot Dragons on the way just like before, while Blazing Hot Lips would be exploring in the other direction. We bade them goodbye after that.

The accident was a fortunate one, because we now knew that teleportation scrolls existed in the Dragon God Cave. It would only allow us to skip a floor, but it was still an excellent tool when used properly.

……

Almost half an hour later, we arrived at a gigantic statue of a dragon.

Drip… drip...

The statue’s jaws were opened like it was trying to devour something. I could even see translucent beads dripping down from the corner of its mouth. I checked the coordinates being shown by Dark Pupils and frowned. "Why can’t I see a mob anywhere even though there’s supposedly a red dot at this spot? Strange..."

Lin Yixin pointed at the statue with widened eyes. "Maybe it’s because… you know… that massive statue…"

I shuddered and backed away from it instinctively. "That’s unusual. Could the boss really be hiding inside the statue?"

He Yi nodded. "We’ve explored the third floor for so long that we’ve gathered over a hundred Snot Dragon Cards. We’ve also explored almost 75% of this floor. This has to be the boss, or Stranger of Three Lifetimes’ party would’ve encountered it before us.

So I slowly stepped toward the statue and touched it with my hand. The second I did, a tremendous power that felt like electricity repelled my fingers and began shaking the ground. It wasn’t long before cracks started appearing everywhere.

"Holy shit! Withdraw!"

I grabbed He Yi and Beiming Xue’s hands, and Lin Yixin scooped up Murong Mingyue in a bridal carry. We ran as quickly as we could as the floor beneath our feet literally crumbled away into the void. If we were even a second too slow, we would’ve fallen into god-knows-where. When we looked back, we saw that the stone of the "statue" fall away bit by bit to reveal a wounded, bleeding giant dragon. Not only that, a boss everyone wanted dead was riding on top of it—Mingyu!

"What the fuck?"

I stopped in my tracks, used a Fire War God Card and spun the Chill of the Nine Provinces in my hands. I growled, "What is going on? Why is Mingyu together with this boss?"

The giant dragon let out a powerful roar, but its brutalized black scales revealed its true condition. It looked like it had just gone through a major battle. However, its head alone was two meters long, and its eyes were bloody and full of murderous intent. As its whiskers bobbed up and down, it spoke to us in the draconic language, "Young adventurers, you should not have come to Dragon Domain. This place isn’t for humans, hasn’t been for a long time now, so you will pay the price of your recklessness!"

I stared at Mingyu. He had lost an arm during the previous battle, and to my surprise, his HP was sitting at 3% or so, which was the HP he was left with after he took a massive hit from Xinran. It was probably because of story reasons, but his HP wouldn’t regenerate any higher than that. This meant that we had an actual chance at killing Mingyu; a Quasi-Divine Rank Boss, the No. 1 of the Top 10 bosses of Spirit of Grief, and the man who once made the continent of Spirit of Grief tremble. I was certain that he would drop one of the Twelve Divine Armaments if we managed to kill him!

Chiang!

I unsheathed my weapon and pointed it straight at Mingyu. "Xinran failed to kill you, but that’s fine. I’ll finish her job for her!"

While saying this, I scanned the giant dragon with Dark Pupils. It was definitely much stronger than Swordback Dragon Mons—

Dark Despair Tiggris (Ancient Immortal Rank Boss)

Level: 295

Attack: 55000~72000

Defense: 80000

HP: 75000000

Skills: Bloody Bite, Dark Flames of Fury, Giant Dragon Flame Curse, Dominated By the Divine

Introduction: The Dark Dragon Tiggris used to be a leader of Dragon Domain. It was defeated when Lin Na and the Night Creatures invaded, but it clung to the commandments of the Dragon Domain and refused to become a threat to humanity. Furious, Lin Na petrified and imprisoned it in Dragon God Cave. In the end, Tiggris wasn’t able to fight off thousands and thousands of years of corruption and became a puppet of the dark.

……

Mingyu smiled savagely from atop the black dragon’s head. "I recognize you. You’re that brat who stole my Dragonslaying Sword! For that offense, I will kill you right here and now! Now, old friend, who was the one who injured you so? Never mind. When this battle is over, I shall treat you and restore you to your former strength!"

The black dragon roared, "Thank you, my master. Tiggris will fight for your sake!"

I said in the party channel, "This black dragon has over 70k Attack, so Eve and Yiyi should avoid contact with it as much as possible. Just leave all the tanking to me and buff yourselves with the Snot Dragon Card. Replace me only if things get dangerous, and keep a close eye on your stun skill cooldowns. This is probably not going to be a boss we can defeat head-on. We’ll have to stun it repeatedly to manage its DPS!"

"Mn!"

I kicked the battle off with Dragon Slaying Slash that struck the black dragon’s head and Mingyu. However, only the black dragon was losing HP. In fact, Mingyu was using the black dragon to fight us. Otherwise, I could’ve just cast Purple Dragon Howl and kill him on the spot.

Swhoosh!

Next, I tossed the Chill of the Nine Provinces at the black dragon’s lower chin and hit it for 279882 damage, tearing off some scales. Finally, the elder grew furious and roared, "Die, brat!"

It spat a jet of black flames that engulfed both me and He Yi. It was a one-line attack with a width of about 5 yards that would’ve caught Lin Yixin and Beiming Xue too if they weren’t that nimble on their feet. Both of us lost a ton of HP—

1171767!

1572652!

……

The black dragon rushed me and struck my Cyan Dragon Shield with its mighty claws, giving us almost no time to recover. Not about to wait and see if it could instakill us, I used Xuanyuan Art and healed myself and He Yi for 50% HP. I then checked my Divine Energy Points. After all the Snot Dragons I killed, I was sitting at 200 points once more (the higher the rank of a mob, the more Divine Energy Points they yielded), so I activated Heavenly River Transformation and charged. So what if it was one and a half of a super boss? It would bow to our power all the same!