1542

"Heavens, a Quasi-Divine Rank NPC?"

Li Chengfeng asked while floating in the air and crossing his arms, "Why are the NPCs involving themselves in the Nation War?[1]"

He Yi shook her head. "Who knows? Maybe some player did a quest and triggered something?"

I replied, "It seems like that is the case. For example, Xinran probably would’ve agreed if I had asked her to fight this Nation War for me. It’s not unthinkable that this Dwarven Tamer Lochdan had agreed to join this Nation War because a player close to him asked him to, or maybe it was prompted by a quest as Eve said."

Gui Guzi said, "Well, who cares? We’re going to have to defeat them one way or another!"

"Be careful. This NPC tamer is way stronger than the average tamer. It can summon 10 Mountain Giants at the same time!" Stranger of Three Lifetimes warned.

……

I unsheathed the Xuanyuan Sword and said, "Chengfeng, Little Xin, want to see if we can take out the tamer first? If we succeed, we won’t need to fight against 10 Mountain Giants at once, not to mention that the giants can probably do massive damage to structures!"

"Sure, big bro!"

I kicked off the ground and flew toward Blood Soul’s formation, Li Chengfeng and Lian Xin trailing closely behind me. The Mountain Giants were currently standing at the forefront of their formation, and sitting on one of the giants’ shoulders was none other than the NPC tamer we were looking to snipe, Lochdan. He gave his thorny whip a swing before letting out a cackle. "Go, my precious little babies. Conquer Fortress of the Iron Halberd and kill everyone inside of it!"

I raised my hand and muttered God Binding Art under my breath. The red-colored skill struck Lochdan squarely in the chest, but the divine arms failed to immobilize him. Unfortunately, the skill’s success rate against a Quasi-Divine Rank NPC was lower than 50%. Alarmed, the tamer immediately rose to his feet and surrounded himself in a protective shield. Then, he swung his thorny whip straight at me!

Crack!

The whip struck the Dihai Shield and numbed my arm a little. While the boss was distracted, Li Chengfeng closed in on him and executed a 7-hit Dragonbone Flurry.

MISS!

MISS!

MISS!

……

7 big misses later, Li Chengfeng felt like his heart was about to shatter into a million pieces. "Are you kidding me? My skill only deleted 1% of its shield durability!?"

Before he finished speaking, two Mountain Giants raised their stone clubs and swung at me and Li Chengfeng!

Bang! Bang!

There was a tremendous amount of force behind the swings. We might be divine players, but our Strength was still no match for a boss’s. Li Chengfeng and I crashed unceremoniously against the ground in opposite directions. The attack didn’t hurt us too much, but it further hammered in the point that our plan to assassinate Lochdan was a complete failure. Even Lian Xin with her powerful spells could only decrease Lochdan’s shield durability little by little.

"You are courting death!"

Lochdan let out a strange cry before landing a powerful blow on Lian Xin’s Telekinetic Shield. Not only did she lose 37% of her shield durability, the whip also dealt around 100k damage to her. This meant that the boss's Attack could partially pierce Magic Shields. It was bad!

I returned to the sky and caught Lian Xin by the waist. "Time to go, everyone. We can’t defeat him without a priest, not to mention that he’s supported by plenty of players!"

Buzz!

It was at this moment a gigantic red sword pierced the sky. It was the goddamned SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill, Odin Slash!

Soul Slayer, the boss of Blood Soul cackled maliciously. "Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand, Legendary Brave and Lian Xing! So nice to meet your outstanding faces here! Now, die!"

I searched the database quickly and confirmed that Odin Slash had an AoE range of 150 yards. It should be enough!

I abruptly gave Lian Xin a mighty push and shouted, "Fly, Little Xin! You can’t tank an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill!"

The smart girl quickly caught onto my plan and used my push to reach max flight speed as quickly as she could. She was able to escape Odin Slash’s range in time, but Li Chengfeng and I were not so lucky. As a swathe of red slashed toward us, I raised my shield in a futile attempt to reduce the incoming damage[2]!

Boom!

1,484,772!

3,457,477!

……

Both Li Chengfeng and I lost a chunk of HP. Unfortunately for Soul Slayer, he neither had Candlelight Shadow’s Dragon Tooth Arm nor Red Maple’s incredible crit luck. He only did 1.48 million damage to me, and about one-quarter of Li Chengfeng's HP. It was because most of his equipment was offensive, and not many of them gave damage reduction.

"Time to go?" asked Li Chengfeng while forcing himself to stop with divine energy before he would crash to the ground.

I nodded. "Right after we treat them to our own Ancient Divine Skills!"

"Gotcha!"

We activated Heavenly River Transformation and locked our targets on Soul Slayer. At the same time, I prayed for the Xuanyuan Sword to get lucky and trigger its sextuple damage effect. With my Attack, there were only a handful of players in the world who could survive it!

Swhoosh! A column of golden light pierced the heavens as I swung the scalding hot energy blade at the enemy in front of me. Soul Slayer was my target, but the cavalrymen, archers, mages and more who were standing too close to him were damaged as well. The Ancient Divine Skill’s direct damage and splash damage combined were enough to kill a lot of people—

3,892,767!

4,277,373!

4,516,631!

……

The Xuanyuan Slash’s damage calculation was affected by my Attack, the enemy’s damage reduction, and especially the gap between our levels. Soul Slayer lost almost 30% of his HP in one go, and over 95% of the players around him were one-shot [3]. Before he could recover, Li Chengfeng’s Crimson Firmament Slash followed in earnest!

Boom!

That was another 20% of his HP gone just like that. Now, Soul Slayer was sitting at half health only. When he saw me raising my arm, he immediately turned the ring on his finger and activated an invincibility skill!

Xuanyuan Art!

I thought that a show of strength would be great in this situation, and I was right. Not only did every enemy within 1,000 yards of me lose 70% of their HP, many of them didn’t even realize that it was due to the Xuanyuan Art. "What the fuck! Who the hell deleted 70% of my HP!? Heal me, priest! Fuck, what the fuck do you think your job is? Heal me to full health already!"

Li Chengfeng and I exchanged a grin with each other before flying back to Fortress of the Iron Halberd. A moment later, a dense shower of arrows and magic spells trailed our backs. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to roleplay a one-man army, but the game was balanced in a way that made it impossible for any one person to handle thousands of archers alone. Even a super tank like me could die if I was chain-stunned with Shock Arrows, not to mention that they had a powerful cavalryman like Soul Slayer. Another Odin Slash plus the full might of Blood Soul would be more than enough to wipe me from the surface of the continent.

……

Half an hour later, I landed on the edge of the wall and ordered, "Prepare for battle! When the NPCs show up later, be sure to focus-fire the Mountain Giants one by one. That tamer should be useless if we took out all of his summoners. Beiming, Little Xin, work with me to take out Soul Slayer if the chance presents itself. Until the situation changes, we may as well focus on killing their leaders all the way!"

The girls nodded. "Will do, big bro!"

Beneath the walls, High Fighting Spirits looked up at me and asked, "Vice leader, are you sure we’re going to stop Soul Slayer with so few people? You’ve withdrawn all the Dragonlight Cavalrymen into the fortress. Is 100k Profound Wolf Cavalrymen really enough to stop the enemy?"

I shook my head. "Not even close!"

"Then why?"

"It’s because… er, it’s because of some reason I can’t tell you. Everyone who dies in battle can receive a compensation of 1,000 gold at Dark Moon City when the Nation War is over, so just do your best…"

"Got it!"

Beside me, He Yi whispered, "Are you trying to preserve the Dragonlight Cavalry, Lu Chen?"

I curled my lips and nodded. "Yeah. You noticed what they’re doing, don’t you? The Northern Alliance is sending their guilds over one by one because they’re plotting to chip away at our main force until nothing’s left. I have big plans for the Dragonlight Cavalry later, so I can’t lose them to the enemy’s strategy. Instead, I’m going to sacrifice the Profound Wolf Cavalry and the Thunder Cavalry and keep the Northern Alliance out of Dawn Valley for 24 hours. All we need to do is to hold out until Swallow Ear Canton falls, and we’ll finally be able to go on the offensive!"

"Mn. I trust you, you don’t need to explain yourself to me!"

"I know, but you’re the boss. I gotta let you know about my strategic intent, right?"

"..."

……

Unlike Olympus’ wave approach, Blood Soul opted to go throw everything—cavalrymen, siege weapons, cloud ladders and of course, the 10 Mountain Giants—at us right from the get go. It was inevitable that most of our ranged firepower would be attracted to the Mountain Giants, so their ground units would be able to approach the walls with far less casualties. Therefore, it was up to the Profound Wolf Cavalry to hold them at bay. This was going to be a costly battle for sure.

Bang bang bang…

A pair of purple war drums operated by a beastman berserker had also been set up on the distant hill. It buffed the players’ Attack by 7%. It was a negligible number, but it was certainly better than nothing at all.

I floated into the air before saying, "Eve, we should head down and join the battle line as well. Otherwise, Fighting Spirits and the others may not be able to endure the assault."

"Mn."

On the walls, Stranger of Three Lifetimes ordered loudly, "Give me your full attention, priests! Each first-rate cavalryman is going to get between 3 to 5 priests’ worth of dedicated healing! The small fries can die, but the first-rate players cannot! Let’s do this!"

As I landed in front of the line of Profound Wolf Cavalrymen, I grimaced. "Momo acts like an SM queen sometimes, doesn’t she?"

"If only the queen could whip Soul Slayer dead…" Li Chengfeng grinned.

"Get ready. The enemy’s Fire Catapults should be able to hit us any moment later!"

"Mn!"

Less than 10 seconds later, flaming payloads fell from the sky and crashed into our players like shotgun pellets. Gui Guzi, He Yi and more used their shields to block the attack, but Li Chengfeng and I simply expanded our Domains and created an invisible wall in front of us. It was enough to bounce off nearly 50% of the Fire Catapults’ payloads.

……

"Full speed! Get through the enemy’s line of fire in one go!"

The shouter was a halberd wielder and a thousand-man corps commander. He rode a black warhorse that gave him incredible movement speed. He was probably a core player of Blood Soul.

However, the moment he got close to the line of fire, an arrow abruptly struck his forehead and froze him in place. Then, a beautiful girl riding a Fire Phoenix in the sky fired shots that dealt over 1 million damage per hit. At the same time, a deep blue matrix formation expanded beneath the corps commander’s feet and carved up his body with blades of ice. Lian Xin’s attack was just as deadly as Beiming Xue’s!

The first man to enter the line of fire dropped dead to the two girls in just 4 seconds.

1. T/N: says he while pretending Princess Karinshan hasn’t helped them massively in the previous war, even though she’s a special NPC ☜

2. T/N: it truly is futile because the skill ignores Defense and Guard, so you should take the same amount of damage whether you blocked it with your shield or not ☜

3. T/N: it’s mostly the splash effect’s work really, all ADS have lost the ability to one-shot a long time ago ☜

"Heavens, a Quasi-Divine Rank NPC?"

Li Chengfeng asked while floating in the air and crossing his arms, "Why are the NPCs involving themselves in the Nation War?[1]"

He Yi shook her head. "Who knows? Maybe some player did a quest and triggered something?"

I replied, "It seems like that is the case. For example, Xinran probably would’ve agreed if I had asked her to fight this Nation War for me. It’s not unthinkable that this Dwarven Tamer Lochdan had agreed to join this Nation War because a player close to him asked him to, or maybe it was prompted by a quest as Eve said."

Gui Guzi said, "Well, who cares? We’re going to have to defeat them one way or another!"

"Be careful. This NPC tamer is way stronger than the average tamer. It can summon 10 Mountain Giants at the same time!" Stranger of Three Lifetimes warned.

……

I unsheathed the Xuanyuan Sword and said, "Chengfeng, Little Xin, want to see if we can take out the tamer first? If we succeed, we won’t need to fight against 10 Mountain Giants at once, not to mention that the giants can probably do massive damage to structures!"

"Sure, big bro!"

I kicked off the ground and flew toward Blood Soul’s formation, Li Chengfeng and Lian Xin trailing closely behind me. The Mountain Giants were currently standing at the forefront of their formation, and sitting on one of the giants’ shoulders was none other than the NPC tamer we were looking to snipe, Lochdan. He gave his thorny whip a swing before letting out a cackle. "Go, my precious little babies. Conquer Fortress of the Iron Halberd and kill everyone inside of it!"

I raised my hand and muttered God Binding Art under my breath. The red-colored skill struck Lochdan squarely in the chest, but the divine arms failed to immobilize him. Unfortunately, the skill’s success rate against a Quasi-Divine Rank NPC was lower than 50%. Alarmed, the tamer immediately rose to his feet and surrounded himself in a protective shield. Then, he swung his thorny whip straight at me!

Crack!

The whip struck the Dihai Shield and numbed my arm a little. While the boss was distracted, Li Chengfeng closed in on him and executed a 7-hit Dragonbone Flurry.

MISS!

MISS!

MISS!

……

7 big misses later, Li Chengfeng felt like his heart was about to shatter into a million pieces. "Are you kidding me? My skill only deleted 1% of its shield durability!?"

Before he finished speaking, two Mountain Giants raised their stone clubs and swung at me and Li Chengfeng!

Bang! Bang!

There was a tremendous amount of force behind the swings. We might be divine players, but our Strength was still no match for a boss’s. Li Chengfeng and I crashed unceremoniously against the ground in opposite directions. The attack didn’t hurt us too much, but it further hammered in the point that our plan to assassinate Lochdan was a complete failure. Even Lian Xin with her powerful spells could only decrease Lochdan’s shield durability little by little.

"You are courting death!"

Lochdan let out a strange cry before landing a powerful blow on Lian Xin’s Telekinetic Shield. Not only did she lose 37% of her shield durability, the whip also dealt around 100k damage to her. This meant that the boss's Attack could partially pierce Magic Shields. It was bad!

I returned to the sky and caught Lian Xin by the waist. "Time to go, everyone. We can’t defeat him without a priest, not to mention that he’s supported by plenty of players!"

Buzz!

It was at this moment a gigantic red sword pierced the sky. It was the goddamned SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill, Odin Slash!

Soul Slayer, the boss of Blood Soul cackled maliciously. "Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand, Legendary Brave and Lian Xing! So nice to meet your outstanding faces here! Now, die!"

I searched the database quickly and confirmed that Odin Slash had an AoE range of 150 yards. It should be enough!

I abruptly gave Lian Xin a mighty push and shouted, "Fly, Little Xin! You can’t tank an SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill!"

The smart girl quickly caught onto my plan and used my push to reach max flight speed as quickly as she could. She was able to escape Odin Slash’s range in time, but Li Chengfeng and I were not so lucky. As a swathe of red slashed toward us, I raised my shield in a futile attempt to reduce the incoming damage[2]!

Boom!

1,484,772!

3,457,477!

……

Both Li Chengfeng and I lost a chunk of HP. Unfortunately for Soul Slayer, he neither had Candlelight Shadow’s Dragon Tooth Arm nor Red Maple’s incredible crit luck. He only did 1.48 million damage to me, and about one-quarter of Li Chengfeng's HP. It was because most of his equipment was offensive, and not many of them gave damage reduction.

"Time to go?" asked Li Chengfeng while forcing himself to stop with divine energy before he would crash to the ground.

I nodded. "Right after we treat them to our own Ancient Divine Skills!"

"Gotcha!"

We activated Heavenly River Transformation and locked our targets on Soul Slayer. At the same time, I prayed for the Xuanyuan Sword to get lucky and trigger its sextuple damage effect. With my Attack, there were only a handful of players in the world who could survive it!

Swhoosh! A column of golden light pierced the heavens as I swung the scalding hot energy blade at the enemy in front of me. Soul Slayer was my target, but the cavalrymen, archers, mages and more who were standing too close to him were damaged as well. The Ancient Divine Skill’s direct damage and splash damage combined were enough to kill a lot of people—

3,892,767!

4,277,373!

4,516,631!

……

The Xuanyuan Slash’s damage calculation was affected by my Attack, the enemy’s damage reduction, and especially the gap between our levels. Soul Slayer lost almost 30% of his HP in one go, and over 95% of the players around him were one-shot [3]. Before he could recover, Li Chengfeng’s Crimson Firmament Slash followed in earnest!

Boom!

That was another 20% of his HP gone just like that. Now, Soul Slayer was sitting at half health only. When he saw me raising my arm, he immediately turned the ring on his finger and activated an invincibility skill!

Xuanyuan Art!

I thought that a show of strength would be great in this situation, and I was right. Not only did every enemy within 1,000 yards of me lose 70% of their HP, many of them didn’t even realize that it was due to the Xuanyuan Art. "What the fuck! Who the hell deleted 70% of my HP!? Heal me, priest! Fuck, what the fuck do you think your job is? Heal me to full health already!"

Li Chengfeng and I exchanged a grin with each other before flying back to Fortress of the Iron Halberd. A moment later, a dense shower of arrows and magic spells trailed our backs. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to roleplay a one-man army, but the game was balanced in a way that made it impossible for any one person to handle thousands of archers alone. Even a super tank like me could die if I was chain-stunned with Shock Arrows, not to mention that they had a powerful cavalryman like Soul Slayer. Another Odin Slash plus the full might of Blood Soul would be more than enough to wipe me from the surface of the continent.

……

Half an hour later, I landed on the edge of the wall and ordered, "Prepare for battle! When the NPCs show up later, be sure to focus-fire the Mountain Giants one by one. That tamer should be useless if we took out all of his summoners. Beiming, Little Xin, work with me to take out Soul Slayer if the chance presents itself. Until the situation changes, we may as well focus on killing their leaders all the way!"

The girls nodded. "Will do, big bro!"

Beneath the walls, High Fighting Spirits looked up at me and asked, "Vice leader, are you sure we’re going to stop Soul Slayer with so few people? You’ve withdrawn all the Dragonlight Cavalrymen into the fortress. Is 100k Profound Wolf Cavalrymen really enough to stop the enemy?"

I shook my head. "Not even close!"

"Then why?"

"It’s because… er, it’s because of some reason I can’t tell you. Everyone who dies in battle can receive a compensation of 1,000 gold at Dark Moon City when the Nation War is over, so just do your best…"

"Got it!"

Beside me, He Yi whispered, "Are you trying to preserve the Dragonlight Cavalry, Lu Chen?"

I curled my lips and nodded. "Yeah. You noticed what they’re doing, don’t you? The Northern Alliance is sending their guilds over one by one because they’re plotting to chip away at our main force until nothing’s left. I have big plans for the Dragonlight Cavalry later, so I can’t lose them to the enemy’s strategy. Instead, I’m going to sacrifice the Profound Wolf Cavalry and the Thunder Cavalry and keep the Northern Alliance out of Dawn Valley for 24 hours. All we need to do is to hold out until Swallow Ear Canton falls, and we’ll finally be able to go on the offensive!"

"Mn. I trust you, you don’t need to explain yourself to me!"

"I know, but you’re the boss. I gotta let you know about my strategic intent, right?"

"..."

……

Unlike Olympus’ wave approach, Blood Soul opted to go throw everything—cavalrymen, siege weapons, cloud ladders and of course, the 10 Mountain Giants—at us right from the get go. It was inevitable that most of our ranged firepower would be attracted to the Mountain Giants, so their ground units would be able to approach the walls with far less casualties. Therefore, it was up to the Profound Wolf Cavalry to hold them at bay. This was going to be a costly battle for sure.

Bang bang bang…

A pair of purple war drums operated by a beastman berserker had also been set up on the distant hill. It buffed the players’ Attack by 7%. It was a negligible number, but it was certainly better than nothing at all.

I floated into the air before saying, "Eve, we should head down and join the battle line as well. Otherwise, Fighting Spirits and the others may not be able to endure the assault."

"Mn."

On the walls, Stranger of Three Lifetimes ordered loudly, "Give me your full attention, priests! Each first-rate cavalryman is going to get between 3 to 5 priests’ worth of dedicated healing! The small fries can die, but the first-rate players cannot! Let’s do this!"

As I landed in front of the line of Profound Wolf Cavalrymen, I grimaced. "Momo acts like an SM queen sometimes, doesn’t she?"

"If only the queen could whip Soul Slayer dead…" Li Chengfeng grinned.

"Get ready. The enemy’s Fire Catapults should be able to hit us any moment later!"

"Mn!"

Less than 10 seconds later, flaming payloads fell from the sky and crashed into our players like shotgun pellets. Gui Guzi, He Yi and more used their shields to block the attack, but Li Chengfeng and I simply expanded our Domains and created an invisible wall in front of us. It was enough to bounce off nearly 50% of the Fire Catapults’ payloads.

……

"Full speed! Get through the enemy’s line of fire in one go!"

The shouter was a halberd wielder and a thousand-man corps commander. He rode a black warhorse that gave him incredible movement speed. He was probably a core player of Blood Soul.

However, the moment he got close to the line of fire, an arrow abruptly struck his forehead and froze him in place. Then, a beautiful girl riding a Fire Phoenix in the sky fired shots that dealt over 1 million damage per hit. At the same time, a deep blue matrix formation expanded beneath the corps commander’s feet and carved up his body with blades of ice. Lian Xin’s attack was just as deadly as Beiming Xue’s!

The first man to enter the line of fire dropped dead to the two girls in just 4 seconds.

1. T/N: says he while pretending Princess Karinshan hasn’t helped them massively in the previous war, even though she’s a special NPC ☜

2. T/N: it truly is futile because the skill ignores Defense and Guard, so you should take the same amount of damage whether you blocked it with your shield or not ☜

3. T/N: it’s mostly the splash effect’s work really, all ADS have lost the ability to one-shot a long time ago ☜