Everyone was practically prostrating themselves in worship. Even Yue Zhongmian had to admit that this guy had, through pure skill, accomplished something impossible at level ten—pulling and holding seven mobs in a group at once. It was downright unreasonable.
“Brother, your Battle Mage technique is just... absolutely domineering.” This time, Tian Qi's words carried not a shred of flattery. If he hadn't offered that compliment, he would have choked on the feeling building up inside him.
“Heh, just so-so.” Lord Grim, surrounded by the seven mobs, thrusting, poking, slashing, and hacking away, was still handling it with ease. Tian Qi and the others felt embarrassed just standing by and watching, so they all swarmed in. They were veterans too, with solid aggro control, and they didn't disrupt Lord Grim's rhythm of holding the mobs. The seven mobs, which had seemed so difficult to deal with, were resolved with ease in the end. But all four of them understood that this easy resolution was built on that person's freakish performance. Without such a person, this situation would never have existed.
Just as the seven small spiders were wiped out, a strange screech rang out—the first mini-boss made its grand entrance. Before anyone saw the spider, they heard it, and then a thick cloud of purple mist came spraying toward them.
“It's a Venom Spider!” Tian Qi shouted. But the purple mist came too suddenly and covered too wide an area. Two of them failed to dodge it, and hurriedly ran while pulling out antidotes to use. After using them, they were shocked—their HP was still bubbling downward!
“Why didn't it work?” the two cried out in alarm.
“Your antidotes are too low-level,” Ye Xiu said.
“Damn it!” the two cursed in unison. This was a problem they never would have noticed before—having only run this dungeon at low levels back then and then returned at higher levels to steamroll it. Back then, their levels suppressed the monsters, and the monsters' paltry little poison wasn't even worth a glance; they never even thought about using antidotes. But now, they had carefully prepared antidotes, only for them to be useless in the crucial boss fight. Wasn't that just screwing them over?
Lord Grim tossed a heal to whichever of the two had the lower HP, then charged toward Boss No. 1, all while directing the unpoisoned Tian Qi and Yue Zhongmian. Pointing his spear in a direction, he called out: “Tian Qi, take the one o'clock position. Little Yueyue, go to four o'clock.”
“Little Yueyue...” Yue Zhongmian nearly coughed up blood, but now was not the time to quibble. Tian Qi, without even asking, ran to the one o'clock position, and Yue Zhongmian hastily took his spot as well. Boss No. 1 came charging out along with the poison mist. The thing was burly and thick-bodied, a full two sizes bigger than an ordinary spider. Against monsters of such massive size, landing hits was noticeably easier for players than hitting small monsters like the Dark Night Cat Demon. But big monsters had their own advantage: being heavier, the effects of launcher skills and other displacement-inducing skills were discounted on them—by how much depended on the monster's specific weight and the attacker's strength.
This Boss No. 1 was already a behemoth to the current players. Lord Grim's pop-up thrust landed, but the boss didn't so much as tremble. Clearly, a normal attack's upward lift no longer counted as any kind of launcher effect on it.
Ye Xiu, with all his experience, was naturally not surprised by this. His fingers flicked rapidly, and Lord Grim fired off four more consecutive thrusts. The big spider screeched, reared its head, and spat a mouthful of thick mist over—but Lord Grim had already turned and sprinted away.
Though this boss was huge, it moved no slower than an ordinary spider, and its jumping ability was outstanding—it came bounding over, ready to crush Lord Grim like Mount Tai falling from the sky. Lord Grim rolled away. Over there, Yue Zhongmian, newly dubbed “Little Yueyue,” was feeling lonely: “Hey, you told us to get into position so you could play with it all by yourself?”
“Those two—one to the seven o'clock spot, one to the nine o'clock spot,” Ye Xiu called.
“How far apart?” the two asked as they ran.
“Two-meter radius!” Ye Xiu said.
After the two had also taken their positions, the four of them stood in a small circle, staring at each other, not knowing what this was supposed to accomplish. Watching him still running circles around the boss alone, was he just assigning them seats so they could watch the show?
Lord Grim dodged left and right, luring the boss until it finally began charging toward them. The four hurriedly prepared for battle, but at that moment the boss suddenly leaped, vaulting high into the air, about to come down and flatten Yue Zhongmian. Yue Zhongmian hurriedly tried to pull away and dodge—only to hear Ye Xiu shout: “Don't move!!”
Retribution! This guy is using this chance to get back at me! Yue Zhongmian's mind was crystal clear. Without thinking twice, he disobeyed Ye Xiu and rolled away to safety. But when he looked up, Lord Grim had already struck the falling spider boss's belly with a Sky Strike. As a dedicated launcher skill, Sky Strike's lift effect was naturally far stronger than a normal attack's upward thrust. The descending spider, struck by this blow, stalled in midair, its direction of movement already shifted. Though not much of Sky Strike's launcher effect remained, the monster was airborne to begin with, so flying off in this altered direction, it landed right in the middle of the four players' positions.
“Tian Qi, Front Kick. Nine o'clock, Chain Thrusts. Seven o'clock, Knockback. Little Yueyue, get back in position!” After running dungeons with these four for so long, Ye Xiu had long since learned which class skills they possessed. Now, having arranged the encirclement, he was even directing them on which skills to use.
Tian Qi charged in with a Front Kick—a Striker skill with a slight pushing effect on monsters. Discounted as it was against this big spider boss, it still nudged it back a little.
The player at the nine o'clock position then leaped in with a Chain Thrust. This Swordsman skill was similar in nature to Tian Qi's Front Kick, and the boss, kicked right up in front of them, was knocked back again. By this point, these experienced players had already grasped Ye Xiu's intent. The player at seven o'clock met it without the slightest carelessness, using a Knockback.
His was a Knight skill—its meaning obvious from the name—and its displacement effect was the best of all their skills. But the four o'clock position the boss was being knocked toward had no one to receive it. That was supposed to be Yue Zhongmian's spot, but because he thought Ye Xiu was trying to get him killed, he had dodged off to the side. Though he was already running back, it was a bit too late.
Everyone had already figured out that Ye Xiu intended to use these displacement skills to bounce the boss around like a billiard ball—and the plan was well suited to the skills and strengths of the four of them. And what were their strengths? Familiarity! All four of them were friends from the old servers, already in sync with one another, capable of pulling off this kind of coordination.
But now, the setup they had worked so hard to create was about to be ruined because of Yue Zhongmian. Even Tian Qi and the others were feeling a bit displeased.
At the very critical moment when the boss was about to be knocked out of the circle, Lord Grim's figure suddenly appeared at the four o'clock position.
Everyone was stunned. Lord Grim had originally gone to the eleven o'clock position—no one had seen him move, so how had he suddenly appeared here? They looked over at eleven o'clock and found that, sure enough, there was a Lord Grim standing there too.
“Holy crap!” Tian Qi suddenly understood.
Ninja level 10 skill: Shadow Clone Technique.
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Third update, coming right up~~