The Night Cat Demon suddenly leaped into the air, abandoning Yue Zhongmian, who had been attacking it all along, and swiped a claw at Yangguan, another team member attacking from the side.
"Ah, sorry!" Yangguan was a newbie—how could he dodge such a fast strike? And even as it hit, he hurriedly apologized, all because Yue Zhongmian had been schooling the three newbies the whole way here, drilling into them the team discipline that OT was always the DPS's fault, never the MT's.
"Stop, don't attack!" Yue Zhongmian hurriedly stopped Yangguan from retaliating and rushed forward to try to reclaim the aggro. But in just that moment, after clawing Yangguan a few times, the Night Cat Demon pounced again with another flying swipe at yet another team member.
"Damn it, chain OT! Are you guys messing with me?!" Yue Zhongmian roared in fury. The team member under attack was also scrambling in a panic, and he was a cloth-armor Mage. Getting clawed by the berserk Night Cat Demon was no small matter—his HP was draining away rapidly. Ye Xiu reacted with incredible speed, immediately having Lord Grim start healing him. But alas, some things couldn't be solved by skill alone. A cloth-armor Mage tanking a berserk Hidden Boss—even with healing, how many seconds could he last?
The answer soon revealed itself: seven seconds. Lord Grim's healing spell was still on cooldown, while the berserk Night Cat Demon's claws and bites flowed together in one unrelenting sequence. Yue Zhongmian pounced over to rescue him but failed to reclaim the aggro in time, and the Mage player perished.
In Glory, dying during a dungeon run meant leaving the dungeon—there was no corpse running for a second attempt. In other words, the original five-man team, with one death, was now a four-man team.
"Damn it, lining up to OT one by one—might as well just kill me!!" Yue Zhongmian was breaking down. After the Mage died, the Cat Demon's aggro still didn't return to him, and it ferociously clawed at the third player instead.
The third player was also a cloth-armor Mage, but this time, Ye Xiu simply didn't have Lord Grim heal him. He had Lord Grim's healing spell return to Yangguan instead.
Using the healing spell to keep the Mage up would only let him survive seven seconds against the Night Cat Demon, but within those seven seconds, Yangguan would die. That was because the berserk Night Cat Demon didn't just have increased attack speed and damage—it also inflicted a status condition: Bleed.
Yangguan had unfortunately been inflicted with Bleed by the Night Cat Demon, and Ye Xiu had been keeping a close eye on his HP drain. Healing the Mage now would buy only seven seconds, but within those seven seconds Yangguan would surely die, and after those seven seconds the Mage would die too. Unless Yue Zhongmian could reclaim the aggro within those seven seconds.
It was as if Ye Xiu had lost faith in Yue Zhongmian. He outright abandoned the Mage and healed Yangguan instead. This decisive move enraged Yue Zhongmian, who burst out cursing: "Healer, what the hell are you doing?"
Ye Xiu didn't answer. Over there, the Mage, with no support, instantly collapsed. Amid Yue Zhongmian's cursing and swearing, the Night Cat Demon wasted no time pouncing straight at Yangguan.
Yangguan trembled with fear and asked, "Do I keep fighting?"
"Fight my ass, stop fucking around!" Yue Zhongmian was full of resentment, not even sure what he was resenting, and came over cursing to chase down the Cat Demon and reclaim aggro.
Thirteen seconds.
Ye Xiu calculated a time in his head. Yangguan, as if possessed by the god of misfortune—the Bleed status had just ended when the Night Cat Demon came over and scratched him, inflicting Bleed yet again. These status-inflicting attacks were all probability-based, but Yangguan seemed to be blessed with an aura of one hundred percent chance. Cursed, Bleeding—he had every status the Night Cat Demon could inflict, asking for nothing in life but death.
Thirteen seconds was how long Ye Xiu could keep him alive. Within this time, only if Yue Zhongmian reclaimed aggro would he have any chance of being saved. But what about Yue Zhongmian?
Yue Zhongmian, who had been so sharp when pulling the boss, now kept having his hands slip, swinging and missing with sword strike after sword strike. Amid the constant cursing and raging, Yangguan finally fell as well.
The Night Cat Demon finally deigned to attack Yue Zhongmian, while Lord Grim's aggro ranked last—all because Ye Xiu's skill was too good. With no unnecessary actions, the aggro he generated was naturally kept to the absolute minimum.
"Buddy, hold on! You still have mana?" Yue Zhongmian cheered Ye Xiu on as he moved to engage.
"You're the one who needs to hold on," Ye Xiu typed.
"Don't worry, with the two of us working together, taking it down is no problem," Yue Zhongmian declared grandly, only to have his hand slip again, his sword cutting through empty air, and the Cat Demon's claw raked right across his face.
"Heal heal heal heal heal!!!" Yue Zhongmian shrieked.
No response. Lord Grim, whose controls had been so good and so timely all along, did not cast the healing spell on him at this moment.
"Can't heal, it'll cause OT," Yue Zhongmian saw Lord Grim type.
"You..." Yue Zhongmian whipped his head around and saw Lord Grim standing leisurely under a large tree outside the woods, watching him coldly. Yue Zhongmian realized something was wrong. This Lord Grim was no rookie—the aggro was clearly nowhere near tipping yet. How could he have judged wrong?
"It won't OT, heal me quick!" Yue Zhongmian could only keep shouting. But there was still no response.
The Night Cat Demon's claw was already upon him. Yue Zhongmian's reaction suddenly sped up, blocking sideways with his sword—a parry intercepted the claw. After his character slid back, he immediately followed with an Uppercut—the very same fluid combo from when he'd pulled the boss. Yue Zhongmian's hands had suddenly stopped slipping.
But this time, his combo didn't flow as smoothly, because this was now the berserk Cat Demon. Its accelerated movement and attacks left Yue Zhongmian barely able to keep up. The thrust combo after the Uppercut ultimately struck nothing, and he took a bite from the Cat Demon instead.
"Heal me, now!!!" Yue Zhongmian panicked. Though he could tank better than the cloth-armor Mage or Yangguan, he wasn't invincible.
"Heal what?"
"Heal my HP!"
"Heal what HP? All I see is you Bleeding."
"You..." Yue Zhongmian was dumbfounded with rage.
"Such a pity. If you could solo the Hidden Boss, you could have changed the loot mode to Group Leader Distribution before pulling. Then even if team members left unsatisfied, the Hidden Boss would still be yours."
"But unfortunately, your skill isn't good enough, so you still have to rely on team members to kill the boss. So you deliberately control your aggro and let the Night Cat Demon OT at just the right moment, wiping out all your teammates, leaving the boss at low health for you to finish off alone. The loot naturally goes into your pocket without a hitch. As for whether the dungeon gets cleared—compared to the Hidden Boss, that hardly matters at all."
These two messages from Lord Grim made sweat bead on Yue Zhongmian's forehead. He hadn't expected that this guy, who had only spoken once the entire way here, had seen through his entire plan. Indeed, the deaths of Yangguan and the other two had been his doing—he had deliberately controlled his aggro to let the Night Cat Demon OT and claw them to death. The original plan was that while madly healing three people in a row, this healer's aggro would rise to the top. But he hadn't expected Lord Grim to abandon healing one of the Mages. Could it be that from that moment on, this guy had already seen through his plan? That he knew there was no way to save the others, so he deliberately held his aggro back, letting his aggro ranking rise—and then refused to heal him, letting him die beneath the Night Cat Demon's claws?
"Buddy..." Seeing that this person was no soft touch, Yue Zhongmian hurriedly began to coax: "At this point, let's not hold grudges. We don't even know those three people anyway. If we work together now to take down the Cat Demon, we each get a fifty percent chance at the loot—isn't that good?"
"Fifty percent? I prefer one hundred percent!"
"Fine then..." Yue Zhongmian ground his teeth in secret. "Materials usually don't drop just one. When it does, you pick the one you need first, I'll pass, and for the rest we'll roll. As for equipment, you can have it all." Without healer support, Yue Zhongmian knew he couldn't last, so he had no choice but to make concessions.
"Now that's hard to believe!"
"Then what do you want?" Yue Zhongmian's speech sped up; the Cat Demon had already clawed away more than half his HP. He couldn't handle the berserk Cat Demon at all, and now he had to split his attention negotiating with Ye Xiu—what a sorry state. He had already silently memorized the name Lord Grim, vowing to make this guy pay.
"Don't worry about what I want. Just die in peace!"
"You... you're insane! If I die, won't you die too? Then neither of us gets the loot." A quarter of his HP left.
"Buddy, no need for a fight to the death!!" A fifth left.
"Are you an idiot?!" One-seventh.
"Lord Grim, don't you want to keep playing this game? Do you know how powerful our Moon Guild is?" One-ninth.
"You're finished!" The last sliver.
"Son of a—" The Night Cat Demon's claw came down, and the world went quiet.
Lord Grim hadn't moved this whole time, but he hadn't left combat either. After finishing off Yue Zhongmian, the Night Cat Demon immediately pounced toward him.
Ye Xiu smiled faintly. His left fingertips darted rapidly across several keys while his right hand slid the mouse. In the game, as Lord Grim's Myriad Manifestations Umbrella swept out, the umbrella canopy suddenly snapped open—opened in an exaggerated fashion, the canopy and ribs flipping directly in reverse, folding inward and converging at the umbrella's tip. At this moment, the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella looked strikingly like a long spear.
The converged umbrella ribs had already pierced precisely into the Night Cat Demon's body.
Battle Mage skill: Dragon Fang.
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