Fatal Shot

“Watch out!”

Without hesitating, Feng Luo pushed Mu Zi to the opposite side. At the same time, he picked up his M110 and sprawled behind the wall that was beside him.

Boom!

A splash of transparent liquid that looked like rainwater shot in through the windows of the building they were hiding in. Each individual drop seemed like transparent rainwater, but when it touched the wall, a hole appeared on the wall as surely as if the wall had been hit by bullets.

At the same time, the remaining liquid on the wall kept spreading around, corroding the wall and causing a white gas to fume out of it.

Though Feng Luo was able to detect the threat and react quickly with his rare skill, Death Sense, he was still hit by a few drops of the “rainwater.” A few small holes surfaced on his Level 40 Excellent combat suit as it was corroded. Meanwhile, −300 damage values appeared over his head in succession. His HP was immediately reduced by almost 1,500.

And that was not all, because a system notification appeared in his sight.

You are attacked by the Spray Beetle’s (Level 39 Boss) Poison Attack (5 partial stacks). All of your basic Attributes have been reduced by 19%. Hearing and vision have been reduced by 38%. Movement speed has been reduced by 27%.

All basic attributes were reduced! Hearing and vision were reduced! Movement speed was reduced!

Feng Luo’s movement was slowed considerably. In addition, his vision was a lot dimmer, the noises in his ears sounded very distant, and his body became weary.

In War, the debuffs on the players were very realistic. Debuffs did not just affect the characters’ status values but really made the players feel uncomfortable.

All the debuffs for basic attributes, hearing, vision, and movement speed would no doubt be critical to any player. They were even worse for snipers.

Although Feng Luo already knew that the Spray Beetle was poisonous, he could never have imagined being attacked by a Boss from such a long range. Despite the warning from the Scout player just now that there will be a Boss, the other Scouts could not find it even after using Detection. He had not expected to be almost insta-killed by one squirt.

It is very likely that me finishing off the Commander Bladed Beetle triggered this Boss’s aggro, Feng Luo reasoned.

The Boss’s attack was undoubtedly overpowered. Just a single drop of its spit dealt 300 damage.

After Feng Luo had all his attributes increased after fusing with the virus, his HP was over 4,000. Yet if he was hit by every drop of the poison spray, it would definitely insta-kill him.

Though Mu Zi who was on the opposite side of Feng Luo, having been pushed away by Feng Luo, he was still hit by 10 drops of the poison in total. His HP dropped until it was in the red, and the attack reduced him to a “heavily injured” state.

Fortunately, a Doctor player assigned specifically by Mu Wu was behind both of them and immediately started to heal him by injecting antidotes. However, there were 10 Debuffs stacked on Mu Zi, which obviously made him feel worse than Feng Luo. Even when his HP recovered above the 5-percent threshold, he would still be “weak” (below 15 percent HP) and “poisoned.” He could barely even sit on the floor.

The general purpose antidote was not potent, either. The Doctor player had steadily applied a few shots of antidotes on Feng Luo, but they only removed the negative status effect by one-quarter. The status applied by this Boss was impossible to remove completely and quickly unless specially made antidotes that countered the poison were used.

Of course, the system would not let the players continue in this state for long. After the system alerted Feng Luo to the poisoned status, another message appeared on his terminal.

Unknown poison detected. Biochip’s poison removal function activated, estimated time required: 5 minutes!

There was no duration of the debuffs in the earlier system messages because the duration actually depended on the players’ own biochip adjustment function. The time required by the biochip to remove the poison was based on the player’s corresponding poison resistance and some other special attributes.

Feng Luo’s resistance against this specific poison was 0 percent, and the “debuffs resistance” in his body’s attributes was also 0 percent. Both of them were zero. That was why the time required was a solid five minutes.

With the injection of the general purpose antidotes, the duration had decreased to around three minutes. However, that also meant that Feng Luo had to wait here for a full three minutes before he could resume fighting. This would certainly impact his scoring strategy. Or so Feng Luo thought. He was soon to discover his body was recovering a lot more quickly than expected.

The previously blurry vision cleared up quickly while his hearing and other perceptions also returned to normal within less than two minutes’ time.

“Hmm… What happened?”

Feng Luo was confused. He started reading the previous system logs because he did not understand what had occurred. He was a little surprised after reading them.

You were infected by the Spray Beetle’s poison. Body Evolution Talent was activated.

This was the first message, which had appeared not long after he was poisoned.

With Evolution Talent, you permanently gained 50% resistance for the particular poison. You permanently gained 3% debuff resistance.

This was the second log message. It had appeared just now, as soon as the debuffs on him were removed completely.

“Evolution Talent?”

This S-Rank talent hadn’t done much after he’d bonded with the Evolution Virus. Feng Luo had tried many ways to increase his Attributes, yet he had failed. But he had never considered that a single spray from that Boss would increase his poison resistance and debuffs resistance.

50 percent of that particular poison resistance did not mean much, since the types of poison used by other monsters were different. The 3 percent debuffs resistance, on the other hand, was incredibly precious. It was a resistance against all Debuffs, including poison, stun, slow, etc. This meant that the effects of all debuffs on Feng Luo would be reduced by 3 percent.

One could not underestimate this mere 3 percent! The key was that, with Evolution Talent, that amount could someday become 13 percent—even 30 percent! At that point, this effect would be extremely powerful.

No wonder this talent is S-Rank! Feng Luo thought with excitement.

Meanwhile, the debuffs on Mu Zi finally faded away too. Then the trio didn’t dare to linger there. They all went out of the door to readjust their position.

In the meantime, a lot was going on in the regional channel. After the appearance of the Boss, it had first attacked Feng Luo but had soon proceeded to killing other players.

This Beetle was just a Level-39 Boss, but it was not to be underestimated. Even the lowest-level Boss, the Level-35 Crimson Moon Scorpion King, was capable of insta-killing players that were over Level 40.

The Spray Beetle Boss continued to rain down on the base of the players, spraying liquids bearing various status effects at them. Other than the liquid with the corrosive debuff shot at Feng Luo, there was a poisonous liquid that turned into a spreading cluster of poisonous mist. Once it hit the players’ base, it would cause continuous damage to the players, forcing them to move. It even released a large green poisonous cloud that floated in the sky and kept pouring down acid rain.

The players’ original formation was now in chaos, allowing numerous beetles to cross the front line. The impact of this was unquestionably grave. The Boss had only been out for barely a few minutes, yet it had killed at least 30 players already.

The players were in big trouble.