Chapter 1394: Skullblood Descends
Chapter 1394: Skullblood Descends
The gigantic dragon raised its head high amid the sea of flames. Its eyes were closed, but its sinister-looking teeth gleamed something intimidating and deadly. Its brownish scales gave it the appearance of some strange beast that just crawled out of the earth, and when it expanded its meaty wings I realized that they were at least a hundred meters long. This bastard was even bigger than Strella the Dark Magma had been! Its head already looked like a little hill, and the fact that its wings were covered in flames made us feel even smaller. When it finally opened its eyelids to reveal a pair of merciless eyes, it actually spoke to us in the language or dragons, "This is not your domain. Remain, and you shall bring forth your own destruction!"
……
"Skullblood the Earth Devourer… Fuck me…" swore Xu Yang as a shiver coursed through his body.
I hurriedly raised the Chill of the Nine Provinces and shouted, "All units, move away from Bloodskull now! It’s one of the nine major bosses in the game and not someone we can battle right now! Our lives are worth more than this…"
Li Chengfeng didn’t hesitate to lead his group of Dragonlight Cavalry away from the inner wall.
I took a moment to scan Skullblood with Dark Pupils and got some of its data—
Skullblood the Earth Devourer (Divine Rank Boss)
Level: 310
Attack: ???
Defense: ???
HP: ???
Skills: ???
Passive: Completely immune to magic
Passive: Completely immune to stun and slowing effects
Introduction: Skullblood the Great Earth Devourer used to be one of the greatest elders of the dragon race. Its understanding of earth magic was rivaled by no one, and it was even chosen to become the next Dragon God. However, Skullblood eventually stepped into darkness when its thirst for power grew to uncontrollable levels. After Skullbood was completely taken over by darkness, it killed the existing Dragon God without hesitation, stole the Dragon Domain’s Heart of Divine Dragons, and offered it to Lin Na the Purgatory Ruler as tribute. In return, Lin Na promised to reward Skullblood with even greater dark draconic power. Since then, Skullblood had slumbered beneath the Godslayer Fortress until some adventurers woke it from its millennia-long slumber. It seemed to be looking forward to a great slaughter as well. [1]……
My heart skipped several beats as I read to the end of the introduction. Without hesitation, I grabbed the Ancient Divine Dragon’s red mane, looked behind me and shouted, "The boss is completely immune to magic, so Lian Xin, evacuate our mages and bards to the grounds below and DO NOT come closer until the boss fight is over!"
Lian Xin stuck out her tongue to alleviate some of her shock. "Seriously? Very well, we will withdraw right away. Be careful, big bro!"
"Mn!"
The archers, cavalrymen, tamers and any other class that wasn’t magic-based (not including the priests of course) stayed behind while Lian Xin and our mages were pulling back to safety. Someone might wonder why we even stayed behind at all. I would argue that a super boss—one of the great nine no less—wasn’t something you encountered everyday, and it was perfectly natural to want to experience an epic battle like this. Sure, there was an extremely high chance that all of us were going to die here, but one, it would cost only a level, and two, I couldn’t imagine that there was a single person here who hadn’t prepared themselves for that possibility.
……
On the walls, Pop Culture’s guild leader Lone Moonshade was galloping along the rampart when he saw our army movements and said disdainfully, "Withdrawing without a fight? And you call yourselves the number one guild of China?"
I simply smiled and ignored the idiot. Gui Guzi pointed the Ghostblade Halberd at Lone Moonshade and yelled, "You think we’re withdrawing? Cretin! Even if I pretend that you somehow have the right to judge our decisions, I bet you’ve never even heard of the word ‘tactic’ before, Lone Moonshade!"
Not far away, Warsky let out a cough and interjected, "The boss is already triggered, so we may as well take it out now. I suggest that we temporarily join hands—maybe even work together with all the other servers—before we do anything else. Remember, if we cannot defeat this boss here, we risk failing the entire March of Chaos patch event."
Candlelight Shadow nodded. Lin Yixin smiled in acknowledgement before sending me a message, "Little Cheat, be careful. There is a high chance Warsky and Candlelight Shadow will stab us in the back even though they’re talking about cooperation now."
I replied, "I know. Make sure that Snowy Cathaya stays close to us when the fighting begins, okay? A Divine Rank boss is incredibly powerful. Expect to suffer massive damage even if we manage to kill it."
"I know~"
It was at this moment a black shadow streaked across the sky before stopping above us. It was none other than Vienna’s Sorrow on his black dragon. Gripping a sword and shooting us a polite smile, he said, "I would like to propose that we fight the boss together. Purgatory Sovereign is too powerful a boss for us to bicker among each other. Moreover, we may all be punished by the system if we fail the patch event, and that’s something nobody wants. India, what do you guys think?"
God of War declared from atop his Giant Abyssal Beast. "I agree! Until the boss is killed, no one is allowed to PK one another. After that, well, that is a whole another matter of course. On that note, let this be the pre-battle negotiations. Any server who isn’t willing to abide by these rules may withdraw now!"
God of War paused for a moment and looked to Breeze and Rain. The man spurred his Purple Wing Unicorn forward and looked at me. "Lu Chen, you are the number one player of the China server, so tell me, will the China server be participating in this boss fight, and do you agree to the terms we’ve stated?"
I nodded. "Of course. There is no reason for China to stay out of this boss fight."
After the representatives of Frostsword City, Iron Horse City, the Chaotic 27; Tear Stain, Hickey, Little Piglet and more voiced their agreement as well, it was decided that the millions of players from all across the world would cooperate temporarily to defeat the boss. Of course, we all knew that some infighting would inevitably happen when the boss's HP had dropped to dangerous levels. There was just no point talking about something everyone already knew was going to happen, and could do nothing to stop even if we did talk about it.
……
"Let’s go! Don’t hold back!" God of War was the courageous leader type. Right after he said that, he spurred his Abyssal Beast forward and charged Skullblood with his Gold Cavalry without hesitation. When he was a suitable distance away from the gigantic dragon, he raised his sword to signal his men to spread out and attack the boss from every direction. This was how he earned the right to become the first to make contact with the super boss.
"When do we act?" Chaos Moon asked.
I stepped on a block of scorched stone and answered, "We’re only going to deploy 4000 Dragonlight Cavalrymen. 2000 of them will be led by Little Gui, and another 2000 by Buyi. We’ll head in once everyone is fully buffed. There is no telling how this boss will react, so do your best to protect yourself and don’t count on others to cover for you. As for you wall huggers, priests, make sure you heal. Archers, spread out and give it a shower of Shock Arrows. It says it can’t be stunned, but it doesn’t hurt to try… Anyway, I’m going to get down there and lower its Defense now!"
"Mn!"
I activated Fusion Armor and Great Earth Transformation at the same time. Then, I jumped off the wall and straight toward the boss's massive back. Skullblood’s back was covered in draconic spikes, and I could easily imagine that it was the toughest spot of all of its parts. That being said, I was also wielding the greatest of the Twelve Divine Armaments. It should be able to pierce Skullblood’s back!
Crack!
I was right. My blade went right through a giant dragon’s scale and into its flesh. Some of its blood splashed against the Chill of the Nine Provinces’ blade as I lowered its Defense by 17.9%. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
……
"Roar roar…"
Skullblood the Earth Devourer roared in pain before swinging its tail at me with a speed that didn’t fit its powerful strength and massive size at all. Even with my movement speed, I failed to get out of the way before I was sent flying across the air!
BANG!
1426662!
Like a cannonball, I crashed against the wall and shattered countless bricks. I felt like all the bones around my chest had been shattered into pieces. If this was how much damage the sonuvabitch did to me with a single basic attack, didn’t that mean that everyone else was going to take at least 2 million damage?
I was right again. While Cyan Beast’s Gold Cavalry were surrounding Skullblood and stabbing it with Barrier Break, Skullblood was also flattening them into meat pies in one strike almost like it was playing whack-a-human. Somewhere in the middle, it raised its head and spat a jet of crimson flames at the players. Heavy armor already took extra damage from magic attacks, but magic attacks of a super dragon was even worse—
2412770!
2837322!
5213784!
5526620!
……
Countless people ate a crit and died. Even those who were lucky enough to avoid a critical hit still died unless they were among the best of the best. There was almost no one who could withstand a single breath from a Level 310 Divine Rank boss!
"Fuck!"
While withdrawing to the back with less than 40% HP, God of War shouted in the direction of the Northern Alliance, "Don’t start lowering my opinion of you now, Vienna’s Sorrow! The so-called greatest hero of the north should not be backstabbing the boss from a safe distance!"
The taunt got Hero Alliance to move as expected. The ground shook violently as 10000+ Iron Cutter Cavalrymen thundered down the stairs and straight toward the boss, and Vienna’s Sorrow swooped down on the boss from above. In another direction, Warsky Alliance, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls, Natural Flow, Asura Period and more had also joined the battle. Soon, at least 100000 players were attacking the boss from every direction. A massive yet classic human sea battle had begun.
……
On the walls, the archers loosed their arrows at the boss from every direction but failed to inflict any meaningful damage whatsoever. Most of them dealt 0 damage—you read that right, there wasn’t even a fixed damage of 1 this time—unless they were using an armor-piercing skill, and even then most couldn’t do more than two-digit damage numbers.
Beiming Xue bit her lip. "OMG, 1983 damage? Are you kidding me?"
He Yi chuckled. "Don’t be disheartened. This Skullblood the Earth Devourer is most likely a defense-type boss."
While saying this, she rushed in and scored a basic attack that dealt around 3000 damage only. However, her follow-up Barrier Break managed to do over 70000 damage, so that was good.
"Roar roar…"
Suddenly, Skullblood let out a terrible roar and surrounded himself in sand and stone. Giant rocks with a radius of one meter flew everywhere in unpredictable patterns. It was a super large-scale AoE attack!
"Shit!"
My heart sank. The rock only dealt around 340k damage to me, but the same couldn’t be said for the archer and tamer legions on the walls. My interface showed that at least 240k players had died from that one AoE skill!
1. T/N: is adventurer really the right term here? I know it’s correct, but it just feels weird considering they’re also an army of millions. ☜