The Great Thief

When Heart of War died, he was naturally angry but there was nothing he could do. He had no way of getting back into that area and even if he did, he would probably get killed again.

As for engaging in another war with Ruling Sword…

If he was to be honest, he had thought about engaging in all-out war with Ruling Sword. There were many players waiting for something to go wrong for Ruling Sword. Heart of War was confident in fighting them, and no one expected him to be the one to do it.

They also wouldn’t give any compensation, as Gangnam Royals had become a bit of a joke recently.

When the players were revived, they were filled with vigour at the thought of this plan. They had previously received an injection of capital which had made them stronger.

But unfortunately, this plan was denied by the board.

They ran a few meetings after analysing Heart of War’s performance and decided that they couldn’t afford another failure.

As such, all Heart of War could do was grit his teeth and swallow his pride. He had to go back with an unsatisfactory answer and could only occupy himself with clearing out the ghosts in the Mage Tower. At least that would give him an excuse to check out the situation.

At this time, someone else sent him a message asking about the situation.

It seemed like it wasn’t just the Gangnam Royals that was paying attention to Ruling Sword. Even Jade Flower Lover, who was previously trying to work with Lu Li, was anxious. They couldn’t bear to just watch Ruling Sword kill one level 60 Wild Boss after another.

In fact, the number of complaints that were being filed with the Game Company had already exploded.

How could the game’s champion do this so easily? There were other players that had invested significant effort and money into this game. There were players that had struggled in games for many years, and they still couldn’t match the performance of Ruling Sword.

But how could the Game Company respond to something like this?

They couldn’t even check the authenticity of all the data, because the AI wasn’t issuing any kind of alert. This could only mean that all the actions of Ruling Sword were within the rules of the game.

Lu Li couldn’t continue gloating on for long. Just as they received their harvest, Allistarj appeared in the secret area.

“Fresh meat!”

He was carrying a dark magic staff in one hand and when he raised it, several players immediately turned their heads to start attacking their teammates.

“Mages, freeze them and everyone else run away.”

Lu Li didn’t expect for this skill to be used and could only tell the players to run away. These controlled players couldn’t be ignored because their damage was increased during this time.

After Lu Li gave his order, there was one player that chose to ignore it. He thought that he could tank the attacks as it normally took a few minutes for another player to kill him.

As a result, he was shocked to discover that he had been one-shot by one of his teammates.

The damage was not far from the ordinary attacks of the Boss.

However, dealing with these players was not that difficult. You just had to follow the instructions that Lu Li had given. These players were not the Boss, and if you didn’t want to kill them, then using crowd-control on them would yield the best result.

The crowd-control would last for 20 seconds and they would return to normal after that time had elapsed.

“Wow, these are really strong attacks! Why are these attacks so strong?”

Azure Sea Breeze started tanking the Boss and was dumbfounded by the damage. Among the three Bosses that they had fought today, Archmage Allistarj had the highest attack. Even his normal attacks were very powerful.

“Keep steady and use your damage reduction skills when necessary. Main Tanks, make sure you keep the aggro but if you can’t do it, don’t be afraid to switch out,” Lu Li said.

He didn’t expect this Boss’ attacks to be so high. In his mind, Allistarj wouldn’t be so strong because he had already been weakened, but it seems that the original Boss was much stronger than he thought.

“Heal me, heal me! He’s about to cast a skill!” Azure Sea Breeze cried out.

No one wanted to die, but if the Main Tank died, this would have a significant effect on the rest of the players. It was possible that they could get wiped. If Azure Sea Breeze couldn’t tank it, then the other Main Tanks would likely have an even harder time.

Allistarj was a Mage, and he was a particularly powerful one too.

His instant skills dealt a lot of damage, and his channelled ones were even more powerful. Azure Sea Breeze was frightened.

The skill finally hit Azure Sea Breeze.

Lu Li didn’t even bother looking at how much damage Azure Sea Breeze had taken. He just ordered the other Main Tanks to take the aggro. Given the way Azure Sea Breeze was acting, he probably wasn’t able to take the Boss’ next attack. If he died from the skills, they would have to revive him, but if he didn’t then, this would be his chance to recover.

Azure Sea Breeze didn’t die. There were very few things that could kill him when he had that much HP and had cast his damage reduction skills.

The Main Tank that took over had worse Defense than Azure Sea Breeze. He managed to tank a few normal attacks before dying to an instant skill, becoming the first Main Tank to be sacrificed. Fortunately, Azure Sea Breeze quickly pulled the aggro after that happened to prevent the Boss from attacking the other players.

The non-defensive professions that were attacked by this Boss were likely to get one-shot.

As for the players that had fallen, they were to be resurrected by the Druids. There were four Druids for each 100-member group. They prioritized the Main Tanks within the group, as the other professions could wait a bit before being Revived.

“There are countless facts that prove that the darkness is the strongest power of all…”

Lu Li was thankful that the channelling of this skill was prefaced by reciting nonsense like this. This meant that he had time to loudly issue the command for the players to cast their damage reduction skills. After everyone had done this, they saw a dark energy expand outwards from the Boss.

Shadow Impact!

This skill dealt a terrifying amount of damage. If someone were to calculate the total amount of damage it dealt to all the players, it would probably total at least one million.

Fortunately, it was an area of effect skill, so individually, they all received about 2000-3000 damage.

However, if you didn’t use your damage reduction skills for a spell that was going to deal this much damage, you would likely die. This was especially true for squishy players like the Healers. If too many players died, then they would have effectively been wiped. However, since they had cast your damage reduction skills, only those players that were already on low HP died.

After Shadow Impact was used a few more times, they finally reached the second phase.

Lu Li took advantage of the fact that the Boss hadn’t begun attacking yet to quickly reposition the players on the battlefield while the Druids were hurriedly reviving players back into the fight.

In the second phase, the Boss didn’t need to use Shadow Impact.

In this phase, Allistarj used his Demon nature to transform and deal a single, continuously-damaging attack. However, this was less dangerous as the Healers could just constantly heal their target. As long as the skills did not deal burst damage, they were no issue.

When the Boss was in a transformed state, he would rarely use an area of effect skill.

When they reached the third phase, they once again encountered many close calls.

In this stage, the Boss would randomly pick a player and turn them into an avatar of the Boss. The avatar would then continually attack the players until it died.

They needed to be quick in this stage because there was no warning and no one would know who he was going to pick in advance.

Sometimes, a player would be turned into an avatar, but those around them might be too slow to respond. They might not even notice that it had happened until a few players died. However, they could also be quick enough to avoid it. For example, when Kitty Likes Meat noticed that something was wrong, she immediately used an escape skill and ran away until the avatar dissipated.

If an important player died, they would be revived by the Druids. On the other hand, an ordinary player would be revived whenever it was convenient for the healers.

With no other guilds to bother them, Allistarj was slowly being defeated. The only thing that bothered Lu Li was the number of players that were dying. Almost every player had died at least once and the Main Tanks had died so many times that they were already crying.

The Main Tanks had all come from professions with very low damage, so they relied on other professions when it came to farming their levels. This meant that farming was slow for them and the effect of each death was even more significant.