Chapter 659: A Vulture
"This is boring..." said Zhang Yang as he yawned. He had been waiting for more than 20 minutes and the boss still had 82% HP left on its extremely long HP bar.
Luckily for the players down there, there were all above than Level 110. Or else, they would have been affected by the annoying Level Suppression system. Not that it mattered, since they were fighting the boss in such a chaotic situation! Either side would have to deal with the destructive attack of the boss.
On one side, Zhang Yang had forced himself to be awake, on the other, the players were having one of the most intense moment in their lifetime. As the battle continued to drag on, the two guilds had not wait for long to reveal their trump card. Many of them had used their Inheritance Transformation skills to speed things up a notch.
There were a total of seven players in The Myth who had used their Transformation while Sengoku Daimyo had only six. As such, the tide of war changed dramatically.
Inheritance players possessed the ultimate power to take down normal players and had high resistance towards non-Inheritance players’ status effect skills. Plus, with their elongated HP and Defense, they would be invincible if they had a powerful team of healers to back him or her up. Furthermore, Inheritance players may have only 500% boosted single attack power, their card in the sleeves was their ability to attack in an extremely large area of 100 meters x 100 meters! Some may be only 50 meters, but it is still overwhelming when compared to a regular non-Inheritance player.
After a few minutes of EP charging, players started to unleash their accumulated power and started casting powerful and rather beautiful AoE skill all over the battlefield. The death toll of both sides of the war had shot up so high that it could break the graph!
The best performing players all time was Death Arbiter. He was one of the few who had manage to gather a huge amount of popularity over an extremely short amount of time. His display of prowess was made even grander with the activation of his Demon Hunter Inheritance Transformation skill, along with the Mechanical Quad-Wing Tiger mount!
However, despite the flashy moves and bright skill animation, the one that had attracted Zhang Yang most was none other than Liu Wei.
The bastard had acquired the Demon Summoner Inheritance and was able to permanently have a Demon Lord by his side as a pet. Those who had been killed by Demon Lord will revive as a small devil to aid in him in battle. If he wanted to, the man could assemble an army of demon to do his bidding.
However so, he was just one man and one Demon Lord, the number of players that could fall in his hands were limited to a certain amount. Additionally, the man had assembled the same 12 Guardians by his side to chain cast the skill {Sacrifice}. The sort of stance, the posture he had right then, was enough to urge anyone in sight to kill him. The proud smug on that bastard had even Zhang Yang’s blood boiling. In fact, it was not just Zhang Yang! His posture and all was a public provocation! As such, a large army of players had rushed over to him with a strong killing aura! Sadly, the man had an army of Guardians to protect him with their {Sacrifice}. If that was not hard enough, there were still B class Inheritance players standing in front of him as the absolute defense line. With their superior HP and Defense, not many normal players would breach the line that easily.
Zhang Yang had to hold his anger back and praised the man for his ability to craft up such a cowardly strategy.
The heat of battle had risen again. This time, it was almost reaching its climax. Both guilds were losing more players that they could replenish them. At most, Zhang Yang predicted that the battle with last only for another 5 minutes before a winner emerges. As such, the losing side could never turn the tables around anymore. Those that revived had only 20% HP. Those who had their dead bodies guarded will inevitably be killed with a single strike.
In a battle between two sides, whenever one has more death counts than the other, the losing side would never have the ability to recover anymore.
From the top of the mountain, Zhang Yang could clearly see that The Myth had the upper hand in the war. One of the main reasons was due to Death Arbiter amazing performance. That, and the party that he had brought along with him. Alone, he was not able to do as much. However, with a team of cooperative players by his side, he was able to perforce more extraordinarily than the Japanese players. With intense vigor on his side, players of Sengoku Daimyo had lost their morale. Slowly, but surely, the players of Sengoku Daimyo had turned passive.
Liu Wei had predicted this and changed the battle strategy once the enemy had lost the will to fight. He then commanded the guild to focus their main attack target towards the boss instead of the players. Even so, he had still left a few strong players to hold back the line to prevent players of Sengoku Daimyo from reaching the boss. The man was greedy. With one hand on the boss, and another on the enemy, he was not willing to allow neither of them to get away from him. At least, until he was sure that he could get the loot of the boss; there could be a possibility that the boss will be killed before Sengoku Daimyo falls back. If that happens, he would have to make sure the players that are surrounding the boss were all his and none of the enemy’s.
However impregnable Liu Wei strategy was, he had seriously underestimated the boss’ prowess. Harten’s single stomp could deal 80,000 damage to all. 80,000 damage may seem low for Zhang Yang, but it was extremely painful for the rest of the world. Neither The Myth, nor Sengoku Daimyo was as strong as Lone Desert Smoke, for they had players with strong equipment that could tank the hits like it was a mosquito bite.
If neither side had chosen to start the war whilst attacking the boss, one of them would have already taken down the boss. But then again, both sides shared the same strong headed attitude. Hence, the outcome.
With the boss’ wild attacks, both sides had already suffered from massive casualties. Right then, most of the players from both guilds were attacking the boss instead of each other. White pillars of lights could be seen as the battle continued. Those light pillars were signals that indicated players were falling and had their souls sent to the graveyard.
70%...50%... 30%...
With haste, the boss HP dropped quickly, as well as the number of players surrounding the boss. The main reason why Sengoku Daimyo was unable to replenish their forces was due to the vast distance from the graveyard to the battlefield. Most players had chosen to sacrifice their dignity and chose to revive directly at the graveyard. That way, they could travel via their mounts instead of running back to their dead bodies in their soul mode. It would take close to an hour if they had chosen to run.
However the situation develops, it was hard to tell whether the players would succeed in killing the boss.
Zhang Yang waited impatiently. There were many times where he almost dozed off, and was lucky to be awake when the boss’ HP dropped to 10%!
Zhang Yang made his move and hopped onto the Thunderhawk. Right outside the line of sight, Zhang Yang unsummoned the bird and entered the ground via {Burrow}. He then made his way towards the boss and waited underneath its stone giant feet.
As the boss started to reach its deathbed, the player counts of both The Myth and Sengoku Daimyo was reduced down to only tens of players. The battle was headed towards a Pyrrhic victory. If either side wins, they would have done so at great cost. By then, Zhang Yang was deep within the earth. He was at least 20 meters beneath the boss. If he was any higher, he would be within the range of {War Stomp} and take damage from it.
9%...7%...3%...
Zhang Yang started moving upwards. Although he had already taken one instance of damage from {War Stomp}, it was a damage that he was willing to take voluntarily, in order to get close to be the first to grab all the loot when the boss is defeated! When the number of players started to drop even lower than before, Zhang Yang would emerge out the ground and deal a few hits to the boss.
8,000,000...
5,000,000...
2,000,000...
700,000...
Zhang Yang resurfaced and activated {Indiscriminate}. In a flash, he used {Blood Rage} gaining a large sum of Rage points. With the damage he had taken earlier from {War Stomp}, coupled with one more when he resurfaced, Zhang Yang’s Rage gauge was full!
{Killing Cleave}!
‘-742,234!’
"AOUUURGHH!" The stone giant roared deafeningly and fell to the ground, dropping a mountain of loot.
In an instance, Zhang Yang experience bar expanded by a large bump. In a non-party battle condition, he had gained 50% of the total experience reward from killing the boss, since he was the player that had dealt the final killing blow.
Since the boss was too large, no one had witnessed Zhang Yang attacking. Since they were all in parties, the reduced experience points gain had led them to believe that someone from the other side had managed to land the killing blow.
"GRAB THE LOOT!" Liu Wei bellowed. "STOP THE JAPANESE!"
Both sides wanted to land a hand on the loots, hence, in a split second, the airspace was filled with flying arrows and magical arcane sparks that were meant to disable the opponent.
Zhang Yang was thrilled. He turned around to search for the loot pile and gobbled everything up.
In less than a few seconds, the place was swept clean, leaving nothing but dust and dirt for both guilds to cry about. However, even though both sides were blasting spells and skill to each other, not everyone would take the hit. When Zhang Yang was reaching his hands out to grab the last pair of boots, another player’s hands were in his way.
"HM!? You are...ZHAN YU!?" A startled voice was heard from the mouth of the player and it belonged to none other than the bastard Liu Wei!
"Ding ding! Correct, but no cigar for you!" said Zhang Yang with a grin and he slammed the ‘Dragon Slayer’ Battle Axe at Liu Wei.
‘-87,332!’
A powerful damage landed on Liu Wei, however, since the bastard was in his Transformation skill, the attack had made no significant damage to him. However, it was not meant to be. When he had used {Killing Cleave} earlier, he had used up all his Rage points to do so. Hence, with no Rage left, he had to start building up his Rage points again.
{Brutal Smash}!
Zhang Yang laid down a stunning skill and successfully stunned Liu Wei. The bastard had already used up all his status effect skills and status effect removing skills a few seconds back when the boss had fallen. Hence, with nothing left in his sleeves, Liu Wei the bastard had inevitably taken the hit. He could only stare in disbelief when he saw Zhang Yang picking up the last of the loot and waltzing away.
If Zhang Yang happened to have the sought-after Inheritance Fragment in his inventory, even the Inheritance quest item would have been snagged away!
"KILL ZHAN YU! KILL THAT MOTHERF*CKER!" Liu Wei bellowed at the top of his lungs and almost destroyed his voice box.
Zhang Yang bit down the urge to continue the fight. If the bastard had not used his Transformation skill, Zhang Yang could have easily killed the bastard without breaking a sweat. Right then, although he was a little bit discontented, he laughed with the satisfaction of taking all the loot and disappeared in the middle of the war with {Shadow of the Void}.
A few seconds later, the greatly disgruntled players could only stare in disbelief as Zhang Yang soared away in the sky, riding on his fiery Phoenix pet.
The two guilds were left with nothing else but the Inheritance Fragment. Hence, the battle to kill for the trophy continued raging. When there was nothing else left, at the very least, they would not allow the enemy to take away the one and only drop left, and that was the Inheritance quest item!
Zhang Yang smiled from ear to ear as he rode the Phoenix, back to Rainbow Village. Without a doubt, when two guilds were at each other throats, the vulture, that is Zhang Yang, had won it all!
"Nishishishi." Zhang Yang snickered at his own devilish act.
Zhang Yang opened his inventory U.I and checked his loot.
For an Ethereal map boss, Hartens had only dropped two Ethereal tier and two Mythical tier equipment. There were also one [Skill Point Crystal] and one skill book.
Zhang Yang had no need to review the Mythical tier and examined the two Ethereal tier equipment instead. It was a Leather Armor glove, and a beautiful radiant cape.
With the [Identifying Scroll] in hand, Zhang Yang immediately used the scroll on the cape. Since it was a cape for physical attack types, Zhang Yang casually took it for himself and swapped it off for the old cape.
[Rocky Cape] (Ethereal, Cape)
Vitality: +1556
Strength: +532
Dexterity: +532
Equip: Increases maximum HP by 3,110.
Equip: Increases damage dealt and healing rate by 8%.
Equip: Absorbs 458 damage on attack.
Equip: Increases Critical strike rate by 2%
Level Requirement: 140
Special: Level Requirement reduced by 20 Levels.
Argh shuck...
Even though he was able to Identify the item right on the spot, he still needed to return to town to have the cape socketed with Gemstones.