Chapter 1406: Double Challenge

I raised my hand and summoned the Ancient Seal. Then, I fired 7 of them in a row along the battle line where the Devil Blood Mad Leopards were clashing against our Dragonlight Cavalry. Only by controlling their aggro would I be able to reduce our casualties, and we had to ensure that the mobs couldn’t get close to the fortress. There was no telling if the fortress so hastily built with mud and stone was strong enough to withstand the bombardment of Stormwind Blood Claws. It would be terrible if the fortress fell and crushed Princess Karinshan with it.

……

Li Chengfeng was swinging his Crimson Refinement Sword and firing dragon-shaped sword auras anywhere. If nothing else, his class skills and attacks—not to mention that he was riding an actual dragon—looked as cool as they were powerful.

He Yi was a Stormwind Holy Knight, and her Cyan Wind Shield reduced the damage she received by 30%. It wasn’t as good as Gui Guzi’s Undying Shield, but it was still better than many defensive skills especially since it was stackable with Rock Shield. This was something I hadn’t expected until He Yi tried it. Her attacks were just as impressive. The Suppressing Fire Sword gave her attacks properties of fire, and her class, element of wind. The Devil Blood Mad Leopards were hard-pressed to withstand this deadly combination of fire and wind.

Of the four of us, Li Chengfeng and He Yi were at the lowest health—they kept jumping over and below the 50% mark because Stormwind Blood Claw was incredibly powerful—so they received dedicated healings from our best priests, Murong Mingyue and Moon Dew. I was able to maintain around 70% HP thanks to my superior firepower, but Gui Guzi still beat me with a whopping 80% HP or higher. His Undying Shield and Undead Recovery gave him incredible tankiness, not to mention that his fan group of beautiful older sisters was healing him and him only from the walls. Lucky bastard. While the rest of us had to struggle to survive, he had to struggle to do the opposite—not that he was trying to kill himself, of course.

On a semi-related note, Gui Guzi was super popular in Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls. For whatever reason, he was especially popular among female players between 22 to 28 years old; the kind of age range many male gamers couldn’t attract even if they tried. One time we were drinking, a drunken Li Chengfeng had complained that his appearance was too masculine, and that he might’ve been a lot more popular if he was just 25% more "moe" like Gui Guzi was. He then resolved himself to emulate my example and hone himself into a powerful, yet humble and tenacious warrior like I was. He thought he would be more popular that way.

It was a complete joke, of course. Some people might think I was joking when I said that the number of female players who were willing to date Li Chengfeng started around 10000, but I wasn’t. However, Li Chengfeng rejected them all claiming that a "executive-level player in the guild shouldn’t be promiscuous”. There weren’t many people who really knew Li Chengfeng. Some men only loved once in their lives, and for now at least it didn’t look like anyone was capable of replacing his old flame. It wasn’t a matter of qualifications. What could any woman do if the man himself wasn’t willing to open his eyes and accept them?

……

"Hey guys, check out Warsky Alliance! It looks like they’re ‘enjoying’ the time of their lives!" shouted High Fighting Spirits while leaping off his mount to cast a Whirlwind Slash before returning to his mount [1].

We looked. As he said, Warsky Alliance was struggling to survive the Devil Blood Mad Leopards—

Bang bang bang…

Warsky was alone and surrounded by layers upon layers of mobs at the forefront. Countless Devil Blood Mad Leopards were swiping and biting at him like the wild animal they were. Although the archers and mages were doing their best to mow them down, and he had the Immortal Blade to heal him non-stop, he was still in grave danger. Further behind him, the Gold Cavalry were dropping like flies despite their best efforts to keep the thick swarm of Devil Blood Mad Leopards at bay. On average, they lost around 500k HP to one Stormwind Blood Claw, so their priests just couldn’t heal them in time before they died.

It took only the blink of an eye for Warsky Alliance to lose another tens of thousands of players.

Warsky was so angry that he was shaking. While swinging the Immortal Blade wildly, he looked behind himself and shouted, "The Devil Blood Mad Leopards must not be allowed to approach the city! Little Rain, tell the men to jump down from the walls and plug the holes now!"

October Rain argued, "We’re almost out of Gold Cavalry…"

Warsky shouted again, "I don’t care! If we ran out of Gold Cavalry, then send in the Cyanscale Cavalry. If we ran out of Cyanscale Cavalry, then send in the Frostscale Cavalry! We are one of the Top 3 guilds of China! We will not be the ones to let the mobs reach the fortress! Do it now!"

October Rain nodded. "Very well, I have received your directions…"

October Rain took a few steps forward. Then, she suddenly launched a kick toward seemingly nothing!

Bang!

The air distorted a little, and a human-shaped figure fell unceremoniously toward the ground. The invisibility dispelled while the figure was still in midair, and he was none other than the assassin, Farewell Song. After Farewell Song climbed back to his feet, he looked at October Rain with betrayal on his face, "Little Rain, you…"

October Rain simply harrumphed and said, "There, I got you the bodyguard you need."

Warsky looked like he could spit blood. "How the fuck do you expect an assassin to body-block the mobs?? He’s going to get one-shot!"

"What are you talking about? Farewell Song’s Defense is almost as good as a Gold Cavalryman’s. He’s exactly the guy you need right now."

Warsky: "..."

On the walls, thousands of diehard fans of Farewell Song hurriedly got on their Cyanscale Warhorses and jumped down the walls. They shouted, "Fuck, Boss Farewell Song fell down to the ground! Quickly! We have to jump down and save him before it’s too late!"

Just like that, Warsky Alliance reformed their battle line and bought themselves a couple more minutes. October Rain really was an intelligent woman. She had hit the nail right in the head…

……

If Warsky Alliance was struggling to hold, then the other guilds could only do worse.

At Snowy Cathaya’s battle line, Beauty Lin was running back and forth with her generals such as Purple Marquis and Zi Chuanyu to save her frontliners. Despite their best efforts, the Kui Dragon Cavalry still sustained heavy losses to the Devil Blood Mad Leopards. There were a couple of things going in their favor though. First, their tens of thousands of Dragon Punisher Archers were able to chain-stun many of the mobs with Shock Arrows and bought their frontliners much-needed breathing room. Second, the mage parties led by Shadow Chanel were also going all out and just barely keeping the situation under control. Third, they were working closely with Blazing Hot Lips and The Monarch Descends, so they were all able to minimize their casualties to an extent.

At Candle Dragon’s battle line, Candlelight Shadow was battling the Devil Blood Mad Leopards alone on his fire dragon. Farther behind him were the Qiu Beast Cavalrymen, and even farther back were the Lantern Girls raising their lanterns, chanting in their sweet voices and dropping tons of Galaxy Storms and God Devil Breaks onto the mobs. Their strategy was just as effective as before as evident from the tons of experience that were streaming toward the tamers. Although Dark Steel City was the worst City of Heaven, Candlelight Shadow was exploiting Life of the Tamer so well that their achievements so far actually exceeded Warsky Alliance’s Gold Cavalry. Warsky was so impressed that he commented "the old ginger is hotter than young ginger after all", to which Candlelight Shadow responded with silence, and Tempest Shadow with "fuck you”...

The southernmost area of the east gate was occupied by a bunch of outer lands players. It was where I had stationed Protective Umbrella. Warsky, Hickey and the Zephyr Cavalry were sustaining just as many losses as everyone else, but at least they were able to hold the line. Next to Protective Umbrella were Dark Mercenaries and Little Piglet, and surprisingly they too were able to prevent the mobs from taking a single swipe at the fortress thanks to the Iron Cutter Cavalry.

Not everyone was able to hold, of course. In fact, some guilds were being routed, or had been routed already. Take the defense lines of Purgatory Mad Dragon, Flower Room, or Pop Culture for example, there were only two words that I could think of that could properly describe their situation. They were: oh no!

Flower Room was almost wiped. Their guild leader, Li Le, and the vice leader, Life of Luxury, were already dead, and less than a thousand of them were still alive. Pop Culture wasn't doing much better either. Lone Moonshade and his army’s remnants were just barely clinging onto life as they struggled. Purgatory Mad Dragon performed the best out of all the losers, but it was really Ray of Sunshine roleplaying a one-man-army with the Heaven Suppressing Necklace. Even without any priest to heal him, he was able to keep his HP above 60%. You could see that he really was a talented player judging from how systematically he was using his AoE skills despite the chaos around him. He was also casting his Rise of the Fire Dragon like it didn’t cost gold because he knew that Wang Dongliang and Lu Chao would compensate him and more. After all, Ray of Sunshine was their lord and savior right now. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that their only way to keep their position on the China Guild Ranking was to throw their full weight behind Ray of Sunshine.

Unfortunately, Ray of Sunshine was literally the only one in Purgatory Mad Dragon who had any skill worth a damn. As a result, the Devil Blood Mad Leopards were able to get close to the fortress and begin attacking its weak walls.

……

Forty minutes and nearly 10000 dead Dragonlight Cavalry later, we finally managed to clear out almost all of the Devil Blood Mad Leopards in our area. Unfortunately, our work was far from over. I looked in the direction of Purgatory Mad Dragon and groaned loudly, "Fuck, Purgatory Mad Dragon is so useless! Little Gui, rally 5000 Dragonlight Cavalrymen and follow me! We need to reinforce them now, or the Devil Blood Mad Leopards are going to breach a corner of the walls!"

"No problem!"

Ever the battle maniac, Gui Guzi happily mustered his men and followed me to Purgatory Mad Dragon’s rescue. He Yi, Li Chengfeng and the others stayed behind to protect our people.

I charged my Chill of the Nine Provinces with power and fired a Coiling Dragon Revolution at the mobs, proccing many crits and killing the unlucky mobs. Now that I thought about it, it kinda looked like we were here to rob Purgatory Mad Dragon of their experience. We weren’t though. I mean we were, but Purgatory Mad Dragon would’ve been annihilated if we had left them be, and then they would’ve lost an entire level worth of experience and their section of the walls as well.

Gui Guzi raised his Ghostblade Halberd and roared, "Kill them!"

Our 5000 elite Dragonlight Cavalrymen cut through the horde of Devil Blood Mad Leopard in unstoppable fashion. Seeing that reinforcements had arrived, the ranged players of Purgatory Mad Dragon hurriedly amped up their DPS as well. There was a problem though. Most of them were using guild attack mode, so their attacks were hitting both the mobs and us. Furious, Gui Guzi pointed his halberd at them and shouted, "Switch to Nation War attack mode, you fucking idiots! You wanna die?"

At this point, Purgatory Mad Dragon players’ mentality was completely wrecked by the mobs. It was to the point where they obeyed Gui Guzi’s order without hesitation.

……

About ten minutes of fighting later, the pressure on Purgatory Mad Dragon was fully lifted, and Wang Dongliang was able to dispatch a group of cavalrymen to defend the walls. Gui Guzi and I withdrew with the Dragonlight Cavalry after that.

"Hey you two!"

Suddenly, Li Chengfeng called out to us from the sky, "You need to come back now! The fourth AND fifth wave just showed up at the same time!"

I exclaimed in astonishment, "You serious? Two waves at once?"

"Yeah!"

"Motherfucker! The boss hasn’t even shown up yet, and the game’s sending two waves at us at the same time? This is totally unlike your normal monster wave…"

……

We hurriedly returned to our formation and restored our buffs and statuses. However, the mobs appeared from the mountain ranges before we managed to fully restore ourselves, and the bloody storm in the distance grew even thicker than before.

"Roar roar…"

Beastial roars filled the air as golden-scaled beasts that looked like tigers appeared on the mountain ranges. They were Level 308 fiend-rank mobs called Dragonscale Battle Tigers, and I had no doubt that their Defense was super high. Not only that, black war eagles appeared above the horde of tigers, and each one was ridden by a skeletal warrior with spears in their hands. Behind them was an unusually large quiver filled to the brim not with arrows, but spears. They were Level 309 fiend-rank mobs called the Spear-throwing Flyers!

Scalp tingling with abject dread, I gripped my weapon tighter and asked quietly, "You guys prepared to wipe and call it a day?"

Li Chengfeng and Gui Guzi chuckled at the same time. "Nope!"

"Very good. Now prove it with the steel in your hands!"

Everyone unsheathed their weapons and waited for the land and aerial army to reach us.

1. T/N: ??? I guess he can’t cast it from the mount because it needs him to spin his body? ☜