Chapter 597: Mountain Stagger Slash

Translator: alyschu

"Heaven-grade weapon..."

The wide-eyed people gulped visibly. "The sword Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand is holding... is the number one weapon on the Weapons Ranking, Cyan Netherworld Sword? It’s a 6-star Outstanding Heaven-grade item and the weapon Bloodthirsty Battle Monarch of Hall of Immortality put up a ten million RMB bounty on... it’ll be a jackpot if we get his sword..."

All kinds of delusional images filled their minds for a moment. It was as if the sword in my hand wasn’t a deadly weapon, but a thick wad of cash, a luxurious mansion, a peerless beauty, and so on. Long story short, anyone who got their hands on this sword would get all the women, all the wealth and all the fame for having killed the seventh CGL Hall of Famer, Falling Dust. It was literally the fulfillment of every man’s ambition—and all they had to do was kill me.

"Kill him! Kill Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand and grab his Cyan Netherworld Sword! By the way, I heard the rest of his equipment is pretty strong as well, right? It’ll be a jackpot if we could grab even one of his Outstanding Earth-grade items, hahaha!"

"Gogogo!"

"Attack!"

......

Logic gave way to greed, and greed gave way to insanity. Every enemy player around raised their weapons and started charging me like mad. It was exactly the kind of effect I was hoping to induce. The more players I taunted, the less pressure my allies needed to endure, especially since I was the tankiest player of the group right now.

I launched Thousand Ice Slash onto the crowd. Then, I tossed three Ice Cyclone Domains to the area about a dozen or so yards away from me. Anyone who wanted to attack me would have to go through them first, meaning that they would have to fight me while their movement speed and attack speed were drastically reduced. In a battle of attrition, the advantage was on my side.

Boom!

The Thousand Ice Slash one-shot all low-health players, and those who didn’t die were mostly frozen as well. While they were immobilized, the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf darted between them and finished the job with its teeth and claws. Not to be outdone by my pet, I ran into the crowd, used War Crush and swung the Cyan Netherworld Sword all over the place, giving these greed-blinded fools a taste of the divine armament in my hand.

The enemy fired a concentrated volley of arrows at me, and many of them were Shock Arrows, a CC skill with a stun. However, the stun resistance provided to me by level and equipment advantage was so high that around 99% of them were useless. Still, there was like 1% chance of a proc, so it was only a matter of time before one of the hundreds of arrows stunned me—

Bang!

Suddenly, my vision turned blurry, and my body shook madly. Shit, just when I thought about it!

At the same time, a dozen or so Galaxy Storms devoured me and dealt massive damage—

1982!

2019!

1728!

......

It was terrible. I had lost almost 30k HP in less than five seconds. This would’ve been fatal if Pure Love hadn’t buffed me with Physique and increased my max HP by 45%. For now though, with a max HP of 43k, I could still recover from this!

Swhoosh!

A beam of bloody light penetrated the clouds as I activated Tenacity of the Dead and instantly healed myself for 10k+ HP. Then, I chugged down a Rank 8 Saint Spirit Potion and further restored myself to almost 30k HP. Finally, the priests including Moon Dew focused their healing on me and pushed my HP past the 90% mark at lightning speed. Just like that, I was safe and ready to go again!

It was at this moment Beiming Xue shouted from the back, "There are too many enemies around big bro! We need to suppress them with Spiraling Arrow Blades as soon as possible!” Mere moments passed before she shouted again. “Now!”

The next moment, at least fifty Spiraling Arrow Blades exploded in a 20-yard radius around me, killing countless archers and mages. More than half of the enemy’s ranged players close to me were killed just like that. Beiming Xue’s archer party truly was the nuclear weapon of our guild. Every time they launched an assault, the results were absolute devastation.

Feeling a great pressure departing my shoulders, I fired a Burning Blade Slash and killed the melee fighters standing in front of me. Now that my HP was full, I renewed my assault on the enemy with extra vigor. I killed the Throne Seeker players so quickly that not a single one of them was able to get close to me. They looked terrible to say the least.

......

The battle had reached a climax at this point. The flames of war stretched hundreds of yards, and the light of skills shone so brightly and frequently that they made the sky look dim. Sea of Flames burned the whole valley, and arrows stole away the lives of players on both sides like a poisonous dart on a cold night.

Li Chengfeng was standing at the frontline and cutting down players with broad sweeps, grinning. After hitting a group of players with a Reverse Scale Slash, he reversed the angle of his sword and took out the closest magic knight to him with a Barrier Break. The dragon warrior seemed almost invincible, and the priests behind his back made sure that that was the case.

On the other side, Chaos Moon fired Rock Crush and crushed countless people beneath a cyan mountain range. The skill ignored a certain percentage of Defense, and the Bone Scythe set drastically boosted Chaos Moon’s attack power. She was incredibly powerful to say the least!

Pop pop pop...

All the players who were killed by Chaos Moon dropped equipment like crazy. The floor of shiny loot beneath her feet was enough to distract anyone who was looking at her direction.

Panicking, a Throne Seeker player pointed at her and shouted, "Holy shit, that girl’s a goddamn weapon of mass destruction! Anyone she kills always drops a piece of equipment, so watch out! My second brother dropped three pieces after he died! He’s lucky to have retained his underwear! This is too brutal!"

Chaos Moon smiled sweetly at them and said, "What are you waiting for, brothers from Vanished God City? I’m here..."

The players of Throne Seeker immediately lost their self-control and rushed her. Naturally, the end result was a Rock Crush to the face and plenty of injuries. Truly, men were creatures who could give up their lives for women.

Twenty yards to the right of Chaos Moon, a fearsome general was brute-forcing his way in and out of the enemy swarm. He was of course High Fighting Spirits. His offensive and defensive stats were drastically increased by our bards, and he exploited the advantage to the max by pouncing at the enemies like an animal. Every time he swung his battle axe and executed the Xiezhi Howl, an empty ring would appear around him, filling up with new waves of enemies. The man was like a vacuum or a black hole! On top of that, he occasionally tossed his axe to the distance and killed lines of players! It was a boomerang skill!

"Axe Boomerang!"

Boom!

Again, Invincible tore through the enemy and reaped dozens of lives before finally flying back to his hand. Grinning, he abruptly sped up toward a magic knight and chopped off the poor bastard’s head with Barrier Break. The skill penetrated 60% of his target’s Defense, so there was absolutely nothing he could do at all.

High Fighting Spirits was an animal, the kind that people set up warning signs for. He wasn't the only animal in Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls though. For example, fighting on the opposite side of the battlefield was Xu Yang, the other animal of the guild!

Today, Xu Yang’s level, equipment, and skill were nothing like his former self. He wielded a 3-star Outstanding Spirit-grade sword and wore a metal armor that was surrounded by the indiscernible glow of a protective skill, and reverberating with the sound of a faint, beastial roar. It was the Ironback Bear Armor, a skill book that he picked up after killing the Ironback Bear King, a Purple Gold Rank boss with Gui Guzi. At max rank, it boosted his Defense by 15% and Magic Resist by 9%. It was an incredible skill.

"So eager to die, you bastards?!"

Xu Yang shouted as the image of a green mountain rock appeared about 5 yards away from him. It was the AoE skill, Mountain Stagger Slash!

Mountain Stagger Slash had a smaller attack radius than many AoE skills, but it was valuable because it ignored 30% of the enemy’s metal armor defense. This meant that it was more effective against mounted players, and it could delete Mount Tenacity really, really quickly. It was very similar to an archer’s Mountain Stagger Arrow, except that it was better.

Boom!

The magic knights and warriors standing on the wrong end of the Mountain Stagger Slash broke into tears. One of them cried, "Is he really Hot Sun, the noob of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls? How is he so strong now..."

Xu Yang shouted and killed another high-level magic knight with Barrier Break. For a few seconds, the man looked positively unstoppable. Then the enemy’s elite mages started focusing their attention on him and gave him their tenderest Galaxy Storms and Dragon’s Roar. It was Xu Yang’s turn to cry as he ran back to his priests for healing.

......

The battle was ridiculously intense, and both sides were giving it everything they had. A while later, it became clear that Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls held the absolute advantage both in terms of firepower and defense in a direct engagement. Unfortunately, there was no avoiding casualties in a battle like this, and our fighters, archers, mages, and priests died despite our best efforts. This was war, and it was impossible to fight a war without bloodshed.

The battle lasted for almost an hour or so. Eventually, the flames of war started subsiding, and after losing over 80% of their players, both the first and the second subguilds of Throne Seekers finally admitted that they were no match for us. Both guild leaders raised their swords and commanded, "We lost. Withdraw!"

However, to everyone’s surprise, a Level 136 magic knight suddenly broke ranks and galloped toward the subguilds. He shouted from far, far away, "You will not withdraw! You will fight to the last man! Did you think you can challenge the throne without sacrifice? Moreover, there are 10000 of you and 7000 of them, and you didn’t even kill five hundred of them! You think a battle result like this is acceptable? Fight! Fight to your last drop of blood! Don’t worry, your sacrifice won't be for nothing, for Hall of Immortality is the next to go!"

The speaker was none other than the guild leader of Throne Seeker himself, the Level 136 magic knight "Emperor’s Equal”. He was an uncle, and a respected one, because his subordinates were so ashamed that they instantly changed course and attacked our formation again.

......

In response, I raised the Cyan Netherworld Sword and said, "If they’re so eager to die, then there’s no need to show mercy from our side! Kill them all!"

In less than five minutes, the one thousand or so players with incomplete parties all died before our feet. Without their priests, archers, and bards to support them, their charge could only be described as suicidal.

Standing at the front, I sucked in a deep breath and ordered, "Xu Yang, count our casualties..."

Xu Yang nodded and did as commanded. A short while later, he reported, "We lost 312 warriors, 45 archers, 12 mages, 41 tamers and 9 assassins. That’s 419 casualties in total. We’re still doing fine."

I let out a sigh of relief before saying, "This is just the beginning. The strongest guild of them all, Hall of Immortality, hasn’t acted yet. Thank goodness we chose to intercept them here, or else... Anyway, I’m sure they’ll be sending out their real elites very soon!"

......

A few minutes later, lines of players with red light shining from their shoulders started creeping across the horizon. It was a guild emblem with a bloody skull on it; the symbol of the Hall of Immortality. Their numbers were great, and their class composition was sound.

Gritting his teeth, Li Chengfeng uttered, "Damn, would you look at that. The first, third, fifth, and sixth subguilds of Hall of Immortality have all stepped into the open. That’s got to be 30000 people at least! Tsk tsk, this will be a hard fight for sure..."

Resting his battle axe on his shoulder, High Fighting Spirits chuckled. "So what? It’s just one death."

Li Chengfeng smiled in response. "That’s true. We’re not even afraid of death, let alone them!"