Ye Tianxie observed for a little while, and the corner of his mouth suddenly curled up into an uncanny smile. He liked challenges, liked thrills, and liked thrilling challenges even more. Looking at the man-eating flower formation before him, one that even a twelve-man party would struggle to break through, he could all but hear the sound of his own blood boiling.
A trial’s monsters weren’t fixed and unchanging — especially in high-difficulty trials, where the trial monsters changed according to the one being tested… For instance, in the Abyss-tier trial where all was despair, had Ye Tianxie been a ranged class, the trial monsters absolutely wouldn’t have been these immobile man-eating flowers, but monsters with extremely high movement speed that would keep a ranged class from ever opening up distance. Ye Tianxie had no class, but his attributes were plainly melee attributes — and so what awaited him was the man-eating flower formation hardest for him to break through, a type of monster and layout that simply couldn’t be picked off one by one.
Each Frenzied Man-Eating Flower stood a full person’s height, a huge red bud hanging from its green vine-body, swaying left and right without pattern. But look closely, and one could faintly make out two rows of fine, tightly-packed teeth reflecting a pale cold light from within that bud. The twelve Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers ringed densely into a semicircle nearly four meters across, their huge red buds knocking against one another as they swayed.
Ye Tianxie considered briefly, then walked straight forward. Each man-eating flower was surely no more than two meters tall, which meant its attack range certainly couldn’t exceed two meters. And the shape they were arranged in right now…
Ye Tianxie’s steps suddenly paused, a thread of a disdainful smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. His steps abruptly quickened, and the ceaselessly swaying man-eating flowers sensed the approach of a living being at the same time, those great unopened buds all turning toward Ye Tianxie’s direction at once.
If he attacked from the left or the right, then when striking the nearest flower, since the flowers stood too close and too densely packed, others were bound to launch attacks at him. At the same time, owing to the differences in distance, as he gradually drew closer, the several flowers would trigger their attacks at slightly different moments, striking one after another in sequence… But what about the single point at the very center of these flowers?
Ye Tianxie’s gaze grew firm as he searched with his eyes for that most suitable position… a point exactly equidistant from all twelve man-eating flowers, the center of that semicircular formation!
Ye Tianxie’s body paused, then leapt, landing with perfect precision on the point he’d calculated. And at once, the very instant his toes touched the ground, he felt twelve icy gusts of wind envelop his surroundings — twelve gaping bloody maws, twelve sets of parted, dripping teeth biting and tearing toward his body at the same time.
Ye Tianxie was neither startled nor thrown, for this was exactly what he’d hoped to see. His landed toes pressed down slightly, and his body — leaning forward until now — instantly shifted into a backward-leaning posture, the whole of it borrowing the force to veer back by a distance of just under ten centimeters. Twelve sets of huge teeth clamped shut before him at almost the same moment… yet, with perfect precision, without touching his clothing at all.
The twelve opened buds began to draw back at the same time, and in that instant Ye Tianxie suddenly moved forward a small half-step, his arm extending, the Hour of Eternal Fate in his hand carving out a jet-black semicircular arc.
-172, -168, -169, -166…
The length of Ye Tianxie’s arm plus the length of the Hour of Eternal Fate made for an attack range of nearly two meters, and from the position he now stood in, that black arc he swept out cut across all twelve Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers at once with flawless precision. Twelve red damage numbers floated up almost simultaneously, merging into one… and before they’d even faded, another small ring of damage numbers floated up — the Hour of Eternal Fate had swung a reverse arc, once again striking all twelve Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers at the same time… Given the man-eating flowers’ layout and the Hour of Eternal Fate’s attack range, had Ye Tianxie been even a few centimeters further back or forward, hitting them all at once would have been impossible.
The instant the second attack finished, Ye Tianxie’s body flashed back a small step — and hard on its heels… twelve cold, sinister gusts of wind struck his chest at the same time.
A single point — a point that could make all twelve man-eating flowers attack at once. As long as his body stood on this point, the twelve flowers attacked at once, then drew back at once, and facing these Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers whose movements had become identical, Ye Tianxie was, in effect, merely dodging the attack of a single man-eating flower.
But should this point be stepped on even a bit too far left or too far right, the effect would change entirely: what Ye Tianxie faced would no longer be a uniform, in-unison attack, but the simultaneous attack of several flowers plus the sequential attacks of several others, making it extremely difficult for him to either dodge or seize an opening to strike.
In a single exchange, Ye Tianxie came out unscathed while all twelve Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers lost more than a third of their HP. With the Hour of Eternal Fate in hand and all his free attribute points poured into Strength at every level-up, Ye Tianxie’s attack power had now reached a strength of 200 — at least double that of an ordinary player of the same level.
The man-eating flowers’ attack speed was extremely fast, but their attack frequency was relatively slow: the time for a single attack was enough for Ye Tianxie to attack twice, and his terrifying reflexes, inborn and unlike an ordinary person’s, always let him calmly withdraw and evade in the very instant the flowers attacked together, then swiftly close back in to counterattack. Faced with twelve flowers attacking in chaotic, patternless fashion, he might have struggled to evade unscathed — but faced with attacks that were now entirely equivalent to a single flower’s, he felt not the slightest pressure.
Shhk!
On the third exchange, a single strike of the Hour of Eternal Fate once again brought all the Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers within its sweep, and at once two flowers had their HP emptied under critical hits. Another black arc swept across, and the remaining ten Frenzied Man-Eating Flowers all toppled to the ground, becoming a field of lifeless, withered man-eating flowers.
“Nothing more than this.” Ye Tianxie gave a disdainful smile and stepped forward to rummage through the flowers’ corpses, tossing one Bronze piece glowing with yellow light and two Steel pieces into his backpack. Powerful as these flowers were, as one-star mini-BOSSes they likewise had a drop rate far better than ordinary monsters’.
After collecting all the coins, potions, and other spoils, Ye Tianxie crouched down and cast on the flowers’ corpses the Gathering skill he’d been using so frequently of late.
“Ding… The Frenzied Man-Eating Flower has no items that can be gathered.”
Ye Tianxie stood up and, treading over the flowers’ corpses, walked straight ahead to stand before yet another stone gate, pressing his hand to it. The first gate — he’d won with the utmost ease, the whole thing lasting mere seconds, and himself unharmed down to a single hair… but that ease was only relative to him. Setting aside his flawlessly precise positioning and distance calculation, how many others could have his kind of reflexes and towering self-assurance? Triggering all twelve flowers to attack at once from the cleverest possible position was indeed the finest of strategies — but let one’s reactions be even the slightest bit too slow, and the outcome of being attacked twelve times at once was, without a doubt, an instant kill!
Behind the pushed-open stone gate, the ground was no longer that deep green, but took on a gloom that pressed down on the heart, the air plainly grown colder and more sinister still.
Before him were man-eating flowers once again — the same number, the same shape, the same layout, differing only in their color…
Dark Man-Eating Flower — Level 10 two-star elite. HP: 1,700. A mutant form of the Frenzied Man-Eating Flower after absorbing too much demonic energy, its nature grown even more brutal; it releases a terrible toxin while biting and tearing its target.
Skill — Deadly Devour: Opens its formed teeth to bite and tear a single target, dealing 100 base damage and inflicting a 100% “Poison” status; a poisoned target loses 15 HP per second, with a 4% chance to devour completely.
(End of Chapter 38)