Under Ye Tianxie’s assault, the Golden Sword Lion Beast’s HP had fallen below a third. Apart from one careless claw that had caught him and taken six hundred-odd HP off him, it had not so much as brushed the hem of his clothes again… and even that single connecting blow may well have been something Ye Tianxie permitted deliberately, to gauge how hard the thing actually hit.
The lion threw back its head and roared, launching its wide-area attack-reduction Lion’s Roar once more. And Ye Tianxie, having already sampled the skill’s power, not only failed to sprint out of its radius — he charged happily in, hammering away at the beast’s body while the roar was still building, as though the debuff were of no consequence whatsoever.
The roar landed. Ye Tianxie’s movements checked briefly, and then he went straight back to driving Dragon Rend Slash into it, his attack power not dropping in the slightest. With Focus several times that of an ordinary person, mind-affecting attacks had great difficulty taking hold on him. The 70% chance of an attack reduction carried by Lion’s Roar, applied to Ye Tianxie… with his deliberate mental resistance, became a flat 0%.
So if the Golden Sword Lion Beast had possessed sufficient intelligence, it would surely have vomited three pints of blood.
After the roar, Ye Tianxie’s furious barrage dropped its HP below 20% — and a savage aura erupted from its body, a wave of rage like magma bursting up, hot enough to raise the temperature of the air around it. This was the omen of the beast’s most terrible technique: the Roar of Fury.
Fixed damage of 1,300. Three seconds and more of forced stun. Ye Tianxie still did not retreat. He flicked a contemptuous finger at the vast lion body in front of him. “…You’ve missed your chance.”
“Hero’s Heart!“
At his low call, the shortsword carved into the Hero’s Headguard flashed once with a metallic gleam, and then poured itself into his body, laying a thin, barely-perceptible metallic sheen across both his hands…
Hero’s Heart — the conviction skill that gathers a hero’s will and belief and guarantees a 100% critical on the next attack.
“Dragon Tornado Sevenfold Rend!!“
A whipping gale erupted outward with Ye Tianxie’s body at its center. Gripping the Hour of Fate, roaring, he spun — and his rotation reached a horrifying speed in an instant too brief to measure, the leveled Hour of Fate blurring into an afterimage. In that heartbeat, it carved into the Golden Sword Lion Beast seven times over.
-851, -835, -849, -879, -837, -869, -842!
Seven blows, delivered almost simultaneously. The gale of dragon-power around him dispersed entirely, and his spinning body came to a controlled stop… The skill description for Dragon Tornado Sevenfold Rend had stated plainly that each use inflicted roughly three seconds of stun on the user, and having now used this so-called ultimate technique for the first time, he finally understood why.
The Dragon Tornado Sevenfold Rend uses dragon-power to whip up a gale, the gale spins the body, and the spinning body drives the weapon’s strikes — seven rotations in an instant, seven cuts to follow. And at a rotational speed that horrifying, it is near enough impossible for the brain not to spend a moment reeling. Even Ye Tianxie, with his Focus, needed nearly two seconds to force control of his body back.
Seven strikes, and under Hero’s Heart, seven criticals — a full fourteen times damage. The Golden Sword Lion Beast’s health was wiped to zero. Caught mid-cast in its Roar of Fury, it never got its furious bellow out. Instead it produced a single despairing cry, and that vast, upright body collapsed to the ground like a heap of mud. Item after item spilled from it, glittering gold, catching and answering the gold of its own mane.
“Ding… You have successfully slain the level 25 Lord-tier boss Golden Sword Lion Beast. Renown +25.”
“Ding… Your pet ‘Mystic Spirit Snow Fox’ has risen to level 9. HP +20, MP +80, physical attack +4, magic attack +8, accuracy +1, evasion +1.”
“Ding… Your pet ‘Mystic Spirit Snow Fox’ has risen to level 10. HP +20, MP +80, physical attack +4, magic attack +8, accuracy +1, evasion +1.”
A solo kill — and a solo kill ten levels above him — plus Ye Tianxie’s Luck. It would have been strange indeed if a magnificent drop hadn’t materialized. With every factor combined, the haul from Ye Tianxie’s kill was several times richer than what dozens of same-level players would have gotten from bringing the thing down together.
Those seven overlapping damage numbers had seared themselves into the eyes of the watching three. Zuo Pojun swallowed hard. “That one move of Second Brother’s — that’s got to be over 6,000 damage!”
Level 15. Six thousand-odd damage. What an unthinkable, terrifying figure — a number that simply could not exist on a player at this stage.
Attack power that horrifying, on top of talent that horrifying… This world had truly gone mad.
“Oh! I grow more and more interested in Second Brother’s recent adventures… and more interested still in the fact that a game called Fate would permit anything this absurd to exist… Oh, Fate. What a profound and mysterious word. I wonder what fate awaits me in this world.” Murong Qiushui sighed, his expression indescribably peculiar.
“Tianxie, you’re wonderful.” Su Feifei murmured it, then smiled and called out, “Let’s go over.”
By the time the three reached him, Ye Tianxie had already collected the gold coins and potions, and turned to the equipment scattered across the ground, glowing gold and silver.
“Gold! That’s gold — three whole pieces of gold gear, and three silver!” Zuo Pojun let out an extravagant cry. The rarity and preciousness of silver equipment was universally acknowledged; a single silver piece at this stage would make its owner the focus of every room he walked into and draw countless envious stares. And gold equipment — the number of people in the entire Huaxia server currently in possession of a gold-tier item could be counted on one hand.
And here, before them, lay three gold pieces and three silver. Zuo Pojun reacted rather as though a UFO had landed.
Ye Tianxie picked up the three gold items and glanced over their stats:
Lion-Mark Bracers: Level 25 gold-tier item. Requirements: level 25, melee class, Strength above 100. Unidentified — cannot be used.
Sword of Excellence (one-handed): Level 25 gold-tier item. Requirements: level 25, Warrior or Guardian class. Unidentified — cannot be used.
Bow of Excellence: Level 25 gold-tier item. Requirements: level 25, Archer class. Unidentified — cannot be used.
One bracer, two weapons. He glanced through the three silver pieces as well, tossed them all back into his pack, and said, “Two weapons. Not bad — exactly what the two of you can use. I’ll hand them over once you’ve reached the level.”
The Sword of Excellence was a golden longsword, its blade lined with a fine row of serrations, and both its glow and its shape were arresting in the extreme. Set against it, the bronze sword in Zuo Pojun’s own hand — the one that made other Guardians red-eyed with envy — was frankly a piece of scrap. He could barely stop himself from lunging over and robbing Ye Tianxie of it outright. Watching him put the gear away, Zuo Pojun assumed a pitiful, hungry-eyed expression and wheedled, “Er… Second Brother, look — couldn’t you give us the sword, and the bow, now? Even if we can’t use them yet, they’d be nice to look at.”
Murong Qiushui nodded in profound agreement.
Ye Tianxie glanced at him and drawled, “Not for the time being. This is motivation. If you want them, go and level.”
“But level 25… seems awfully far off,” Zuo Pojun said, deeply mournful.
“Far off, is it? All right, then…” Ye Tianxie thought a moment and adopted an air of concession, summoning his pack — at which Zuo Pojun’s eyes lit up, and he loudly declared that Second Brother truly had a blade’s face and a heart of tofu, that he was Guanyin herself reborn… And then Ye Tianxie unhurriedly produced a golden shield.
Tiger Soul Shield: Gold-tier item. Requirements: level 15, Guardian class. A golden shield holding the power of a tiger’s soul within it. Attributes: Defense +110. HP +230. Strength +7. Constitution +15. Shield block rate +5%. On being struck, 5% chance to trigger “Tiger Soul Riposte,” reflecting the attack and its attached effects in full.
“Get to level 20 first, and the shield is yours.” And before Zuo Pojun could lunge at him like a starving wolf, Ye Tianxie had whipped it back out of sight.
The shield is a Guardian’s soul. A Guardian can do without his sword; he can never do without his shield. When the Tiger Soul Shield’s stats appeared before him, Zuo Pojun, drooling hard enough to reach the ground, very nearly wrapped himself around Ye Tianxie’s leg and knelt. After a long and fruitless campaign of piteous begging, all he could do was mutter like an aggrieved young bride, “Fine… I’ll do exactly as Second Brother says and get to twenty as fast as I can… Second Brother, whatever you do, don’t give that shield to anyone else… You’re more of a brother to me than my own brother!!”
Murong Qiushui swiftly took three steps to the left and looked elsewhere, feigning no acquaintance whatsoever with this shameless fat oaf who had abandoned all dignity over a golden shield.
Ye Tianxie gathered some golden lion fur from the beast’s corpse, stowed it in his pack, and dusted off his hands. “Right. This is enough to prove the quest is done. Pojun, notify Big Sister — we’re heading back.”
That said, he took out a Town Portal Scroll. From the moment he’d accepted the quest, it had never occurred to him that he might fail. Had he been the Ye Tianxie who had never gone to the Hidden Dragon Abyss, the task of killing the Golden Sword Lion Beast would have made his scalp crawl — merely reaching this place would have cost him enormous effort. And with his Dragon Soul power awakened, the increase in his strength was hardly a matter of doubling or tripling.
(End of Chapter 150)