Chapter 77: Slaying the Kingdoms Elites
Back in Novice Village, Chief Wang had been nothing more than a Bronze Grade boss.
Now, he had somehow broken through consecutive ranks to reach Platinum Grade.
This rate of promotion was horrifying. Monstrous, evolving bosses like Chief Wang were exceptionally rare. Generally, the wild monsters and NPCs of a nation could only undergo Kingdom Ascension after the country itself had completed the process.
Chief Wang’s situation was an extreme anomaly.
Liam pondered for a brief moment, then acted without hesitation.
Chief Wang clearly didn’t come in peace. Since the boss wanted a confrontation, Liam would test exactly how powerful this Platinum version had become.
Whish! Whish! Whish!
Liam’s arrows tore through the air, but Chief Wang didn’t seem to care. Flying daggers materialized in his hands and were sent spinning around his body in a defensive orbit.
It felt somewhat reminiscent of The Young Scholar’s protective Spectral Blades, though the execution was leagues behind the Scholar’s refined technique.
"Thousand-Blade Scatter!"
Chief Wang tapped a finger against a flying dagger. Instantly, the single blade split into a thousand, and the swarm of steel shrapnel screeched toward Liam.
"Flame: Heart-Sear!"
Chief Wang didn’t stop his assault. His hands blurred through a series of incantations. Liam felt a sudden, sharp pang in his chest as a ball of fire erupted directly from his sternum.
-1,000!
-1,000!
...
Damage numbers ticked upward over Liam’s head in rapid succession. Even with the mitigation from the Purifying Jade Amulet, the damage remained remarkably high.
[System: You are affected by Grievous Wounds. Life-Steal effectiveness reduced by 1%.]
The corners of Liam’s mouth curled into a smirk.
The Purifying Jade Amulet was truly broken. That Grievous Wounds effect should have been a 10% reduction, but after the amulet’s filtering, only a negligible 1% actually affected him.
Moments later, Liam’s attacks accelerated.
As strong as Chief Wang was, charging straight through Liam’s hail of arrows was proving to be a nearly impossible task.
However, at that exact moment, the player who had previously vanished reappeared. He slammed a palm against the ground.
Liam’s eyes narrowed. He felt the space around him shudder and distort. This minor spatial ripple wasn't enough to cause direct damage, but...
It was enough to alter the trajectory of his arrows.
His aim was being forcibly diverted. It was an absurdly powerful support ability.
"Frost Monarch, your time is up!" Chief Wang roared as he closed the distance.
With his arrows missing due to the Spatial Distortion, Chief Wang finally had the opening he needed to reach melee range.
"Void Blink."
Liam instantly blinked backward to create distance, then pivoted his aim toward the interfering player.
Between Ethereal Invincibility, a 50% reduction to three core stats, and now Spatial Distortion, what kind of class was this person playing? It was ridiculous.
The player activated Ethereal Invincibility again, and Liam’s arrows passed harmlessly through his ghostly form.
Liam rubbed his temples. Dealing with someone who could simply choose to be intangible whenever things got heated was a headache.
Left with no other choice, he turned his focus back to Chief Wang.
"Fission: Triple Shadow-Slayer Slash!"
Chief Wang’s body split into three identical phantoms, reaching Liam in the blink of an eye.
Liam immediately stowed his longbow and summoned the Novice Wooden Sword to parry the blow.
"How is that possible?!"
Chief Wang gasped. Liam was an Archer; he shouldn't have been able to use a sword, let alone a basic wooden one.
The Novice Wooden Sword’s attack power was abysmal, but it possessed the "Indestructible" trait. No matter how much force Chief Wang poured into his strike, the wooden blade held firm.
Liam didn’t give the boss a second to think. He countered with a Shadow Slash, then activated Glacial Wings, soaring into the sky to reset the distance.
Liam was already fast, but with Glacial Wings active, he was a blur.
Chief Wang, however, wasn't about to let his prey escape.
"Shadow Pursuit: Instant Kill!"
Chief Wang vanished, reappearing instantly behind Liam. To be precise, he emerged directly from Liam’s shadow.
"Burst Slash!"
The moment Chief Wang appeared, Liam’s counter-attack was already falling.
Chief Wang’s heart skipped a beat. Liam’s reaction speed and combat intuition were bordering on the supernatural. It was the kind of instinct that usually required a decade of life-and-death combat experience to hone.
Chief Wang managed a desperate, instinctive block as Burst Slash landed.
Liam didn't care that he hadn't dealt damage; the move was purely a defensive maneuver to create space. With a powerful beat of his Glacial Wings, Liam surged away, swapped back to his bow, and began raining down arrows like a berserker.
Caught in mid-air, Chief Wang’s defensive options were limited.
-429,108!!
-429,108!!
...
The onslaught was relentless, the sheer force of the impact slamming Chief Wang out of the air and back onto the ground.
"Can’t fly?"
Liam smirked. If Chief Wang was grounded, the rest of this fight would be much simpler.
But before Liam could celebrate, Chief Wang began hurling his flying daggers again. Each one multiplied into a thousand in mid-air. Liam tried to bank and weave, but there were simply too many.
-9,850.
-9,866.
...
Each blade dealt nearly ten thousand damage. It was a manageable amount for Liam, but being suspended in the air made him an easy target.
"Found you!"
A thin smile played on Liam's lips. He had finally pinpointed the player with Ethereal Invincibility. Despite the hidden name, the player’s unique gear set made him stand out from the rank-and-file.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Liam’s arrows streaked toward the player.
The player’s eyes widened in horror. Ethereal Invincibility was still on cooldown; he was a sitting duck.
-429,018!!
A massive damage number erupted, yet remarkably, the player survived the first hit. It took a second arrow to finally empty his health bar.
"Over 400,000 HP and all those powerful skills... that player was interesting."
With the nuisance dealt with, Liam pulled back further and turned his sights toward The City Guard.
Chief Wang’s parrying ability was simply too high; arrows alone were a waste of time as long as the boss was focused on him.
"Kill him!"
The Veiled Overseer suddenly appeared just as Liam shifted his focus. The masked NPC lunged forward, intercepting and pinning down Chief Wang.
Chief Wang’s expression darkened. With The Veiled Overseer hounding him, he could no longer focus on parrying Liam’s projectiles.
Sure enough, Liam’s arrows seemed to have a mind of their own, consistently finding gaps in the boss’s guard and sinking into his flesh.
"No...!"
Chief Wang’s face went pale. Liam’s damage output was simply too high. At this rate, he wouldn't last another ten seconds.
He didn't even get those ten seconds. Before he could mount a final defense, his health vanished.
[System: You have achieved the World First for Chief Wang. A Server-Wide Broadcast is about to begin. Would you like to hide your name?]
"Hide it."
[Server-Wide Announcement: Congratulations to player 'Anonymous' for achieving the World First kill of Chief Wang! Let us celebrate this feat and encourage all players to keep striving!]
[Server-Wide Announcement: Congratulations to player 'Anonymous' for achieving the World First kill of Chief Wang! ...]
The moment Chief Wang fell, a nearby player lunged forward, trying to loot the body.
"Bastard, you dare touch his kill?"
The Veiled Overseer, seemingly reading Liam’s mind, didn't hesitate. With a single, brutal swing of his blade, he cut down the greedy player on the spot.
Liam descended and began looting the boss.
[System: You obtained Skill Tome x3.]
[System: You obtained Equipment x2.]
[System: You obtained 5,000 Gold Sovereigns.]
[System: You obtained 200 AP.]
[...]
The rewards were substantial. The equipment was Level 100, meaning Liam couldn't use it yet, but the Skill Tomes were a different story.
Chief Wang’s "Triple Shadow-Slayer Slash" and "Shadow Pursuit: Instant Kill" had both dropped. Both were Warrior-class skills.
[Skill: Triple Shadow-Slayer Slash (1-Star)]
Requirements: Level 50 Warrior
Effect: Summon three Phantom Doubles and teleport to the target, performing a coordinated strike. Each phantom deals 80% of your Attack Power (Max range: 20m).
Cost: 50 MP
Cooldown: 300s
Mastery: 0/100
Liam stared at the description. The skill was excellent, but since it scaled off Attack Power, it wasn't particularly "friendly" to his current build.
[Skill: Shadow Pursuit: Instant Kill (1-Star)]
Requirements: Level 50 Warrior
Effect: Instantly teleport to the target’s shadow and deliver a strike dealing 120% of your Attack Power (Max range: 30m).
Cost: 50 MP
Cooldown: 300s
Mastery: 0/100
Liam frowned slightly. Again, his low base Attack Power made the damage negligible.
However, both skills provided high-utility displacement. Liam was desperately short on mobility skills. While Triple Shadow-Slayer required a target, Shadow Pursuit: Instant Kill only required a shadow. As long as there was a shadow nearby, he could blink to it.
It was a solid addition. Triple Shadow-Slayer, however, would be a waste on him.
After a moment of thought, Liam learned Shadow Pursuit: Instant Kill and decided to set aside Triple Shadow-Slayer for Monty. On a high-attack pet like Monty, that skill would be terrifying.
Then, he looked at the third skill drop.
[Skill: Ranged Fission (1-Star)]
Requirements: Level 50 (All Classes)
Effect: Causes your ranged attacks to split. Currently splits into a maximum of 10 projectiles. (Damage remains unchanged after splitting).
Cost: 50 MP
Cooldown: 60s
Mastery: 0/500
Liam’s eyebrows shot up. This was it.
Splitting one arrow into ten might not seem game-breaking at first. But what if the skill reached 10-Stars?
Chief Wang had managed to turn one blade into a thousand today. Liam’s gut told him that Chief Wang hadn't even reached the skill's ceiling. If he could level this up, could he split an arrow into ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
The range of the fission would likely increase as well.
Liam learned the skill without a second thought. The current stats were low, but the potential for growth was astronomical. Imagine a single shot turning into a literal cloud of thousands of arrows.
And the best part? The "damage remains unchanged" clause.
Furthermore, since each split arrow counted as a Basic Attack, every single projectile would trigger his HP-stacking passive.
In a 1v1 fight against a mob, it might be overkill. But in a massive Realm War?
If he could eventually fire ten thousand arrows in a single shot, one use of the skill would grant him tens of thousands of permanent HP.
Currently, Liam only gained about a thousand HP from clearing an entire dungeon. The prospect of gaining tens of thousands in a single instant was staggering.
"Kill him next!"
The Veiled Overseer’s body turned into a blur of shadows as he charged toward Archmage Abyr.
Liam grinned. He knew exactly what the NPC was thinking: Decapitation.
They were going to systematically eliminate The Astral Kingdom’s top powerhouses. Liam was more than happy to oblige. His ultimate goal was King Abraham, but as long as Archmage Abyr and the others were alive, the King would never step onto the battlefield.
Under The Veiled Overseer's heavy pressure, Archmage Abyr had no way to defend against Liam’s long-range sniping. In a matter of seconds, the Archmage’s life was snuffed out.
[System: You have slain Archmage Abyr. A Server-Wide Broadcast is about to begin...]
"Hide it!!"
[Server-Wide Broadcast: Congratulations to player 'Anonymous' for slaying Archmage Abyr! ...]
Liam laughed and rushed over to loot the corpse, pocketing another batch of Skill Tomes, Gold, and AP.
With the Archmage dead, the pressure on The Night-Walkers’ front lines vanished instantly.
"Another one!" The Veiled Overseer shouted, his eyes locking onto General Flynn.
Liam didn't miss a beat. General Flynn was a formidable warrior, but even his legendary resilience meant nothing in the face of Liam’s absurd DPS. Within seconds, the General fell beneath a hail of Liam’s arrows.
[System: You have slain General Flynn. A Server-Wide Broadcast is about to begin...]
"Hide!"
[Server-Wide Broadcast: Congratulations to player 'Anonymous' for slaying General Flynn! ...]