Chapter 447: An Upgrade in AOE
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Wei Yan Er continued to pick up the loot that had been dropped by the boss. The second Yellow-Gold equipment was a pair of leather boots, with additional of fire resistance attributes, so everyone just ignored it. They deduced that even if they placed it into the Little Merchandize to sell, no one would actually spend a dime to purchase this pair of boots. So by the end of it, Han Ying Xue took it and dismantled it into materials for making a Runestone.
But afterwards, the little girl picked up a staff that was aquamarine in colour. This aquamarine staff radiated with a vague violet light, presenting it’s fascinating appearance like a crystal jade. Everyone already knew that this was one fine staff, just by looking at it.
[Staff of Nostalgia] (Violet-Platinum, Staff)
Magic Attack: 2,321 - 2,921
Equip: Increases 10% of damage and healing effect.
Equip: When you succeeded in casting a spell, there is a 0.1% chance of having a nostalgic experience which recovers you back to 100% of your health and mana points.
{Unidentified}
Required Level: 100
Looking at the attributes of the staff, everyone took in a deep breath. Staffs of the same level and same grade and tier did not have much difference. Unlike other types of weapons, players would have to look at their attacking speed to determine whether it’s good or not. Therefore, the key to judging whether the magic type weapon is good or not, depended on its additional attributes or effects.
This staff actually added 10% damage and healing points of the wielder! Judging just by this additional attribute, this staff was already very powerful! The second additional attribute that this staff provided was even more awesome than the first one could offer! There was a rate of recovering 100% of both health and mana bars! Any player should know, this was one attribute that could really turn the tide of the battle around during PK battles!
The rate was low, and it was a reasonable rate. Because if the rate was high, the wielder of this weapon would single-handedly break the game!
Daffodil Daydream gave it some thoughts and said, "Ms.Snow, I think you should have this staff. Think about it! If the duration of a boss battle is a little longer, you won’t have to worry about having not enough mana with this staff."
Although Daffodil Daydream would face the same problem as Han Ying Xue, having the need to worry about having insufficient mana points during a boss battle, she was more of a DPS player in the party, and there were still other DPS players on the party to cover her part if she ever ran out of mana points to use. But it was a totally different story when it came to healers being in a boss battle, especially a battle involving only 5 players as a party. If a healer of the party had insufficient mana points to activate skills that kept the party members healed up well and alive, the entire party would be wiped out in just a brief moment, unless the boss had only 1% of health bar left at that time!
So, after Daffodil Daydream did some math on it, she decided to let Han Ying Xue have this awesome staff.
The two of them were being polite at first, but the staff was taken by Han Ying Xue by the end of the discussion, though the day she is eligible to equip the staff was still a little far away.
Wei Yan Er reached her hands into the loot, and she actually picked up a piece of [Aura Stone]!
[Middle-tier Aura Stone] (Consumable)
Use: Improves an Aura Skill by 1 level, the skill must not be higher than level 6.
Required: Aura Skill
[Low-tier Aura Stones] could only be used to level up an Aura Skill up to Level 4, after that, they would not be able to level up the Aura Skills further. So it had become meaningless for Zhang Yang and his party members to hold many [Low-tier Aura Stone] after their Aura Skills had been leveled up to Level 4. They could only wait for the appearance of [Middle-tier Aura Stones] before they could level up their Aura Skills even further. However, Daffodil Daydream and Sun Xin Yu had not learned any Aura Skills at the moment, so they could only stare at Zhang Yang, Han Ying Xue and Wei Yan Er, fighting to get the stone by throwing dices!
In the end, the stone went to Wei Yan Er! This little girl placed her hands on her waist and laughed out loud like a mad girl, looking extremely cocky!
But it actually did not matter if it was the {Vitality Aura}, the {Life Aura} or the {Strength Aura}, any improvements on any of the Aura Skills would be very practical in battle. And since that they would be staying together in one party whenever they go on a quest, they could all enjoy the beneficial effects of the Aura Skills on each of them!
After cleaning up the loot from the ground, the five of them came up to an entrance of an underground passage. After they walked along the staircases that led them down, they arrived at the second floor of the Treasure Cove. The environment of this floor was a little different from the first floor. The entire area of this floor was supported with long thick pillars. These pillars were like fluorescent tubes, radiating with bright and yet soothing lights all around them. These pillars were the reason why the floor was so bright that everyone could see every inch of the floor!
In this vast area, there were countless skeleton monsters wandering about, without any sense of purpose. The number of these skeleton monsters was so high that people would feel goosebumps just by looking at them!
[Skeleton Rangers] (Elite, Undead)
Level: 95
HP: 500,000
Defense: 1,000
"Oh my gawd! There’s... there’s so many monsters here!" Daffodil Daydream could not pronounce her words properly as she was really shocked to see so many Level 95 elite monsters in a single area. Every single one of the monsters had a total of 500,000 health points. Although their health bars were a little lower than the health bars of the monsters in the previous floor, their number were tenfold, or maybe hundreds of times higher than the number of monsters on the first floor!
"Even if we were to activate our paired skill {Blizzard Sky} and {Luna’s Dew}, I don’t think we can clear this much monsters!" Han Ying Xue was beginning to complain.
Zhang Yang looked around and said, "Haha! We’re going to be rich!"
"Noob tank! Are you mad? There’re so many monsters here! I think, we need at least 2 to 3 days to clear everything out. And you will definitely not going to finish that stupid quest of yours in time!" Wei Yan Er said it with a humph.
"You are right! It is definitely not possible under normal circumstances! But there is a staircase here! As a wise man once said, this is a pass that one man can hold against ten thousand! I can block at the entrance to this staircase. In that way, only two or three monsters at most will squeeze into the available space before me and attack me. Then we shall control everything from thereon!" Zhang Yang reached out for Han Ying Xue and said, "Give me the [Cloak of the Dark Wings], I’ll go to lure the monsters here."
If Zhang Yang charged in blindly, and if he lured too many monsters to the point that he couldn’t make it back to his party members, or too few monsters to the point that AOE attacks would become meaningless, at the least he would have the ability to fly in the air. Although the cloak could not be used to attack the monsters, it was ideal to be used in situation like this, where players need to lure a large number of monsters and get away when needed.
Zhang Yang put on the [Cloak of the Dark Wings] and activated the special effect of the cloak. He immediately opened up a pair of large wings on his back and commanded them with his thoughts. He instantly fluttered up away into the air and flew straight towards the direction of the Skeleton Rangers.
"Rawgh --- " the monsters below reacted quickly as Zhang Yang flew into their range of aggro. They began to chase after Zhang Yang.
Zhang Yang fluttered with his pair of wings in the air as he soared through the air. Although the Treasure Cove was quite vast, however, the movement speed of Zhang Yang had increased up by 300% while he is in the state of flying. In less than 5 minutes, he had already arrived at the bottom of the Treasure Cove’s second floor. Right after he arrived, he immediately flew back up straight to the entrance of the stairwell at a high speed, with an entire army of monsters tailing him very closely!
Boom!
Zhang Yang landed on his feet and took off the cloak, and then he quickly passed it to Han Ying Xue. Then, he quickly equipped his [Titan Cape] back on and summoned his [Mythical Turtle]. The man and his turtle began to stick themselves in between the narrow entrance of the stairwell, making sure that nothing passed the entrance.
With his blazing speed, the monster army only managed to catch up with Zhang Yang on the entrance of the stairwell after about half a minute. The scene of monsters marching up towards them was really magnificent to look at. What they saw right before them were countless skulls, with their eye sockets lit up with the green flames of spectres. It was really terrifying, to the point that the four ladies felt a tingle on their skulls!
"Get ready!" Zhang Yang had been in battle mode all along, so he was regenerating 2 rage points in every second. By the time he informed everyone to get ready, he had already accumulated 120 rage points. He wielded his shield and sword up and threw out a shot of his {Spear of Obliteration} from afar like he usually did.
"Rawgh!" the Skeleton Ranger that was shot by the attack let out an immediate roar with its jaws wide opened. The width of the opened jaws was so wide, that the Skeleton Ranger could actually swallow a mature pig whole!
"Argh ---" Wei Yan Er let out a scream, and she humphed at the Skeleton Ranger, "Do you think that you’re the only one that knows how to shout?"
Piak! Piak! Piak!
The monster army had finally crashed into them, like a strong tidal wave!
{Blast Wave}!
Zhang Yang wielded his [Sword of the Purging Devourer] across the monsters right before him, inflicting a damage of ‘-1,030’ onto each of them within his attack range! The numerical numbers were so dense! The higher the number of monsters there are, the more packed the monsters were in one spot, and the more effective the {Blast Wave} would be! Because this skill could penetrate and spread across all the monsters within the attack range, all the monsters within the attack range would have to suffer the damage inflicted by Zhang Yang!
This skill had struck at least 50 monsters, and the special effect of the [Sword of Purging Devourer] would of course be triggered without mercy! Another wave of damage was inflicted across the monsters within Zhang Yang’s attack range, again and again!
In just a brief 5-seconds, the damage of {Blast Wave} was repeated for 7 times, inflicting a total of at least 360,000 damage points upon the monster army! Although this amount of damage value did not really mean a lot when it is done onto the Skeleton Rangers, Zhang Yang’s DPS had already reached a terrifying height for the moment!
"This is really a god-like AOE weapon!" the four ladies were feeling envious over the sword that Zhang Yang wielded, especially Daffodil Daydream!
Daffodil Daydream had an AOE skill called {Hellrain}, inflicting damage upon all enemies in a 10x10 meter square. Although the {Hellfire}did not have a penetration attribute, it rained down hellfire onto the monsters, straight from the heaven! No monsters could escape that! Undoubtedly, if she got her hands on a fine weapon like Zhang Yang’s [Sword of Purging Devourer], then her AOE attacks would become insanely powerful!
Zhang Yang was being disgusted, over and over again. As the number of Skeleton Rangers was too many, and with the monsters from behind consistently pushing the monsters at the front further up, some of the skulls of the monsters came into contact with Zhang Yang!
Seeing Zhang Yang’s face squeezed against the skulls of the monsters, Wei Yan Er actually laughed out loud without any remorse! As she was laughing, she stood on top of Turtle and began her assault towards the army of skeleton monsters. Sun Xin Yu had also clambered up the Turtle and had activated her {Fan of Blades}.
The monsters in the game would never attempt to get onto the [Mythical Turtle] like how the two ladies did. So, they rounded up on Turtle from all directions and began their assaults. This was the difference between a player and a monster. On the contrary, if the monsters were as clever as the players, then there would be no telling who the players were and who the monsters were, already!
"Haha! Eat my cannons to the heavens! And my thunder strikes across the earth! I shall be the only one that is puffed with all glory in all directions!" Wei Yan Er was giggling as she slashed up the monsters.
"Hehe!" Zhang Yang took a peek at Wei Yan Er, with a face filled with bad intention.
The little girl was sharp, and instantly sensed it, so she asked, "Noob tank! What are you looking at!"
"I think you are trying to be like the maiden of the Heavenly Mountain2, aren’t you!"
"Oh! Are you just beginning to realize that both of us are pretty ladies then? Haha!" Wei Yan Er proudly proclaimed!
"Well, I didn’t feel that way actually. All I see is that you two are the type of girls who have not fully ‘developed’ yet! But, the maiden of the Heavenly Mountain was framed by one of her fellow sister apprentices. So, who framed you? Sigh. I can’t tell your front from your back!" Zhang Yang could not hold his laughter anymore as he finished his sentence.
"Noob tank! You’re as good as dead! Rawgh!" Wei Yan Er looked at Zhang Yang with a ghastly face.
"Silly Yu! Please don’t always bully little Yan Er! Grow up, man! You’re not a little boy anymore, so stop bullying little girl!" Han Ying Xue stepped up for Wei Yan Er.
"Wah! I’m not a little girl anymore! I’m already 18 years old! 18! I’m a big girl now!" Wei Yan Er was enraged, "It’s all just because you have more meat on your chest! What’s there to be proud about?!"
Although the number of monsters was very high, they could not break through the defense line of Zhang Yang and Turtle, they could only stand at the blockaded entrance and let out their roars at Zhang Yang and his party members. The monster could only stand there, waiting for their health bar to be emptied out and collapse onto the ground. Each monsters only had a total of 500,000 health points, with 5 of them acting on slaying the monsters, each of them only needed to take out 100,000 health points to carry out their parts!
The experience points are acquired was definitely increasing, like a rocket shooting up. Every few minutes, with more monsters collapsing down to the ground one after another, the experience bars of Zhang Yang and his party members were progressing so rapidly that even the naked eye could see the bar visibly going up! If One Sword Stroke and other opponents of the Lone Desert Smoke could see how much experience points they were getting from killing this monster army, they would surely be envious!
After battling for a full 2-hours, the monsters on the second floor were completely being wiped out! Zhang Yang and the ladies sat down on the ground, exhausted. Right before them were countless dead skeleton rangers piled up all across the ground. Some of the monsters that died in the early battle had already been removed from sight by the system!
Other than Zhang Yang, the four ladies had leveled up once. Meanwhile, Zhang Yang only had about 10% left in his bar before he hits Level 98! His experience bar showed it all!
Zhang Yang could not help but to feel shocked and excited at the same time. If the next 3 floors of the Treasure Cove also had this amount of monsters for them to slay, then he might have the chance to level up past Level 100! If that happened, would he be kicked out of the realm by the system?
TL Notes:
1. Maiden of the Heavenly Mountain - a maiden in the story of ‘The Dragon Chronicles - The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain’. This maiden was betrayed by her own fellow female apprentice who she trusted the most. Then she became obsessed with becoming the best in the world.