Chapter 666: Abyssal Blast
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The red zone of the HP will always be different in different battles. However, there is 99% chance that the higher HP you have, the safer it will be for a player to fight a boss. The remaining 1% chance was that of a fight with a boss such as this Dark Magician who could cast skills to reduce a player’s HP by a fixed percentage. Having a full HP all the time would only be a complete waste of mana for healing.
In that battle with the Dark Magician, it will be efficient to have the HP at 100,000 and above. Not much higher, but never lower. If the healers can do that, the threat of the Dark Magician’s curse would be nullified. Han Ying Xue and Fantasy Sweetheart’s burden would be slightly easier.
However, it was merely a little. With only 100,000 HP on reserve, the boss’ skill, {Abyssal Blast} was not to be underestimated. Each blast could deal at least 100,000 damage. Hence, with all the Battle Companion and two pets participating in the fight, that totals up to 21 healing targets. Unless they had a Battle Companion with a full set of Mythical tier equip like Felice, those that were unable to deal too much damage would be better off kept in their owner’s inventory than remain on the battlefield, taking too much damage and adding weight to the healers’ burdens.
Hence, with a quick acknowledgment and command, the party kept away many of their Battle Companions. The only ones left were three healer types Battle Companions and Sun Xin Yu’s strong DPS. Even Hundred Shots had removed his pet from the battlefield. Compared to the ones that he was using now, the future Red Dragon would be a god among all Hunters’ pets!
With lesser characters that required constant healing, Han Ying Xue and Fantasy Sweetheart’s burden were lightened even further.
However! They would still have to be extremely perceptive to immediate healing whenever someone’s HP drops below 100,000. If they were to be late by 1 second, they might be attacked by a single blast of {Abyssal Blast} and will inevitably be killed.
Luckily, the boss’ skill cycle was rhythmic. {Abyssal Blast} will be used once every 30 seconds. As long as the healer calculates the timing correctly, they would not waste time channeling healing spell, instead, they could just instantly cast a {Holy Shield} to absorb the damage.
Han Ying Xue had been a super healer since the beginning of the game. Fantasy Sweetheart had been joining the party in boss fights for many times now and had picked up several of Han Ying Xue’s latent skills. Be it intuition or controls, she was able to "level up" her own capabilities. She was no longer the girl in the party that was harassed by Endless Starlight and Fatty Han by calling her "The badahonka without brains". Right then, she was already at the level of "badahongkerdongs with real brains!"
With the combined power of the healers in the party, they remained strong, without showing any signs of slowing down.
Zhang Yang was able to mount the Phoenix while fighting the boss, boosting his HP to at least 800,000. To save the burden on the healers, he had made sure to maintain his HP from getting bellow 200,000. Fortunately, he was not affected by the curse of the Dark Magician. However, it was extremely dangerous for him when he takes the boss’ {Abyssal Blast} and the {Shadow Arrow} at the same time. Two hits from the skills will be catastrophic.
It all depended on the capabilities of the healers. Although {Abyssal Blast} may have a long cooldown time, the {Shadow Arrow} did not. For the boss could spam the skill every 2 seconds. Hence, at every 2 seconds, the healers would have to keep their eyes on Zhang Yang’s HP to prevent an accidental {Shadow Arrow} from killing Zhang Yang.
If he falls, so does the party.
To heal Zhang Yang HP from the absolute extreme back to the green zone of 200,000 HP, the healers would take at least 20 seconds. From that perspective, it was extremely dangerous for the skill {Abyssal Blast} that takes only 30 seconds to attack once. It is known that whenever a boss had their HP dropped below the 20% threshold, the boss skill usage will be frequent. By then, if the cooldown of {Abyssal Blast} reaches 20 seconds at a time, it would the very limit of the two healers.
It was inevitable. The curse was there to limit the players’ HP to be at 30% at all times. It will be useless to have a mass party of healers to heal everyone to 100%. Now that it has come to this, the skill {God of War Heavy Axe} was rendered powerless. The requirement of the skill to be OP, depending on the HP % of both the caster and the target. Now that Zhang Yang was locked at 30% HP at all times, he would have to wait until the boss had a lower HP than he did to have the skill deal 300% melee attack instead of 100%.
…Annoying boss…
Zhang Yang had reserved all the life-preserving skills such as {Shield Wall}, {Last Vigor}, {God of War Radiance}, and the accessory effect of the [Medal of Bravery], and [Helena’s Charm]. Now that he counted them all, Zhang Yang realized he had many healing and immunity skills! Even though [Helena’s Charm] could only heal a maximum of 300,000 HP, he only needed 200,000 HP to be saved. Any extra would be a waste, since the Dark Magician’s Curse would "eat" the extra HP away. Since the battle had been going on for such a long duration, Zhang Yang had already conjured 10 Life Orbs and could use them at any time he wanted to.
"I am the great Dark Magician! The world is mine to rule! All who oppose me that crumble in the power of the Abyss!" Brosh roared. "I shall have you all sacrificed to the Dark Lord as tributes!"
"Huh…seems like every villain we have fought wants to rule the world!" Lost Dream chuckled.
"Well…There have to be villains. How else could Ultraman be the good guy is there aren’t any monsters out there?"
"Hahaha!" Everyone laughed at Fatty Han’s retort which made the boss infuriated. His rage burned bright dark flames from his eyes, for he wished at that moment that he had a strong instant kill skill to kill all these insolent fools!
With a flawless cooperation between the tank, the healer, and the attacker, the coordination of attack was continuous. The boss was losing his HP quickly. Even if he had 500 million HP, it would be of no use to him, for the party was progressing slowly, but surely!
Zhang Yang still had the trump card, {Glare of the Death God} in his hands!
Half an hour later, the boss had finally entered the 20% HP threshold. Everyone activated their skills and rampaged on. However, even if they had skills that could increase their damage when the boss has less than 20% HP, prioritizing their survivability was still the first commandment in that battle. Besides Wei Yan Er, none of the party members had consumed any [Power Potions]! They knew, that by being alive, only can they deal damage! However, the little brat had always been a competitive child. She consumed a bottle of [Power Potion], activated the {Indiscriminate} and struck the boss with {Killing Cleave} at full Rage.
‘-498,552!’
Dealing close to 500,000 damage in a single strike, the little brat was satisfied and grinned like a spoiled brat. However, her luck might not be on her side that day, for when she struck the boss, the curse was triggered on her and instantly pushed her HP down to 90,000 HP.
Since the boss had entered the 20% HP threshold, the boss skill usage will be increased. At then, Brosh was already brandishing his staff in midair, seconds away from activating {Abyssal Blast}.
.
Han Ying Xue and Fantasy Sweetheart was still adjusting to the new boss’ rhythm and the little brat potion’s cooldown was still ongoing. Fearing for her death, the little brat shouted. "Save me! Sister!"
Zhang Yang stopped his attack instantly and cast {Sacrifice} and {Shield Wall} one after the other.
BOOM!
The blast boomed out and the little brat was unscathed. Zhang Yang took the damage, but since he had {Shield Wall} activated, the damage he received was reduced greatly. However, the little brat selfish act had cost him two life-preserving and life-saving skills!
"Sigh…Why couldn’t you just behave?" Zhang Yang sighed heavily.
"Nishishishi!" Wei Yan Er grinned stupidly and nodded her head. She knew that she had done wrong.
"As a lesson, I’ll punish you. For the next 10 days, you are not allowed to loot the boss drops!"
"MYAA?!" The little girl squeaked and sulked solemnly. "Stinky noobie tank! I curse you! Your son will be a lazy bum!"
"Little brat!? Are you asking for a beating?" Han Ying Xue cringed.
"Ah."
Wei Yan Er had just remembered that her cousin sister was with Zhang Yang. If she were to curse his child, it would be the same as cursing Han Ying Xue! Just then, she realized that the child would be her own nephew, as well! She put up a cute face and said, "Ah heh~ My bad~!"
As the boss’ HP dropped down, Zhang Yang could finally use his skill, the {God of War Heavy Axe}. With the enhanced damage dealt during the "Killing" stage (below 20%), the damage dealt by the skill skyrocketed!
"Could you not be that OP, little Yang?!" Fatty Han jumped when he saw how powerful Zhang Yang was, then. He could not even match up to his damage when he had the combined attack of his pet, the battle mount, and the Battle Companion!
"Heh. As expected of the big boss. Fatty Han, give up trying to be like him. There’s no one like him!" Endless Starlight patted Fatty Han’s shoulder.
"D*m you all! I will end your life!" Brosh started to panic. Not only the skill {Abyssal Blast} was used repeatedly, even the curse damage was triggered rapidly as well. It was almost impossible to anyone in the party to have more than 30% HP!
The battle had then entered the climax stage where anyone could get killed by the boss if they are careless.
17%...13%...11%...
{Glare of the Death God}!
Resist!
It was a shame that the skill could not properly land. Everyone had their hearts skipping a beat when Zhang Yang cast the skill, but raged when it failed to be inflicted on the boss. How could the skill have such high failure rate!? Now that the skill could not be inflicted, everyone was left with one means to kill the boss, that is to fight like madmen!
"Hmm hmm…ha..haha…HAHA…HAHAHA! YOU ALL SHALL FALL!" The boss grew stronger and faster with every HP he lost. With every pain he suffered, the vengeance grew tenfold and was unleashed back towards those who opposed him.
10%...
{Abyssal Blast}!
The skill had indeed been shortened to only 15 seconds cooldown. After a brief while, the skill {Shadow Arrow} had been upgraded into a volley of arrows came raining down from the sky. Everyone was inflicted by the damage. Both Zhang Yang and Endless Starlight were forced to unleashed {Vanguard Agression} to protect the entire party and gain a little breathing space.
8%...5%...3%...
Everyone in the party was forced to use their life preserving skills. Even all accessory skills were not spared. Right then, survivability first, attacking comes second! Its either do or die!
That was one of the reason why most open-world bosses required a sea of players to defeat. Either they had AoE killing skills, or the means to instantly disrupt the players attack! In such a situation, players would have to own an Inheritance or the battle tide would lean towards the boss. The only means of fighting such a boss without Inheritance players would be to fill in the extreme gaps with more players! And if the players die, more players shall be dispatched to fill in the gaps!
While Brosh could not be considered a final boss(1), spamming their AoE skills once every 15 seconds was considered to be only average difficulty. The most annoying and troublesome aspect was the curse.
Unlike most parties, who would instantly fail at killing, Zhang Yang’s party consisted of elites amongst the elites. If it was them, perhaps they could do it without even dying!
2%...1%...
"Remember this day! For you have defeated me! I shall be back once more!" Brosh’s eyes glowed with an intense crimson red. "The power of the Abyss is infinite! I shall be revived once more! I shall return to this earth and lay waste to you all!"
"Yea…yea…remember to bring some gifts back from the underworld, yeah?"
0%
The boss cracked something and fell off the Ghastly Dragon. He shot down like a meteor and landed with a great crash. The dragon flapped its wings and soared to the sky, disappearing from sight after Brosh was defeated.
"Sigh…I do wish that we could catch that dragon!" said Wei Yan Er.
"Little Yan Er. It’s no good sitting on a boney dragon. You will hurt your little flat bum bum!" said Fatty Han purposely, to tease the little brat. To have him keep his mouth shut for 10 minutes would either require him to eat a 50-inch sized pizza or a massive 10-foot-long German sausage.
"Shut up pervy bro! I have no time to deal with you!" Wei Yan Er hurriedly ran towards the boss and picked up the loot. She had already forgotten that she was being punished. When the battle was still ongoing, Zhang Yang was paying full attention to fight the boss. He had no time to modify the looting arrangement setting and ended up allowing the little brat to loot all the drops.
"Nyahahaha!" The little girl laughed as she collected all the drop in her inventory.
Zhang Yang shook his head and facepalmed himself. "Looks like you’ve cheated..."
"Nishishishi." Wei Yan Er counted the gold coins and after she was satisfied with it, she posted all the equipment out to the party chat.
There was a silvery gray heavy armor helmet, a blue colored ring, a red leather-bound skill book, and a piece of [Skill Point Crystal].