Chapter 51: Water Spirit Wattland
Translator: Zenobys Editor: TheRealSeal
“Holy crap! That’s a sick skill! Why isn’t the Berserker’s <Tornado Cleave> that awesome?!” In her tone of voice, there was a hint of both pity and excitement.
“Alright! Alright! Save your breath for later. Press on the attack, or it will unleash another tornado and kill us all!”
Zhang Yang’s unreserved manner of speech ticked Drizzler off, and she returned his scorn with her own insult.
“Tch! Zhan Yu, if you’re going to continue being humorless, I’d pity whoever that’s going to be your girlfriend! She’d be bored as hell!”
During their quarrels, one of the guardians was defeated and turned into a pillar of light, disappearing into the air. The party changed their target to the remaining guardian and bombarded it with all their damaging skills.
After some time, the Water Spirit turned and used <Charge> on Little Snow, immediately casting <Dance of the Blade>. She quickly healed herself with a bottle of red potion along with a healing spell. Fortunately, it was only one monster, as her healing could keep up with the damage loss to maintain her HP and surviving the attack. The party picked up the pace and attacked furiously. The last guardian fell soon after.
“Little Snow, revive Hundred Shots. I’ll take this time to explain the next battle strategy.”
Zhang Yang opened the palace door, and standing right at the center of the room was a gigantic Water Spirit. Having the height of almost half the room, the giant stood almost 10 meters tall.
[Water Spirit Wattland] (Green-Copper)
Level: 21
HP: 126K
“This boss is a Spellcaster class and its main attack is <Water Arrow>. It will only cast this skill on the player with the highest aggro value. There’s a three-second unbreakable channel duration which will then strike an 800 damage value! The person that’s going to take this skill head on is me. After my passive 20% damage reduction, I would take about 640 damage. It’s still quite fatal so I need Little Snow to focus your healing solely on me!”
Little Snow nodded in all seriousness. She knew at this time, he was not in the mood for jokes and she had to take this fight seriously too.
“His second skill is <Ice Ring>, and it’s randomly casted on any player. Once activated, an icy ring will form around a player and within 3 seconds, it will form an orb around you, causing 1,000 frost damage. Anyone that starts to notice an ice ring forming around them, you must run out of the range or you’ll receive a fatal attack.”
Almost everyone in the party had a specific attribute allocation style; Fatty Han being one of the most extreme ones did not allocate a single AP on Vitality before Level 10. Only after that level did he allocate his AP as such: 2 on Vitality, 1 on Strength, and 1 on Dexterity. His HP was the lowest in the team, with only a little over 1,000 HP. Little Snow and Drizzler always had 2 AP allocated on Vitality at every level gained, so their HP were around 1,200. Hundred Shots had the highest among them, having 3 AP assigned to Vitality at each level, gaining a strong HP of 1,400.
Fatty Han jokingly gestured, “Little Yang, wht didn’t you tell me to assign any AP on Vitality when I first joined in? Look at my HP now! It’s so low that I feel I could get killed in a single hit!”
Zhang Yang replied, “Tch! Whoever gets hit by the <Ice Ring> is a dumb piggy! As for the third skill…”
Fatty Han interrupted, “What the f*ck! Just how many skills does this boss have?!”
Zhang Yang could only shake his head, disappointed at his wasted anger.
“Three skills, and you think that’s many? Wait till you encounter Marzerway and that’s when you know the true definition of ‘many skills’. Imagine all the skills of his underlings, adding up with his own skills. I’m pretty sure you’d be on cloud 9 then!”
Fatty Han was left stunned.
“AS FOR the third skill…” Zhang Yang repeated a little louder, “it’s called <Hail Storm>. It has a three-second casting delay and once casted, it causes 200 damage to all targets for 10 seconds. The skill’s interruptible so it can be stopped!” Zhang Yang turned to look at Hundred Shots and Fatty Han, “Fatty, Hundred Shots, you’ve learned <Silencing Shot>, no?”
They exchange looks and nodded. “Yeah.”
“The skills <Hail Storm> has about 20 seconds cooldown time while <Silencing Shot> has 30, which is why we need not just one but two Hunters to successfully cancel out the boss’ skill. Remember guys, the first <Hail Storm> interruption must be done by Fatty Han, and the second by Hundred Shots. Just repeat the cycle, got it? The next time the boss uses <Hail Storm>, one of you use <Silencing Shot>. Easy right?”
They looked at each other and then back to Zhang Yang again.
“You guys are the ones that determine whether or not we survive this round. If any of you missed the chance to <Silence> the boss, all of us would die in just one <Hail Storm>.” There was a threatening tone in Zhang Yang and Fatty Han clearly felt it.
“It seems easy when you explained it earlier but once you said our lives are depending on us, it’s making me feel a little nervous.” Fatty Han turned to face Zhang Yang, hoping to be consoled but what he saw was a middle finger pointed directly to his face.
“If there’s anything else you guys want to ask, voice it out now!”
“Pretty sure it’s easy.”
“Let’s try it once!”
“Okay! That’s the spirit! The boss is easy indeed. As long as you can evade well and the two Hunters can <Silence> just right, we’ll be safe and sound.”
“Easy for you to say.” Fatty Han rolled his eyes.
Zhang Yang unsheathed his sword. “Here I go! Everyone get inside, because the moment I start the battle, the door is going to close. Anyone left outside can do nothing but wait!”
Everyone else in the party complied and followed him in.
“Ready? Here I go!”
<Charge>!
‘-327!’ Normal Attack.
The stun effect was weak against Wattland. Being a Level 20 boss gave it a certain degree of resistance towards crowd control effects. In just one second, it recovered from the stun and started to make a weird noise.
“Haha! Here comes a bunch of beings to offer their lives! Wattland will freeze you all!”
The giant targeted Zhang Yang and began to cast <Water Arrow>, and a progress bar appeared on its head.
‘-640!’
‘+392!’
In almost a split-second gap, a green healing text appeared right after the red damage text popped out. As expected of Little Snow, her healing ability was truly remarkable.
This b*tch actually has some decent healing capabilities. Just when she saw the boss’ attack progress bar reaching one-third of the way, she also started to chant her own healing spell. Two seconds later, Little Snow’s healing spell and the boss’ <Water Arrow> went off at the same time.
Little Snow immediately casted another <Regeneration> on Zhang Yang. Even though the recovery rate was slower, the overall healing amount over 15 seconds was 200% of her magic attack, which was better than having no healing at all!
If it were to be another healer, their magic attack would be at most around 200 with all the Green-Copper Level 10 equipment, but Little Snow was different. With only a single Level 20 Green-Copper magic staff, her magic attack was already at 180. Adding that to her other Level 20 Green-Copper equipment, her Magic attack totaled to 300. That was the major difference between other healers and her!
Even with such powerful attributes, Little Snow would still need to use all of her strength to keep up with Zhang Yang. That was the power difference of a Hardcore difficulty boss! If you wanted to take it easy, better to just raid the Normal Mode. With Black-Steel equipment and players not making silly mistakes, it was a sure fire win in the dungeon. Hardcore Mode is not some playtime thing where you could just try out for the fun of it; it was do or die! Fight your hardest to win!
‘Ding! Water Spirit Wattland used <Ice Ring>!’
Zhang Yang quickly turned around to warn the team, “Guys! Look down and check at your feet! Continue to attack if it’s safe and don’t get any unnecessary damage that burdens our healer!”
The boss chose to cast the skill on Hundred Shots. An icy ring formed around him, forming a thick layer of ice and it got thicker overtime. He quickly evaded the ring and got out flawlessly. He was and will be the man called the Dragon Hunter. Even though most of his glory would be because of the pet dragon that he would get in the future, Hundred Shots still had a trick or two up his sleeves. He used to follow Zhang Yang into Hardcore Mode and experienced Hardcore boss fights; a simple run and dodge was nothing to him.
The boss’ attacks were becoming quite a problem. Little Snow drastically used up her MP to make sure Zhang Yang survives. Thankfully, the boss stopped after a series of attacks to cast another skill.
‘Ding! Water Spirit Wattland used <Hail Storm>!’
“Fatty! <Silencing Shot>! Now!”
“On it!”
Fatty Han drew his bow and fired a dark-green arrow. As it landed on the boss, a ‘-224’ appeared, simultaneously cancelling the boss’ spell cast.
“That’s it, guys! Keep this up! Keep it going!” Zhang Yang tried to raise the party’s morale.
As the battle raged on with many of the boss’ skills casted, none of the party members were once hit by <Ice Ring> as they managed to evade swiftly. Even the silencing cycle was performed errorless against <Hail Storm>.
90%, 80%... all the way to 20%, the boss’ HP drained off quickly.
‘Ding! Water Spirit Wattland used <Hail Storm>!’
“Fatty!”
Zhang Yang and he had been battling for more than 10 years now, and their communication was and always has been excellent. With just a call, Fatty Han fired a <Silencing Arrow>.
“Missed!”
“F*CK!” Zhang Yang suddenly cursed out; everyone’s face changed instantly.
After three seconds, arrow-like icicles fell from the sky. There was no place for them to hide.
‘-200!’
‘-200!’
‘-200!’
Even after Little Snow trying her best to heal everyone with all her might, she could not replace the HP loss everyone suffered in time.
‘Ding! Player Slim and Handsome has died!’
‘Ding! Player Little Snow has died!’
‘Ding! Player Drizzler has died!’
‘Ding! Player Hundred Shots has died!’
‘Ding! Player Zhan Yun has died!’
It was another party wipe out once more.
The five of them stood together at the revive point.
“[email protected]#$! What luck! I missed?! I actually missed!”
Any physical attacks had a 1% chance to miss the target. This value could not be modified or changed by any equipment or the player’s level. How would you describe a skill like <Silencing Shot> that required 30 seconds to cooldown to miss a hit? The only answer would be just plain luck, which he did not have. Sometimes in life, all you needed was not the strength to carry on, but the luck that comes along the way.
“It’s fine, guys! Now everyone knows how to fight ths boss! We can defeat it in the next round! Think of this as practice!” Zhang Yang tried to cheer up the team.
“Okay!”
‘Shuh!’
Another five souls appeared at the revive point; they were members from Sky high, and they were the elite members that were led personally by Sky Shaman.
“Haha, it’s you again, Zhan Yu!”
“It’s alright, guys! It’s alright. Come, let us all revive again!”
Shy Shaman asked Zhang yang, “Hey, where did you guys die at?”
“At the two guardians! Holy crap, their attacks are too strong! They killed us all in one clean swipe!”
Sky Shaman relaxed a little. He felt tense before thinking that Zhang Yang could have overtaken them, but now he knew that Zhang Yang was on the same progress as they were.
“Hah, you guys are strong! We haven’t even reached there yet!” Sky Shaman then quickly revived and continued his fight.
“This bastard!” Zhang Yang shook his head in anger. So you think you could trick us? Well, guess what, we’ve also tricked you!
“Zhan Yu! Hurry and revive now! I’m waiting to open the corpse!”
All little Drizzler was here for was to get the money. She only cared about money, and that was the only thing she loved.