Chapter 814: Frost Lord, Antoine
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Those who were attacked with the {Fire Beacon} will gain only one chance to use {Beacon’s Radiance}. Hence, the formation they had come up with was to stick together to make sure {Beacon’s Radiance} could cover everyone.
Instead of using their Transformation skill to charge in recklessly, Zhang Yang had ordered one to have a test run without Transforming. Naturally, Zhang Yang was the first to strike the boss.
"Mortal. You have sullied the Holy land of the gods! Is it death that you seek!?" Antoine roared and shot out a Frost Arrow to deal 350,000 damage to Zhang Yang. Following closely after the first attack was the {Cold to the Bone} skill. Zhang Yang was immediately inflicted with a debuff, causing him to take 300,000 Frost damage every 3 seconds and a 10% movement speed reduction for every second.
"This is bad. That skill is a single target skill!" Zhang Yang frowned and grunted.
Contrary to normal playstyle, if the skill is a multitarget skill, it would be easier to handle, since everyone will be frozen together and it would only take one use of the {Beacon’s Radiance} to dispel the Frozen effect on everyone.
However, if {Cold to the Bone} is cast on one player at a time, players will be frozen sequentially. Hence, when one is about to saved, the other will be frozen, causing an "uneven" rate of dispelling. Bear in mind that {Beacon’s Radiance} will only dispel the Frozen status and not the movement reduction effect.
As expected, the boss had continued to cast {Cold to the Bone} on the party members, one person at a time. Zhang Yang had concluded two things. One, {Cold to the Bone} did not have any cooldown skills. Two, the boss will randomly cast the skill and stop at random as well. At times, the boss will cast thrice on three players and stop there. Other times, he would only cast on one player and stop there.
Before all 20 players there were inflicted with {Cold to the Bone}, Zhang Yang was the first to be frozen in place. Since the boss had not used {Fire Beacon}, Zhang Yang had to use {Warrior’s Will} to save himself. Once {Cold to the Bone} has successfully "frozen" a player, the player will continue to take the DoT damage while being immobile. After being thawed out, Zhang Yang still continued to receive DoT, but no longer suffered from movement speed reduction. Sadly, the boss will continue to randomly cast the skill on the players.
At that moment, Zhang Yang scrapped the original plan. His plan was to get everyone frozen at the same time and have everyone to dispel the Frozen state with their own status removal skills. All in all, the plan was completely screwed up since the boss’ skill was not described properly. It was only after all players have received {Cold to the Bone}, the boss would cast {Fire Beacon} on a random target. When the chosen player receives the skill {Fire Beacon}, the system will grant the player an additional, usable, one-time skill called {Beacon’s Radiance}. The skill could be used anytime to dispel the frozen effect from all players within a certain area. When the {Fire Beacon} effect on a player disappears, so does the skill {Beacon’s Radiance}. The estimated time of effect would only be 15 seconds.
The frequency of the skill cast was rather strict. It will be used once every 10 seconds. Within that time, the player must use the skill to dispel or the timing for dispelling would be off. Theoretically, the skill must be used once every 10 seconds. As for the usage of the {Beacon’s Radiance} to be efficient, it would have to depend on the number of healers being Frozen in that instance. If there are more than two healers Frozen, the chosen player who has the {Beacon’s Radiance} may use the skill to thaw the healers out, or the entire party’s healing rate would be affected gravely.
Since it was still during their test phase, Zhang Yang had tried to use the War Chariot to fight the boss. However, although all players in the War Chariot will receive one DoT tick at a time, the Frozen effect was rather f*cked up. Once any player in the War Chariot is Frozen, the effect would apply to all players on the War Chariot! Basically, all the players on the War Chariot were constantly being Frozen. Although the damage was painful, it was not much of a trouble for the party. Unfortunately, it would only be a complete waste to use the War Chariot for that particular boss fight.
Without Transformations, everyone in the party only had a small margin error. Players like Cheng Xue Yao had only around 1,500,000 HP, and that was already with the help of the {Vitality Aura}. Under the Frozen state, three attacks would be enough to kill her.
Although healers were able to cope with the intense healing requirement, it was only lasting for 10 seconds at a time. When one or two of the healers are Frozen in place, the other healer would not have enough time to heal the other moving players. Hence, just a few minutes into the fight, more than 10 players had kicked the bucket! The boss still had more than 80% HP!
Zhang Yang quickly ordered anyone who was still alive to get out of the battle before they are killed unreasonably. Zhang Yang unsummoned the Phoenix and waited for everyone in the battle to erase their aggro before he left the battlefield with {Shadow of the Void}.
Everyone returned from the nearest graveyard while the survivors had waited for them to further discuss the battle plans. For the next attempt, they would use their Transformations. However, since Transformation skills had 72 hours of cooldown duration, they would have to make their next attempt count. That, or they could attempt to dominate the next mountain, either the Light Mountain or the Shadow Mountain.
"Let’s try using the Ice Weaver set equipment," said Daffodil Daydream after being silent. She continued to elaborate. Since the main point of the battle was to stay alive instead of focusing on attack power, the party could sacrifice a little of their DPS to increase their survivability. At most, the entire party would lose 10% of their total DPS in exchange for a 50% increase in Frost resistance. It was a worthwhile trade-off.
Zhang Yang nodded his head to agree with Daffodil Daydream. Along the way to the mountain top, they had killed many monsters and had collected many sets of Ice Weaver set equipment. Sun Xin Yu, Hundred Shot, and Zhang Yang distributed all the equipment to the party. All but Sun Xin Yu and Zhang Yang had received a set each. It was not that they did not want to take them, they were lacking a few important parts that would make the set whole.
However, since the two top DPS units in the team had S Class Inheritances, their magic nullification rate was at 40%. Not wearing any Frost resistance armor would not make a significant difference to their survivability.
Everyone changed into their new set of equipment and were smiling with great confidence, sure that they will win the second attempt.
"Foolish human! Know that life is precious! Since you have forsaken them for the greed of victory, I shall be the one to teach you a lesson!" Antoine groaned, as the party, led by Zhang Yang approached the boss again, for the second time.
Without delay, the battle started with Antoine blasting Zhang Yang with a Frost Arrow. The cold blue arrow whistled through the air and immediately sublimated in the air when it made contact with Zhang Yang.
Resist!
That was the effect of the Inheritance Transformation Magic Nullification in effect. Magic Nullification is unlike Magic Resistance, where the damage taken will be reduced. Magic Nullification will completely negate all magic damage dealt by a magic attack for that instance. S class Inheritance has 40% Magic Nullification rate. If one is kissed by the Goddess of Luck, having 100% chance to nullify all incoming magic attack was not an impossible dream. Still, it would not be happening anytime soon. As soon as the attack count reaches a certain amount, be it un-nullified or nullified, the pseudo-RNG will kick in to make adjustments.
{Cold to the Bone}!
On the second run, Zhang Yang was not able to nullify the skill, since the magic skill inflicted on him was not counted as an attack, but a debuff. Only when the DoT starts ticking on him, would Zhang Yang have a chance to nullify each tick.
After Zhang Yang was inflicted by {Cold to the Bone}, the party rushed into the fight and started to attack. Without recovery skills to restore his HP, the boss’ HP drops much much faster than before.
"Pest! Begone!" The boss roared with fury as he cast {Cold to the Bone} on many players. Since the ticking DoT had to pass through two "obstacles", one being the Frost Resistance set effect, and second being the magic Nullification of each player, part of the damage was absorbed and the other part would depend on the luck of the player.
Even though being Frozen was inevitable, with 50% Frost Resistance and the Magic Nullification helping, the party was able to last longer and better than before. All the healers, including Han Ying Xue, were having a relaxed time healing everyone. It was mostly due to the HP boost provided by the Transformation skill. Even the weakest player there had over 15,000,000 HP! There would not be a case where players will be killed instantly for being Frozen.
"This is nice. I never knew that having magic resistance armor would ease the battle this much!" cried Endless Starlight.
"Oh shut up! It’s not like you’re doing much damage anyway! Look! Not even little Yan Er is making noise! It’s not your turn yet!" cried Daffodil Daydream as she still bore some hatred for the perverted man.
"Say what now?" cried Wei Yan Er when she heard her name being called out.
"Ehh. Nothing!"
Everyone else laughed at the comical scene.
While he was fighting rhythmically, Zhang Yang had a sudden thought. Perhaps killing the bosses of the quest had something to do with the monsters surrounding the area. For example, defeating the Fire boss was all thanks to the monsters that had dropped the bombs. On the other hand, to defeat the Ice boss, the party had relied on equipment that had been dropped by the monsters! Could it a coincidence, or was it perhaps by design? Still, thanks to the 50% Frost resistance set effect, the team had no need to use their Transformation for the second attempt. All it did was to increase the DPS power and reduce the time taken to kill the boss. As for survivability, having just the Frost resistance armor would do fine.
What an interesting plan, Zhang Yang thought to himself. Perhaps it would be the same for the remaining two mountains!
After taking so much damage from the party despite having cast so many {Cold of the Bone}, the boss started to show signs of being defeated. At then, even though the boss had high HP, the party would, theoretically require another 40 minute more to kill the boss. Before they knew it, Zhang Yang’s luck that fight was rather good. Not only was his Transformation magic nullification skill able to nullify many Frost attacks, even the {Glare of the Death God} was effective on the boss!
Naturally, due to the trouble of being frozen from time to time, the team was not able to maximize their DPS to their full potential. Hence, they had taken 50 minutes to reach 20% HP, and another 10 minutes to kill the boss.
The victory was rather awkward for the party, since they had suffered greatly from the first attempt and won the second attempt without much effort. However, in less than a second, that bad feeling was gone when Wei Yan Er jumped for the pile of loot. Antoine had dropped a total of 9 Ascended tier equipment and 8 Holy tier equipment, as well as countless random items.
After a turn of rolling, Zhang Yang had not obtained any single equipment but managed to haul in a skill book.
[Rock Solid] (Level 1): Upon activation, stand in the same position to gain 10% Defense and 2% Damage Reduction passive for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 1 minute.
To test the skill’s growth rate, Zhang Yang had added one skill point on the skill and found that the Defense gain went up to 20% while the passive Damage reduction was increased to 4%. If Zhang Yang maximizes the skill to Level 10, he would gain 100% Defense and 20% Damage reduction. It was a powerful defensive skill, if only it could last longer than 10 seconds. However, if the skill is paired with the {God of War Shield}, Zhang Yang’s damage reduction would go up to 60%, which is almost the same as the {Shield Wall} damage reduction effect.
Zhang Yang could not help but try and have the skill enhanced via the Book of Revelation.
[Rock Solid (Enhance)] (Level 2): Upon activation, stand in the same position to gain 30% Defense and 6% Damage Reduction passive for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 1 minute.
A 50% boost!
At that point in time, Zhang Yang had used all three upgrade slot of the Book of Revelation for {Block}, {Shield Wall}, and {Rock Solid}. He had removed the upgrade effect on {Gates of Hell} until further required. Since the Book of Revelation upgrade slot change had a 24 hours cooldown duration, Zhang Yang could charge 3 different skills a day if he wanted!
The boss had also dropped a skill book called {Frost Aura} which was given to Cheng Xue Yao. The aura skill was speedily level up to the maximum, which made Zhang Yang and the other core party member feel a little disgruntled. Back then, increasing their aura skill from Level 1 to Level 10, had taken them more than 3 years to do so!
[Frostbite Aura] (level 10): Deals 80,800 Frost damage every 10 seconds to all targets within 30 meters of the user. Damage will increase, according to the level of the player and skill. Reduces the movement speed of all targets in the effective range by 50%. You can only have one active Aura effect in one instance.