Chapter Eighty-Eight: A Terrifying Collision with the Boss, Ink Soul

“All right, I’m going to trigger the boss now. Once the fight starts, remember to fall back quickly and don’t get caught in the attacks. After all, I’m not exactly a close-range melee fighter, got it?”

Though he said that, Ye Yu advanced with great caution. A class like his could not afford to wear the boss down slowly the way Lao Hu and Huang Hong might. In Ye Yu’s line of work, he was extremely fragile. Though still sturdier than a pure magic-damage class, prolonging the battle would only increase the chance of being struck by the boss. The thing he needed to do now was unleash his high damage and bring the boss down quickly while maintaining the advantage.

Lao Hu, meanwhile, smiled faintly. He made a gesture toward Ye Yu, patting his chest as he said, “Relax. I’m ready to jump in at any time. If you need me, just say the word, haha!”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

Ye Yu laughed at that, but his expression turned serious almost at once. He drew out his zither and moved forward slowly, his left hand’s five fingers gliding lightly over the strings.

A streak of purple light shot out at once. Everyone then saw that before the violet beam had even reached the heart-like boss, a mist of pale green vapor burst forth from the heart and gathered around it. From within that haze, a human-shaped figure took form. Though the shape of its head was somewhat strange, a vague face could be made out on either side of the features. But the mist obscured it so heavily that nothing could be seen clearly.

Then a set of large words appeared above the boss’s head: [Ink Soul].

At once, [Ink Soul] moved. The distinct human figure spread its arms wide, then clenched both hands. In its grasp, the pale green vapor condensed into a bizarre, serpentine curved spear of an eerie dark green, flickering and writhing like a snake. The spear shaft also gave off a poisonous aura, and beneath [Ink Soul], the status [Poison] appeared.

[Ink Soul] opened its mouth and spat a swath of dark green flames at Ye Yu. Within those icy flames was a thick, foul corrosive poison.

“What kind of monster is this [Ink Soul]?! I never thought the boss design in God’s Sorrow would have something like this. It does fit the ghost-and-spirit legends you see in some martial tales,” Ye Yu thought to himself. He did not dare hesitate even for a moment. His body flashed backward at once, and purple light surged around him, enveloping him. Then a nearly transparent ring of zither sound rippled out from his side, scattering the incoming flames.

However, an even stranger sight occurred at the same time. [Ink Soul] shot forth from within the flames, spun its spear in a full circle, and swept horizontally toward Ye Yu’s position.

Ye Yu activated Overtime Mode. He bent his body slightly and easily avoided the sweeping strike, then pushed off the ground with explosive force and flew forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. Raising his left hand, he brought five fingers together. Purple energy gathered in his palm, and he slammed a strike onto [Ink Soul]’s human-shaped body, forcing it back.

Boom—

“Why is he doing that?” Huang Hong asked in disbelief as he looked at the scene before him. “Wasn’t Third Brother supposed to keep his distance from this [Ink Soul]? Why is he going in close? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Boldness comes from skill, though it may also have something to do with ‘Cool Night’s’ custom talent skills,” Lao Hu replied. Yet his answer sounded somewhat perfunctory, and his eyes were full of solemnity.

“What exactly is going on? Lao Hu, explain it,” Luo Feng said anxiously, since he could only buff Ye Yu and could not heal him. Ye Yu would have to rely on the medicines in his pack to restore himself.

“He’s probably trying to land enough damage to force [Ink Soul] into a stagger state. If you set a skill’s attack range very small, the system-balanced damage becomes extremely high—sometimes nearly ten times the damage you’d get at long range. So as long as you can deal enough damage, even without hitting a weak point, you can still force a stagger. That’s why he chose this method.”

After saying that, Lao Hu’s brow furrowed slightly. Though string classes were very close to magic classes, there was no reason their damage should be this high. Clearly, Ye Yu had boosted it through the custom talent tree.

Still, string classes did have one or two skills whose damage scaled directly with magic skills, and under certain conditions, when combined with their own enhancement talents, they could produce shockingly high damage.

Because magic classes generally dealt far more damage than physical classes, when they unleashed truly explosive power, they could even stagger a boss or monster a little without striking a weak point. But even for magic skills, one had to spend a bit of casting time and channel the spell to unleash its full might. So if one wanted to raise damage while reducing the time it took to cast and speed up the execution, the only option was the kind of close-range attack Ye Yu was using now.

Yet string classes had one advantage: their skill and casting times were nearly half as long as those of magic classes. From there, it did not need much explanation to understand just how short Ye Yu’s skill time was. At point-blank range, that damage could be described as erupting in an instant.

Boom—

Boom—

Ye Yu’s attack slammed once more into the chest of [Ink Soul]’s human-shaped body. Purple palm prints branded themselves onto [Ink Soul]’s form, and then, with the amplification of Overtime State, Ye Yu followed with one palm strike after another, each landing with brutal force.

Purple lightning suddenly flared across [Ink Soul]’s body, spreading in an instant and enveloping it completely. Under that impact, [Ink Soul] was sent reeling backward by Ye Yu, and its health dropped by six percent.

“The damage is too low. Is this really the final boss of a multiplayer dungeon or a large-scale instance? Even with both defenses reduced, that health pool is still far too thick. I didn’t expect that even point-blank burst damage like this would barely shave off much of its life.”

Ye Yu took a slight step back, his expression grave. Then [Ink Soul]’s spear suddenly pierced straight through his barrier and thrust toward him.

A perilous instant, right before his eyes.

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