MMO: Pierce Heaven Til’ It Breaks

Dark Storm could not be interrupted. It would last until players reduced Nunnally’s HP to lower than 200,000, so passing this segment relied heavily on the healers. They could not simply heal, because this time they also had to predict when to heal. Only then could they fully nullify the disadvantages from the delay in healing times.

This segment also demanded a lot from the DPS. If they dealt damage quickly, they would be able to take a load of the healers’ shoulders. If they were slow about it, and the healers ran out of mana, all that awaited them then was disaster.

Li Yi activated two powerful skills, Violent Bear’s Protection and Rapid Shooting. His DPS immediately shot through the roof.

The party’s two healers took turns healing and found that they were more than capable of managing this situation. Li Yi and the sisters also performed well with the DPS, and the Dark Storm vanished after a mere dozen seconds or so.

“I sacrifice my right eye, in return for Dark Healing!”

Nunnally sacrificed her right eye and her HP was immediately fully replenished. Li Yi and the others had another debuff now, Frenzy Curse.

[Frenzy Curse: Reduces target’s HP by 100 per second. With every 5 HP reductions, the effect of the Frenzy Curse doubles. It will also automatically become undispellable.]

“Dispel the curse!”

Li Yi barked. Little Elf from the Magical Realm and Fire Ice both moved at the same time, dispelling the Frenzy Curse.

“Whoosh—”

The Frenzy Curse came back in earnest.

“Continue dispelling it!”

The Frenzy Curse activated itself three times. Although the healers’ Dispel skill had a short cooldown period, it consumed a great deal of mana. Since this attack came hot on the heels of the Dark Storm skill, the healer classes had not regained enough mana for this. If they ran out of mana in the middle of dispelling the curse, the Frenzy Curse would become undispellable within 5 seconds.

Many of the parties who were annihilated all fell at this segment.

Thankfully, it was a piece of cake with two healers. If one of them could no longer dispel the curse, there was one more to pick up the slack. They took turns with ease.

“So that’s what double healers are for. And here I thought…” Xu Man said admiringly.

Li Yi shot as he said, “What did you think?”

“That you were being a perv, and that’s why you only accepted girls into your party.” Little Elf from Magical Realm rolled her eyes at Li Yi.

Li Yi roared with laughter. “Double healers will come in handy a lot more times in this dungeon, just you wait and see.”

“I sacrifice my left leg, in return for Dark Healing!

“I sacrifice my right leg, in return for Dark Healing!”

Whenever Nunnally’s HP approached 200,000, she would use her Dark Healing, sacrificing parts of her own body as she piled frustrating debuffs onto the players.

Most of the debuffs as a result of the Dark Sacrifice could be dispelled, but a few of them would last until the end of the battle. In other words, the longer the battle dragged on, the higher the pressure on the players.

“I sacrifice my left arm, in return for Dark Healing!”

Nunnally’s HP was filled to the brim again, and this time, she unleashed the ultimate dark debuff, Magic-breaker!

[Magic-breaker: Prevents target from using any skills. If the target forcefully uses skills, their HP will be halved as punishment, and they will automatically be paralyzed for 10 seconds.]

Now they could not even use special skills. All they could do was defeat her with their normal attacks…

Of course, Nunnally also had to pay quite the price in order to use Magic-breaker. She had lost both eyes and all four limbs, so all she had left was her torso and her head. In that state, she could use a skill called Steal Sacrifice to attack the players.

[Steal Sacrifice: Releases a floating soul sphere that will chase players. If it catches up to the players, it will automatically absorb one part of the player’s body and transfer that to the caster. The number of soul spheres released depends on the number of players. The soul spheres last for 1 minute.]

“Avoid the soul spheres and deal damage as you move. Anyone who gets touched by the soul sphere is a puppy-dog.” Li Yi ran as he unleashed his arrows, staying far away.

Nunnally spat five emerald soul spheres from her mouth. The soul sphere flew extremely quickly, chasing all five of them.

The soul spheres had no HP meter or aggro, so they could not be pulled together. The only way to dodge them was to run.

The soul spheres’ SPD was slightly faster than the players’, so if the players ran in a straight line, the spheres would soon catch up to them. They had to constantly change directions and turn. Of course, if they did not calculate the direction they were turning in advance, things would also end badly for them. Since the soul spheres did not have any aggro, they would be dead instantly if they accidentally ran toward another soul sphere.

Although he could not use any special skills, Li Yi’s SPD was already fast to begin with. He could leave the soul spheres in the dust just by running in a straight line. The same could not be said about other members of the party, though.

Thieves had naturally high SPD, so the sisters were completely safe. Although Little Elf from the Magical Realm could not run very quickly, she was quite skilled at the controls. In fact, she somehow managed to lead the soul sphere that was chasing her up to Li Yi instead, and then she ducked far away so she could watch the show in peace.

Fire Ice was the only one who slipped up…

Fire Ice’s SPD was slow. She could heal like nobody’s business, but asking her to escape from a soul sphere hot on her trail was a tad too much. She was hit by a soul sphere as soon as she made a turn, and a wisp of black smoke rose from her body, shooting toward Nunnally.

“Ahahaha… My left hand is back!”

Nunnally grew a left hand and Fire Ice lost one. Of course, this was only temporary. Once the boss fight was over, everything would go back to normal.

Since Fire Ice had been sacrificed, the remaining four soul spheres picked up the pace as well, and became twice as fast as before. Moonlight Ocean was the first to fall victim, followed by Xu Man. Now the soul spheres were four times their initial speed, and they caught up to Little Elf from the Magical Realm immediately. After that, the five soul spheres, moving at eight times their original speed, rushed toward Li Yi.

“Camouflage!”

“Pseudocide!”

Both were ineffective…

Li Yi fell prey to the spheres as well.

“Dark Storm!”

Nunnally regained all the body parts that she had lost, while Li Yi and the others suffered. They had each lost a body part, their HP was halved, and to top it all off, the Magic-breaker debuff was still intact…

The healers could not heal, so all five of them died in the Dark Storm that followed.

It was a total wipeout…

“Sob sob sob, I’m sorry, I… Boo-hoo-hoo…” Fire Ice lay on the floor and bawled.

Li Yi was exasperated. “What are you crying for? It’s totally normal to wipeout when exploring a new dungeon. If we didn’t coordinate well enough, we’ll just try again. Alright, everyone, corpse run!”

If Nunnally was so easy to beat, the parties that had entered the dungeon before Li Yi’s group would not be stuck here still.

Up till now, not a single person had managed to defeat Nunnally.

The five of them corpse-ran together and returned to the dungeon. They then sat on the floor, eating buns and drinking water as they tried to brainstorm methods to get past Nunnally.

“Later, when the soul spheres are about to appear, make sure you run far, far away. Also, I’ll give you my shoes to wear. If you really can’t get away, just use the special skill once. Sure, it’ll halve your HP, but it’s still better than getting sacrificed immediately.”

Li Yi took off his boots and traded them to Fire Ice.

“Oh, and there’s this too. You guys take them for now, but never use it unless you really have no other choice.”

Li Yi pulled out the Divine Essence Potions and gave the four girls 20 potions each.

“When fighting Nunnally, using any potions will rob you of the achievement, All on Your Own. Yes, we can get this achievement later as well, but…”

“Does the achievement come with a prize?” asked Xu Man.

“Yep. The All on Your Own achievement is one of the Light and Darkness Instances’ mount achievements. If you want that mount, you hafta complete this achievement.”

“A mount? Flying or ground?” asked Xu Man.

“Ground.” Li Yi paused before saying, “A combat mount.”

Only a select few players owned a ground combat mount. Most of the players were riding non-combat mounts, which meant that the mounts were automatically dismissed as soon as a battle began. The only thing those mounts were good for was traveling.

“We’ll do it, we’ll definitely do it!” Xu Man waved her little fist.

Li Yi sent them the list of the Light and Darkness—Glory of the Hero achievements. There were a total of 50 minor achievements listed there, and every single one had to be completed before the player could receive the system’s reward of a combat mount.

“It’s so hard…” The list made Moonlight Ocean’s head spin, and she was instantly discouraged.

“It’s just 50 achievements. If we’re fast about it, we can get it done in a month. How is that hard? In the future, when you’re doing the quests for the flying combat mount, you’ll know what hard means.”

“There’s an achievement for a flying combat mount too? Can we do that now? Is it hard?”

“Yes we can, and no, it’s not. All you gotta do is complete 5,000 achievements and obtain the overall achievement, Respected by All. That’s it.”

Moonlight Ocean stuck out her tongue and then bit it.

“Alright, refresh those buffs and let’s go.”

Li Yi clapped his hands and the four girls began casting their buffs.

Little Elf from the Magical Realm comforted Fire Ice. “Ice, if you can’t get away later, just run toward Dark Wing. Don’t worry, you’re not hurting him. With his skills, forget 5 soul spheres, not even 50 would be able to catch up to him.”

“Yeah…” replied Fire Ice, her face red.

The battle began anew!

With their experience from the previous try, the 5 of them were even more comfortable the second time around. They reached the Magic-breaker segment in no time, and Nunnally spat out the soul spheres, sending them on a chase.

“Ice, run toward Dark Wing!”

“Ice, don’t worry, we’ll just start over if we die.”

“Ice…”

When they saw the soul spheres chase after Fire Ice, all of them, including Li Yi, grew nervous. Their success or failure here in this battle depended directly on whether or not she could dodge the soul spheres!

Thankfully, Fire Ice did not mess up this time. Just as Little Elf from the Magical Realm told her to, she led the soul sphere that was chasing her up to Li Yi, and then she ran away to hide in the distance.

Little Elf from the Magical Realm also led her soul sphere to Li Yi. When the two sisters saw that this method seemed to work, they dashed toward him as well…

Li Yi led the five soul spheres on a wild goose chase around the area. Thankfully, this was still comfortably within the limits of his skills.

The four women gathered their firepower and channeled it all at Nunnally. One minute later, the soul spheres vanished on their own, and the Magic-breaker state was dispelled as well. Nunnally cried out in agony. Since the sacrificial spell had failed, she would remain weakened and immobilized 僵直 for the next two minutes.虚弱僵直状态

“Little Elf, use Miracle. Everyone else, let’s pummel her.”

“Miracle of Wind!”

Little Elf from the Magical Realm waved her staff, and a pale blue breeze enveloped every member of the party instantly. Everybody’s ATK SPD, MAG SPD, and damage were given a boost. Initially, the sisters could only deal 3,000 damage per second, but thanks to this Epic-level support skill, their DPS had gone way over 5,000.

As for Li Y, he went without saying. His DPS was consistently over 10,000, and that was without any potions boosting him. If he drank a Fury Potion, his damage would reach 13,000, at the very least.

Li Yi yelled, “Listen up, listen up! The boss’ HP will drop below 200,000 any time now. Everyone switch to full attack mode and get ready to hit me.”

“We will definitely complete this mission, so you can go in peace.” Little Elf from the Magical Realm grinned dastardly at Li Yi, causing his heart to waver once more. He resisted the urge to pinch her again.

“In the name of the Evil God, I sacrifice my life! In return, you shall all die with me, ahahahaha…”

When Nunnally’s HP dropped below 200,000, her hair began to float and her expression contorted. She emitted a blood-red wave of light that surrounded Li Yi and the others.

The fatal 10-second timer for the Life Sacrificial Spell had begun!

…