Chapter 187: The Fifth Wave
Chapter 187: The Fifth Wave
Zhang Yang hands were in a blur, like the hands of Flash! Swish! Swoosh! He grabbed all the loots and placed them into his inventory! From Gray-Silver equipment to skill books, leaving the Green-Copper as the last...he swiped them off the ground!
He had hide his player's profile and turned on the helmet effect that hide his face and appearance. He had even unequipped his shield to be safe! When the players around him saw him picking up the loots, they were not suspicious of him since they knew that the item distribution mode was set to leader distribution. If you wanted the honors of picking them up, by all means, that's probably the closest you can get to owning it!
However, in a flash, they realized that something was going wrong. The items on the floor were disappearing extremely quickly!
"Spy! There's a spy!" one of the player shouted which had instantly triggered the nearby players to react and attack Zhang Yang.
Zhang Yang summoned [Clear Lotus] and activated <Substitute> to gain immunity.
Zhang Yang took this chance to quickly pick more items as he could!
At this point of the game, no many players could get their hands on a [Servant]. Those who knew about the <Substitute> ability were only those within Zhang Yang's party. There was no way that players from The Dominators would know that they would need to kill the servant before they could dispel the immunity effect, thus everyone was vigorously attacking Zhang Yang with everything they had.
5 seconds was very short, in that time, Zhang Yang had missed 3 Green-Copper equipment on the ground. He then ignored the items and used <Charge>, targeting the closest Spellcaster. In an instant, he activated <Rearm> and refreshed every skill's cool down!
<Shadow of the Void>!
Swoosh!
In Zhang Yang's world, every living being was removed from his vision. He quickly dashed back to his guild position. In the effect of <Shadow of the Void>, his movement speed was increased by 100%. With a 20 second active duration, it was enough for him to run 300 to 400 meters away!
By the time the skill had ended, Zhang Yang had reappeared far away within the NPC army. He then summoned his mount and rode by safely to his guild position. Zhang Yang checked his loots and found that he had looted 9 Gray-Silver equipment, 19 Green-Copper equipment and two skill books, <Grace> and <Healing Rain>.
Haha! Humbly Gentleman would have cried his eyes out if he had knew I took these awesome skill books!
That being said, Humbly Gentleman was still preoccupied with Zhang Yang's disappearing act. Was he still alive? Humbly Gentleman was still at the outermost circle of defense, commanding the troops to attack at random. In that instant, he had so distracted that he did not bother about the boss loots. In his opinion, as long as the defense line was intact, no one else could pick up the boss' loots, so it does not matter!
However, when his underling had reported about the loots had been looted by an unknown player, Humbly Gentleman had frantically shoved his way to the boss' copse and found only three miserable Green-Copper equipment lying there!
Having worked tirelessly for so long to earn only 3 pieces of Green-Copper equipment?! Humbly Gentleman felt his final fuse burning out. He asked around, but his underlings could only report that the thief had hidden his profile information and had a helmet covering his head, hiding his face from everyone. With that little information, Humbly Gentleman had the highest confirmation that the thief was Zhang Yang!
Play with fire and you will be get burned one day!
Humbly Gentleman quickly sent a private message to Zhang Yang. "I knew you were behind this! Give me back all the items that you stole!"
Zhang Yang immediately replied. "I have no idea what you are talking about!"
"Don't act coy with me! I knew that you were the one who stole all our boss loots!"
"No! I did not!" Zhang Yang replied in his heart. "I did not steal. I clearly robbed you!"
"You..." Humbly Gentleman finally had a taste of his own medicine! To be unable to come up with a reply! Furthermore, he had no proof that it was really Zhang Yang who had stolen all his boss loots.
Zhang Yang laughed and continued. "Hey! Hypocrite! The monsters are about to spawn again! Who knows, the next boss might land in your hands again!" If that was really the case, Zhang Yang could easily hijack the boss again since one hour was a luxurious duration for all his skills to refresh!
When Humbly Gentleman saw his reply, he was so enraged that he could feel the anger gushing out of every pore of his body. He felt nauseous. What kind of attitude was that?! At least, he now understood how Sky Shaman felt back then.
On one side, Wei Yan Er was overjoyed. "Hey! Noob tank! Did you really hijack their boss?! I could see their tantrum all the way from here! Ge Ge Ge Ge! It's looks like fun!"
Zhang Yang only nodded his head and did not say anything else. He then posted each of Gray-Silver equipment he looted in the guild channel and auctioned them off like the rest. One of the equipment was called [Lodac's Arm Brace], a heavy armor type. Zhang Yang equipped the armlet first, with the intention of getting it identified back at the city, after the war. He will give it to Wei Yan Er if the identified properties were of the offensive type, and keep it for himself if it was a defensive type.
As for the skill books, since Endless Starlight and Han Ying Xue had the skills in hand, Zhang Yang decided that he will put them up for sale in his shop.
'Ding! The fifth wave of monsters have started to come out of Tukula Fortress!'
In an instant, a massive horde centaurs stampeded out of the fortress. However, unlike the Kukulo's tribe, these centaurs were completely red, from head to hoof. They looked much fiercer, having eyes that emitted a dark reddish flame. These were clearly indicators of a demonic nature!
Similar to all the previous monster waves, there were normal and elite types, both wielded a long bow and a quiver on their backs.
[Demonized Centaur Archer] (Normal, Demon)
Level: 55
HP: 5,500
Defense: 50
[Demonized Centaur Archer Lord] (Elite, Demon)
Level: 55
HP: 100,000
Defense: 300
Zhang Yang cried out. "Everyone! Get back! Let the NPC army take the first wave of attack!" Zhang Yang lead his own troops back and let the NPC army take over the frontline.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The stomping of hooves got louder as the centaurs approached the players like lightning speed. As the enemy entered their attacking range, they began drawing their bows and shot endless waves of arrows to attack.
A few of those monsters were capable of dishing out damage on par with a large group of players. Unless the players were all wearing the same tiered equipment as Zhang Yang, they would easily be killed. Besides those who were standing at the front line, other players had made their way behind the NPC army to prevent themselves from getting instantly killed by the NPC!
Zhang Yang waited until the NPC had started to return fire and then commanded his own troops. "Time to lay waste to these bastards!"
"HUURAHH!"
Once the players entered melee range, the Hunter class monster lost their offensive edge. Due to the outrageous number of monsters, with many layers stacked together, the ones standing behind were unable to attack, blocked by the ones in front! However, these monsters had <Barrage>, and with a number of attacks, the monster had inflicted massive causalities to the NPC army in the front row!
As the killing went on, the number of drops multiplied, as player deaths shot up relatively. The number of players was initially at around 2,000,000, but right now, there were less than 1,000,000 left! The NPC army had lost an even greater number! With lesser players to pick the loots, the ground was littered with them!
Once the NPC army had suffered significant losses, the attacking force was unable to match evenly with the incoming enemies. They actually had enough man power to create a literal defensive line to fight the monster, but currently with their low numbers, the monsters had begun to engulf the army like an island in sea! With this kind of situation at hand, the death rate was increasing drastically!
Monster will spawn again after dying and the numbers will keep on getting higher and higher. Inversely, once an NPC dies in battle, they will not respawn again! A loss will remain lost!
The players did the best they could and managed to somewhat keep the monsters of the fifth wave at bay. However, the performance of the super guilds were much better, they could at least preserve their NPC army while the rest of the players had already completely sacrifice the NPC army on their end! Among the guilds that could preserve their NPC army was the alliance between Lone Desert Smoke, Crimson Rage, and Lost Paradise. The number of NPC army on their side of the battle field remained at 70%!
'Ding! The fifth wave boss, Marcus the Wind Ranger has appeared!'
Along with that system notification, the hill-sized male centaur Wind Ranger had entered the battle field. His massive body had actually managed to block the sun and cast a huge shadow onto a large portion of the battlefield! With half of its body naked, his tight and ripped muscles were filled with explosive power, coupled with his full red body, he was packed with power, easily spotted from afar!
[Marcus the Wind Ranger] (Gray-Silver, Demon)
Level: 55
HP: 15,000,000
Defense: 600
"GROANN!" The centaur growl loudly and stomped his way towards the players. The thundering sound of its hooves was as loud of the drums of war, a truly ferocious and terrifying prospect!
This time, the boss was headed towards the guild called "Floating Clouds"
The closer it came, the stronger the clopping of its hooves. The boss, Marcus drew its bow at a far distance and began to fire arrows, burning in emerald colored flame. When the arrows struck the Floating Clouds players, they exploded and formed 2 meter tall flaming walls that spread out everywhere.
' -5.000!' -5.000!' -5.000!'
Just as the flame touched with the players, the damage number popped out from the head and was mostly killed off instantly. A single attack alone had killed off close to 50 players of the guild!
"Spread out! Spread out immediately!" cried Nightless Moon, the guild master of Floating Clouds.
However, even when the tanks of Floating Clouds had gotten hold onto the boss' aggro, Marcus remained completely unfazed and still fired arrows towards the attacking tanks!
Wei Yan Er saw the scenario and asked Zhang Yang. "Hey...noob tank. A Hunter is not supposed to attack when a player gets close to him, right?
A Hunter cannot attack targets that were too close to him. The effective range was between 3 meters to 30 meters. Within 3 meters, the Hunter would be unable to fight. It was also called the "Blind Spot".
"...Did you see how tall is the monster is? From his feet to his head, he could at least be a few meters tall! How can there be any blind spots?" Zhang Yang laughed as he explained.
Everyone was baffled by his explanation. How could that be valid?!
It's the truth and nothing but the truth. They had to accept that fact since the boss kept on shooting arrow and arrow at the tanks beneath him! Every time an arrow was fired, it would deal an AoE fire attack to all targets in 10 meters of the first target.
Skill-wise, this boss had simple mechanisms. He had only been using one form of attack. Every time he attacked, the aggro value was reset! It's a bloody massacre by his hand! By the time Floating Clouds had understood the mechanics, they would stop their attack in time when the boss cleared its aggro and allow the tank to regain his aggro hold, but, by then, Floating Clouds had already lost more than 2,000 men!
In the end, the boss was slain by the guild, but at great cost. It could be predicted that by the time the next wave onslaught arrives, the guild would be completely routed and removed from the city war!
Having witnessed such events, the other guilds had started to be wary of the bosses. Without proper strength and power, they would be in trouble trouble of they did not have enough power to take the boss head on!