Chapter 27 – Meteor
Tang Yao was the first to attack the Leader-class Rock Spider. He had also remained the one who had outputted the most damage, so the spider’s aggro had been firmly placed on him. The spider had completely ignored Nie Yan. It left him behind and continued pursuing Tang Yao even after he had attacked it with a combination of skills. So while it was still aggroed on Tang Yao, Nie Yan took advantage of this moment and fished out the vial of poison within his knapsack and coated it over his dagger.
Five seconds later, he finished applying the poison. He approached the spider from the rear and stabbed his dagger into its abdomen with Vital Strike.
−10% Defense
−52
The Rock Spider became poisoned and a status debuff was applied.
Additionally, Nie Yan’s Vital Strike was a critical and dealt quite a bit of damage!
「Scritch! Scritch!」The spider shrieked out in pain. It switched its focus to Nie Yan and pounced towards him.
Nie Yan was caught off guard by this spider’s unexpected shift in targets and hastily fell back.
−78
The Rock Spider’s blow still landed on his body, causing the larger half of his health to immediately disappear. Seeing this, he didn’t dare to be carless. He immediately fished out a Basic Health Potion and downed it before rolling away and retreating.
The spider followed in pursuit.
Seeing the spider change focus, Tang Yao fired off a salvo of spells: Arcane Missile, Arcane Blaze and Arcane Fireball were released in quick succession.
“I’m going to be out of mana soon…” Tang Yao glanced at his health and mana. He had roughly a quarter of his mana remaining. His mana expenditure was too ferocious. There was simply no chance for his natural regeneration to keep up.
“Do you have any Mana Potions?” Nie Yan asked.
“I have a Basic Mana Potion.”
“Then hurry up and drink it. We’ll deal with it later,” Nie Yan instructed. As he turned to face the Rock Spider, it had already rushed in front of him. In response, he brandished his dagger and struck out with Concussive Strike, causing the spider’s movements to stall for a moment, which allowed him to take advantage of this opportunity to pull open some distance.
Although the spider had been struck by Concussive Strike, it had managed to land its attack during the exchange. Nie Yan glanced at his health bar. Roughly an eighth remained. Seeing this, he hurriedly applied a Combat Bandage to himself.
+20… +20… +20...
In the same moment, Tang Yao had fished out a bottle filled with a blue liquid from his knapsack and drained its contents down his throat. In reality, drinking this potion had caused him to feel some heartache, because that single bottle of blue liquid was worth ten coppers. It was his life-saving treasure! Yet even in a moment of emergency, he still couldn’t bear to use it.
Tang Yao’s mana was instantly restored to ninety percent. Now with his mana replenished, he unleashed several spells in succession with each one landing explosively and dealing a high amount of damage.
Before two seconds had even passed, the Rock Spider awoke from its dazed state. Upon awakening, it abandoned its pursuit of Nie Yan and rushed towards Tang Yao.
Its aggro had shifted once again.
“Keep at it! It’s almost dead!” Nie Yan shouted. Once his health was fully restored from the Combat Bandages, he rushed to the spider’s side once again.
He and Tang Yao’s damage were by no means low. Even if it were a Level 5 Leader-class monster, it was still unable to withstand this kind of assault. By now, it only had a little over ten percent of its health remaining.
「Scritch! Scritch!」The spider’s cries suddenly became manic and its entire body turned a shade of crimson red.
“Not good! This son of a b*tch became enraged. Keep moving back, and be careful of its attacks,” Nie Yan nervously shouted.
After hearing Nie Yan shout, although he still didn’t understand what was going on, Tang Yao followed Nie Yan’s instructions regardless and hastily made his retreat, all the while casting magic as he ran.
While he ran, a spike came shooting from the ground below and pierced towards him.
Fortunately, Tang Yao was still moving when this rock spike emerged. It went slightly off target and barely managed to graze his skin. However, this slight scratch still dealt thirty-two damage to his health.
If this rock spike had directly pierced Tang Yao, Nie Yan estimated that he would have lost at least two thirds of his health.
Tang Yao was nearly frightened to death and rejoiced inwardly that he had survived this attack.
“Keep running and never stop. If you see areas where the ground is trembling and cracking, get out of the way and don’t step on them!” Nie Yan shouted. If Tang Yao paused for even a moment, then he would meet his end.
Sure enough, as soon as Nie Yan called out more rock spikes came piercing from the ground. Tang Yao followed Nie Yan’s instructions and paid attention to the earth beneath his feet, occasionally dodging from side to side. Afterwards, aside from the first rock spike, not a single one managed to land a hit on him.
Tang Yao couldn’t help but wonder how Nie Yan knew this method for dodging the rock spikes. Could it be that Nie Yan had slain a Leader-class Rock Spider in the past?
In the end, he put this thought in the back of his head and concentrated solely on evading the rock spikes beneath his feet. Occasionally, he would see an opportunity to cast one or two spells, but he never had the time to inquire.
The spider was unable to land a hit on Tang Yao and this caused it to seemingly become more enraged as it unceasingly rammed itself at the tunnel walls. Suddenly…「Crash!!」The walls finally crumbled and collapsed. The spider climbed over the pile of rubble and rushed inside the tunnel, pouncing towards Tang Yao.
“Run quickly!” Nie Yan shouted.
“I can’t! There’s another Rock Spider behind me, and if I run any further I’ll end up aggroing it!” Tang Yao nervously called out as he looked back at the spider’s immense body fast approaching.
Nie Yan looked at the spider’s heath bar. Five percent… it only has sliver of life left!
“It’s fine! Keep running!” Nie Yan shouted as he checked his skill bar. By now, several of his skills had already come off cooldown.
He chased after the spider and arrived near its rear.
Assassinate! Lacerate!
−2, −3
It still has two percent remaining!
Vital Strike!
Nie Yan lunged forward as his dagger pierced into the spider’s abdominal cavity.
「Scritch! Scritch!」The spider issued a miserable shriek as it fell to the ground with a heavy crash. The impact caused the entire cave to tremble.
“We finally killed it.” Nie Yan’s mind relaxed as he breathed a sigh of relief. He walked over to the Rock Spider’s corpse and picked up the items that it had dropped.
“Over here! I have this guy chasing me too!” Tang Yao ran over to Nie Yan with a smaller Rock Spider aggroed onto him. For the sake of evading that Leader-class Rock Spider just a moment ago, he unavoidably ended up alerting the one chasing after him. Thankfully, it was only a common monster.
Nie Yan obstructed the spider’s advance as Tang Yao successively cast spells in the backline.
Very quickly, the two made short work of it as another spider corpse collapsed to the floor.
“My God… I’m going to die of exhaustion.” Tang panted as he sat himself down besides the corner of a nearby wall and slowly recovered his health and mana. How they ever managed kill this Leader-class Rock Spider that was two levels above them? He didn’t know. But it was most likely his greatest achievement since starting the game, “You know… This is the first time I’ve noticed how awesome I actually am.”
Nie Yan took out the two items that Leader-class Rock Spider had dropped: a single skill book and a silver white key.
Skill book: Meteor
Skill description: Beckon meteors to your call and smite your enemies below.
Required: One syllable, three gestures, and one talisman.
Skill attribute: (Beginner) Summon five meteors. Each meteor deals five bonus damage for a total of five times five bonus damage. Also applies ten points of burn damage.
Skill cooldown: 120 s
User restriction: Elementalist, Arcane Mage; can only be learned by the Righteous Faction that protects the light.
This was an uncommon Arcane Mage skill book and an extremely rare one at that. At the Beginner level, it could summon blazing fireballs that rained down the sky like meteors. Each fireball could be directed at a single target or five targets simultaneously. At later levels, it would become a powerful area wide spell.
“Even something like this can drop…? You lucky son of a b*tch.” Nie Yan was almost speechless. The Meteor skill was exceedingly rare. It could only be found in Level 1 to 30 areas where Rum Spiders, Rock Spiders, and Flame Spiders spawned, and they would only drop from Leader-class or higher versions of these monsters. Moreover, the drop rate for this skill wasn’t more than one in ten thousand. With the current level of the playerbase, this skill would be priceless in the marketplace. They really did meet with an unexpected success today. As for the rare drop, it was mostly like due to killing a Leader-class monster two levels higher than them.
“What did it drop?” Tang Yao asked in surprise.
“Looks like your luck isn’t half-bad today. It dropped a Meteor skill book. At the Beginner level, it serves as a high damage small area of effect skill. At the later levels, it becomes a pretty decent mobbing skill.” Nie Yan felt a slight hint of envy as he summarized the skill to Tang Yao. An Arcane Mage acquiring Meteor during the first two weeks of the game… This truly was too much of a blessing.
“Really?” Tang Yao suddenly stood up in surprise. “Let me see!”
“It’s not bad. You can use it. But compared to Templar magic, Giant magic, or Dragon magic, it’s still somewhat lacking.” Nie Yan threw the Meteor skill book over to Tang Yao, and looked at the other item that was dropped.
Silver Key: Used to open Level 0–20 treasure chests that are gold or lower.
Uses remaining: 3/3
“What’s Templar magic, and Dragon magic?”
“You’ll find out yourself in the future. You can have Meteor skill book and I’ll take the key,” Nie Yan replied. He and Tang Yao both took what was useful for them. Nevertheless, this key was still better in Nie Yan’s hands, because only then could it be fully put to use and have the most value gotten out of it. Not to mention, with this key, he could now finally open that nearby locked silver treasure chest.
“If that’s the case, I won’t be polite!” Tang Yao went ahead and learned Meteor. Afterwards, when he read the skill’s description, he felt extremely pleased with himself. He had been thoroughly depressed from being pursued by the Radiant Sacred Flame guild all day. Who knew the moment Nie Yan showed up, all of his extreme sorrows would turn into joy and his situation would become completely reversed.