The General’s Tomb was the death bed of the City of Light’s famous general [Var? Wind Earl]. He was the bravest warrior in the City of Light and was very powerful. He had raged and led hundreds of thousands of warriors into the Dark Lair because the Dark Shrine had abducted his wife. He had fought to death there.
However, everything had been planned by the Dark Shrine as the war ground had become a great soul summoning spot for them. Countless ancient generals had awoken from their slumber and transformed into the Undead Soldiers that were manipulated by the Dark Shrine. Furthermore, the revival ceremony for the Wind Earl was in progress as well.
Lin Jie was extremely well-versed with the background story, but he did not regard the Wind Earl’s gritting and tragic life of importance. Instead, he was concerned with the items in the tomb—ancient equipment, armories, treasure chests, gems, skill books, and so on. Those items were the valuable portion of the ‘tomb’.
Lin Jie rode his Iron-Willed Blood Horse across the desert as countless other players followed suit. They had all teamed up to explore the new map, and it was rare for solo players like Lin Jie to be around this area. Amongst the casual adventurers, a large portion was made up of Bandits, and they planned to steal some stuff from the tomb.
The reason why Lin Jie did not team up with Bu Yi, and the rest was that this map wasn’t exactly suitable for groups. Due to his training over the years, coupled with his muscle memory and trap familiarity, it would be a breeze for Lin Jie to avoid dangers on his own, but the same couldn’t be said if he brought the others along.
Ssss—
At that moment, several arrows burst through the air abruptly, and they shone as though they had been dipped in gold.
The Iron-Willed Blood Horse neighed, and Lin Jie pulled onto the rein as he threw himself forward and rolled on the ground. He avoided all the arrows as they pierced through the ground. These arrows turned out to be the Gold Hook Arrows and were exclusive to NPCs only. Other than adding 45 points to Attack, they had 35% of Armor Ignore against heavy armor.
The players that ambushed Lin Jie escaped immediately as they noticed their failure and left several traps around to prevent him from pursuing.
“Arrows from the General’s Tomb’s corpse?” Lin Jie did not chase after them. Instead, he began pondering as he looked at the Gold Hook Arrows. “My guess must be correct. Eighteen Massacres must be having a good time around such Undead locations, plus he is the Blood Sub-Shrine’s Master. He must have accepted some special mission and entered the tomb.”
The players around were in shock as a player’s alertness was at the lowest when the person was on the rush. Most of them had the habit of watching movies or flirting while they were on the move. However, this fellow had such quick reflexes that he could react in the heat of the moment!
Lin Jie patted away the dust carelessly and continued on his journey. However, he raised his alertness level. Eighteen Massacres was the current Blood Sub-Shrine’s Master, and even though it was just one of the many sub-shrines of the Dark Shrine, most of the spawned Undead monsters were released from there. In other words, Eighteen Massacres was in control of the majority of monsters!
Furthermore, he had changed his job to an Abyss Knight that was capable of capturing Devils from the Abyss. Seeing how Eighteen Massacres was like, if he hadn’t thought of himself to be invincible and planned to torture Lin Jie, he wouldn’t have appeared at the Ice Shrine. He might even have prepared to attack the City of Light, however, his plan was pushed back when he encountered the system’s protection while opening up the new map.
If he was really so powerful, the General’s Tomb might already be under his control! Eighteen Massacres was an influential Shrine Master, and several ancient backstories were related to this dark force. Hence, if he was able to manipulate the souls in the tomb, it would be too late…
Fortunately, after the first ambush, it wasn’t followed by a second one. Lin Jie had a relatively safe journey, but he was stunned upon reaching the tomb.
Although the name, General’s Tomb, sounded pretty domineering and had a backstory that gave of a strong visual image. However, despite how magnificent the internals would appear, the entrance would just be a black hole, and how could this black hole be sufficient to fit a sea of players?
Thus, upon his arrival, Lin Jie noticed that the hole was fully filled with people, and everyone was trying their best to squeeze inwards…
Lin Jie was sweating as the black hole was not the entrance—on the contrary, it was the resting ground of the tomb’s guarding Boss. Once a player activated the trap for the first time, the Boss would fly up from beneath the ground in a suave manner and begin fighting with the players. What’s worse, the guarding Boss would only drop 100 keys for the hundreds of players.
Judging from the current situation, the players had all jumped in before the Boss was prepared to appear. Hence, these all contributed to an odd situation: Before the Boss was respawned, it was being trapped underground by a dozen of butts.
“Yo, Brother Lone Wolf!” Very Fat, Knight’s Glory’s guild leader, spotted Lin Jie and greeted him with a smile. He approached Lin Jie and raised his eyebrows at the sea of people. “With your abilities, will you be able to squeeze your way in?” he asked, kind of shocked.
Lin Jie gave him a side glance—there seemed to be no link between the ability to squeeze and a professional player, right? However, this wasn’t the time for this, he pointed to the hole and said, “In order to enter the tomb, we must first release the Boss.”
It was obvious that Very Fat had obtained partial information of this map using his own methods as he nodded. “The guarding Boss, Skeleton Demon Sword Artist, isn’t the strength-type, so he won’t be able to blast all the players away. If this situation carries on, we will lose our advantage of being here early. However, these players are all solo players and won’t listen to instructions, we can’t help it.”
“You can’t say that we don’t have a choice. For one, you can definitely help out…” Lin Jie chuckled. “As a huge guild, your team must have some Shamans, right?”
Very Fat’s chubby face jiggled as he said, “You want to electrocute the Boss with the Shaman’s Elemental Conduction?”
Shaman, especially the Elemental Shaman, was the job with the best group-AOE damage output.
Elemental Shamans’ Lightning Arrow was capable of inflicting 120% Magic Damage onto its target while overloading it. An overloaded target would have 30% of its Mana bar drained. If it was under the consecutive lightning attack, it would become the targeting vector.
There was an explanation needed for the lighting chain.
—Lightning chain: A skill unique to the Elemental Shaman, allowing them to inflict a 120% damage to any target within 40 yards before attacking 4 random targets within a 10-yards radius. If one of the targets was overloaded, the overloaded effect would be canceled out, and a lighting chain technique, which did not require any casting time and cooldown period, would be inflicted instead.
Theoretically, Elemental Shamans had the strongest group-AOE explosion of strength, as opposed to Elemental Mages! As once there were sufficient ‘overloaded’ targets, Elemental Shamans were able to unleash up to hundreds of lightning chain damage! If there were a huge number of Elemental Shamans, the damage they could inflict would be significant as well.
Lin Jie nodded. “Now that the Boss is buried beneath, normal attacks will not be able to reach. Only Shamans are capable of doing that, so? Will you consider it?”
“Why aren’t you doing that then?” Very Fat sensed that Lin Jie was plotting something.
“I don’t have sufficient manpower… I am all by myself, I can only seek your help,” replied Lin Jie.
“No deal!” Very Fat walked off with his huge belly, he knew that Lin Jie’s proposal was the only solution they had. They would all be stuck outside if they couldn’t slay the Boss. However, Lin Jie was treating the players as conducting bodies to electrocute the Boss, which would result in the deaths. Ultimately, he would be carrying the burden of this crime, wouldn’t he?
Very Fat shifted to Dark Earl and said lowly, “Dark, I have a great idea, let me tell you for free…”
Dark Earl grew frosty after hearing it, and he scoffed. “You are dumping the burden on me? No deal! But, fatso, wouldn’t it be easier for you to call for some cannon fodder?”
“Wouldn’t cannon fodder be expensive?” asked Very Fat.
“With how you are scrimping on the coins, I finally understand why you have gotten so fat!” Dark Earl felt helpless. He was planning to call out for the cannon fodder anonymously, before noting something occurring on the other side.
Lin Jie, together with another guy and girl, managed to squeeze their way in with the help of his Strength. They were currently staring at the cavity solemnly.
“Hey, hey, hey, every lightning chain will cost 1 gold coin, we agreed on that. You better open your eyes wide and count properly.” The girl blabbered on. She looked sweet and slender as her long purple hair was tied up into a ponytail. She hopped around with a lightning hammer in one hand, and she was an Elemental Shaman!
The girl was Charming Smile. After coming online, this money-faced girl had her eyes on the General’s Tomb. Due to the influence of tomb raiding movies, the first thing that came to her mind when one mentioned tombs, was the funeral objects… instead of skeletons. Thus, she had rushed over and was recruited by Lin Jie as she was a normal member of the Brotherhood.
The other guy was a ‘talent’ that Lin Jie had just discovered. He was called Hardworking Pants and was an Enchant Master. He previously belonged to the Xuanyuan Alliance and was a powerful character that was capable of casting Runes.
“Runes can be used in combat? Are you sure?” Hardworking Pants questioned as the reason Lin Jie had used to recruit him was that he was needed to cast runes to slay the Boss.
A Living job being able to slay the Boss? Hardworking Pants had joined Lin Jie’s team out of interest.
