Moving further inland, Zi Dan quickly realised that Xia Mao’s decision was not as great as they hoped it to be. There was indeed a small forested area, but as he went further in, he found that the place was mostly filled with nothing but swamps.
“Shit! Shit! This is worse than the beach!” Zi Dan cursed to himself when he accidentally stepped into a seemingly stable ground, only to find himself stuck in between the mud and water. He quickly used his chain ball mace to grab onto a branch and pulled himself up.
His current direction was a no go, but the party members were already pulling Nian towards the swamp. Even worse, he felt other creatures were lurking within the swamp after spreading his chi around to check on the surroundings.
While Nian might be enough to scare them off away for a while, he would not count on that happening since this was a dungeon instance. It was far more likely that the party would be ambushed while they were fighting Nian. And if the monsters were to attack now, they might be caught in a bad predicament.
Either way, it was a lose-lose situation for the entire group, and Zi Dan had to make the decision fast. Allow his team to slow fight their way back to the sparsely forested area for the showdown or continue pushing into the swampy areas and hope to find some better grounds further into the island.
With Zi Dan leaving the party to scout, the pressure on the Nian had lessened, enabling the monster to start bullying the party members by picking on Jing Yu or Xia Mao as they fled further inland. Heala was shooting crossbow bolts at regular intervals to distract the monster as her healing would require her to stand still, which was impossible at the moment.
The mercenary healer did have instant cast spells for emergency heals, yet those were precious and limited in number. After all, Jin had designed Heala similar to their world’s mages way of healing instead of how Peppers or other mage minions he had in possession. That way, the cultivators and subsequently mages of his world could get used to the dungeon raids if they were to be together. (Especially with his dream of going worldwide.)
“Damn it! Our mobility will be limited if we cross this swamp area without some proper strategy, and this fight is proving to be way harder than we thought!” Zi Dan thought to himself as he could see the rest of his group approaching fast with the Demon Beast right behind their backs.
The forested area, however, gave Jing Yu the opportunity to hit Nian unexpectedly, just that her blades were still not strong enough to pierce it no matter how much she hit it. Xia Mao was the same as he tried to backstab Nian with the trees as his support and for some reason, Nian was perceptive enough to escape the ambush strikes and could even counter-attack with its paws the moment Xia Mao entered its field of vision. (The only fortunate thing was that they could at least still see its health being chipped downwards though it was marginal in terms of progress.)
The Blind Cat cultivator might have been able to hide its actions from the Demon Beast for a while, but it was not enough when his strikes were not decisive enough or lacked the speed to counter its perception. Not to mention, they were on the move, and Xia Mao had to adjust accordingly by moving further into the forested area to create such an ambush.
The most troubling thing was that their formation lacked their Panda Guardian who had been scattered from the group. Tanke had the endurance to hold down the Demon Beast, but because of its armour, the Panda Guardian did not have enough stamina to catch up with the party’s main offensive attackers.
Furthermore, Nian had been aiming at Tanke so much that their injured mercenary was not moving fast enough, which caused Xia Mao and Jing Yu to take the matter into their hands and thus their current situation. If they lose Tanke while finding a more suitable ground to fight Nian, there is a possibility they would fail the dungeon instance because of the loss of their Guardian.
That was why the Pandarens spammed their offensive skills to attract Nian and the more they did that, the more they had to move continuously so they could evade while dishing out attacks. With the Nian approaching fast towards Zi Dan and fast losing of options to stay alive, he suddenly remembered that the Panda Sailors had given them some souvenirs before their departure.
The Firecrackers.
“He should be scared of these loud sounds, right? Please don’t tell me the firecrackers are just for fun! We need the legends to be true now!” Zi Dan prayed as he took his portion of firecrackers out and started to light them with a lighter.
“What the heck are you doing!?!?” Jing Yu screamed towards Zi Dan when she saw him standing still, attempting to light a few firecrackers. The Bullet Cheetah Cultivator ignored the shout as he already had a hard time keeping his hands from shaking violently with the incoming Nian racing through the forested areas and towards him. (He literally felt the stare emanated towards him.)
Zi Dan’s eyes widened as he saw the fuse light up, but when he looked up the Nian was merely a metre away and already pouncing towards him. With all the training and experience within his body, Zi Dan instinctively squatted and performed a low jump so that he would glide in the opposite direction from where Nian pounced.
His brain was not thinking, and the only thing that reacted were his muscles and the chi he emanated naturally allowed him to flee from his current position and away from danger.
“As expected from the Bullet Cheetah!” Xia Mao heaved a momentary sigh of relief when he saw how Zi Dan dashed out of trouble and not only that, he took that opportunity to hook the firecracker on Nian’s tail.
“Run back to the forest!” Zi Dan cried as he manoeuvred his body to throw his chain ball mace towards Nian’s face violently hitting the beast’s nose.
At that moment, the fuse for the firecrackers had reached its end, and the fire had ignited the explosives, causing it to produce a tremendous amount of noise which inadvertently scared Nian out of its wit.
All that ‘in-game’ aggression against the party had disappeared as the Demon Beast fled east towards the mountainous area of the island with the popping noise right behind its tail.
“Wow, okay that is some quick thinking there, my friend.” Jing Yu tried to catch her breath as her ears were ringing. She never had such an experience being chased by something so ominous. Usually, she’s the one doing the hunting and not the other way round.
“I guess the Visual HUD interface wasn’t kidding when it wrote that it was the boss. I thought it was some monster attempting to disguise itself as it is.” Xia Mao said as he saw Tanke finally catching up to them. Seeing how the threat was gone for now, the Panda Guardian was so tired from running that it decided to lie and roll slowly instead.
“Let’s take a breather and take a look at the island. Boss Jin wouldn’t have designed a dungeon so straightforward. We should be able to find something that should prove as helpful as that firecracker move at the least.” Jing Yu commented.
“Or maybe just more firecrackers. Hahahaha…” Zi Dan looked into the swamp area where he last saw his chain ball mace after it hit Nian’s nose.
“Should I even attempt to search for it…?”
