Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The Vanishing Step!
Hungry Tiger was using one of the Bandits’ top-tier techniques, the skill which Tomorrow Night had already demonstrated before—Vanishing Step! This skill allowed one to conjure up afterimages, and hence rendered the opponent incapable of identifying the skill owner’s true location!
Furthermore, it seemed like Hungry Tiger was definitely better at this skill than Tomorrow Night. Although Tomorrow Night was also able to use the Vanishing Step, he could only activate it upon calling out the skill. Due to his usual habits, one could also predict his path of action correctly after some observation.
What Hungry Tiger showcased now was how the Vanishing Step should really be like. His body would make a reaction reflexively when he sensed danger and swerved to avoid the attacks by turning left, right, or by moving front or backward easily. At the same time, his body could control the afterimages he conjured up, such that those afterimages looked like they were launching attacks instead of dodging the attacks. This would confuse his opponents so that they will stop their attacks and hence revealed their weaknesses.
‘Vanishing Step! Isn’t this one of the Bandits’ top-tier techniques? How can a Druid use it?’ Although Lin Jie still looked terrific wielding Broken Blade, he had already lost sight of Hungry Tiger’s whereabouts. Thinking back to how he had killed Tomorrow Night the last time, he tried to re-enact the scene again by forcing Hungry Tiger to dodge in a planned way.
However, his plan failed—Hungry Tiger seemed to have a unique sense of danger. As long as Lin Jie revealed any intentions of attacking him, he would move away using the Vanishing Step, which made Lin Jie’s attacks simply go to naught.
There were afterimages all around Lin Jie! It was as if they were stubborn statues surrounding him, refusing to fade away.
Lin Jie’s heart sank. He stopped attacking altogether, and let the afterimages swirled around him, ignoring their actions.
‘I need to take the quiet approach now—as long as Hungry Tiger dare to make any real attacks, I will be able to seize the chance to retaliate!’
After all, from the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes, which he achieved, Lin Jie gathered that such top-notch techniques most probably had time limits. Once the skill ended, it would be easy to take down Hungry Tiger!
Lowering Broken Blade, Lin Jie closed his eyes. He felt like the winds brought up by the afterimages were like raindrops beating against his ears, making one confused as to where they were truly coming from. Indeed, Hungry Tiger’s Vanishing Step was formidable.
The next moment, Hungry Tiger let out a cold laugh and aimed straight at Lin Jie’s face—he seemed to see through Lin Jie’s plan and was darned on killing Lin Jie in one shot!
‘That’s him!’ In the blink of an eye, Lin Jie identified correctly that the figure coming at him from the front was not an afterimage, but the real person! He parried the attack with Broken Blade while giving out a low roar—he activated Outraged Roar!
Attack Immuned!
A white-colored word rose up above Hungry Tiger’s head. It was not surprising that an expert like Hungry Tiger would have means to offset Lin Jie’s Control-type skills. However, he did not expect that Broken Blade would also give off low growling sounds the following second—it was the Dragon’s Roar skill, which was attached to Broken Blade! Hungry Tiger could not use any means to evade this attack, and he was stunned.
“Dragon Armor Removal, Clomaros’ Kill!
Lin Jie immediately made use of the chance to launch his strongest attacks! That’s right, his motto was always to get rid of enemies when they were at their weakest! Regardless of what secret association this fellow came from, Lin Jie was sure that his health bar was definitely not any more than 200,000 points. As long as that stood true, he would be able to kill him with the Clomaros’ Kill skill!
“Well, that’s quite powerful, I admit.”
A cool voice rang out from behind him. Lin Jie’s heart flipped. ‘Darn it!’ Hungry Tiger had escaped again with the Vanishing Step! He had actually activated that skill simultaneously when he immuned Lin Jie’s previous attack!
‘Can it be that he already predicted my attacks is a multi-step Crowd Control attack?!’
Meanwhile, Hungry Tiger had turned the tables and was now in control of the battle. He turned his Bladefists inside out—one could see a faint whirlwind forming in his palms. This whirlwind gradually divided itself into seven smaller whirlwinds, and each of them caught up with Lin Jie’s Broken Blade, armor, war boots, and his torso, respectively…
This was the Seven Spinning Slash skill!
Hungry Tiger clenched his fists and made loud sounds of cracking his knuckles. He titled his head, and punched down on Lin Jie’s head the next moment!
“The fight’s over. Codename Lone Wolf, I will take this Broken Blade!”
Boom—
As his fist came down upon Lin Jie, it did not hit his head, but landed on a layer… or rather, several thick layers of Power Word Shield!
Seeing that Lin Jie was in peril, Bu Yi actually cast seven layers of Power Word Shield on him!
Since a long time ago, Bu Yi had discovered that the Power Word Shield was not the supposedly balanced, round shield made up by Holy Light as it was said to be. In fact, there were always several fragile spots on the Power Word Shield. If one could apply another layer of the Power Word Shield onto those fragile areas, the two skills would not be canceled off, but could instead be superimposed onto each other!
However, the fragile spots of the Power Word Shield were not always found on the same location—how could one expect to superimpose two layers of Power Word Shield so easily? Out of all the times Bu Yi experimented with this idea, she could only superimpose two or three layers of Power Word Shield together. In fact, those were during extremely rare occasions.
It was a miracle that she could superimpose all the Power Word Shields that efficiently this time round! With a wave of her wand, she actually cast seven layers of Power Word Shield on Lin Jie, before she finally reached her limits!
Hungry Tiger was astounded. ‘Is this the Ten Shields Spell? It’s known that this skill is the most difficult to learn. Less than 2/5 of us in the association can achieve this skill! How come this girl knows how to cast it? And she can even cast seven layers of shields in one go?!’
“Fancy you getting distracted at this moment!” Lin Jie’s menacing words echoed in his ears the next moment. Broken Blade was thrust out at Hungry Tiger again, and it finally left a gruesome, bloodied injury upon his neck!
-1,928!
Swoosh!
Hungry Tiger’s health bar decreased by almost half with this strike. However, this attack did make him pull back his attention. He drew in a deep breath, and his heartbeat quickened as a layer of blood vigor covered his Bladefists.
This was… the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes skill!
Whoosh—
Hungry Tiger’s figure suddenly pounced upon Lin Jie out of nowhere, and his Bladefists knocked hardly against Broken Blade’s surface. This huge impact made Lin Jie falter, and he almost sat down on the ground!
Yet this was not the end. Hungry Tiger’s Bladefists hit upon Broken Blade continuously, sending waves of pain up Lin Jie’s wrists. Lin Jie felt as if his wrists would be broken soon. Under these ferocious attacks, even Bu Yi’s multi-layered Power Word Shield was smashed to pieces and dissolved into faint sparks.
He actually used the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes—the exact skill which Lin Jie used previously!
Lin Jie had only learned the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes after all those efforts at training, exploring the Blade Peak Canyon to seek out the Wind Rider Sword Saint’s Training Handbook and relying upon his seven years of gaming knowledge in his previous life. Yet Hungry Tiger had managed to attain three of the top-tier techniques—the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes, Vanishing Step, and Seven Spinning Slash—all by himself?!
‘This fellow… is he some crazed gamer or what?!’
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Lin Jie was fully aware of the destructive effects the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes could cause. Not only did this skill allow its owner to deal out 150% damage per attack, but it would also have an increasing Armor Ignore effect the longer the attack persisted. In the end, the last blow would cause True Damage, which none could escape from!
Right now, the only thing Lin Jie could do was to fend off those attacks with Broken Blade. He was forced to retreat step by step by Hungry Tiger’s attacks, which were almost impossible to break through. There were almost no time gaps in between his consecutive attacks, needless to say, any flaws that Lin Jie could make use of!
“Die, die, die, die!” Along with his attacks, Hungry Tiger shouted at the top of his voice. In fact, he did not look like a human being at all! He literally seemed like a mountain tiger, which had been starved for ages, and was pouncing on any prey once he saw it, ready to devour them…
‘Wait a second, ‘devour’?’ Lin Jie’s eyes brightened up as he finally remembered something. He retracted Broken Blade and thrust it out at Hungry Tiger again! At the same time, he activated the Undefeated Anger skill!
Boom, boom, boom!
-3,017!
-3,048!
-3,162! (Resisted)
The next moment, Lin Jie’s health bar was emptied! However, due to the effects of being immune to death with the Death Rage skill, he was still alive! With his emptied health bar, Lin Jie’s Heart of Enrage started giving off excited growls, while his Blood Power surged around his body and turned him all red!
“Death Rage!”
“HAH!”
With a loud roar, Lin Jie’s mouth enlarged, and it looked like a gigantic black hole, engulfing all the attacks, Blade Auras and Damage Dealt caused by Hungry Tiger’s Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes skill! What’s more alarming was that Lin Jie’s health bar started increasing by leaps and bounds, and his Devour skill effects were en-longed infinitely!
This meant that no matter how strong Hungry Tiger’s following attacks were, he would never be able to harm Lin Jie!
“Cut!”
After all the previous attacks, the force of Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes skill had accumulated to a maximum—a multitude of Blade Auras blasted towards Lin Jie! However, the attacks were all devoured by Lin Jie. This made Hungry Tiger absolutely shocked.
To Lin Jie, Hungry Tiger seemed like a crazed gamer, but what he did not know was that Hungry Tiger was, in actual fact, terrified of Lin Jie! After all, Lin Jie was only an ordinary player to him. Putting aside the fact that such a character had managed to attain the Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes, this person could still fend off his attacks of the Vanishing Step, Seven Spinning Slash, and Berserker’s 100 Consecutive Strikes?! What was the world coming to?
Besides, there was still that fragile-looking Priest who had managed to attain the Ten Shields Spell. This was one of the few most difficult spells among the Ascetic Priest’s top-tier techniques!
Seeing that Hungry Tiger was still all unscathed after all these series of attacks, Lin Jie realized that this fellow must be stronger than him!
Yet he did not realize that this tiger-like guy was now looking at him in an awestruck manner. Hungry Tiger was now secretly scared, yet also somewhat admiring Lin Jie. He could not help but wonder—if Lin Jie joined them, he would most probably achieve heights no one could reach!
Lin Jie did not care what Hungry Tiger thought of him, though. The next moment, he commanded, “Attack him together, guys!”
Behind him, the Savage Blade team launched their attacks! The hell to experts’ courtesies of fighting 1-to-1—now was not the time to play hero!
Domestic Fat Cattle immediately blasted all sorts of Pyroblasts, which he had been preparing secretly from who knew when. Meanwhile, Dejected Night conjured up various Ice Spears, and together with the Ice Path skill by Baili Changcheng, both of them greatly limited Hungry Tiger’s speed. Star Kill had also snuck up on him from behind and had almost succeeded getting him with the Stealth Hit skill.
“Transform!” Hungry Tiger let out a loud roar and transformed into his tiger king state again. His figure bloated up instantly to several times of his normal size—all the other players attacking him were being stomped to death by this huge Tiger King, just like defenseless ants!
Hungry Tiger growled, “Lone Wolf, haven’t you discovered that I did not use any techniques at all throughout our fight? You are relying too much on your techniques now, and I admit they are strong. However, they will become the very obstacles to you, achieving greater heights in the future! I am asking you one last time—are you joining us, or not?”
“KILL!”
Broken Blade swiveled around Lin Jie’s body, and when it appeared in sight again, there were lightning, flames, and a whole Dark Chaotic Hole attached to it! Lin Jie raised up Broken Blade, and his Blade Auras were extended to 10 meters long as he slashed his sword down upon Hungry Tiger!
“Shield Cut, Army Obliteration!”
“You’re biting off more than you can chew.” Hungry Tiger scoffed, and his right tiger paw suddenly swelled up to three times as big as its usual size—this was the supplementary skill his tiger king state allowed him to use, the Tiger King Claw Kill! It could cause 200% damage to enemies within a certain area, and also an additional attack wave. If the target was already hit by the previous attack, the attack wave would cause him or her to suffer double the damage. Coupled with the normal claw attacks, anybody who received this blow would definitely be killed definitely!
It was easy to see what Hungry Tiger’s motive was—to kill Lin Jie at all costs!
As such, the other Savage Blade team members were not in danger exactly. Even though all of them had blasted their attacks on the Tiger King and their attacks seemed to be very ferocious, Hungry Tiger did not care about the thousands and hundreds of damage values appearing above his head. After all, he had gulped down 2,000 health potions during his transformation to the Tiger King state. He now had 15,000 health points in total—why would he care for the deduction of a few thousands or hundreds of health points?
Just before the Tiger King Claw Kill skill was about to descend on Lin Jie, Lin Jie’s creased-up forehead suddenly smoothed out. One could see that as the tiger’s paws landed on him, Lin Jie was being smashed to the ground!
However, no damage figure rose up—instead, only an afterimage faded away on that spot.
“The Vanishing Step?!” Hungry Tiger couldn’t help but let out a shocked bellow.
