The bloody clouds swiftly covered the sky above Sky City, and the crimson hurricanes began moving toward us slowly but steadily. It would be great if it was just for show, but there was no mistaking the screeching horde of monsters being spun round and round in the hurricanes. From a distance, they almost looked like red cotton candies. If only that was the case...

"Holy shit, are they seriously going to paratroop our asses?" Li Chengfeng growled while clutching his Dark Blade.

Chiang! I unsheathed my own weapon and shouted, "Guess we know what the ‘storm of death’ is now. Everyone, stay in position and prepare to meet the first wave!"

Whoever came up with the name "storm of death" knew what they were thinking. It made both literal and figurative sense. No matter how many defenders Sky City had, it was only a matter of time before the paratroopers—or was it paramonsters?—started punching holes in our defense. After all, the enemy would be attacking everywhere at once, and in such great numbers too.

……

It wasn’t long before the first hurricane to the east grew close enough that we could feel it. Almost everyone was holding their breaths in anticipation. Du Thirteen licked his lips before calling out to his people, "It’s been a while since we’ve been treated to a free experience lunch. Bloody Mercenaries, prepare for battle!"

I warned him. "Don’t underestimate these mobs, man. You’ll lose face if they one-shot you…"

Du Thirteen nodded. "I know, I know, don’t worry. I’m plenty strong now, so ain’t no mob is gonna get to me!"

Me: "..."

It was at this moment the hurricane finally reached the floating rocks that led up to Sky City. At first, it seemed like the enemy had made a mistake when the seemingly endless swarm of Corpse Eaters and Wraiths turned themselves into pancakes against the rocks. However, the impact was enough to knock the rocks way from their original position, effectively cutting off our way to the ground. Sophie seriously intended to destroy us all.

"Big bro, look!"

Beiming suddenly pointed to the sky, and I looked. Floating in the air was a black-armored woman with fire beneath her feet, a sword in hand and a cruel smile etched across her face. She was none other than Sophie, the Snow Minstrel!

"For fuck’s sake!"

I swore through gritted teeth while shooting a glance at the Ancient Divine Dragon clinging to my arm and dozing off. If it was an adult, I would be able to take to the air and challenge Sophie to a fight right now. A hopeless battle it might be, it was a better choice than being attacked one-sidedly. As the saying goes, you need to defeat the general to disband an army, and the best way to stop Sophie from killing us was to kill her first!

"Here it comes!" Li Chengfeng shouted, "Ready your weapons, people!"

By now, the storm of death was so close that we could literally see the ugly teeths of Corpse Eaters. A weird thought entered my mind as I stared at the mobs. We were scared, but the mobs were probably even more scared than us. After all, they were the ones who were being spun round and round like a ragdoll...

Boom!

The hurricane hit the ground we were standing on at a 45-degree angle and weakened a little. At the same time, a horde of blood-red Corpse Eaters, Wraiths, and Skeletal Braves descended on us like the rain. What shocked me was that they were all Level 200 dread-rank mobs. If this was the kind of mobs we had to fight on the first wave, I couldn’t imagine what would show up near the end of it. Who the fuck was the idiot who came up with this patch? Even Sky City with its new buff would be hard-pressed to survive this, much less the other main cities. Heavens, if a main city had to fall, please let it be Purple Grape City…

Chiang chiang chiang...

A Corpse Eater landed right on top of my Dragon God Shield and attacked immediately. The filthy, growling creature managed to land three swipes on my shield, but each hit only dealt around 2000 damage or so. My Defense and level were so high that not even a dread-rank mob could do much against me, not to mention that my HP was buffed to a crazy 300k.

I raised the Purple Ying Sword and rocked all the mobs in front of me with Burning Blade Slash. Since the skill was powered by my Famous General Skill, Martial God, it did an ungodly amount of damage—

79002!

102993!

142828!

That wasn’t all. The Purple Ying Sword had a 50% splash effect, and I kept triggering its other passive and dealt 5 times more damage than normal. As a result, Burning Blade Slash was 5 to 9 times more powerful than usual, and the one skill one-shot over 20 high-level mobs in one go. White streams of experience kept entering everyone’s experience bar.

We had organized our parties beforehand as a matter of course. Du Thirteen, Yamete and Yu Tong were in my party. He Yi, Beiming Xue, Lian Xin, Li Chengfeng and Chaos Moon had their own parties to take advantage of their Famous General Skills. Each of them was leading a couple hundred players to battle. Speaking of which, Lian Xin had copied Chaos Moon’s Plunder when she made her own party, unknowingly showing off her excellent sense of value. Of all the Famous General Skills, Chaos Moon’s Plunder was without a doubt the most valuable of them all.

The mobs’ assault was fierce and unrelenting. They kept crashing on top of us and attacked anyone they saw. Their teeth and claws were sharp enough to pierce steel, much less the fragile bodies of the priests, mages and archers. The first wave had only just begun, and already we were losing people. Those who were killed wouldn’t be able to return to this event, so they could only leave for a tier 2 city or grind at a leveling map.

"Hold your ground! Make sure you kill the mobs that landed inside our formation first!" I shouted.

The Dragonlight Cavalry led by Li Chengfeng and Chaos Moon galloped back and forth within the formation and ran down all the mobs in their way, greatly reducing our troops’ losses. Besides that, Beiming Xue and her cavalry archers used large AoE skills like Skypiercer to kill the mobs, spilling the guts, brains and blood of undead mobs all over the place. Beiming Xue did the most damage of all of them because Ice Soul Feather straight up increased Skypiercer’s damage by 100%, not to mention that Beiming Xue’s Attack was pretty crazy to begin with.

Bang!

Another round of Skypiercer from the dark archer hit a group of hundreds and deleted a huge chunk of HP. Even better, many of them suffered from Ice Soul Feather and were unable to take a single step from their location. They easily fell to the rest of our ranged players without being able to do anything.

Lian Xin’s Dimensional Storm and Ice Spiral Matrix almost never stopped throughout the fight, crushing mobs left and right like ants. Her damage was as good as Beiming Xue’s, if not better. Yu Tong and the one thousand high-level mages we had "borrowed" from Blazing Hot Lips did good work as well, almost making our defense look easy. I reckoned that their very presence had increased our DPS by 25% or more!

……

Rumble rumble rumble...

The battle was far from over, however. The second hurricane came, and this time, it was a horde of Devil Giants with giant rocks in their hands. These creatures had been turned into puppets of the undead long time ago. They opened their smelly mouths and descended from the sky like meteors. Wherever they landed, fighters and even Dragonlight Cavalrymen were knocked out of the way. Strength-wise, very few players could go head to head against a Devil Giant.

Gui Guzi’s eyes sharpened as he declared, "Devil Giants, Level 205 Heaven Rank minibosses. We’ll have to defeat them one by one. I’ll take that one!"

Li Chengfeng charged. "Leave the one to the left to me!"

Chaos Moon didn’t even bother responding as she charged toward the third Devil Giant.

High Fighting Spirits laughed and swung his axe at the foot of the fourth Devil Giant. Our guild boasted the strongest fighters in the world, so of course our generals were also the strongest in the world. What should’ve been a destructive blow was easily nullified by our combined strength and cooperation.

I pulled my arm back before tossing a dragon soul–infused Purple Ying Sword straight at the chest of a Devil Giant, dealing tons of damage. Not even waiting for my sword to return to me, I Charged—caught the handle of my weapon midway—and pierced its leg in one smooth motion with Burning Blade Slash. It elicited a scream of pain from the Devil Giant and killed all the Corpse Eaters in the way. A couple of high-powered spells and Touch of the Dragonkiss from Yu Tong later, the Devil Giant quickly dropped to red health.

"Roar roar!"

The miniboss roared angrily and tried to crush me with its giant rock. I wasn’t going to eat the blow directly because the damn thing was at least twice as tall as me! I raised the Dragon God Shield and Guarded!

Bang!

The power inside the Dragon God Shield was so powerful that it knocked the miniboss's attack aside. While it was staggered, I clashed weapons with the Devil Giant and shouted, "Lie down!"

Strength raged against strength, and I was the one who won out in the end. Once the miniboss fell on its butt, Du Thirteen and his troop of Dragonlight Cavalry immediately ran over to help me secure the kill. A master could be overwhelmed by numbers, and this Devil Giant was hardly a master of anything. It died in just the blink of an eye.

Pop pop pop...

Surprisingly, the miniboss dropped a ton of equipment probably because I was the one who dealt the final blow. Du Thirteen picked them up and said happily, "Oh man, it dropped three Heaven-grade and two Earth-grade pieces of equipment! They’re all Outstanding too!"

I nodded. "Very well, we’ll put them in the guild warehouse later!"

"Of course. Hmm, these Heaven-grade wristguards aren’t half bad. Thank you very much…"

"You’re not welcome, man…"

……

Suddenly, we heard a chorus of screams from behind us. It was Mad Dragon’s defense formation straining against the dozen of Devil Giants that had broken through their line. The minibosses knew War Crush and Rock Sweep, and that was all they needed to send Mad Dragon players flying. Some of the Devil Giants even lifted players into the air and crushed them with their bare hands, yuck. Mad Dragon had neither Dragonlight Armored Horses nor excellent equipment, so this outcome was perfectly expected.

Roaming Dragon might be rich, but he wasn’t so rich that he could afford buying everyone in the guild a full set of Heaven-grade equipment or better.

The Devil Giants weren’t their only problems either. The Corpse Eaters, Wraiths and Skeletal Braves were able to tear into their ranks easily and wreak havoc. The way Mad Dragon had to throw bodies just to reduce normal mobs’ HP was almost gruesome.