The Chill of the Nine Provinces flashed once before piercing Strella’s sides, injecting a stream of purple energy that reduced the Divine Rank boss's Defense by a whopping 26.7%. Behind me, Beiming Xue Far Shot her Bone Eroding Arrow into the boss's body and lowered it by another 14%. Now, Strella was much more fragile than before.

Both Beiming Xue and Lian Xin had listened to my orders and Far Shot their skills from the farthest range possible. Not even Strella’s breath could hit them from 150 yards away. Although the Far Shot mode reduced the power of their skills by at least 50%, not dying was far more important than doing more DPS.

……

Impact noises resounded from all around the Dragon God Strella. Cavalrymen were Charging from all sides and landing their Barrier Break + Triple Slash combos. After the boss's Defense had been lowered by Beiming Xue and me, even a normal player could now deal over a thousand damage. Strella’s HP began decreasing at a slow but visible rate.

"You are courting death, foolish humans[1]!"

A low growl rumbled from Strella’s throat as it shook its humongous head left and right before climbing to its feet. Then, it swiped left and right with its claws and blew a jet of dragon breath at its offenders, killing over 30 Candle Dragon Qiu Beast Cavalrymen almost instantly. The damage numbers that rose above their heads could only be described as absolutely terrifying—

1826362!

1928283!

1823991!

……

This wasn’t the kind of damage the current baseline of players could endure, not to mention that Strella’s attacks weren’t purely physical. It was a dual cultivator of magic and physical arts of sorts, which meant that its skills dealt additional damage to heavy-armor players. Naturally, the frontliners became even more stressed out than they already were.

Li Chengfeng launched a Dragonbone Flurry at the Dragon God’s head, pissing it off and causing it to retaliate with a conic dragon breath. Gui Guzi, He Yi, Lin Yixin and I were unable to dodge it, so we had no choice but to endure the scorching pain ripping through our bodies—

MISS!

1429821!

1592394!

1422112!

……

Swhoosh swhoosh swhoosh! At least 50 Dragonlight Cavalrymen dropped dead at the same time. The boss had struck even the likes of He Yi, Lin Yixin and Li Chengfeng for over 1.4 million damage, so of course the Dragonlight Cavalry fared worse. Most of them received at least 2 million damage and were one-shot where they stood!

I didn’t take any damage because I was protected by Battle Astral Wind, but the one attack had deleted 47% of its durability. Two more hits like that, and I would be as vulnerable as any player in this hall. I immediately raised the Chill of the Nine Provinces and shouted, "Cold of the Nine Provinces!"

An icy wind swept across the area and froze both the Dragon God and some of the players around me. It was because my attack mode was set to affect everyone except my guildmates and players from allied guilds. To my surprise, the ice had even extinguished the flames burning atop the Dragon God’s head. The Ancient property of the Chill of the Nine Provinces was definitely stronger than the God Binding Art.

"Eve, Chengfeng, Yiyi, go catch some healing now!" I yelled while unleashing Burning Blade Slash + War Crush + Myriad Swords Obliteration combo at the boss's head. Then, I changed my attack mode again to peace mode—meaning that it only affected mobs and bosses—and cast Rise of the Guardian Dragon. Countless dragons exploded out of the ground and attacked everything in its path. The Dragon God shuddered violently as many, many damage numbers rose from its head—

290128!

310212!

281777!

……

Strella had lost a ton of Defense after eating Purple Frost Concentration and Bone Eroding Arrow, so my skills could largely penetrated its Defense. Moreover, This was one of the few cases where Strella’s huge body actually worked against it. The area of effect of Rise of the Guardian Dragon consisted of multiple linear-path attacks, and each path consisted of huge pillars of fire rising from the ground every ten yards. Since Strella was so huge, Rise of the Guardian Dragon struck it dozens of times more than normal and dealt nearly 10 million damage in total, or nearly 5% of its max HP. Normally, I would be rejoicing at the amount of damage I dealt, but learning that this motherfucker had over 200 million HP had killed most of that joy.

Crack!

Strella was the first out of everyone who had been affected by Cold of the Nine Provinces to break out of the skill. All of its aggro was on me right now, so it immediately struck my Cyan Dragon Shield twice and dealt a ton of damage—

MISS!

1340020!

+134002!

……

I shuddered and lost almost half my HP in one go, and that was after the Guardian Dragon Armor had converted 10% of the damage dealt as HP. Before I could rejoice at the fact, Strella opened its bloody maw and unleashed its breath again. I was starting to understand why it was the Dragon God. It hadn’t even been 5 seconds since its last dragon breath, and it almost felt as if this motherfucker didn’t need to accumulate its energy before converting them into a breath! So OP!

Buzz!

I burned and lost over 1.2 million HP in one go. I managed to restore myself to 800k HP thanks to Tenacity of the Dead and my priests’ healing, but it still wasn’t enough to withstand a single slap from the boss. I needed to do something, and fast!

I made up my mind and activated the special effect of the Cyan Dragon Shield, Cyan Dragon Scale. A dragon’s cry pierced the air, and the image of a cyan-colored divine dragon surrounded my body and formed some sort of magic-infused energy barrier on my Guardian Dragon Armor. A great but unoppressive weight supported me, and I knew that my Defense and Magic Resist had greatly improved!

While this was going on, I didn’t forget to swing my Chill of the Nine Provinces like a motor, deleting the Dragon God’s HP and healing myself for every point of damage dealt. I tried summoning the Phantom Wolf King to assist me, but 3 seconds later the motherfucking boss fired its dragon breath again!

Whoosh!

The Phantom Wolf King let out a painful yelp and died instantly. However, I survived thanks to Cyan Dragon Scale—

755427!

Before the Cyan Dragon Scale took effect, the dragon breath would’ve dealt 1.2 million damage. Now though, it had been lowered to just 750k damage. I knew that the Cyan Dragon Shield would turn out amazing!

Unfortunately, Cyan Dragon Scale only lasted for 120 seconds. Worse, it had a 240-second cooldown. This meant that Cyan Dragon Scale would only be active for 50% of the time of this boss fight. I could tank the boss if the effect was up, but not when it was down. Moreover, we didn’t have many priests with us. Over 30 ASDS priests had entered Dragon God Cave, but 20 of them had been killed by the first dragon breath because they stood a bit too close to the center. When the margin of error was so narrow, only the most discerning priests would survive. Unfortunately, Murong Mingyue, Moon Dew and Yamete were the only ones who truly were at that level.

……

A hundred meters away, Pop Culture’s Lone Moonshade was yelling, "Warsky Alliance, Hegemon Palace, Gods of Destruction, the fuck you guys are waiting for? Ancient Sword and Snowy Cathaya alone can’t stop the boss! Even Lu Chen is struggling at 33% health! What the fuck do you think will happen if he dies!?"

October Rain also shouted, "Stop worrying about your backs for once in your life! It’s not like there are foreigners here! Plus, this boss fight is eventually going to be spread across the internet! Do you want the world to look down on our lack of unity? Let’s go! A video tells no lies, and if your contribution is significant the people will know about it! If you truly wish to improve your guild standing in the server, then stop being selfish and go all out!"

October Rain hit the nail on the head. The entire reason we came here was to one, to get some powerful equipment, and two, to show off our might so that our guild development would go smoother. A fight against one of the Nine Purgatory Sovereigns was sure to be recorded and sent to the CGL officials, so the guilds who performed well during this fight would definitely be rated higher on the Guild Ranking.

Many people made up their minds at once. Wang Dongliang ordered, "Little Piglet, take our men and do your best to keep the boss at bay! We are many, and Strella is but one boss! We will prevail!"

Little Piglet bowed a little. "Got it, guild leader!"

October Rain shouted while shooting the Dragon God from afar, "This is the vile dragon who devoured Warsky and the Immortal Blade! Kill it and take revenge for our guild leader!"

However, Li Chengfeng revealed the truth. "Wow, that is a bald-faced lie if I’ve ever seen one. You don’t really care about Warsky at all, do you? It’s the Immortal Blade that you really want. Hoh, your face has turned completely purple. I knew I was right about you…"

"Fuck you!"

October Rain fired an armor-breaking arrow that struck the dragon warrior’s face squarely, causing him to stumble a little and muttering to himself, "I should’ve known better than to provoke a woman…"

……

Everyone was using their Great Earth Transformations or Heavenly River Transformations to attack the boss. I was the only one who continued fighting in my normal form. In fact, the pressure on my shoulders greatly lessened after the other guilds started fighting for real, so I transformed from a tank into a pure damage dealer whose sole job was to dish out a ton of DPS. Speaking of which, Lin Yixin and He Yi had rejoined the fray after returning to full health, and this time they wised up and buffed themselves with the Snot Dragon Card. It was the same for the other frontliners. There was nothing more important than survivability against a boss like this.

"Roar!"

Strella was still a mighty boss though. It killed over a hundred Hegemon Palace players with a single breath. It killed over 40 Peach Garden players and left Indigo Collar with just 29% HP with a swipe of its claws.

Time passed agonizingly slowly for this boss fight. Strella wouldn’t stop refreshing our views on the true power of a Divine Rank boss, its DPS was just out of the world. It killed dozens of players per second, and it was absolutely not a boss anyone was equipped to fight. Thankfully, a total of ten thousand Chinese players had entered the Dragon God Main Hall, so it wasn’t exactly an unacceptable rate of deaths...

……

Behind us, the formerly imprisoned human hero, Figue, was clenching his fists and watching our battle nervously and worriedly. However, there was also some sort of emotion lurking behind his eyes that I couldn’t comprehend. I hardly had the time to puzzle out the thoughts of an NPC though, much less everyone else.

"The boss's HP had dropped below 10%, and the end is high. Should we kill it with our Ancient Divine Skills?" Li Chengfeng asked me.

I nodded. "Yeah. Let’s all use our Ancient Divine Skills so that the experience will go to Ancient Sword!"

"Very well!"

……

It was at this moment Lin Yixin allowed Strella to smack her a dozen or so meters away from her. Eyes tinged with a bit of doubt, she whispered, "Why… do I feel like something isn’t right? This dragon is a Divine Rank boss and one of the Nine Purgatory Sovereigns, Strella the Dark Magma, right? So why does it feel like this boss fight is too… easy?"

1. T/N: except there are other races except humans among the players, which I’m sure the author forgot