The Great Thief

If the four images were as Lu Li had said, he would have to tank all of their attacks without any support

from his teammates.

This was something really difficult to do, even for a strong player.

"Please. Do you think that the images will coordinate their attacks on you?" Lu Li said quietly. "The four

images might sometimes overlap their attacks, so your window might be longer than two seconds."

Even with instant cast skills, he could only cast three of them in two seconds. He had to pull four mobs

with three skills and reposition himself; it would simply have been impossible.

Fortunately, the four images weren’t well-coordinated.

Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t wait until the effect was over before attacking again.

After Lu Li explained this, Wandering’s expression looked a little better.

However, there was still an immense amount of pressure on him. Lu Li was right when he said that the

key player for this Boss was the off-tank. Only he could draw the aggro of the four images and allow the

others to attack the Boss.

"Can I say no?" Wandering was lazy and really hated tasks like this.

"Nope," Lu Li rejected as he took off his shoes. "The most important thing for you is speed. Wear my

shoes; we need you to be faster."

"Wear your shoes?" Wandering had a look of disgust on his face. It wasn’t that he didn’t like their

attributes, nor was it that they didn’t suit him as a Paladin. It was simply the fact that these were

someone else’s shoes. He pinched his nose as he gingerly slipped them on.

"Anything else?" Azure Sea Breeze asked.

"Of course – you have to pay attention to the surroundings," Lu Li said. "Although we aren’t going to kill

them, the images can be re-summoned, which means they will appear in a new location. When that

happens, you will need to change your angle of attack and Wandering will need to move. You two will

have to help him with that."

"You want me to help that guy?" Azure Sea Breeze wasn’t happy.

It had always been someone that was helping him, so this was a blow to his pride as a main tank.

"I don’t care which one of you gets hit, as long as it’s not any of the other players. This Boss’ greatest

strength is its HP regeneration. Everyone must be doing maximum DPS or its HP will not go down."

Lu Li had no other way of putting it.

The Boss before them was level 30 and they were fighting it on Nightmare Difficulty.

At their current level and strength, their odds of defeating this Boss weren’t much greater than 50%,

even with the additional NPC. As such, they needed to be perfect in every way they could.

In reality, completing the Instance Dungeon wasn’t that important. For example, in the Howling Caves,

most teams just farmed the first three Bosses as opposed to clearing it. They would rather farm in the

wild or go on to try and take First Clears in new Instance Dungeons.

Even at the present level, only the Elite groups of the big guilds were likely to finish playing through the

Howling Caves.

Blackfathom was similar; they wouldn’t lose much even if they couldn’t defeat the final Boss. After all,

they had received many good items on the way here.

However, Lu Li refused to willingly lose this battle.

This Instance Dungeon Scroll was the result of a quest. If they were unable to complete it, upgrading the

Supreme Ring would be very difficult.

They would also be giving up on a World Announcement for their First Clear.

It would be inspiring for the players to see the Xin Xin Mercenary Group, known as the newly formed

Ruling Sword, accomplish another First Clear. They had just received news from Square Root 3 that the

guild was now level 3 and the number of players who were joining was constantly rising.

Square Root 3 was working tirelessly to screen these new applicants and Lu Li would feel bad if he didn’t

at least bring home the First Clear.

"Everyone, don’t hold back any of your skills. Do as much damage as you can whenever possible."

After addressing everything, Lu Li signaled Azure Sea Breeze to engage.

The Ancient Gods’ servant Aku’mai couldn’t speak, but it greeted Azure Sea Breeze with a spit of venom.

A damage value of -436 appeared on Azure Sea Breeze head at first, which was followed by a cascade of

-75s. The venom was very potent and taking any antidotes provided next to no resistance.

The damage was quite high, but they could still deal with it.

Lu Li ran up and stabbed the Boss with his dagger, causing it to lose over 60 HP. This amount of damage

for a normal attack was acceptable.

They had managed to deal 500-600 damage to the Boss in their first wave of attacks, which was a good

proportion of the Boss’ 120,000 HP. It just meant that Aku’mai was slightly more difficult than the

regular Bosses.

That was everyone else’s impression.

However, Lu Li didn’t think that way. He stared at Aku’mai’s HP and watched as it made an obvious

upwards jump.

+165.

This was really cheating – it had gained 165 HP in three seconds. Aku’mai was definitely some kind of

regeneration demon. Up until this point, Aku’mai had the fastest regeneration that Lu Li had ever seen.

Of course, the Wind Wielder that Lu Li had seen in the Warsong Canyon didn’t count.

Because it had regenerated a chunk of its HP, they had lost a significant amount of progress.

If you didn’t count the NPC’s damage, Lu Li and the others could only do about 300 damage per second.

However, if you considered the Boss’ regeneration and other skills, there would be no guarantee that

they could even deal 100 damage per second.

"This is going to be another bitter struggle," Lu Li thought as his heart sank a little. He looked at Azure

Sea Breeze and Wandering, wondering if this pair could continue to properly draw the Boss’ aggro.

Azure Sea Breeze turned and looked at Wandering and shuffled his feet slightly.

It wasn’t enough. Lu Li was struggling to hold himself back, but he needed to show that he trusted them.

Sure enough, after two seconds, Azure Sea Breeze had cast his new taunt skills and moved again.

The reason why they didn’t want to do it in one go was because they were afraid of messing up the

Boss’ aggro. These were still the early stages after all.

Wandering was now also moving. The two of the kept moving until the Boss spat some more venom and

reared its head.

It was coming!

A dark crack opened up in front of the Boss, out of which shot four, identical tentacles. These were the

same images as before. They had seen all sorts of things on the way here, but nothing could compare to

the strength of these four images.

After the tentacles shot out, Wandering immediately moved to face them and casted Taunt. The

tentacles paused for second before shooting towards Wandering.

Wandering was immediately frozen on the spot. However, it wasn’t just him – Sesame Rice Ball was also

affected.

It was his first time, so these little mistakes were to be expected.

After two seconds, Sesame Rice Ball recovered and out of instinct, moved away from the tentacles to

adjust his angle of attack.

The others were just struggling to deal as much damage as possible. They didn’t save any of their skills,

but they deliberately avoided attacking the tentacles so that they wouldn’t draw their aggro.

If they were to fight this Boss normally, there was bound to be someone who would walk into Aku’mai’s

attacks. There was no way to guarantee that no one would make any mistakes.

Lu Li had now left Wandering to deal with the images. With him pulling the aggro, the others had a

much easier time.