After seeing Barney off, Liam returned to the grind.
He had already cleared twelve Blood-Backed Black Turtles. Only six more remained before the Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle would finally spawn. With his current damage output, the only real bottleneck was the respawn timer of the mobs.
Time slipped by. An hour passed in a flash.
[System Notification: Due to the slaughter of a massive number of Blood-Backed Black Turtles, the Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle slumbering within Black-Water Lake has awakened. Please vacate the area immediately.]
Vacate?
That wasn't happening. His entire reason for being here was to hunt this beast.
Ahead of him, the surface of Black-Water Lake began to churn. A massive tortoise shell, the size of a basketball court, breached the water's surface.
Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle (Bronze)
Level: 45
HP: 6,850,000 / 6,850,000
Attack: 17,590
Skills: Rapid-Fire Water Cannons, Healing Physique, Dragon-Roar Tsunami, Nine-Pillar Impact, Black-Water Vortex, Blood-Thirsty Dragon Scale, Water Arrow Array, Blood-Eye Toxic Mist, Unstoppable, Berserk.
Liam arched an eyebrow.
Nearly seven million HP, over seventeen thousand Attack, and that wasn't even accounting for its hidden Magic Power. As a magic-based monster, its spell damage would undoubtedly be even higher than its physical stat.
However, Liam didn't flinch. Even without equipping the Tears of the Life Goddess, his HP exceeded 530,000. If he played the kiting game right, he had a high probability of winning this.
Whiz!
An arrow streaked through the air.
-16,369!
A massive damage number rose above the boss's head. Simultaneously, two glaring green numbers popped up.
+5,258.
+3,000.
The first was the life-steal from Blood-Thirsty Dragon Scale; the second was the boss's innate regeneration.
Liam felt a prickle of unease. He knew the boss had strong recovery, but he hadn't expected it to be this oppressive. If an ordinary Level 45 player tried to solo this, they’d likely deal less damage than the thing could heal back.
Of course, that was assuming they didn't have Grievous Wounds. Generally, around Level 30, players would start finding weapons or skills that applied healing reduction. With Grievous Wounds suppressing it, the boss's regeneration would be severely crippled.
This sparked an interesting thought. Maybe he should look into some Grievous Wounds gear. It would make ganking World Bosses from a distance much more viable. Those bosses had terrifying passive regeneration; currently, the damage from the Tome of Mortality was negligible compared to their healing. But with high healing reduction? That would be a different story.
He shook the thought away for now. Grievous Wounds was a rare special attribute, and it became harder to stack as the game progressed. Before the Second Advancement, reaching thirty or forty percent was considered legendary, and even that wouldn't help Liam much right now.
Though his mind wandered, his hands never stayed still. Arrows whistled through the air in a steady stream. He didn't dare approach the lake's edge, instead utilizing the range provided by Basic Reach to kite from afar.
The Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle let out a deafening roar. The lake water surged, forming a wall several meters high that came crashing toward him.
It was a wide-area skill. Despite Liam’s high movement speed, outrunning a wave of that magnitude was unrealistic.
-19,859.
A large damage number appeared over Liam’s head as the wave slammed into him, sent him flying backward. Such massive AOE damage was a headache.
He hit the ground and recovered quickly, but the moment his feet touched the dirt, he noticed a shimmering ring of water beneath him.
"Crap."
Liam lunged forward. A split second later, a massive pillar of water erupted from the ground where he had just been standing. Had he been a fraction of a second slower, he would have been launched into the air.
He barely landed before another water ring appeared. Liam performed a sharp backflip, narrowly evading the second pillar.
As he braced himself with one hand to right his balance, a third ring formed directly beneath his palm.
Boom!
The water pillar slammed into him with full force. It sent him spiraling upward, shaving off a massive chunk of his health.
-18,850.
Another hit for nearly twenty thousand. Sensing him in mid-air, the boss triggered the fourth Water Pillar Burst.
Based on the skill name—Nine-Pillar Impact—Liam expected nine of these in total. While suspended in the air, he twisted his body 360 degrees, a desperate maneuver that allowed the fourth pillar to graze past him.
The moment he hit the ground, he retreated at full tilt. With his superior movement speed and the benefit of foresight, the remaining pillars failed to touch him. He even managed to find the gaps between dodges to fire back.
Whiz!
Whiz!
The arrows kept flying. Liam’s damage was significant, but the boss's recovery was equally relentless. Moreover, the area around Black-Water Lake was the creature's domain; its skill range was nearly on par with Liam’s extended Basic Attack distance.
Once the pillars subsided, Liam unleashed a relentless barrage, pushing his DPS to the limit.
-16,398.
-16,407...
Liam’s output was staggering. The boss's passive health regen was calculated per second, but with Liam’s Attack Velocity sitting above 5.0, he was pumping out over eighty thousand damage per second. At that rate, the passive regen couldn't keep up. The real problem was the life-steal from Blood-Thirsty Dragon Scale.
Still, even that was a drop in the bucket against Liam’s sustained fire.
The Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle, possessing a modicum of intelligence, realized the current stalemate wasn't working.
Whoosh!
To Liam’s surprise, the turtle pulled its limbs and head into its shell. In the next heartbeat, the massive shell turned into a blur of light, hurtling toward him like a runaway freight train.
Liam rolled to the side, but the shell was the size of a basketball court. He couldn't clear the area in time. The impact clipped him, sending him tumbling.
-19,999.
His health bar dipped again. Liam scrambled up and continued his assault. The boss had massive AOE, but its raw burst damage wasn't as high as he’d feared.
Then, he realized why the turtle had closed the distance.
The moment it came to a halt, it lunged with a massive flipper, slamming it directly into Liam's head.
-34,980! (CRITICAL!)
Liam’s vision swam from the force of the blow. Ignoring the ringing in his ears, he immediately retreated, firing arrows as he moved. He needed to re-establish distance; a melee brawl was a losing game for an Archer.
However, while the Dragon Turtle looked slow, its sheer size meant that a single stride covered as much ground as a dozen of Liam’s steps. He couldn't shake it.
"Fine. If you want to get close, let’s dance," Liam growled.
He abandoned the retreat and dove toward the boss's flank, using the creature's own massive bulk to block its line of sight.
Against a boss this large and relatively sluggish, kiting their vision was the most effective strategy. Because of its size, its movement speed didn't matter if it couldn't turn fast enough to see its target. Using the boss's body as an obstacle was a fundamental high-level technique.
In the distance, Fenrir Pagoda watched. He had arrived just as the fight began, but he had kept his distance to avoid being mistaken for a boss-stealer.
He wasn't the only observer. Another figure lurked nearby, cloaked in stealth. Shadow-Slayer. He was here for the same reason as Fenrir Pagoda.
Liam had noticed them both, but he didn't care. His arrows continued to rain down on the boss, and its HP began a steady crawl toward zero. It spun in circles, growling in frustration, unable to find the pest stinging its sides. Liam's footwork was flawless, staying perfectly tucked into the boss's blind spots.
"Shadow-Step!" Shadow-Slayer muttered, his eyes narrowing.
He recognized the technique because it was his specialty. In fact, he was confident that in a pure test of Shadow-Step, he was superior to Liam. But his mastery had been forged through countless battlefields and assassination missions. Seeing Liam execute it with such proficiency—even if it wasn't quite at his level—was unsettling.
Shadow-Slayer’s mind raced. He didn't believe for a second that Liam had learned this since the game started. This was a skill honed over years in the real world.
Fenrir Pagoda, watching Liam’s absurd movement and damage, felt a chill run down his spine. Now he understood how Misty Snow's elite team had been wiped out so effortlessly. High damage was one thing, but this movement was ridiculous. In any other game, he would have reported Liam for hacking.
Liam ignored their stares. Movement speed, Attack Velocity, reaction time—he had everything pushed to the redline.
Even in the late stages of most MMOs, many Archers would accidentally cancel their Basic Attacks while moving. They might have a 5.0 Attack Velocity on paper, but in practice, they only delivered a 3.0 because of poor kiting. Then there was accuracy; most Archers saw their hit rate plummet while on the move.
While the Dragon Turtle was too big to miss, Liam's fluidity was enough to convince Fenrir Pagoda that this was a man you did not provoke.
"ROAR!!"
The boss bellowed, and a thick Toxic Mist began to billow from its shell.
-648.
-648...
Damage ticks appeared over Liam’s head, but the Purifying Jade Amulet proved its worth. It mitigated the poison so effectively that the damage became negligible.
Suddenly, the turtle roared again. A crimson light flared around its body—Berserk.
Liam’s eyes sharpened. In that instant, he realized he’d been baited. The boss had predicted his movement. It had triggered Berserk specifically to set up a kill shot.
A Black-Water Vortex erupted beneath Liam's feet. The swirling water instantly trapped him, dragging him toward the center of a twenty-meter-wide whirlpool. Even with his speed, there was no escaping the suction.
Simultaneously, a magic circle formed above him.
Water Arrow Array.
A hail of liquid bolts rained down.
-6,785.
-6,789.
-6,782...
The damage numbers stacked up rapidly. Without hesitation, Liam equipped the Tears of the Life Goddess and opened fire.
With his HP boosted by twenty percent, Liam was now regenerating ten thousand health per second. His damage surged, and his survivability skyrocketed.
Fenrir Pagoda, who was highly sensitive to combat data, noticed the shift instantly. He couldn't see Liam's exact HP, but he could infer the change in attack power and recovery from the combat log.
"A skill? An Innate Talent?" Fenrir Pagoda wondered.
It looked like a massive damage buff. Liam’s output had jumped by roughly twenty percent, and that ten-thousand-per-second healing blessing was insane for this stage of the game. Fenrir had seen buffs before, but they usually capped at ten percent. He had never seen anything that offered a twenty percent boost alongside massive flat health regeneration.
The battle raged on. Liam tanked the Water Arrow Array, standing his ground and firing back. On average, ten arrows hit him every second, but he was dealing over eighty thousand damage in return. The Dragon Turtle tried to keep him trapped in the vortex, snapping at him with its massive jaws and firing Rapid-Fire Water Orbs.
-10,890.
-10,893...
Each orb carried a knockback effect, but Liam didn't panic. The boss had massive AOE and crowd control, but its burst damage wasn't concentrated enough to one-shot him. As long as he survived the initial hit, the combined recovery from the Tears of the Life Goddess, the Bloodstained Necklace, The Ninefold Longbow, and his Resurgence skill made him immortal.
Whiz! Whiz! Whiz!
The Dragon Turtle’s HP plummeted. It fought back with everything it had, but its damage was a joke compared to Liam’s absurd recovery. The outcome was no longer in doubt.
"It's over for the turtle," Fenrir Pagoda remarked. His tactical intuition was sharp; even though the boss still had health, he already knew the result.
There were no surprises.
[System Notification: You have achieved the World First kill of the Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle. A Server-Wide Broadcast is about to commence. Would you like to hide your name?]
"No."
[Server-Wide Broadcast: Congratulations to player Frost Monarch for achieving the World First kill of the Blood-Eyed Dragon Turtle! We hope all players continue to strive for greatness.]
[Server-Wide Broadcast: Congratulations to player Frost Monarch for...]
As the announcement echoed across the world, Fenrir Pagoda and Shadow-Slayer both stepped forward. Shadow-Slayer, being the faster of the two, reached Liam first.
"Frost Monarch," he said, his tone professional. "My captain would like to discuss something with you."