Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

At the entrance of Epidemic Pond, Savage Blade’s team members looked at one another in dismay.

Lei Zhika’s crazy damage, variety of potions, dazzling number of monsters, and powerful skills… This Boss was sent by the system to torture the players, right?

All stratagems were useless in the face of absolute power. Savage Blade could rely on its team quality to kill many Bosses. However, they had no idea how to attack when facing this Boss with strong attributes and varied attacking ways.

“Its damage is stabilized at above 1,000, and it also keeps killing us by using the potions and summoning the small monsters. How are we going to defeat it? Could I learn dozens of Restricted Curses to attack it?” Domestic Fat Cattle was holding a wand, wishing Lei Zhika to turn into a book of Restricted Curse so that he could burn it in a minute.

The Heavenly Shield also frowned, “This Boss is too strong, it will be undefeatable if we don’t have effective ways to fight against it.”

Lin Jie threw a meaningful look at them and asked, “Any ideas?”

“From the information we have, the capability of the Boss itself is not so good. The more worrying thing is the potions it throws, and the small monsters summoned!” Netherblue said seriously with her eyes like burning torches, “I think the purpose of this Boss is to screen the players but not to embarrass them. The first dungeon of the Belief Church was testing the players’ equipment, skills, and grades. The players have to meet these criteria in order to clear the dungeon. While the second dungeon, Epidemic Pond, is testing the players’ soft skills such as techniques and patience.

“If my judgment is correct, that means we need sufficient techniques, proper strategies, and ‘patience’ which I mentioned earlier. Now that our method is pretty clear…

“Use time strategy to kill it! Despite the Boss itself, we need a lot of time and energy to analyze all the potion effects and record down the attributes of all the summoned biological creatures until we kill the Boss!”

Netherblue spoke with a momentum of burning her boats. Even Lin Jie was surprised by her judgment as she was pretty close.

Indeed, patience was the most important thing in order to clear the dungeon! The mentality of all the teams was impetuous, hoping to get the first clear of the dungeon immediately as it appeared. Driven by this mentality, all the teams were trying to find various ways for help, such as looking for NPC and high-grade potions, learning special skills, enchantment, and so on.

But all these were not of any good use to clear the dungeon. Until they were suddenly awoken and began to gradually explore the true intention of the system to create such a Boss.

In Lin Jie’s previous life, the first clear of Epidemic Pond dungeon had been obtained by an unfamous team 40 days after its release. The team’s name was Ordinary People, and it had been initiated by a college student. Usually, they would only exchange the gold coins they had earned from killing the monsters for allowance. They had been hardworking and persistent. On the first day of trying to clear the dungeon, they had started collecting the data of potions and successfully cleared it after they were ready. This had surpassed the other guilds which had been trying to kill the Boss; thus, allowing them to become famous for a while!

As Lin Jie was reborn, he was very familiar with Venom Lei Zhika’s potions and could even write all of them from memory. However, he could not do this as he should not clear the dungeon by trickery. The team would lose the motivation of exploration as well as the space for improvement if he wrote out all the data regarding the potions.

“Record down all the potions? Oh my…”

“That a lot of work to do! Actually, I think this dungeon is testing our luck. If we’re lucky enough, we could avoid all those powerful potions and clear it.”

“I agree with you. Maybe we should try a few more times? With our attributes and strength, we could definitely clear it in a week.”

“Actually I think Netherblue’s point makes sense…”

Teammates began to argue. From the “luck theory”, one could tell that the team’s mentality was not as stable as Lin Jie imagined.

Lin Jie changed the subject and said, “We shall look at the equipment first. The equipment dropped from Son of Darkness should be good, given its high grade.”

“Yes! We still have the equipment!”

“Let’s check it out.”

Blasphemer’s Greaves (Gold)

Requires: Level 25

Defense: 56-85

Strength: 5

Endurance: 12

Additional effect: Blasphemer Set

Blasphemer’s Cape (Gold)

Requires: Level 25

Mana Defense: 25-60

Health Points: 100

Wisdom: 10

Additional effect: Blasphemer Set

“The attributes are so bad.”

“Yeah, as expected, there won’t be any good equipment drop from the small Boss!”

Everyone was disappointed. The attributes of equipment dropped from the Belief Church was much better than from the Epidemic Pond.

Lin Jie smiled. There were four pieces of equipment in Blasphemer Set: Plate Armor, Lock Armor, Leather Armor, and Cloth Armor. As the players had not undergone the second Job-Changing, the Blasphemer Set was separated into “physical set” and “mana set”, and their attributes were only slightly different.

“Don’t give the judgment in a rush, check out the Set effect,” said Lin Jie calmly.

Zheng Ziliang curved up his lips. “It’s just a Golden Armor Set, how good can it be…”

Blasphemer Set’s Effect

2 pieces: Increase all attributes by 10 points.

3 pieces: Healing Effect increased by an additional 15%.

4 pieces: Increase attack range by 5 yards.

5 pieces: Provide immunity to Death Potion.

6 pieces: Increase 50 points of immunity to Shadow Poison, Natural Poison, and Flames Poison.

7 pieces: Increase 50 points of immunity to Frost Poison, Gale Poison, and Harden Poison.

8 pieces: Increase health points by 200.

9 pieces: There is a 1% chance of clearing all your abnormal status and restore 800 health points when you are affected by any abnormal status.

“F*ck!” Zheng Ziliang could not help but curse.

Normal Sets would only provide an effect after gathering half or a whole set. But this set was different! With a piece of additional equipment, an additional effect was given. What’s more, every additional effect was targeting the Boss directly!

“I see, I see! You have to get the full set in order to defeat the Boss!” Zheng Ziliang slapped on his head and said.

The Blasphemer Set could only be found in the Epidemic Pond. There were three grades in total: Silver, Gold, and Dark Gold. Equipment of each grade could drop from the small monsters, Bosses and Venom Lei Zhika respectively.

Lin Jie could never forget that in his previous life, Demon Robe had been wearing a Dark Gold Blasphemer Set. Even the mist of his Forced Stealth was carrying frightening toxins!

Lin Jie continued, “Our next mission is very simple. Just enter the dungeon, record down the effect of the potions while attacking Lei Zhika. Attack Lei Zhika until his HP is dropped by 10% and then kill the summoned Boss. Exit immediately after that and repeat the process again after Lei Zhika recovers full HP.”

“This is going to make me sick…”

“Leader, what if other teams get the first clear before us?”

Lin Jie smiled and said with confidence, “Relax, I assure you that nobody else can get the first clear except us! Let’s go!”

As they entered Epidemic Pond again, Venom Lei Zhika’s health points were recovered to full, and it was doing some experiments with an elf’s head on his hand. Its rotten eyes stared at the team and laughed out loud.

“Loser!”

Silver Shield rushed up front again, attacked with his full damage output and healing.

“Fire Corrosive Potion, damage 150, follow-up damage 120. Lasts for 15 seconds.”

“Frost Potion, damage 500, reduces speed by 60%… Has a slight chance to freeze the target, aggro reduced to zero.”

Netherblue murmured and recorded down the information. While Silver Shield was frozen into an ice sculpture by Lei Zhika’s Frost Potion, Lei Zhika turned to The Heavenly Shield, and the rest of the team continued their damage output.

With their first time experience, dealing with Lei Zhika in the first stage was much easier: the MTs attracted hatred, the healers healed quickly, and DPS gave full damage output. Soon, Lei Zhika’s health points were dropped by 10%.

“Hehehehe, I kept quite a number of pets when I was lonely and bored. It’s time for them to meet the guests as these cute little pets are… hungry!” Venom Lei Zhika vanished in the pond again.

“MEOW—”

“MEOW—”

Cute calls of kittens came from the bottom of the lake, but what appeared was a lot of buffalo-sized beetles, whose shells were hard as steel plates, and they had long antennae, like guns. However, they had an extremely cute cat face… Their weird shape made everyone feel chilly, and they all swallowed their saliva involuntarily.

Holy Beetle (Enhanced Elite)

Level 30

Health Points: 70,000

Attack: 572-748

Defense: 300

Additional effect: Damage reflection (Reduce 30% of physical damage when attacked. This amount of damage will be reflected to the attacker by its 200%)

There was a total of more than 40 Enhanced Elites!

“All the melee jobs go to the front, block them in the pond, don’t attack!” Lin Jie yelled, “Fat Cattle, use Fire Rain!”

Lin Jie, Baili Changcheng and others blocked around the Epidemic Pond and piled up a human wall. As Holy Beetle could reflect physical damage, this would put pressure on healing with its damage output. The best way to resolve was to block them with the crowds and let magical jobs to AOE.

The Mechanical Gargoyle also rushed over and filled the gap firmly.

Fireball was whistling in the air, and Fire Rain smashed towards the Holy Beetle as Domestic Fat Cattle waved his staff. Lin Jie also activated Flame Boost and Wind Rider Blade Aura Executioner, dealt much damage. As the Holy Beetle’s strengths were its damage reflect and strong defense, mana attacks could be used to avoid them.

In less than 20 minutes, the bodies of Holy Beetles flipped and were smashed to death by mana. The light of equipment dropped was partly hidden and partly visible. Star Kill rushed down the pond and kept all the equipment. Everyone looked at one another and exited one after another.

If the equipment dropped this time was Silver Blasphemer, the attributes would differ around 30%, and the set effect would be immunity to Death Potion. This was the difference between different grades of sets.

With a full set of Silver Blasphemer, one would be allowed to use a Defense Shield with 250 health points, which was better than nothing.

“Continue! Keep the Silver set first. It’s not suitable for us to use as its attributes and effects are not good,” Lin Jie said. “We’re not lucky this time! It’s the best for us to continue killing the Son of Darkness.”

After arranging their attire, the team entered the dungeon again.

At this time, all the players of The New Age entered a terrible endless loop: enter, death, revive, enter, death… This was accompanied by a huge consumption of numerous potions and food. Thanks to the dungeon, the business of Auction House was increased by many times. Lin Jie filthily increased the tax of the Cash Exchange System by 1%. As for his excuse? More NPCs would be needed to deal with the large number of transactions…

Hence, this 1% increase in tax led to an increase in a seven-digit number of gain in Lin Jie’s bank account.

As the team entered the dungeon again, two pairs of eyes in the crowd twinkled.

“Fox, did you see Savage Blade?”

“Yes. I saw them exiting the dungeon in an average of every one hour and then enter again. What are they doing?”

“I don’t know… Could they be…”