Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Unexpected Childe’s damage output gave everyone a good shock!

This was the result of one’s job compatibility with the weapons. Lin Jie was a Warrior, and although both Warriors and Bandits were allowed to use ranged weapons, Warriors would normally use them just to lure monsters. After all, melee jobs like Warriors were not meant to be experts in ranged attacks.

As such, Warriors had a fixed attack time of 3.2 seconds when they were using ranged weapons. Meanwhile, with their compatibility with ranged weapons and their nimble actions, Bandits’ attack time when using ranged weapons would be as fast as 2.5 seconds.

This meant that Warriors would never be able to use ranged weapons to level up in the game. However, powerful the attributes of a Sub-Legendary gun was, it would not be able to display its full prowess in the hands of a Warrior.

Yet for Unexpected Childe, everything would be different! He was a Marksmanship Hunter and would enjoy additional 15% Ranged Penetration and Attack buffs whenever he used guns, crossbows, and bows. Moreover, his preparation time for shooting was only just one second, and he possessed skills which allowed him to proceed smoothly to subsequent moves. Coupled with the 5 Consecutive Shots and Continuous Silence effects, Unexpected Childe had become an almost invincible and unbeatable figure with the Silent Killer!

Like now, as Unexpected Childe got used to handling the Silent Killer, he was practically using it as if like a laser gun. The bullets shot out non-stop from the gun, sending thrills down his spine, and his DPS was getting as high as Lin Jie’s DPS.

“Have a taste of Lei Zhika’s specialty tidbits…”

Lei Zhika took out a light yellowish potion bottle and smashed it down on the ground. A pale yellow mist rose up—it was the Confusion Potion! This was Lei Zhika’s best weapon for destroying teams. This potion could make players randomly attack their teammates within the next five seconds. What’s most terrible was that during this period of time, Priests wouldn’t be able to release their healing skills!

“Everyone put down their weapons!” shouted Lin Jie as he stuffed his Thunderbolt Sword into his backpack, and kept Broken Blade on his back. To prevent his body from taking out Broken Blade uncontrollably, he took out the Blank swords which he had kept in his backpack specially for this occasion and gripped tightly onto them in his hands.

At this moment, Kid, who observed the scene with wide eyes while lying on the ground, shouted out in glee, “Everyone, move towards Big Sister Bu Yi! The big brothers who are carrying shields, run five steps towards the southeast direction, hurry!”

Bu Yi was in the midst of using the Mass Dispel skill to clear all the additional buffs everyone else had. Hearing Kid’s excited cry, she and the rest of the team exchanged surprised looks. However, they heeded his advice and moved towards Bu Yi without hesitation.

Most of the teams would employ the same tactics to counter against the Confusion Potion: keep all weapons away to minimize damage, and then try their best to hold past the five seconds of its effects. This was also the most commonly known method used in Lin Jie’s previous life. If Lin Jie didn’t remember wrongly, there was absolutely no other way to avoid being hit by the mist-type Confusion Potion.

‘Are there other methods to evade this potion’s effects?’ Lin Jie’s heart flipped as he moved towards Bu Yi.

Ding~

—Battle prompt message: Venom Lei Zhika has used Confusion Potion on you. You suffered 723 Venom damage points.

A Damage Dealt figure jumped out from Lin Jie’s head, but the Confounded effects were not activated!

“The healing jobs heal our health bars, MTs put up your defenses, Damage output jobs, prepare yourselves!” shouted Lin Jie excitedly as his heart started to beat fast. He didn’t care how Kid could distinguish the effects of the Confusion Potion. So long as he could continue doing so, they would be able to take down the Epidemic Pond soon!

Lei Zhika’s health bar decreased rapidly, and soon the third wave of monsters, Ender Undead, were summoned. A total of 60 such monsters were spawned—their specialty was that they could divert away any Mana damage they suffered, and then attack the player with the least health points at the scene. It was easy to take down these monsters—as long as Mixed Breathless’ health points were maintained at 1,000 points while Fat Cattle blasted his Crowd Control Mana spells on them, all of them would get destroyed before the MTs.

Everyone was getting more and more familiar with killing the monsters. Lei Zhika’s health bar had already decreased by half, and it was now deteriorating to 20%!

At this moment, a crisis appeared!

Lin Jie had not planned to take down the dungeon for this time round. As such, he had not passed the Perfect Natural Potions to the healing jobs, needless to say, his prized superior-grade magic potions.

As such, the MTs’ equipment durability neared zero in no time under the corrosive effects of the potions, and everyone’s equipment attributes also decreased tremendously! At the same time, the Silent Killer’s Ease of Familiarity effect had worn off, and hence Unexpected Childe’s damage output was greatly decreased.

Coupled with that, Kid’s online time was more than three hours, and the system automatically logged him out. Thus, when the next wave of Confusion Potions rained down upon the Savage Blade team, the players who were already in bad shape ended up killing each other due to the Confusion Potions’ effects. With a last crowd control AOE skill by Lei Zhika, the entire team was killed!

Ding~

—’You are dead now, and your EXP bar decreased by 10%. The dungeon’s progress levels are reset.’

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Everyone found themselves revived at the cemetery.

“Darn it, I thought we could take it down!”

“There are some problems with our team’s sustenance. I guess it’s up to Leader to sort out this problem.”

“Come to think of it, how does that kid know where Lei Zhika will aim the Confusion Potion at? Ever since we got him to direct us, we never got hit by the Confusion Potion! Does he have some supernatural powers?”

Bu Yi shook her head and said, “No, it’s not supernatural powers. He just has a keen observation.”

“Yes, and he observed very carefully,” added Lin Jie. “Actually, when every Boss use their skills, they would have some actions to signal it. It’s just that we didn’t notice it, or rather, we didn’t have the time or energy to notice it. Kid wasn’t involved in the battle, and thus he could focus all his energy on observing.”

“In any case, this shows that his observation skills are really great! And he’s able to adapt to changes fast too—he’s a potential expert gamer worth nurturing,” agreed Mixed Breathless.

Lin Jie thought about Mixed Breathless’ words. Since Wine God Elder could not come online for the time being, why not pull Kid into the team for now?

The more Lin Jie thought about it, the more he felt it was a great idea. Having Kid in the team meant that Lin Jie could free up his time and focused fully on his damage output.

As for Kid’s levels and his gaming skills… Well, it didn’t matter if his gaming skills were lousy. In any case, it would be an easy task to help him level up too.

There were many famous gamers in Lin Jie’s previous life who had provided directing services or else known as ‘raid commanders’, in the game. Some raid commanders were worth tens of millions. Just guiding their clients through a dungeon or battle could earn them hundreds of thousands. Among these people, there was no lack of expert ‘killed raid commanders’!

By ‘killed raid commanders’, it meant that these players had lousy gaming skills, equipment, etc., and would get killed early into the fight. However, they were revered for their superior observation skills and were like ‘advisors’ to generals at war—their main purpose was to be an armchair strategist!

And Kid had the potential to be one of them.

Lin Jie went through his idea again and got offline to find Kid. He proposed about letting Kid join his team, which Kid agreed to immediately.

It was easy enough to resolve the problem of Kid being unable to remain online for long. Zheng Ziliang’s father, Zheng Guangming, was, after all, an authoritative figure who could command his wishes in Jiang City. Even if one was just a newborn, he had the means to let the system believe that this person was already 18 years old. As such, after Kid re-scanned his irises, he could officially remain online for more than the stipulated amount of gaming time for under-aged children.

However, what happened next was something that Lin Jie had not expected. The first minute Kid became an official member of the team, he pointed out a problem solemnly: the coordination between players in the team was ridiculously bad! In theory, everyone’s levels and the allocation of their tasks-to-do should already be enough for them to get past the dungeon. He concluded that the Savage Blade team had failed because of the poor coordination among the players in the team, and thus requested that he should be allowed to gain full commanding rights so that he could use a supposedly very powerful attack plan to let them take down the dungeon in one go.

This suggestion was, of course, being turned down by Lin Jie. He felt that the most immediate task they should concentrate on was to gather the complete set of the Blasphemer Set for everyone in the team. As such, the two started a quarrel over this matter.

“Big brother, please trust me. Even if your equipment is of inferior quality, my plan will work! Really!” said Kid in a serious voice.

“No, we will gather the Blasphemer Sets first,” insisted Lin Jie.

“Well, I admit the importance of this set, but your team’s overall capabilities won’t improve if you are only thinking of gathering better equipment all the while!”

“A team will be ruined if you feel that better coordination is the only way to improve the team’s capabilities!” said Lin Jie after some serious thinking. “Kid, you still have a lot to learn—for example, methods of how to command a team effectively. Winning a fight doesn’t just depend on a few instructions like ‘go right, go left’. You need to learn how to make use of the coordinates in the game at least, and also distinguish between each of your teammates’ skills. To be very frank, you don’t possess the abilities of a raid commander now—you are just very good at observing details. Don’t get puffed up with pride just because of this talent!

“If you still don’t agree with what I say, okay—I can pass you the full commanding rights of the First Savage Blade team. We can compete and see who can take down the dungeon faster!”

“If you win, I will hand over the full commanding rights of the Savage Blade team to you, and I promise never to interfere with your decisions again. However, if you lose, you will have to listen to me and get familiar with the game first. I will let you have the full commanding rights in the future. Fair enough?”

Kid gallantly accepted Lin Jie’s challenge, and immediately joined the First Savage Blade team as the team’s raid commander. He declared that he would definitely beat Lin Jie’s team with this team who possessed more inferior equipment!

‘He’s too ambitious for his own good,’ surmised Lin Jie as he shook his head. Being overconfident was a common fault among all raid commanders—they always felt a team would definitely be able to conquer dungeons if they fully executed 100% of their commands. Yet they always failed to realize that ‘plan’ and ‘action’ were two different matters. A successful raid commander not only needed to be extremely clever but also need to consider reality’s limits so that he could actualize his plans!

Kid still had loads to learn!

‘Well, hopefully, he will get it after he has more actual practice and encounters more failures.’

Lin Jie checked the team’s progress. There was still about six days against the appearance of the first clear of the dungeon in his previous life. Savage Blade had sufficient time!

What he did not know was that other teams were under immense pressure due to the fact that Savage Blade had made 80% progress into the dungeon. One of their competitors was Kingdom of Glory!

Ding~

A notification sprang out in Lin Jie’s Friends Column. It was a call from Silent Grey Sky.

“Hoo, I was enjoying the whale of a time mining ores for the past 20 plus days. I have just gotten my required rest in the past week!” commented Silent Grey Sky in a lazy voice.

“Oh yeah, to thank you for providing me with the coordinates of the mining sites, I got you some small presents. I just sent them to you, you don’t need to thank me though.”

“Oh, than—”

“Du—” the call was being hung up.

Lin Jie let out a small sigh as he kept away his communication device. He returned to the city and took out two small bottles from his mailbox.

Highly Effective Essence Oil: Can be used during battles. It will return 50 Durability points for your equipment.

Mithril Membrane: Each layer of Mithril Membrane you applied to your equipment will increase five levels of its Magic Resistance, and allow it to have five levels of Magic Absorption. These effects will last for 30 minutes.

The Highly Effective Essence Oil could be used for 20 times, while there were six layers of Mithril Membrane available.

Lin Jie was overjoyed as he kept these two items away into his backpack. The Highly Effective Essence Oil was a side product one could get from mining. Sometimes, some slippery worms might crawl into the crevices within advanced ores, and when they were being crushed by the minerals within the ores, they would become this essence oil which could help to recover the Durability levels of equipment.

Meanwhile, Mithril Membrane was created by crushing the mother ores and smithing them together with liquid Mithril. It was a rare item to come by.

Lin Jie looked at Broken Blade and Thunderbolt Sword, and an idea flashed past briefly in his mind.