"What's going on?"
Bai Ye stared at the progress rankings on the stone tablet, unable to believe what she was seeing.
A Great Lord was equivalent to a team dungeon boss — not only did it have extremely high defense, but it was also far more difficult to handle.
The Black Stone Leader standing before them had already unleashed three powerful skills, making it an incredibly tough opponent.
The first was the passive skill Stone Skin: the lower its HP dropped, the higher its defense and magic resistance climbed. The second was a single-target attack called Flame Charge, which would randomly target a player on the field at blinding speed — one wrong move and you'd be instantly killed. The third was a large-scale ability, Rock Rain, where boulders came hurtling down from the sky. Getting hit by even a single rock would cost at least ten thousand HP. Facing it alone, with no healer to restore health, you could only rely on healing potions — and that was an incredibly difficult proposition.
With these three skills, players could barely keep themselves alive, let alone quickly chip away at the boss's HP.
Just as Bai Ye was thinking this, the progress rankings suddenly shifted again after a short pause — dropping directly from 82% to 78%, now barely ahead of Shang Buyan's 72%.
"His HP is dropping that fast — he must have used some powerful magic scrolls," Shang Buyan noted, having also noticed the change on the rankings. But he showed no signs of anxiety, even smiling. "What a shame. Young people are always so impulsive. The Black Stone Leader isn't the kind of boss you can handle so easily. Burning through your trump cards this early will only make things harder later."
He had his own burst tools too, just like Bai Ye — he simply wasn't using them yet.
For a boss like the Black Stone Leader, the lower its HP, the harder it became to deal with. The correct strategy was to whittle it down in the early phases and save your burst for the end, minimizing the time spent fighting the boss at low HP. That was the key to clearing the dungeon.
But Shi Feng, desperate to catch up, had blown through a massive number of precious items. On the surface it looked like he'd closed the time gap, but in reality he was trapping himself — he might not even be able to finish off the boss in the end. After all, every boss had a final burst phase when its HP got low, and if you couldn't survive it, it was a total wipe.
Time ticked by, second by second.
Shi Feng's boss HP was still dropping at a staggering rate, but the decline was slowing — no longer losing four or five percent at a time, then just two percent, and finally only one percent.
By the time the boss's HP hit 42%, it had ground to a near halt.
"Too eager to win, and now look." Bai Ye watched the progress bar with a faint smile. She wasn't entirely happy about being pushed to second place by Shi Feng, but seeing his bar barely moving filled her with a certain smug satisfaction.
In her estimation, she would truly make her move when the boss's HP dropped to 20%. After all, a Level 44 Black Stone Leader had a whopping 36 million HP, and with its defense and magic resistance scaling up in the later phases, it wasn't wise to burst too early.
Besides, this was only the second floor. The real inheritance was on the third. She needed to save plenty of trump cards — enough to claim the second floor's rewards while still having the firepower to seize the third floor's inheritance.
Meanwhile, Shi Feng had just used his last second-tier or higher offensive magic scroll.
"HP only down to 40%, defense up 50%, magic resistance up 70%. As a floor boss, those are some seriously impressive scaling numbers," Shi Feng muttered as he commanded the Battle Blade Demon, evaluating the Black Stone Leader's defensive growth. "But it's about time I went all out."
To catch up to Bai Ye and Shang Buyan, he'd burned through his entire stockpile of second-tier and third-tier magic scrolls in one go.
But the real purpose of those scrolls had only been to buy time while his skills came off cooldown.
Shi Feng activated Light of Darkness, boosting all his stats by 60%.
Nine-Headed Dragon Slash!
Abyssal Curse!
The Level 50 Black Stone Leader had a whopping 44 million HP — far more formidable than the version Bai Ye and Shang Buyan were fighting. But against Shi Feng with his burst skills active, the gap in raw power had narrowed considerably.
The Abyssal Curse immediately slashed the Black Stone Leader's stats by 10% for five minutes, cutting its HP by 10% on the spot. In terms of raw strength, it was now on par with Shi Feng.
"Die!" Shi Feng unleashed Fire Spirit Storm.
A blazing storm of flames erupted from the ground, and the Black Stone Leader's HP began plummeting at 150,000 per second — critical hits dealing over 300,000. At his side, the Battle Blade Demon unleashed its second-tier ultimate, Purgatory Rush, each strike tearing away over 120,000 HP, with crits exceeding 240,000. Six strikes in rapid succession. Meanwhile, the twelve Abyssal phantoms hammered away at the Black Stone Leader with relentless attacks, each dealing five thousand damage — a full volley adding another 60,000.
In just six seconds, the Black Stone Leader's HP dropped by nearly 8%.
After the Fire Spirit Storm subsided, Shi Feng activated Phantom Kill, and both his original self and his clone surged forward to engage.