"You're telling me this Beast Emperor can actually get a legendary NPC to fight directly?"
"You've got to be kidding! This is a Tier Four legendary NPC!"
Members of the various powers and adventure teams in the Ancient Divine Ruins stared wide-eyed at the elderly NPC slowly descending from above, their hearts churning like storm-tossed seas.
Everyone was familiar with Tier Four legendary NPCs — after all, the major NPC cities in both kingdoms and empires were guarded by Tier Four legendary NPCs. They represented the absolute peak. Anyone who had ever seen one understood firsthand how terrifying a legendary NPC could be.
NPCs were nothing like monsters. While their HP was far lower than monsters of the same level, the sheer number and tier of skills and spells they commanded was beyond what any player could imagine.
The reason players could fight high-tier monsters was that they relied on magical skills and combat technique. Monsters, despite their powerful attributes and massive HP pools, knew very few spells, making them relatively easy to deal with — exploit their weaknesses, and the weak could triumph over the strong.
But NPCs possessed a number of magical skills that completely dwarfed what players had. Their skill combinations were complex and unpredictable, making them many times harder to counter. There were simply no exploitable weaknesses, and their base stats already surpassed players — they only fell short compared to same-tier monsters. For players, fighting one was practically being steamrolled.
Any player who had ever clashed with an NPC would tell you the same thing: they would rather take on a Tier Three Great Leader monster than provoke a same-level Tier Two NPC.
Put simply, if a player couldn't overpower an NPC of the same tier in raw strength, that NPC would play them to death with its magical skills.
Low-tier NPCs were already like that, let alone high-tier ones — it was a straight-up nightmare.
And the elderly NPC who had opened his eyes now seemed like an entirely different creature from before.
Only now did they truly grasp how terrifying a Tier Four NPC was.
The miasma rolling off his entire body was impossibly dense, seeming to corrode the very space around him. The pressure he exuded was something they could feel clearly even from two thousand yards away.
If the legendary demonic beast and its demonic mist had made them feel like they were submerged in water, this was like being trapped in incredibly dense mercury — cold, crushing, enough to make anyone tremble.
This legendary elder could, if he so wished, wipe out every single one of them present, and they wouldn't have the slightest chance to fight back.
Just as the members of the various powers and adventure teams were stunned into submission by the legendary NPC Diluo's aura— A massive figure suddenly appeared before Diluo. It was the Holy Dragon. Under Sword Shadow's control, the Holy Dragon lashed out with claws as enormous as mountains, aimed straight at Diluo. Where those claws passed, space itself shattered layer by mere force of the spatial rips could gravely wound a Great Leader of the same level.
The power behind those claws was so tremendous that even a legendary monster of the same tier would be sent flying.
Yet facing this terrifying force, Diluo acted as if he hadn't even noticed, allowing the claws to crash down upon him.
BOOM!
With a deafening boom, the enormous flying demonic beast — the Evil Bat — was smashed into the ground like a cannonball, cratering the earth in a sixty- or seventy-yard radius. Despite being an 80-rank Great Leader, the Evil Bat was now critically wounded, unable even to stay airborne.
"Where is he?" Sword Shadow, still controlling the Holy Dragon, stared at the crater on the ground in bewilderment.
The entire ground held nothing but the Evil Bat. There was no trace of the legendary NPC Diluo — not even his terrifying aura could be sensed. It was as if he had vanished entirely.
A second later, a figure materialized exactly where the Evil Bat had been. It was Diluo. But now he was already chanting a spell, tracing divine script in the air. Paragraph upon paragraph of lengthy divine writing drew the surrounding miasma into an ever-thickening tempest. Behind Diluo, a magical array was taking shape, causing the surrounding space to fracture and collapse into a black hole that hungrily devoured every trace of energy.
Sword Shadow watched the magical array grow more powerful by the second, his expression growing darker and darker. He could feel just how devastating it was — absolutely more fearsome than any Tier Four large-scale destruction spell he had ever witnessed. If that thing hit him, it would be no joke.
Magic-oriented classes were nothing like physical ones. Chanting and writing divine script was tedious, but the destructive output was far beyond what any physical class could hope to match. If Diluo blew him away and got the chance to target his defensive array, the consequences would be catastrophic.
"Die!" Sword Shadow hurriedly commanded the Holy Dragon to unleash its Tier Four skill — Five Thunder Claws — directly at Diluo.
Five Thunder Claws delivered devastating damage in a cone-shaped area ahead. It was useless to hide in the void — the force would simply scatter but still reach. And the Holy Dragon's power utterly eclipsed Diluo's, so even diminished, it was more than Diluo could withstand.
As the Five Thunder Claws swept down, countless bolts of lightning erupted in every direction, racing through the surrounding space toward Diluo.
But Diluo, mid-cast, seemed to have anticipated this all along. His other hand, gripping a staff, jerked sharply in midair. A dark gray triple-layered magical array materialized before him.
Tier Four defensive spell — Dark Hunt!
"Double-speed chanting?!" Everyone watching gaped at Diluo, who was still calmly writing divine script, their jaws dropping in disbelief. The magic users among them were utterly dumbfounded.
Double-speed chanting was the holy grail that many powerful casters aspired to, but very few ever truly achieved it. The higher the spell tier, the harder double-speed chanting became — let alone pulling it off at full speed.
Even top-tier experts of Tier Two classes could hardly manage two simultaneous Tier Two spells through double-speed chanting. Yet the Diluo before them was casting two high-tier spells at once, placing his technical mastery on par with the absolute elite among casters.
The countless bolts of lightning in midair were completely absorbed by the dark gray triple-layered array — not a single spark got through to harm Diluo.
Seeing that the spell Diluo was chanting was nearly complete, Sword Shadow urgently commanded the Holy Dragon to attack from another angle.