Everyone looked at the confident Shi Feng, and their heavy hearts began to lighten.
The Great Lord-level Azure Fire Crow King was incredibly powerful, but that didn't mean it couldn't be fought.
After all, dungeons were meant to be conquered by players—they just hadn't figured out the right strategy yet.
Shi Feng produced the Book of Darkness and began chanting the incantation within.
"Come forth, Demonic Gate!"
With Shi Feng's quiet command, the black mist in midair coalesced into a silver-gray demonic gate. However, it was far inferior to the one Xia Lian had summoned—not only was the gate smaller, but the aura it gave off was rather ordinary, lacking that soul-chilling dread.
Though this smaller demonic gate was nothing special to Shi Feng, those seeing it for the first time—like Huo Wu and the others—watched with grim expressions, their eyes fixed on the gate.
As the demonic gate slowly opened, everyone felt a chill creep into their hearts—or perhaps it was a sense of danger.
Before long, a purple demon with a towering figure, a full two meters tall, stepped out of the gate.
The purple demon merely swept its gaze over the crowd, but the alert Huo Wu and the others had already drawn their weapons and taken up defensive positions.
"Don't worry—this is a demon I summoned." Shi Feng waved his hand to reassure everyone. "Looks like the random draw was kind to us. It's a second-tier Heart-Devouring Demon."
The Heart-Devouring Demon. Type: Demon. Level: 35. HP: 1.2 million.
A second-tier demon was equivalent to a Lord-level monster. Though its HP wasn't as beefy as a true Lord monster, it surpassed Lords in both skills and intelligence, making it a tremendous asset for team dungeon runs.
Players' personal retainers could follow them into dungeons too. But Cait was too high-level, and if he died, reviving him would be extremely difficult. More importantly, personal retainers consumed a dungeon slot. Not worth it. Summoned demons, on the other hand, carried no such drawback.
Moreover, every demon possessed numerous skills and its own area of expertise. The Heart-Devouring Demon, for instance, excelled at support—it could weaken enemies while boosting allies' power. That was why Shi Feng said their luck was good.
"Second-tier demon!" Shuise Qiangwei stared at the Heart-Devouring Demon with open astonishment.
The Divine Realm had no shortage of summoning skills. Summoners were a class dedicated to summoning creatures, but even a first-tier Summoner struggled to call forth a single first-tier being. Most could only summon swarms of zero-tier creatures to fight.
Even a first-tier Summoner of the summoning class had extreme difficulty summoning a first-tier creature, let alone a second-tier one. A second-tier being was a Lord monster—it could steamroll through players and play an impossibly valuable role in dungeons.
"Alright, everyone get into position. Maintain ten yards of distance between each pair. Same formation as when we fought the Azure Fire Crow King on Hard mode." Shi Feng wasted no more time and immediately began issuing commands.
In his previous life, he'd run the Hell-difficulty God of Crows Ruins so many times it bored him. Back then, though, they'd brute-forced it with level advantages—every party member was over level 40, equipped with Mythril Rank or better gear.
The Hell-difficulty God of Crows Ruins wasn't fundamentally different from the Hard version. The base stats and skills had been significantly buffed, but there were no new skills or traps. It was a mid-tier large-scale team dungeon—reasonably conquerable. If it had been high-tier, Shi Feng would have had no choice but to give up.
"Heart-Devouring Demon—support magic!" Shi Feng ordered the moment everyone was in position.
The Heart-Devouring Demon nodded, its sharp claws tracing spell after spell in the air.
Second-tier magic: Iron Wall Reinforcement!
Second-tier magic: Blood Radiance!
Second-tier magic: Mana Amplification!
Second-tier magic: Bull's Fury!
...
One second-tier buff after another boosted the entire party's capabilities by a massive margin. Ke Le's defense and HP especially skyrocketed—his defense doubled, and his HP jumped by 60%, pushing his total health past sixteen thousand. The second-ranked main tank, Ye Wumian, also reached nearly fifteen thousand HP.
With their defense, HP, and strength all enhanced, the Great Lord-level Azure Fire Crow King would have no chance of one-shotting anyone.
"Holy hell, second-tier support magic is freaking awesome!" Hei Zi discovered that his spell damage and healing output had both surged by 20%, elevating his DPS and healing to an entirely new level.
Only now did the party understand why Shi Feng had wanted to challenge Hell difficulty. With second-tier buff magic like this, there was absolutely no suspense in fighting the Hard-mode Azure Fire Crow King.