"So much HP!" Shuise Qiangwei couldn't help but frown.
A high HP pool meant a longer fight, which placed even greater demands on DPS. In a level-10, twenty-man Hell Difficulty Dungeon, the boss with the most HP had only seven hundred thousand — and no team had ever cleared it. Eighty-eight hundred thousand hit points before her felt utterly hopeless.
But Huo Wu and the others showed no particular reaction. They were simply waiting for Shi Feng's command.
Seeing the intense gazes directed at him, Shi Feng smiled faintly and spoke up. "Ke Le, go in and test the waters first. Tanchi Xiaoshu, keep him healed. Everyone else, pay close attention to the boss's movements and patterns. Make sure you're recording video — we'll figure out a strategy afterwards."
As the Knight Commander of the Demon Castle, Fried Justin was devastatingly powerful in melee combat. Even with Ke Le's solid equipment, he wouldn't last more than three hits. Any other main tank would probably fall in two.
Beyond his extreme attack power, as a heavy-armor knight his defense was naturally formidable, and having been transformed into a demon, his innate magic resistance was sky-high. He was a boss with virtually no weaknesses.
Fried Justin had two major skills that could wipe the entire party in the blink of an eye.
And on Hell Difficulty, both of those skills had been enhanced, making him even more punishing.
The first was Demon Summoning. At set intervals, he would summon three Demon Guards. If these guards weren't killed within a set time, they would return to Fried Justin's body and restore his HP. On Hard Difficulty each guard restored 3% of his health, but on Hell Difficulty it was 5%, so they absolutely had to be taken down.
The second skill was Death Strike. Fried Justin would designate a player and hurl his spear, dealing massive damage while reducing that player's movement speed by 60% and their defense by 100%. He would then charge directly at the marked player. No one could stand between Fried Justin and his target, or they would die instantly — and the marked player would also die if he caught up. So whoever was targeted had to run as far as possible and simply survive for ten seconds.
With these two abilities, the situation was practically hopeless. On top of that, Fried Justin had numerous smaller skills, though as long as you dodged in time they weren't a huge problem.
After Ke Le and Tanchi Xiaoshu made a few test runs, everyone got a clear picture of just how fearsome Fried Justin was. A single swing of his greatsword carved over fourteen hundred HP from Ke Le. For any other class, that was a two-hit kill. And his attack speed was no joke — two swings per second was nothing to him. To have any chance at all, coordination was key: the main tank had to dodge, and every melee fighter needed to learn how to disrupt the boss's attack rhythm.
"Let's pull!"
Once Shi Feng had finished explaining everything, the party took their positions, surrounding Fried Justin almost completely. Ke Le charged straight in while Ye Wumian waited off to the side for the three Demon Guards.
Compared to attacking an Elite monster, the damage Ke Le dealt to Fried Justin was drastically reduced — barely over a hundred points. The rest of the party began attacking as well.
But everyone quickly realized something: that defense was absurdly high. Previously, only Ke Le had been hitting the boss, so nobody had noticed just how high Fried Justin's defense truly was.
Jimo Ruxue, a Berserker, hacked the boss in the back with his axe and barely scratched out two hundred damage. Even after stacking armor-penetration effects, he could only push it to three hundred at best.
As for the newcomers, their numbers were even worse.
"This defense is ridiculous." Shuise Qiangwei had been bombarding the boss from range for ages, and her highest hit had only been a little over five hundred.
"Shadow Burst!"
Hei Zi held nothing back, unleashing the skill he had learned from the Four-Color Trial. Five bolts of dark energy whooshed into Fried Justin's back.
-736, -741, -726, -732, -738 — five damage numbers popped up above Fried Justin's head.
Shi Feng was hacking away from behind as well, dealing noticeably less than Hei Zi. His basic attacks only hit for a hundred-odd damage, though when he triggered the Abyssal's Curse and the damage amplification from Wind Thunder Flash, he could push out quite a bit more.
Since this was a Hell Difficulty boss, the effects of the Abyssal's Curse and Wind Thunder Flash had been severely nerfed, but stacking them together still reduced Fried Justin's stats by roughly fifteen percent.
At the same time, Shi Feng deactivated the One Rider Against a Thousand title and switched to the Demon Hunter title, which chipped away at Fried Justin's power by a little more.