After all, this was the first Tier-4 BOSS he had faced in this lifetime, and he had to take it down within forty-five minutes, so Lin Mo didn't dare be careless.
As he approached the Lich King, he activated the SSS-grade Eye of Insight—
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[Lich King · Gais] (Lv45 Physical Type · Tier-4 BOSS)
— Physical Attack: 17,550
— Physical Defense: 6,000
— Magic Defense: 5,600
— HP: 1,280,000
— Skills: Ice Soul Slash (B-grade), Frost Charge (C-grade), Power of Extreme Cold (C-grade).
— Weakness: The Lich King is covered in frigid energy. Every time it takes ice-element damage, its attack increases by 1%, stacking up to thirty layers. Once fully stacked, the Lich King enters an Extreme Cold state. When it takes ice-element damage, it will counterattack the enemy once with a normal attack. Every time the Lich King takes fire-element damage, its defense decreases by 1%, stacking up to thirty layers. Once fully stacked, it enters a Scorching state, and when it takes fire-element damage, the damage it receives increases by 30%.
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When Lin Mo saw the Lich King's attack stat, he was completely stunned.
'Seventeen thousand attack power?'
'That is just ridiculous!'
"Even the dungeon BOSS of the Scorpion Empire, the Lv48 Tier-3 Shadow Demon Scorpion King, only had just over ten thousand attack."
Even Ning Xi couldn't help showing a bit of surprise, "This Lich King's attack is really high!"
Even if the Lich King's tier was one level higher than the Shadow Demon Scorpion King, its attack shouldn't be nearly double.
After all, its level was three lower than the Scorpion King.
But after seeing its weakness revealed through the SSS-grade Eye of Insight, Lin Mo quickly understood.
"Before we got here, the Blood Dance guild used skills like Ice Spike and Ice Arrow with control effects to hold the Lich King back."
"Clearly they already stacked the Lich King's thirty layers of attack buff through ice damage."
"Not only did it gain a 30% attack boost, the Lich King has probably already entered the Extreme Cold state."
No wonder the Blood Dance mages and archers who used Ice Spike and Ice Arrow against the Lich King earlier had suddenly died right after casting their skills, even though the BOSS never touched them.
That was because in the Lich King's Extreme Cold state, continuing to deal ice damage would trigger an automatic normal attack counter.
And judging by the Lich King's terrifying attack power.
If it counterattacked with a normal strike, none of the players here, who were only around level 30, could possibly survive it.
Of course, this wasn't really their fault.
After all, they didn't have the Eye of Insight, so they couldn't see the BOSS's weakness.
"If ice doesn't work, then we'll counter it with fire."
As he spoke, Lin Mo canceled the skill he originally planned to start with, Ice Snow · Grip of Extreme Frost, and switched to Blazing Heaven · Starfire Prairie.
After all, the Lich King had more than 17,000 attack power.
Even if Lin Mo only took one normal attack counter from it, he'd lose more than half his HP.
Once he entered attack range, the Venomous Set skill Immunity to Ten Thousand Poisons automatically triggered, putting the Lich King into a poisoned state.
However, the poison damage of 1% max HP per second didn't work on elite monsters and BOSSES.
Only a "-1" poison damage tick appeared above the Lich King's head every second.
But for Lin Mo, who was wearing the Venomous Set, the amount of poison damage per second didn't matter. What mattered was the poisoned status.
Against enemies in a poisoned state, all eight pieces of Lin Mo's Venomous equipment, along with their eight affix effects, were fully activated.
Taking advantage of this moment, after all the Blood Dance guild members withdrew from the BOSS area, Lin Mo locked onto the Lich King.
He noticed that the Lich King's thirty layers of Extreme Cold buff were fully stacked, but it had not a single layer of the Scorching buff.
So before launching his attack, Lin Mo opened his backpack and took out an E-grade magic scroll.
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[Arson] (E-grade Magic Scroll)
— Effect: After use, deals true burning damage to a single target equal to 30% of the user's attack power.
— Uses: 30/30
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Without another word, Lin Mo immediately began using Arson repeatedly on the Lich King.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
With each use, a white true-damage number popped above the Lich King's head.
-1626!
-1626!
-1626!
When the surrounding Blood Dance players saw the damage Lin Mo dealt to the Lich King, they immediately started murmuring.
"Wait… we waited all that time for this?"
"Hey, cut him some slack! There are hundreds of us here, did any of us even manage to break the BOSS's defense? He not only broke it but even dealt four-digit damage. That's already stronger than any of us."
"But with just this much damage, can he really solo the Lich King? And that number is white, which means it's true damage that ignores defense."
"Yeah! If even using a magic scroll for true damage only hits this hard, wouldn't his own damage be even lower? Maybe he can't even break the defense either, just like us."
When someone stands at the very top.
People at the bottom don't compare that person to themselves. Instead, they match them against the height they occupy.
Clearly, the Blood Dance players all believed that as the number one player on the Heavenly Rankings, Rulebound must have some way to kill the BOSS. Otherwise, he wouldn't have spent eight million to buy it.
Yet Lin Mo's performance right now left them greatly disappointed.
After using all thirty charges of [Arson], Lin Mo had only shaved off about four percent of the Lich King's HP.
After all, it was just an E-grade magic scroll.
And besides, Lin Mo's goal wasn't to use it for damage in the first place.
According to the Lich King's weakness: every time it takes fire-element damage, its defense decreases by 1%. Stacking up to thirty layers would trigger the Scorching state.
After thirty uses of Arson, the Lich King's Scorching buff was fully stacked.
Now through the Eye of Insight, Lin Mo could see that the Lich King's physical defense had dropped from 6,000 to 4,200.
"Magic scrolls really are a good thing."
Lin Mo couldn't help feeling glad he had started saving resources for establishing a guild, which was how he happened to have this Arson scroll.
Otherwise, relying only on his Blazing Heaven · Starfire Prairie once every eleven seconds, it would have taken ages to trigger the BOSS's Scorching state.
Now that the Lich King had entered the Scorching state, Lin Mo finally raised the Venomous Crossbow and locked onto the Lich King to launch his real attack.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Blazing Heaven · Starfire Prairie!
Heaven-Slaying · Seven-Star Volley!
The two SSS-grade skills exploded on the Lich King's body—
-26488! -5502 (Burn)!
-5187!
-5343!
-5503!
After the 200% poison effect boost from Immunity to Ten Thousand Poisons.
The Poison Break affix on Lin Mo's Venomous Ring continuously reduced the Lich King's defense from 4,200 under the Scorching state down to 2,700.
With Lin Mo's 5,420 attack power, combined with the massive bonus damage from affixes on his other equipment.
The explosive damage from this SSS-grade skill combo instantly left the surrounding Blood Dance players dumbfounded.
"Holy crap! What kind of damage is that?"
"So this is the real strength of a top player? Damn, I jumped to conclusions… turns out the clown was me…"
At the same time, Ning Xi cooperated with Lin Mo, activating the ten-times damage effect from her SSS-grade talent Nine-Five Supreme and simultaneously locking onto the Lich King to attack.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of C-grade single-target skills slammed into the Lich King, producing damage numbers that shocked the Blood Dance guild all over again—
-13258!
-12999!
-13125!
Ning Xi's Venomous Set was still only level 30, and her set skill was still [Immunity to Hundreds of Poisons].
Compared to Lin Mo's level 35 Tier-3 golden Venomous Set with Immunity to Ten Thousand Poisons, it was several tiers lower.
And for the first time ever, her damage ended up slightly weaker than Lin Mo's.
The Lich King's aggro was successfully drawn by Lin Mo and Ning Xi. Gripping its massive ice greatsword, it charged toward them in long strides.
Crash!
Power of Extreme Cold froze the entire field, applying a large-area slow.
The Lich King went straight for Lin Mo.
Behind him stood Ning Xi.
Lin Mo resolutely chose to face the Lich King's attack head-on instead of retreating.
The next second, the Lich King rushed forward.
C-grade Frost Charge + B-grade Ice Soul Slash came straight down at Lin Mo.
Around them, the Blood Dance players were stunned for the third time.
"Wait, what? Bro's tanking it head-on?"
"Holy crap! Dude, do you think you're a knight or something? You're an archer! Tanking a Tier-4 BOSS?"
"Well… looks like he doesn't have a choice. The BOSS slowed the whole area, there's no avoiding this hit."
"That sword's gonna leave him bruised head to toe."
"No it won't. At most there'll be pieces of him scattered everywhere."
Just as the Blood Dance players admired Lin Mo's courage to take the attack of a Lv45 Tier-4 BOSS head-on, some of them even unable to bear watching what would happen next—
Slash!
Facing the eight-meter-tall Lich King, Lin Mo was indeed sent flying by a single effortless swing.
But when he landed, the damage number that popped above his head stunned everyone on the field for the fourth time.
-2781!
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