A thousand-player team wiped out!
That was a team of players with an average level of seventy, wiped out entirely by just two players.
Although the balance chanisms in the virtual world aren’t like traditional gas, where it’s common to see scenarios of one versus a thousand or one versus ten thousand—it’s not exclusively an NPC thing. Players, if they develop well and have fortuitous encounters, can achieve similar levels too.
This isn’t the first ti this has happened, but occurrences like these are still rare.
So, after such an incident, the players who initially had aspirations gave up...
But a few refused to accept defeat and decided to try again, which led to today’s situation.
"Be careful later,"
"Got it... Whoa, what is this?" Tanshia Firlo suddenly cried out in alarm, as faint black markings appeared on her face. The small white dragon instantly transford into its giant dragon form.
The black markings spreading on its white scales didn’t disappear.
"It’s a curse targeting dragons—equipnt specifically designed for anti-dragon attacks," Lilith, in her chibi form sitting on Zheng Yichen’s shoulder, remarked. "I can reduce the duration of this curse."
"Can’t you completely remove it?"
"That would require deeper hacking into the virtual world."
"Just reduce it then." Zheng Yichen took out a long spear—a weapon obtained during his King of rcenaries playthrough, the best gear provided by his client.
"Roarrrrr——!" Tanshia Firlo raised her head and roared skyward. The nearby ambushed players instantly felt a wave of suffocating pressure.
Several abnormal icons appeared in their status bars.
Dragon’s Might, Life Suppression, Life Lock-on.
Dragon’s Might reduces all attributes by 1%–50%, Life Suppression decreases maximum life value by 1%–30%, while Life Lock-on makes stealth skills ineffective, nullifies bonus damage from backstabs, and other such attacks...
"Not surprising for a dragon-class transformation, absolutely overwhelming." One player looked at his status bar full of anomalies, the corner of his mouth twitching involuntarily. The fight hadn’t even started, and just one dragon roar had already slapped them with multiple debuffs.
The attribute reduction itself would impact maximum life value, not to ntion the further decrease from Life Suppression. If the effects were minimal, the combined impact might only lead to a re 2% reduction, which isn’t significant.
But the problem was that the lowest reduction among present players was at least 10%—and that was thanks to wearing resistance-focused gear specifically prepared to counter a dragon. Without this gear, the impact on their attributes would’ve been far worse.
Life Lock-on completely nullified the advantages of assassin-class players.
"That dragon player is using a Life-type build? Who in their right mind would play a healer dragon..." Another player was shocked, utterly stunned. A dragon transformation as a healer build? What a waste!
If they focused on raw output, they could already be in the top-tier player group battling premium bosses and participating in elite events.
Even without max level, just the innate template buffs from a dragon-class transformation would let them enter the top tier.
But a healer build—how terrified are they of getting killed instantly?
"I rember hearing this dragon player said they’re playing casual mode with family. Could that be the reason?"
"Even so, it’s a waste... Just one dragon-class transformation could earn you enough to buy a luxury apartnt downtown."
"Ugh, rich people’s choices are beyond reasoning. Wait, Life Lock-on can’t be force-cleared?!" An assassin-class player widened his eyes. Assassins usually spec into debuff removal skills.
So even learn extre force-clear abilities, which have very high priority but also remove positive buff effects along with the negatives.
Despite the drawbacks, seasoned assassins still make sure to learn such skills.
They know there are enemies who cast range debuffs at the start of battles, and during that window when teammates haven’t applied buffs yet, such force-clears beco highly useful.
This ti, their force-clear worked, briefly removing Life Lock-on. However, Dragon’s Might and Life Suppression were area-type effects—unless you had continuous purification-type abilities, you couldn’t purge them.
For these types of debuffs, equipping resistance gear was more effective. But after utilizing force-clear, Life Lock-on did vanish montarily, only to rapidly reappear.
This showed that Life Lock-on was field-type debuff rather than a contact-triggered effect that required reapplication.
"...Forget it; let’s switch to ranged attacks." The assassin, frustrated after failing to permanently clear the debuff, sighed and began coating his weapon with poison. What else could he do?
Without stealth or backstab bonus damage, assassins lose the majority of their offensive capability.
"Ranged, my ass—you guys focus on that guy! Leave him breathing; soone wants his win-streak buff!"
Recognizing the sarcastic tone, another player cursed. Ranged attacks certainly didn’t require assassins to do ager damage. Since Life Lock-on originated from the dragon player, they just needed to avoid targeting her.
The real issues were solely the effects of Dragon’s Might and Life Suppression.
"Go!"
The players who had been ticulously preparing began to unleash their respective abilities. Dragons had the suppressive power of Dragon’s Might, but the players’ anti-dragon curses were designed to counteract dragons, leaving the dragon player far from optimal status.
That type of curse could reduce all dragon attributes by at least one-third.
As for Zheng Yichen, they had prepared plenty of inhibitors—but before they could touch him, a red aura shimred around him.
The Curse Master players stared, slack-jawed, as text above Zheng Yichen’s head showed repeated ’Immune’ and ’Resist’ notifications, cursing out loud: "That’s not Tyrant Body—holy shit!"
Tyrant Body typically blocks control skills. While it might offer resistance against curses and debuffs, it doesn’t grant immunities. Yet Zheng Yichen was outright immune to nurous curses now.
On top of that, a frontline tank player was sent flying the mont he confronted him.
The blood-red dragon coiling around the long spear tore through the players’ blockade like an unstoppable force.
The players killed by Zheng Yichen had their blood drained, empowering him further, leaving surviving players pale-faced.
According to their system prompts, beyond the loss of experience points from death, they had also been drained of Essence of Life, resulting in a loss of levels.
For players, typical death usually only ant losing a fraction of current experience points and perhaps their gear if looted by enemies—not level drops.
But now, they were actually losing levels!
This was worse than simply being killed—or rather, Zheng Yichen had already killed them.
After dispatching dozens of players, Zheng Yichen raised his eyebrow slightly as he noticed a new poison debuff appear in his status bar. He recalled having a passive poison resistance; would it trigger?
Ignoring the poison, he relied on Essence of Life to regenerate his health quickly. The accumulated toxin’s impact was negligible as his health regen far outpaced the poison damage.
Especially since players he killed replenished his blood pool and further boosted his regenerative abilities, they posed no direct threat to him.
Over on Tanshia Firlo’s side, the black markings on her body quickly faded. The players besieging her were dumbstruck: "Dammit! Did we get counterfeit goods?!"
The dragon curse should’ve lasted at least ten minutes. Their plan had been to weaken Tanshia Firlo during early combat and then utilize specialized dragon-slaying gear to inflict heavy damage. Even if the curse wore off, she wouldn’t be able to maintain peak combat efficiency.
Yet, less than two minutes into the fight, the dragon curse visibly diminished.
"Does this dragon have passive curse resistance or sothing? This is bad," another player muttered just as Tanshia Firlo opened her mouth and fired a sphere of light that scattered bursts of light spikes.
When the light sphere eventually exploded, nearly half of the players in front of her were gone.
The remainder were in critical condition.
Seeing her blue bar decrease by one-tenth, Tanshia Firlo pouted slightly.
The virtual world was fundantally different from reality; although her mana bar as a dragon was extensive, it was still bound by individual attributes. In her native world, she could spam that kind of attack dozens of tis without breaking a sweat.
In this ga, however, the light sphere acted like a high-cost ultimate ability, consuming one-tenth of her total mana. What a lousy system.
Thinking this, Tanshia Firlo spread her wings and prepared to fly higher. But just as she ascended, she spotted a few players wielding massive crossbow-like weapons.
Under normal circumstances, she’d ignore such attacks outright. Yet, in the virtual world, caution seed prudent—after all, injuries in realistic modes hurt considerably.
Those players with crossbows failed to notice a black cat spirit appearing out of nowhere. A malicious Lock-on debuff appeared in their status bars, but before they had ti to react, black claws tore through them.
Though not fatal damage, the red numbers were critical hits—the type invoking deadly curse-induced penalties.
"!? There’s another enemy!"
After being attacked, so players quickly responded. The cat spirit, previously concealed, was revealed amidst dazzling light and let out a low growl before rapidly bulking up to a height of two ters.
It radiated a dense aura of curses, imdiately affecting nearby lee players.
"Another pet?!"
The players ensnared by the curse aura were utterly miserable. Already suffering from Dragon’s Might and Life Suppression, which weakened tank stats significantly, now they also faced curse entanglent that further debuffed their attributes and defense.
As a result, lee fighters found themselves flimsier than mages.
Why were there so many ridiculously shady chanics?!
And none of this had appeared in the reports—the strange black cat spirit wasn’t ntioned, nor was Life Lock-on’s presence, Zheng Yichen’s immunity-streaked ’Tyrant Body,’ or any of these other absurd effects. Were yesterday’s wiped-out players totally incompetent?
The cat spirit’s offensive capabilities weren’t as overwhelming as Zheng Yichen or Tanshia Firlo, but its sabotage ruined the dragon-hunting crossbows, causing their already shaky plan to fall apart entirely.
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