"Xuanxuan — smash it!"
Trapped inside a ring of stone spikes barely ten square ters wide, Li Wei suddenly stowed his Enchanted Strong Bow, reached behind himself with one hand, gripped the hilt of the Enchanted Heavy Sword, and pressed down hard. The clasp on the bottom of the Tactical Backpack snapped open — and the next second, the heavy sword ca down like a hamr, driving into the earth and shattering a stone spike that had just ford underground and was shooting upward.
Then Li Wei gripped the heavy sword with both hands and swung in rapid succession — dozens of strikes in that cramped space, keeping the stone spikes completely suppressed.
Zhao Xuanxuan seized the opening. She exhaled sharply, swung her Enchanted Iron Hamr in a wide arc — and in that instant, the Sword Caster title seed to awaken both her Blacksmith Destiny Grid and her Miner Destiny Grid. The reflection of roaring furnace-fire appeared in her eyes. With each hamr strike ca the faint sound of iron being forged, and behind her flickered the blurred silhouette of a figure hamring endlessly at a forge.
This was the effect of a Destiny Title combined with a near-Destiny-Resonance enchanted weapon. In an ordinary fight, Zhao Xuanxuan had no particular edge — Benjamin, Santiago, and other freeman soldiers could defeat her with ease.
But her greatest strength was her armor-piercing, defense-breaking blunt damage — extraordinarily high.
Against targets like stone giants, or immobile stone spikes like these, it was a perfect counter. One thing conquers another.
Interestingly, against humanoid creatures or other mutant beasts, Zhao Xuanxuan's hamr strikes were fairly ordinary — no critical hits, to use a gaming term.
But against slow-moving targets like these, critical hits ca naturally. Give her three seconds to charge up, and the results were even more dramatic — she could replicate the output of a Destiny Resonance weapon.
The Serpent Knight must have sensed sothing was wrong, but it didn't matter. More stone spikes only ant more targets for Li Wei's Enchanted Heavy Sword — they were shattered the mont they ford.
"HA!"
With a fierce shout, Zhao Xuanxuan's Four-Star Enchanted Iron Hamr began to emit a sound like wind and thunder. Trailing layers of afterimages, it crashed down onto a stone spike two ters thick.
Boom.
A deep, resonant impact — followed by a strange series of echoes.
But stranger still: the stone spike didn't show a single crack. The blow seed to have done nothing.
Then the next second, Zhao Xuanxuan's hamring speed suddenly accelerated — one strike per second — and she stopped targeting the sa spot. She moved across multiple spikes, playing them like a drum kit, her Enchanted Iron Hamr becoming percussion.
Li Wei didn't understand what she was doing, but he was deeply impressed, and kept pace without hesitation — shattering every underground stone spike the mont it ford.
Li Yue, Zhao Guozhu, Old John, and Annie were all fighting for their lives as well. Most of them had no idea what Zhao Xuanxuan was doing — but they had no choice. Stop resisting and you'd lose everything.
This also kept the black python — the one wielding earth-elent magic — fully occupied.
Ten seconds passed. Then Zhao Xuanxuan brought her hamr down one final ti — and it was like the closing note of a thunderous, sweeping percussion symphony.
Then the miracle happened. The stone spikes surrounding Li Wei and Zhao Xuanxuan cracked open with a series of terrifying fractures that spread and branched until the entire formation collapsed into rubble.
But it didn't stop there. Just as Li Wei was preparing to escort Zhao Xuanxuan to break the other stone formations, the spikes trapping everyone else began to collapse one after another — within seconds, hundreds of stone spikes were completely destroyed.
All of them?
"AAAAAH!"
In the distance, the stone-statue mount of the Serpent Knight let out a piercing shriek. One eye blinked — and a single tear of blood ran down its face.
At the sa ti, the black python, which had been buried in the earth like an ancient tree root, began to convulse violently — then exploded with a crack, shattering into aningless rubble.
What had just happened?
Had they just destroyed one of the Serpent Knight's life cores?
With just a 3 3 3 Zhao Xuanxuan?
Li Wei was astonished, but he didn't allow himself a mont of relaxation. He grabbed Zhao Xuanxuan — who had nearly exhausted her last drop of Stamina and was half-unconscious — and ran.
Zhao Xuanxuan now had the highest aggro.
Sure enough, the next mont, Li Guishan's sinister voice rang out — "Zhao Xuanxuan—"
But before it could finish, the instant that voice began, Li Wei had already delivered a precise strike to the back of her neck, dropping her into deep unconsciousness.
Then he started weaving — evasive, fluid, unpredictable.
You're just a curse-caster. You're just a spellcaster with maybe five-elent magic. I'm not afraid of you.
Li Wei had figured it out by now.
The Serpent Knight was rated Six-Star minus, and genuinely powerful — but not overwhelmingly so.
Because its abilities had cooldowns. If they didn't, it could curse all six of them simultaneously and no one would survive. But each curse had roughly a 90-second window between uses.
During that window, it could only use other thods — and only one thod at a ti: one magical python per turn.
Now, the curse cooldown had begun.
"Strike!"
From another direction, the freelancer Annie — who had been watching quietly and calmly — had apparently also worked out the pattern. The mont Li Wei began his evasive weaving, she moved in perfect sync, cleaver in hand, and brought it down at precisely the right mont — severing the blue python that had been doing the targeting.
Unfortunately, she fell just short of destroying its life core. The blue python's life core, like the black python's, was mobile — it drifted through the body.
The black python's ability to project stone spikes across the entire area and control the moving formations had depended entirely on that life core. And it had been systematically countered to death by Zhao Xuanxuan from start to finish.
A bitter end.
Annie was clearly strong — but not strong enough to track a life core that moved like a bird in flight.
Li Wei, from dozens of ters away, had a clear lock on it. He was confident he could draw the Four-Star Enchanted Strong Bow and destroy it in three arrows.
But if he did, the aggro on him and Zhao Xuanxuan would shoot through the roof. Genuinely suicidal.
Because anyone who claid this Serpent Knight didn't have a second phase was soone Li Wei would slap across the face.
In the second phase, Li Wei himself could survive — but Zhao Xuanxuan would certainly die.
So it was better to let Li Yue control the battle's rhythm.
And Li Yue was not idle. She, Zhao Guozhu, and Old John were attacking the Serpent Knight's main body from multiple directions — but predictably, they were hitting illusions again. When the illusion burst like a bubble, the Serpent Knight reappeared in a different direction. Simultaneously, the fla-red python opened its maw and unleashed a torrent of fire — like a dragon.
The flas shot forty to fifty ters, and with the boss's agile movents, it imdiately sent Li Wei and the others scrambling in all directions. This was fire at over a thousand degrees — no equipnt could withstand it.
Worse, the flas seed to ignite the chaotic magical particles in the area. For a mont, the very air around them was burning.
There was no option but to run. The Serpent Knight gave chase at speed, blasting fire as it went. The situation seed to have no solution.
But then Li Yue suddenly accelerated and moved to the front.
Li Wei imdiately fell back, carrying the unconscious Zhao Xuanxuan, and positioned himself precisely behind Li Yue's line of sight — together with Old John on the right front, they ford a visual blind spot for the Serpent Knight behind them.
Not a permanent blind spot — but the fla-red python had a brief inhalation phase after each fire burst, during which its body made a motion like a whale gulping water.
That was the blind spot.
Li Wei didn't know if it would work, but his understanding with Li Yue needed no words.
And indeed — three seconds later, the fla python's visual blind spot opened. Li Yue acted instantly: she swapped out the blue greatsword, drew her Four-Star Enchanted War Bow, and nocked an arrow — a dark, unremarkable shaft of indeterminate quality. Even with his enhanced Perception, Li Wei couldn't identify it.
It looked like it had been coated in so kind of stealth compound.
This was no ordinary arrow.
As he was thinking this, the fla python launched another devastating fire burst — a torrent of fla like a fifty-ter fire dragon, raining down from over fifty ters above like a blazing waterfall. Spectacular and utterly lethal.
The chaotic magical particles around them ignited and detonated in chain reactions.
But in that mont, Old John and Li Wei simultaneously stepped aside. Li Yue spun like a whirlwind, drew the Enchanted War Bow to a full moon, and released — with a sharp crack. The dark arrow was nearly invisible in flight, even to enhanced Perception. The sound it made cutting through the air was several levels quieter than a normal arrow.
The next second, the python that had been spewing fire erupted from sowhere within its body in a violent explosion. Its life core was destroyed — and the terrible fire energy turned inward, consuming the python itself.
"AAAH—"
The marble-statue mount below let out another agonized shriek. Its right eye wept blood, and slowly, it began to open — as if it were waking up.
But that didn't matter. Two life cores had now been destroyed.
Li Yue reclaid the top of the aggro list.
"Everyone be careful," Li Yue said quietly. "I suspect the white python is ice-elent, and the deep-green one is poison-elent. Also — watch out for the blue python's targeting curse."
She spoke calmly, then quickly swallowed so kind of potion to restore her Stamina. She had prepared thoroughly for this fight.
The situation was becoming clearer. Five-elent magic was this special boss's defining feature.
Barring surprises, once all five python life cores were destroyed, the mount below would enter a final form. To have served as the mount for five-elent magical pythons, this figure must once have been a formidable Ability User.
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