Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

Chapter 32: Gnolx's ultimate skill

Fight against opponents that know teleportation spells are very tiring, to begin with, and add his high magical attack, made this battle a tough one. Ye Yan only thought was how to get near the boss that was casting a very powerful spell. He knew this because the cast time of the skill is long and the longer the time needed to cast a spell, the more powerful it is. He would need, at least,5 more seconds to reach the boss and it would be too late to stop him.

"Flash!" Ye Yan yelled to Spell Bound to cast his skill, so he could disorient the boss and he wouldn't know where the players are for him to hit them accurately. "Don't stay still! Keep running!"

Ye Yan recognized the spell because the boss was doing the same gestures as last time, in the Nightmare mode, and that is why he told his friend to use the skill to make the boss temporarily blind, while he continues to ran to the boss.

Spell Bound's spell [Flash] struck the boss at the last second but it couldn't interrupt the boss attack, he just made him cast it in the same location the players were at that time before he was struck by the spell and not following the players with it. [Meteor Rain] is a multitarget spell that can reach the entire area with a spacing of 4 meters (~4.78 yards) between the fireballs[1]. The boss can redirect the fireballs to attack a specific location as they learned in one of the previous runs but, at least, at that time the spell power wasn't as powerful as it is now.

While Gnolx was reciting the spell incantation, a 200 meters wide (218 yards) magic circle appeared about 15 meters (17,9 yards) above their heads. It was a red circle with a five-pointed star inside and some strange symbols. They could feel the pressure emanating from it, which was so strong that caused shivers on them. They knew just by looking that getting his by it would mean instant death.

Many fireballs started to fall from the magic circle and they tried to evade to the best of their abilities. Luckily, the boss only knows the low-level version of the skill, or every single party member would die instantly because a higher-level version would shorten the space between the fireballs. The players were running around covering their heads as if it was a hailstorm, even knowing that doing it wouldn't make any difference but it was a subconscious instinctive reaction after all.

"Look at the direction where it is going to fall first!" Ye Yan saw that they continue to run like chickens in the henhouse and gave more instructions. He told them to run before, so the boss couldn't aim at them, but now they need to look at the fireballs to predict where they will fall to be able to evade it on time as they aren't real meteor and they can follow it with their eyes because their speed is not high. They didn't think of it before because it is an entirely new situation for them and as Ye Yan is used to unexpected things happening to him while fighting, he could keep a clear head to analyze the better course of action to take.

The words of Ye Yan wake them and they start to observe the fireballs route. If they had kept running like before, the magical classes would fall very fast because of their lack of agility, resulting in their low movement speed.

Ye Yan activated [Lucky Hit] when he reached the boss and started attacking using [Bash]. He was lucky enough to trigger the skill's secondary effect, stunning the boss for 2.5 seconds. The stun induced by [Bash] has an original duration time of 5 seconds but it was reduced by half because of the boss's rank. The time was short but he could use [Clive] to deal damage and prevent the boss from using spells.

The boss tried to run but Ye Yan is faster them him and kept using normal attacks on the boss. A pure magical class will never outrun a physical one without using spells, except in the cases that the opponent is using very heavy armor without agility bonus or didn't spare any points in the stat. It would be like asking a sedentary bookworm to race against a soldier. Even if the soldier is overload with a heavy backpack, he would outrun the other in the end.

The battle continues and the other physical class players reached the boss as well, starting their attacks. They took turns attacking the boss fr him to be unable to cast spells because now, won't have any time interval between attacks. Ye Yan can attack once every 1.53 seconds with his weapon. he normally uses his left hand to attack in the meantime but it is not as effective because the low damage can be ignored by the boss and don't interrupt his cast time. Attacks that aren't higher than the enemy defense can deal 1 damage but don't have any other effect like trigger a skill or effect.

The mages started to attack from a distance away using combinations to maximize the damage because the boss has high magical defense and their damage is reduced by 40%. Dovakin kept casting [Waterball] that do a little damage and can wet the enemy, while Spell Bound and Mage of the Cold Nights use [Lighting Bolt] and [Ice bolt] respectively. Both spells gain an increase in damage when used on wet enemies.

They kept attacking the boss until he uses [Blink] again which is an instant spell and can't be interrupted and they have to start all over again, reaching the boss and attacking.

The battle continues in this rhythm until the boss's healthy reached 10% and he went berserk, increasing his magical attack and casting skills faster them before.

Gnolx used [Blink] to move away and cast [Fire Wall] to keep them from approaching himself, so he could use his ultimate skill that has a long cast time, even now that his cast time decreased, and can be used only once in the battle.

The boss used the skill [Flame Terrain] and all the area at the top of the mountain went aflame, burning the players and himself. The boss is specialized in fire magic, so his resistance to this element is very high and he used this advantage to try to kill them while he receives little damage.

Ye Yan heard so many curse words, even from the originally cute Snow White, after the boss used the skills. He didn't have the time to pay attention to them, he just yelled for them to attack because the boss HP is almost reaching 0. Ye Yan used [Provoke] on him to decrease his defense and activated his skill [Endure] so he could stand the flames. With a healing potion in his left hand and his fan on the right, he spends his Action points using [Bash] repeatedly to deal the maximum damage on the boss.

Spell Bound yelled "The Hell with all this!" like a war cry and kept attacking until his healthy points reached 0 and his body fell to the ground. Mage of the Cold Nights died almost instantly when the boss used his ultimate skill, being an ice elemental, she/he has a weakness to fire. Dovakin last 3 more seconds than Spell Bound but died anyway. The doctors, I Love Skooma and Mad Dog died soon after. Only Conan and Ye Yan resisted and kept striking the boss. Ye Yan kept fight like an alcoholic that couldn't stand a second without a shot. Ye struck the boss with his right hand and used his left to take the potion to his lips.

Conan's body fell on the ground after 5 seconds, leaving Ye Yan to take the boss's remaining healthy points. And 1 second before the boss could use [Blink] again, he used [Bash] one more time to take the last 30 HP of the boss.

System: Congratulations to Jun Xie, Conan, Spell Bound, Demon Fox, Dovakin, I Love Skooma, Mad Dog, Snow White, Thumbelina, and Mage of the Cold Nights for being the first party to clear the Hell mode of White Birch Mountain Forest! Your achievement will be written in the annals of City of Ji history.

The announcement could be heard by every player in the City of Ji influential area.

......

[1] I'm using the International System of Units to measure things in this novel, but I am trying not to forget to write the conversion to US customary units.