MMO: Pierce Heaven Til’ It Breaks

The Arena Championship has always been supremely popular. The finals for each season would especially attract the audience of countless players.

It was tragic for the seasonal champion in Li Yi’s past life, Defiant Zephyr. Now, not one but three dark horses had flooded the scene!

Aside from Jiaojiao, two other dark horses have managed to make it into the finals. One of them was Fang Jie the Assassination Archer, while the other was Pale Blue Elegance the Contract Summoner.

Li Yi had prompted them to enter the game earlier than they had in the past life, and their performance did not disappoint Li Yi. They had shown their extraordinary abilities in a short amount of time.

Of course, Li Yi did not find Fang Jie or Pale Blue Elegance as the most surprising one in this situation. He did witness their superior performance in the past life, and they were vastly more skillful than their present selves.

The one that astonished Li Yi was Jiaojiao.

This feral dark horse has risen through the ranks with unstoppable momentum. When she had qualified herself into the finals, she has rushed herself into third place.

Since Li Yi did not go anonymous when he had betted on Jiaojiao, he had single-handedly caused a bunch of people to follow his hand and bet on Jiaojiao. Finally, even the usual cunning banker, Autumn Love, was swayed by it. She directly banned all bets on Jiaojiao and stopped anyone from placing further bets on her.

The season finals have started. Li Yi watched whatever match that Jiaojiao was on, and Jiaojiao did not disappoint either. With the greatsword in her hand, she defeated all enemies that stood before her, one at a time.

Fang Jie fell before her, so did Pale Blue Elegance. With a clean sweep record, Jiaojiao stepped into the grand finals.

On the other side, A Bucket of Paste and Unending Unmatched was having a closely fought match between themselves. The winner of two rounds out of three would win the match, and currently, both of them each held one match in their hands. They were now deep in their third and final death match.

The winner could march forward, and the loser shall leave the stage!

The two main tanks had a long-lasting fight. A Bucket of Paste was a Paladin that was infamous for its shamelessness of healing their own HP once their health showed any signs of dropping. On the other hand, Unending Unmatched relied on his high HP and Defense. With the Blood Lord equipped, his performance was not far away from A Bucket of Paste. As the HP of both players continued to drop continuously, no one could clearly see the winner among the two players.

Battles within the arena forbade any use of potions. However, special skills could still be used. Due to these regulations, many equipment with special skills of HP Regen had become incredibly expensive.

Unending Unmatched has an equipment on him that has the HP Regen special skill. However, he has yet to use it and had instead chose to wait until when his HP has dropped to critical.

A Bucket of Paste had similar intentions. He was also waiting for the right moment to use his Holy Healing Skill and Holy Shield Spell.

Unending Unmatched zoned in onto a gap in his opponents attack. He dragged his sword forward, flicked the blade up and slashed it down and across his opponent.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

A beautiful [3 combo] appeared above A Bucket of Paste’s head. Unending Unmatched took the chance to continue his assault. After Thunder Strike, he used Amplification for three consecutive times, effectively depleting all 100 points of Aggro.

[7 combo!]

[-19874]

After he had successfully executed a set of combo attacks, A Bucket of Paste’s HP was close to zero in a blink of an eye.

“Holy Healing Skill!”

A golden glow flashed brightly. A second later, A Bucket of Paste’s HP was full once again. He continued to rain down a flurry of attacks with his hammer.

“Megashield!”

A white blinking light surrounded Unending Unmatched’s body. He blocked the front of his body with a shield and charged at A Bucket of Paste at top speed.

Wham!

A Bucket of Paste was thrown backward.

Unending Unmatched charged forward. An upwards flick, a downwards slash, a strike across…

“Holy Shield Spell!”

A Bucket of Paste immediately used the Holy Shield Spell to forcefully intercept when he saw Unending Unmatched’s intention of making a combo attack again.

“Holy Light Impact!”

A Bucket of Paste shone brightly like the sun. At this time, Unending Unmatched was still affected by the hit recovery effect and thus had no way to dodge A Bucket of Paste.

A harsh light shone brightly into his eyes. He immediately lost sight of his surroundings.

Blind was in effect!

“Holy Light Trial! Intelligence Trial! Hammer of Punishment…”

A Bucket of Paste grabbed the opportunity to inflict a set of continuous attacks on Unending Unmatched.

Damage Reflect, heal, combo. A Bucket of Paste showed off his might, and Unending Unmatched’s Blood Lord had no way to use its main special skill under the attack. Unending Unmatched’s HP kept dropping, and it looked like he was moments away from death.

“Shield Wall, Battleshout! Shield of Earth!”

At the critical moment, Unending Unmatched activated the Shield Wall and used the HP healing special skill Battleshout. Then, he used the Shield of Earth to reduce the damage that would be inflicted on him before attacking A Bucket of Paste in a frenzy.

He has finally used all of his life-saving skills. The only thing that he could do now was to fight with all his might. This move was the only chance that he could take his opponent out of the picture!

A Bucket of Paste’s hands glowed gold as he tossed countless things onto his own body. This was the trademark skill of all shameless Paladins – the healing skill Holy Flash.

The more violent Unending Unmatched’s attacks were, the more severe the Damage Reflect became. However, since he had the Shield of Earth special effect on him, his attack damage had increased by 5% while his damage sustained would be reduced by 80%. Thus, he was not exactly afraid of A Bucket of Paste’s Damage Reflect at this point in time.

The only thing that gave him a headache was how this guy would constantly touch himself. ¹ Main tanks were not a damage-dealing class in the first place, and that annoying skill of his has managed to frustratingly maintain the HP of A Bucket of Paste regardless of how hard Unending Unmatched would go at him…

“Holy Light Trial!”

A Bucket of Paste would retaliate once in a while, forcing Unending Unmatched to look at his dwindling HP helplessly. Finally, the latter collapsed to the ground with a crash.

Unending Unmatched was defeated. A Bucket of Paste has successfully advanced himself and was now qualified to fight for the championship against Jiaojiao.

The final was about to begin, and the arena was in chaos. Many private and illegal bankers have now opened themselves for bids on the winner of the championship.

“The Queen will win!”

“A Bucket will win!”

The number of players that placed bets on Jiaojiao and A Bucket of Paste was almost equal.

These players have watched all of the combat recordings during the championship. Many of them were very familiar with the standards of Jiaojiao and A Bucket of Paste. The previous video where they had fought each other and died at the same time had become one of the most important reference materials for these players.

Li Yi logged off and ran to Jiaojiao’s side to cheer her on.

“Jiaojiao, you must win this. Yameteh! ² ”

“If you’re trying to cheer me on, you should say ‘Gambateh’ instead of ‘Yameteh’. Where has your common sense gone? I thought you’ve been watching Japanese educational videos on a regular basis.”

Jiaojiao insulted Li Yi and stepped onto the arena with her greatsword in tow.

Fire Ice, who was logged on to the game this whole time at the side, could not help but chuckle when she overheard their conversation.

When players wore their VR headset in the game, they could choose between two modes, namely Immersion and Listening. Immersion mode was meant for a total dive into the game, and the player would not hear a thing even if someone was shouting into the ears of the player. On the other hand, the Listening mode was a half-dive into the game, and the player could listen to the sounds around them. They just could not see their surroundings.

“Witness how I will annihilate him!”

Jiaojiao looked entirely confident when she faced A Bucket of Paste.

The countdown has ended. The battle has officially started. Li Yi did not mess around this time and had instead chose to sit obediently at the side to stare nervously at the screen.

He believed in Jiaojiao’s abilities, but A Bucket of Paste was not an unskilled player. The winner in this match was not easy to predict.

Jiaojiao struck first by using Death’s Grasp again to drag her enemy. The Cooldown for this skill was only 30 seconds, hence it could be deployed very quickly after its first use.

A Bucket of Paste cast the Holy Shield Spell to cancel out the effects of Death’s Grasp.

“Undead Summon!”

Jiaojiao called out softly while pointing the greatsword at the ground. A gust of filthy black gas filled the area, and soon a red-haired ghoul crawled out of the ground yowling.

This was different from the Decadent Ghoul that appeared previously. This time, she had summoned a Berserker Ghoul that has naturally high attack power.

“Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill…”

The Berserker Ghoul charged at A Bucket of Paste while yelling. However, on its way there, Jiaojiao has instructed it to Guard. The Ghoul stopped and stood dumbly at a spot.

After her previous fight with A Bucket of Paste, Miss Jiao has summarized her experience and came to a conclusion that the first ghoul that she summoned must never die too quickly if she had the intention to defeat A Bucket of Paste.

With the support of the Legendary weapon Lord of Disaster, the ghouls that Jiaojiao summon could stay up to a few hours at a time. On top of that, Undead Summon only had a Cooldown of five minutes. Basically, this meant that Jiaojiao would have something similar to a permanent pet if the Lord of Disaster was around.

The reason why she had chosen to summon the ghoul first was because the Undead Summon and the Undead Army had a Shared CD. Only one of these two skills could be used within a short period of time, and there was no way that they could be simultaneously cast.

A Bucket of Paste had probably seen through Jiaojiao’s strategy. With his hammer raised high, he marched forward to try and eliminate the Berserker Ghoul.

Jiaojiao dragged her sword and swung both of her arms. A Bucket of Paste was repelled away.

The Berserker Ghoul had a HP similar to Jiaojiao. With a HP more than 50,000 almost going up to 60,000, A Bucket of Paste would need to spend a considerable amount of effort if he wanted to kill the ghoul.

“Holy Light Trials! Hammer of Punishment!”

A Bucket of Paste had given up on attacking the Berserker Ghoul. Instead, he has turned his attention to Jiaojiao to attack her.

Jiaojiao continued to use two Mortal Strikes before backing away. Even though Mortal Strikes do not have a Cooldown period, casting it required two Runes. Dark Paladins have a total of six Runes that would regenerate every ten seconds. In other words, she could only use three Mortal Strikes every ten seconds.

Jiaojiao’s horizontal strikes were very powerful even without the support of skills. The humongous size of the greatsword was not just for show. When it hit its target, an additional Repel effect would be inflicted onto the target. It was truly violent.

Jiaojiao would only use Mortal Strike, and all that was left for her to do was to drag out the time with A Bucket of Paste. Her general strategy did not change from her previous experience. She would drag out the five minutes of Cooldown and summon the Undead Army after that.

Jiaojiao’s SPD was much quicker than A Bucket of Paste even with the greatsword in her hands. The Paladin class was famously nicknamed as short-legged donkeys. They only had a handful of ranged attacks and would be rendered helpless if their enemies kept running and stopped attacking them.

“Repentance!”

“Will of Darkness!”

When A Bucket of Paste used Repentance, Jiaojiao would immediately cancel it out with Will of Darkness. Similar to an Archer’s Survival Instinct, the Will of Darkness also carried the function to dispel any abnormal effects on the player.

Run, run run run run run…

Jiaojiao ran all around the arena with her greatsword. She kept on running, and would only stop and face her enemy head-on when A Bucket of Paste went to attack the Berserker Ghoul.

“Shameless, the Queen is being shameless!”

“What a rascal! What even is going on?”

“Why are you running? This is Cooldown manipulation!”

“Cooldown manipulation, the Queen is shameless!”

The audience was displeased because the fight was nowhere near interesting. They were utterly disappointed.

The arduous five minutes have finally come to an end. Miss Jiao activated the Immortal Body to forcefully use the Undead Army.

Poof poof poof poof!

Black aura shot around the arena, and more than 80 ghouls had crawled out from the ground…