MMO: Pierce Heaven Til’ It Breaks

“Please select the dungeon difficulty that you wish to challenge…”

Normal, Advanced, Heroic, Regal, Hell.

In the dark, a multiple-choice panel had appeared and floated before Li Yi’s eyes.

Soul Gate dungeon had five difficulty levels. There were no requirements imposed on them, and players could choose whichever difficulty they wanted.

Shangguan Bailu asked, “What should we select?”

Everyone had their eyes on Li Yi. He was the party leader and would be calling the shots once they entered the dungeon.

Li Yi thought for a long time before he finally said the word that failed to excite many. “Normal!”

Brother Windcloud Nine was taken aback. “Did you just say that we’re going to go for Normal mode?”

“We should first familiarize ourselves with the dungeon.”

Even Jiaojiao was unwilling to do so. “Even if we don’t do Inferno mode, we should at least go for Heroic or Regal, right? Lil’ Yizi, I never thought that you’re the kind to shrink away from a challenge like this.”

Ouyang Qian agreed with the previous sentiment. “I agree with Lil’ Jiao’s point. While our party might not claim to be the best skilled in the server, we’re still considered the cream of the crop, no? You’re now asking us to go for the Normal mode for a dungeon that only opens once every half-month? This… This doesn’t really live up to our reputation.”

Many party members had joined in the discussion. Aside from Li Yi and a few others, many felt that they should go for a harder mode.

They could not be blamed for their actions, though. After all, Miss Jiaojiao had gotten the 10 million Gold Coins quite easily. Thus, this had indirectly caused many to underestimate Soul Gate dungeon’s difficulty and assume it was nothing to worry about. Even if they could not defeat the Soul King, just seeing him should be easy to do.

The first player to enter Soul Gate would obtain 10 million Gold Coins as a reward!

The first player to be embraced by the Soul King would obtain 10 million Gold Coins as a reward!

The first party to kill the Soul King would obtain one Epic-level soul mount for each member of the party!

The first party to kill the King of Souls in Hell Mode would obtain one Epic-level flying soul mount for each member of the party!

Now, the reward for entering Soul Gate had already been obtained by Queen Jiao. No one had gotten the hug reward yet, though, and many people were hoping to get the 10 million Gold Coins reward from getting embraced by the Soul King.

Li Yi said lightly, “Anyone that does not want to do it can quit the party.”

“Lil’ Yizi, this is tyranny, I will not give…”

Before Jiaojiao could finish her sentence with the word ‘in’, Li Yi had kicked her out of the party without any hesitation.

All of the party members were stunned.

“Everyone will be treated equally. All members who do not wish to join us can quit the party now.”

Many people were dumbfounded by this. No one dared to speak anymore.

“Ahem, I don’t have any opinions on this.” Brother Windcloud Nine was the first to comment. In this party, there were seven players from the Whole of Windcloud. This was the only way he could express his opinion and stance.

“You dare to kick me out? Wah, wah, wah, I’ll fight you to the death!” Jiaojiao was so enraged that she started to shout and scream. However, before she could run towards Li Yi, she was forcefully sent to another dimension.

The Mirror Dimension that Li Yi and the others were in was the party mirror. Jiaojiao was kicked out of the party, and she would be forcefully sent away to an individual mirror dimension.

The individual mirror dimensions were where party-less individual players were sent to so that they could contact others to form a party.

“Another one has come in. Hey? Do you want to form a party?”

Jiaojiao heard a harsh female voice the moment she had entered the mirror dimension. She raised her head to find that the person speaking was The Cat that Sings. There were only five players within the individual mirror dimension, The Cat that Sings included.

“Yes!”

Jiaojiao was still furious, and she had agreed to the proposition without much thought.

The Cat that Sings clapped happily. “Now we have six of us. Don’t be anxious, once we have ten of us, we’ll start killing everything and their dad if they’re in our way.”

…

Jiaojiao had joined The Cat that Sings’ party. Li Yi did not ask her to rejoin his party either. He clicked on ‘Confirm’ and led all 23 of his party members to teleport into the Soul Land.

Within the black space, countless spirits floated around. In this place called the Soul Land, it was natural that the types of monsters present were soul-related.

Li Yi ordered, “Brother Nine, Unmatched, Mad Dragon, go forward! Others, stay on standby!”

The three main tanks had charged forward, each taking a direction to pull the spirit monsterlings together.

It required great skill for the main tanks to gather the monsterlings together. The monsterlings were very spread out, and it was not easy to gather all of them together. Thus, gathering monsterlings as quickly as possible was one of the basic benchmarks to evaluate whether a main tank was good or not.

Unending Unmatched was the quickest. By piercing left and right with his sword, Taunting, Thunder Striking and throwing a javelin faraway, he had quickly gathered a bunch of monsters. Mad Dragon was not too bad either, as he was only slightly behind Unending Unmatched after roaring at the front and turning to stomp at the back. He had attracted a group of monsterlings too.

Among the three famous main tanks, only Brother Windcloud Nine had poor skills when it came to gathering monsterlings. After exerting a huge effort and running back for a long time, he had only managed to gather four monsterlings with him. Many monsterlings were still wandering around him…

When it came to equipment, Brother Windcloud Nine was better than both Unending Unmatched and Mad Dragon combined. However, when it came to skill in gathering monsters, ten Brother Windcloud Nines would not match up to even one Unending Unmatched. One of the main reasons he was ranked the lowest in the top ten main tanks ranking in the past life was his monster gathering skills.

“Everyone, don’t deal damage for now. Wait for me to gather all of them before you start attacking!”

Brother Windcloud Nine was so busy that sweat had started appearing on his forehead. He had finally managed to gather all of the spirit monsterlings around him together after all the spirit monsterlings that Unending Unmatched and Mad Dragon were already killed…

Brother Windcloud Nine was overjoyed. “You can start dealing damage now!”

The DPS players replied with a resounding ‘Okay’. After just a few splatters of attacks, three of the spirit monsterlings had escaped the group and ran towards the crowd.

Brother Windcloud Nine managed to get one of them back to him after using Taunt. However, the other two were stopped by Unending Unmatched and Mad Dragon. Thanks to them, the party had closely evaded potential disaster.

These spirit monsterlings were not to be underestimated. Each of them had an extremely high attack power and would definitely take out a DPS or Healer in three hits if they came into contact with them.

Brother Windcloud Nine was feeling quite awkward. “Next time, attack slower. Start attacking only after I have a steady aggro.”

“Hubby, you’re the best! Good luck!” Sister Windcloud Nine chose this inopportune moment to cheer Brother Nine on. As a result, Brother Nine’s face flushed red for a moment before it turned pale. The atmosphere became somewhat more awkward.

“Let’s continue. Everyone, pay close attention.”

The three famous main tanks marched forward again so that they could attract and gather the monsters.

Brother Windcloud Nine still did not improve much. Even though he managed to gather the monsterlings with much difficulty, he could not maintain his aggro. Once the DPS players started to attack, there would at least be a few monsterlings that would OT (over-threat) …

Brother Windcloud Nine awkwardly said, “There’s something wrong with these spirits. Their aggro keeps shifting.”

The naive Sister Nine asked again, “Hubby, why didn’t the monsters of the other main tanks shift their aggro?”

“Hahaha…”

Everyone in the party laughed.

Brother Windcloud Nine glared at Sister Windcloud Nine. The level of awkwardness was off the charts. After all, it was very embarrassing for a main tank if they could not control the aggro of monsterlings.

After clearing a dozen more waves of monsterlings, Brother Windcloud Nine’s performance was still the same. Everyone else did not comment much on that. Only Sister Windcloud Nine was still enthusiastically cheering him on.

In the end, Li Yi could not stand by and watch on anymore. He secretly messaged Sister Windcloud Nine and told her, “Stop talking so much, your husband is going to have a breakout soon.”

“A breakout?”

“He’s getting angry soon.”

“Why?”

Sister Windcloud Nine was stunned for a moment. She stared at Li Yi with wide eyes, naive and innocent, clear as crystal…

” You keep hitting him in the face. It would be weird if he wasn’t angry. ¹ ”

“I didn’t, right? How would I… I…”

“Just stop talking and you’ll be fine.”

“Oh…”

When clearing the final wave of the spirit monsterlings, Brother Windcloud Nine had performed amazingly by attracting the 13 spirit monsterlings around him together in one go. That was much quicker than Unending Unmatched and Mad Dragon.

The DPS players dealt damage, and all 13 spirit monsterlings just stayed tethered until they died. None of them had over-tanked (OT).

Unending Unmatched gave Brother Windcloud Nine a thumbs-up. “That was gorgeous!”

Others chipped in their praises. Brother Windcloud Nine was greatly pleased and turned to look at his partner. However, he found Sister Windcloud Nine staring at the sky. She was not even looking at him during his performance.

“This dumb woman…” Brother Windcloud Nine was entirely speechless…

After all 200 spirit monsterlings were cleared, a gust of black air appeared from the middle of the Soul Land. In a blink of an eye, one giant spirit had appeared before them. A golden name had appeared above its head – Spirit Lord.

Unending Unmatched asked, “Guild Master, how should we attack this Boss?”

Li Yi pointed with his hand, “Let’s charge!”

“Don’t you have any strategies for this?”

“Just like all of you, this is my first attempt in clearing this dungeon. What do you want me to strategize about?”

“Oh, oh. Charge, charge!”

The three main tanks rushed forward simultaneously, forming a triangle to surround the Spirit Lord.

The Spirit Lord was not the subordinate of the Soul King. Instead, it was naturally formed due to the overwhelming resentment concentrated in the area. Its status among the other spirit monsters around the area was just slightly lower than the Spirit King that Li Yi had sealed.

Once the three main tanks had attacked, the HP bar above Spirit Lord’s head appeared. It had a total of 30 million HP.

When the main tanks’ attacks landed on it, the highest damage value that appeared was [-2113]. All other damage values averaged at less than a hundred. Needless to say, as a main tank, only Brother Windcloud Nine’s reinforced equipment set allowed him to deal a terrifyingly high damage of [-2113]…

The Spirit Lord’s attack methods were very one-dimensional as it only swung both of its arms to randomly. If it smashed a main tank, it would cause around 20,000 damage. If the same attack had landed onto DPS players or healers, one hit was enough to kill them immediately.

Thankfully, the Spirit Lord’s attack rate was not too high. It would swing its arms for a while and rest afterwards. The healers did not feel any pressure when it comes to healing the main tanks, and the three main tanks had maintained their HP at above 80% throughout.

“Is this a dummy boss? Does it only know how to swing its arms?”

After a while of attacks, many had realized that this Spirit Lord that seemed fierce and huge to the eye only knew how to swing its arms around to attack. As long as one did not stand right in front of it as if they were acting like targets, it was entirely possible to kill the Spirit Lord without taking any damage.

Only the main tanks would stand before the Boss to act as targets. Any melee DPS with average intelligence would know to stand behind the Boss and stab at it right on its arsehole.

The Dwarf commander Shangguan Bailu shouted, “This Boss is easy! Everyone, put in more effort so that we can kill it as quick as possible!”

Even though she was petite, her shouts were so powerful and solid that everyone in the party could hear clearly.

When the Spirit Lord’s HP had dropped to around 5 million, it suddenly boosted its attacks. Though its attack was still very one-dimensional, its attack rate had increased by a great margin. From the initial one arm swing per second, it has increased to three to four arm swings per second.

Once the frequency had increased, the pressure on the main tanks increased exponentially too!

Soon, Unending Unmatched and Mad Dragon could not stand it anymore. Even though the healers had tried to heal them with all their might, their HP could not be raised much and would fluctuate around the low 10% HP mark. It was entirely possible that the main tanks would fall at any time.

“Both of you, stand back and heal your HP! I’ll take him!”

Brother Windcloud Nine roared. His HP was still more than 70%, and there was no problem for him to take the Spirit Lord head on.

Brother Windcloud Nine might not do well in tanking monsterlings, but he was definitely the No.1 in the entire server when it comes to taking on these brainless, violent dummy Bosses.

Brother Windcloud Nine handled the Spirit Lord by himself and still managed to maintain his HP at over 60%. The party members were all cheering for him. Meanwhile, Sister Windcloud Nine was so anxious just by watching her husband that she had forgotten Li Yi’s warning. With both hands cupped around her mouth, she shouted, “Hubby, don’t be stubborn and try to be a hero…”

Whack! Whack!

The Spirit Lord hit Brother Windcloud Nine twice in a row. Brother Windcloud Nine was distracted by Sister Windcloud Nine to the point that he had forgotten to use Block so that the damage taken could be reduced. His HP immediately plummeted to below 30%…