MMORPG: The Elementalist

Aaugh!

In the midst of his blinding pain, the Gale Garuda was caught off-guard by the abruptly surfacing Elite Phantom Skeleton from the water and suffered the sudden impact head on.

***

The Elite Phantom Skeleton hit the Gale Garuda.

683 damage inflicted on the Gale Garuda.

Triggered the Sap effect which Stuns for three seconds.

Plop!

The gigantic silver predator was taken down in spectacular fashion by the Tier 5 Miniboss. The eagle dropped, head-first after the attack as if it was a clay pigeon shot down by a hunter. The gigantic bird shrieked, flipped and nosedived into the sea.

“Good job!” Qin Ruo jumped out of excitement.

He had never put high hopes in the first place and never expected that the Elite Phantom Skeleton could really snipe down the Gale Garuda on its first try.

“How fortunate, haha!!! Curse your own bad luck for having the Skeleton as your enemy.” Qin Ruo gloated at the misfortune of the silver bird. “This was initially planned to be used against the Jebel Pangolin. I do not believe that it will be equally effective against a flying monster. A king of the sky is just a vulnerable prey inside the water. Here’s my chance to finish you once and for all!!”

Thrilled, Qin Ruo stopped flying and directly retracted his Angelic Wings. His body dived down with incredible speed as he activated Aquamorph and fused with the seawater without a trace. He used his Water Elemental Perception to first locate the whereabouts of the Gale Garuda before approaching it rapidly while condensing a Fatal Frost Crystal on his palm.

At the same time, the Amethyst Orc which stood by the shore also began to act. It began striding with its giant feet and splashed up huge waves with each step. The Amethyst Orc was rapidly approaching in Qin Ruo’s direction.

Though the charging time of Fatal Frost Crystal was relatively long, he still had enough time as he was being protected by Poochie and the fact that the Garuda was stunned for three seconds.

Zapp!

A bolt of golden lightning skipped across the sea surface and headed toward the Gale Garuda at high speed.

Although the ambushed Boss was brought down to the sea, the eagle had prevented itself from drowning by supporting its large body with its ten-meter-long silver wings right above the sea surface.

This in turn provided a perfect chance for Poochie. If the Boss was submerged completely under the sea instead, the Shadowfox would not be able to activate its Clone Shadow Strike under the sea. Even if it did, the effect of the attack would be greatly diminished.

Four golden figures glided toward the target through the water surface.

After four solid knocks, another series of painful shrieks were heard coming out from the Garuda’s beak. The poor Gale Garuda was once again stunned before it could even recover from the previous one.

This time, for nine whole seconds!

Qin Ruo did not loosen up despite the growing advantage. It had been gained by a series of successive blind luck moments and he did not want to celebrate prematurely.

After Poochie bought him enough time, Qin Ruo daringly resurfaced and saw the condition of the half-floating Boss. An idea came to his mind and he consciously suppressed his urge to immediately release the Fatal Frost Crystal.

***

The Attack Speed of Elite Phantom Skeleton on the sea was restrained, but the power of its Bandit-like defense-ignoring attack would not be diminished. Standing in water that reached its stomach, a pair of short trident-like weapons danced rapidly in its hand and trimmed away thousands of HP from the Gale Garuda.

The approaching Amethyst Orc leapt as soon as it sensed the hindrance in the seawater. The monster landed back on top of the dense part of seawater modified by Qin Ruo and began sprinting toward the Gale Garuda, leaving behind two rows of ripples.

The Amethyst Orc came to a halt when it was close enough and wasted no time to pounce on the gold crown of the Gale Garuda’s head with one after another imposing punch.

Although the damage of the Shadowfox was the least among the three, Qin Ruo did not spare his Pet and instructed Poochie to attack consecutively with Amethyst Orc and Elite Phantom Skeleton to quicken the destruction of the Gale Garuda.

As the three Pets joined forces and ravaged the Gale Garuda, several Aqua Ramparts were promptly ejected out from the sea surface at an insane rate (2-3 ramparts per second).

A few seconds later, more than ten Frost Ramparts were seen surrounding the Gale Garuda. It was an astounding sight.

Poof!

The Elite Phantom Skeleton no longer hesitated and jumped hard vertically.

Simultaneously…

“Freeze!!” Following the crisp yelling along with the resonance created by the activation of the Twelve Frost Ramparts Formation, the sea surface within a thirty-meter radius of the spell formation was instantaneously turned into solid ice by the sudden burst of frosty aura.

Clank!

The Elite Phantom Skeleton landed back steadily on the frosted land. Without any delay, the Skeleton resumed its assault on the Gale Garuda which had now lay beneath it.

Once the Twelve Frostramparts Formation was activated, the stunned Gale Garuda was immediately trapped inside the ice sheet with only a quarter of its body exposed. Other parts of its body were now frozen under the thick ice.

This turned the Tier 6 Megaboss into an easy target, free to be bashed by Qin Ruo and his three pets.

While the Stun effect was still active, the Fatal Frost Crystal had reached in fast. Trailing that were the Skeleton’s Sap and Poison Sting, Poochie’s Clone Shadow Strike, and Amethyst Orc’s powerful punches. Under such a heavy barrage of attacks, the Gale Garuda’s HP dipped like water pouring out from a ruptured dam.

“Damn!”

The impressive Tier 6 Megaboss had fallen into a deathtrap in a blink of an eye. The grandiose Gale Garuda certainly did not foresee this as it was deceived into pursuing Qin Ruo from a thousand meters away beyond the shore. Resentment showed through its eyes but the eagle was given no chance to retaliate. The Megaboss constantly suffered from Stun and Frozen effects subsequently one after another. Its brain that protruded above the icy layer was pounded for hundreds or even thousands of times. The human intruder seemed to enjoy torturing and did not ease up the attack until the Garuda’s HP finally reached zero.

***

“270,000…”

“Still 270,000.”

In the few minutes prior to this, numerous players couldn’t even remember how many times they had summoned the leaderboard to check the changes in player rankings.

However, nothing drastic happened other than a few Veteran Champions who had just casually climbed to a higher spot.

The leader of the rankings was still Qin Ruo with 270,000 points, which had been stagnant for quite some time now.

Demon Faction players were more than happy to see the inactivity on the Winter Demon’s point count. However, those from the Angel Faction couldn’t be more nervous.

The number of Demon Faction players on the leaderboard surpassed those from the Angel Faction by at least fivefold. The former also occupied most of the higher ranks. This more or less made the Angel Faction players feel ashamed for themselves.

The only consolation they had now was the fact that the top spot in the rankings was still currently held by an Angel Faction player.

However, Qin Ruo’s points had remained unchanged for the past four to five minutes.

This inevitably made those following the rankings feverishly anxious. Many began to speculate on whether Qin Ruo had already completed the previous round and entered a new phase of the contest. The tension was especially prominent when the ten players falling behind Qin Ruo had just increased their points from 200,000 to 267,000.

“…”

“Perhaps he’ll lose the top spot soon…”

Everyone was aware that the few thousand points of advantage would just evaporate in a matter of minutes. Besides, although the number of upcoming Champions had increased significantly, there was still no clear sign of the more critical players. This further exacerbated the uncertainty of current ranking.

“Only God knows how different the rankings will look if these key players suddenly decided to put the pedal to the metal.”

Winter Demon was definitely stronger than Majestic Hero and Netherclaw in the Angel Faction, but could he really compete with the Demon Faction? Did Qin Ruo, a Level 54 player, have what it took to topple the Level 57 Sinistress and Savior? Could he actually leapfrog over each and every Level 54 Champion (about fifty of them) from the Demon Faction?

Of course, while putting all their bets on Qin Ruo, quite a number of Angel Faction players had also quietly put in their best effort.

After all, this “once in a hundred thousand” competition was a rare opportunity for every H&G player. This was the chance for them to showcase their capabilities and talent!

Winter Demon might have been the most famous, but he was not necessarily the strongest in the Angel Faction. There were still a lot of unknown Champions hidden from the spotlight. Even for these types of players who had distanced themselves from the gaming community were unsure about how strong they were in relative to other players on the Mythical Continent.

They might have shied away from other battles, but this time, they swore to be the brightest star among the best of the best.

Besides that, most Veteran Champions from the Angel Faction had also started to get more active in the competition.

With an enormous burden on their shoulders, they had waited previously in order to gather more comprehensive intel before entering the battlefield.

However, the circumstance on the ranking had skewed way above their initial forecast. If they didn’t act now, not only would the Angel Faction lose its reputation and confidence, these veterans might also completely lose the chance to individually catch up to the frontrunners.

This would then be an unthinkably demoralizing blow to the pride of these egoistic veterans.

***

At the third level of a random Mythical Mirage.

Inside the forest, a Demon Faction Elementalist flapped his Demonic Wings urgently and sped through the woods.

Three concave shaped purple rings around his body continuously emitted a faint-blue electrical discharge. The three mysterious rings moved together in a circular motion from top to bottom, then bottom to top.

“Two minutes, only two more minutes left. Fuck! Where are all the monsters? Where the hell have they gone for god’s sake…” The Elementalist murmured with his fast-moving lips and quickly scanned the forest around him.

With every passing second, the Elementalist grew more impatient and grumpy. “Fuck! I only need a thousand points more and you all went missing on me!!!”

That’s right, this dude was the second-ranked Demon Faction Champion with 269,000 points under his belt—Jungle Cobra.

So far, he had taken down a Tier 6 Megaboss and a few Minibosses in this fifth phase. Seeing that he only needed another one thousand points to overtake Qin Ruo and to also temporarily hold the top spot, he suddenly lost sight of viable targets near his region. Most monsters there had already been exterminated by him.

Like most players, Jungle Cobra could not understand why such misfortune was befalling him and he cursed helplessly. After a while, he finally found what he was looking for—Not one but a horde of them.

“Haha!” Though only at Tier 5, the sheer number of monsters should be sufficient to top up the extra one thousand points that he needed in time.

The Elementalist felt triumphant.

“Die now!”

The three rings glowing with halos of purple electrical discharge were immediately shot out. The rings split apart the air and easily killed the monster nearest to the front by cutting it into several pieces.

The Elementalist dashed into the horde with an insatiably destructive force as he continuously commanded the rings to tackle one after another Tier 5 monster. Every monster killed earned him one hundred points.

However, after half a minute and more than ten kills later, the Elementalist who was now hovering above the mountain of corpses still did not receive the notification that would have confirmed his promotion on the ranking.

“What’s wrong?” The Elementalist frowned and summoned out the leaderboard with clear dissatisfaction…”Fuck me! Why am I forever stuck in second place?”