MMO: Pierce Heaven Til' It Breaks

Every platform in the Instance Dungeon had collapsed. The party members were split up as they were blown away by the raging winds.

Although the platform had disappeared, the Wind Ladders were still around. In order for them to defeat the final boss, Varian the Dwarf, they had to climb up the Wind Ladder into the sky and kite the boss down to the ground.

“Gather at coordinate 125477,122544. Stay put as Guild Master Dark Wing has gone out to pull the boss here. We should gather and prepare to fight it.” Xiao Changfeng shouted.

There was no need for many people to pull the boss over. All they needed was just one person.

Li Yi had told Xiao Changfeng beforehand that he would be the one to do the pulling.

The sky was filled with Wind Ladders. If the players did not know how to navigate around them, they would never be able to climb up even if they tried for a year. The navigation was much tougher than a labyrinth.

The Windstorm Platform had already been released for a few months. Although the correct path had been posted onto the forum, there were still only a handful of players who could climb up without dying.

Fortunately, climbing up the Wind Ladders was not an issue for Li Yi regardless if it was this life or the past life.

Xiao Changfeng had gathered the remaining party members at the bottom of the Instance Dungeon while Li Yi climbed up into the sky to pull the boss down. However, they could not sit around while waiting for him as a wave of monsters would spawn and ambush them every two minutes. It would not be a problem if they cleared out the wave in time or the spawns would accumulate and the party would be wiped out over time.

The players below Li Yi could not spot him by the time he reached the sky. He did not pull the boss directly. Instead, he kept climbing higher based on the path from his memory…

After some ten minutes of constantly climbing up, a white orb appeared above his head. Li Yi waited patiently for a Wind ladder to appear and leaped upward to it.

Activate!

The white orb started rotating and lighting up.

There were a total of seven orbs of different colors in the Windstorm Platform. The final boss’ difficulty would increase with each activation of the orbs. When all seven orbs were activated, the final boss from the Windstorm Platform would automatically enter Hell Mode.

Hell Mode was the most difficult mode for an Instance Dungeon. Not a single party had yet to successfully clear the Windstorm Platform in Hell Mode.

Li Yi did not activate any orb when the Wind Sword was dropped in the past life. He was clearing in normal mode and it was due to pure luck that an Epic-Level equipment had dropped. In order to replicate what had happened in the past life, he decided to use such a measure to increase the probability of such rare equipment being dropped.

Perhaps the worst equipment that would drop would be purple equipment by obtaining the first kill in Windstorm Platform at Hell Mode?

Li Yi was filled with confidence as he took a full hour to activate all seven orbs.

As all seven orbs lighted up, the final boss, Varian the Dwarf’s HP was immediately multiplied by ten. What was originally a 5,000,000 HP had instantly turned to 50,000,000 HP.

Li Yi shot an arrow at Varian as he slid down the Wind Ladders…

“Are you the one who took Maylia away? Curse you gods, for I shall take your life!” Varian the Dwarf chased after Li Yi in anger.

As Varian was a soul at the moment, he could fly freely in the sky at great speeds. He caught up to Li Yi within a matter of seconds. He swept a stream of chaotic wind at Li Yi, resulting in -565 damage appearing on Li Yi’s head.

“Hahahaha. Feel the pain!” Varian laughed out loud.

Xiao Changfeng was leading the party on the ground as they were sweeping the spawns with difficulty. The spawns had become much stronger since Li Yi had activated Hell Mode. The party members were on the verge of collapsing as they defended after a full hour.

“Guild Master Dark Wing has returned. We’re saved!” A Priest who had completely depleted his MP cheered merrily.

Li Yi glided down from the sky.

“Everyone prepare to battle.”

Li Yi started attacking as he assisted the party in cleaning up the spawns, in which the latter were quickly dealt with.

“Recover yourselves!” Xiao Changfeng shouted as all party members sat on the ground. They then proceeded to eat bread and drink water to recover their HP and MP which they had exhausted earlier.

Varian floated above everyone. Since the party did not attack him first, he would continue floating in the sky. This was to provide room for the players to strategize the battle.

“Guild Master Dark Wing. Isn’t the difficulty you’ve chosen a little bit too high?” Xiao Changfeng asked.

As long as the players were not a total idiot, it was as clear as day that Varian’s HP had increased by tenfold.

“It’s the Hell Mode!” One person screamed in shock.

“Guild Master Dark Wing, we’re just typical players and we don’t have great equipment like yours. Hell Mode might be too difficult for us to deal with.”

“The difficulty of the Instance Dungeon can no longer be changed. You may leave now if you’ve no confidence in yourself. However, what I want to say is that if we were to clear this Instance Dungeon, the rewards we will obtain will far exceed our efforts.”

“Let’s do it!”

“Since Guild Master Dark Wing has said so, I will not leave even if I die a hundred times.”

“Isn’t it just Hell Mode? Let’s do this!”

The party members were hyped up as they agreed to challenge Hell Mode. None of them left.

Xiao Changfeng spoke up. “It’s time for you to take command, Guild Master Dark Wing. I don’t think I can do it.”

Li Yi nodded as he stood up and briefed everyone on how to fight against the boss.

The Hell Mode Varian and the normal Varian were two completely different bosses as their strength was heaven and earth apart.

“Varian specializes in long-range attacks. When you’ve dealt a certain amount of damage to him, he would release a Retaliation Skill to counter you back. You must be extremely careful at this point. You have to stop attacking him or else the Retaliation Skill would take effect. If you hit him more than you should even once, you would definitely be killed in an instant.”

“Classes who are able to interrupt the boss must take note of more than just the Retaliation. All the boss’s skills must be interrupted once the channeling bar appears. Furthermore, all three main tanks would have to take turns to Taunt it every minute. We must not let his buff, the Wrath of the Wraith to stack for more than ten times.”

“Guild Master Dark Wing, what does the buff Wrath of the Wraith do?” someone asked.

Li Yi then explained it patiently. “The boss’ ATK will increase with each stack. Once it has been stacked ten times, the boss would release an area-wide Wrath of the Wraith and damage everyone. It’s very easy to be killed in one hit if you have a max HP of less than 1000. The Wrath of the Wraith’s stack effect would be reset if Taunt is used repetitively.

“How do you know all of these Guild Master Dark Wing. It’s not even stated online. Perhaps you’ve fought it before?”

“I’ve attempted it once with my guild members in the past but we failed. However not to worry, as I was only Level 30 back then.” Li Yi put on a slight smile as he casually answered.

Li Yi’s explanation was very detailed and he kept on repeating it until everyone understood the strategy before he nodded in satisfaction.

“Party Leader Changfeng, you can officially announce it now.”

“Ahem!”

Xiao Changfeng heightened his senses as he walked to the front with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Has everyone memorized what Guild Master Dark Wing had said earlier? This is a very rare opportunity and I hope that everyone can perform better than their usual selves. We have to persist and make no mistakes. This boss is simple to take down. All we have to do is to avoid Revenge Counter and be cautious of the Wrath of the Wraith…”

Everyone, who was originally very hyped up had lost their enthusiasm after hearing Xiao Changfeng’s longwinded and pointless speech.

It was all nonsense and it did not matter if he spoke or not.

“Is everyone ready?” Xiao Changfeng roared. As he obtained the green light behind him, he swept his hand and screamed, “Begin!”

The battle against the final boss began. An Archer used Mislead on the main tank as he threw everything he had at Varian that was floating in the sky.

“Are you the one who took Maylia away? Curse you gods, for I shall take your life!” Varian rushed down furiously as he started fighting back.

When Varian was in his soul form, he would always use a multi-target Wind Attribute Magic. The three main tanks were the one who took it head-on first and their HP was reduced by 1000+. The others did not escape from the attack as the residual attack had damaged everyone in the hundreds.

Varian did not have any single target skills and would always cast a multi-target skill whenever he attacked. The healers were put in a challenging position as not only they had to heal the tankers, they also had to heal those that were at low HP. Their reactions and equipment were an integral part of this challenge.

It would not be a problem for this casual party that was created on the fly to challenge the Normal Mode. However, it was obvious that they were not up to the task to challenge Hell Mode as two members had died after some ten seconds into fighting Varian.

They were Xiao Changfeng and Wind-on-Snow. These siblings were very unfortunate.

Li Yi shouted. “You must stop attacking the moment the boss casts Revenge Counter or else you’ll be dead in an instant!”

“My mistake… I’m sorry for the mistake!” Xiao Changfeng did not dare to push the blame on others and admitted to his mistakes as Li Yi called out.

The others were more cautious as they saw what happened to Xiao Changfeng. They stopped attacking immediately the moment the boss retaliated and would resume attacking when the healers had healed them up.

The first phase was rather difficult as they had to be wary of Revenge Counter and the Wrath of the Wraith. They should be fine as long as the healers did not make any major mistakes.

Li Yi’s DPS was in the tens of thousands and the damage he dealt was significant compared to eight to nine people’s DPS combined.

Li Yi dared to challenge Hell Mode as his Level was more than 60 whereas Varian was only Level 30. He was able to completely flatten out the boss with his current equipment.

Flattening, in definition, meant that he would not lose much HP when he was attacked by the boss. However, he would be able to ignore the boss’ DEF and deal additional damage when he attacked.

Li Yi even started using his Fire Arrows and this pushed his DPS to new heights. While the others had to be wary of Revenge Counter, he did not have to as the boss would deal less than 1000 damage whenever he was attacked. Since his HP was close to ten thousand, he could ignore it completely.

The Violent Bear King took some pressure off the main tanks’ shoulders as it helped out in the front. It was currently Level 58 and had a solid max HP of 10,000. It could also deal incredibly high damage as well as Varian lost at least 3000 HP as it swept its claws. Its damage would double when it landed a Critical Hit.

Varian’s HP continued to drop steadily. Although 50,000,000 HP was rather intimidating, Li Yi would not be in any danger as long as he did not make any mistakes as Varian did not have any burst skills in its first phase.

When Varian was left with around 20,000,000 HP, his attack pattern started to change. He no longer loitered on the ground. Instead, he flew up in the sky and transformed into a stream of chaotic wind. It would ambush and attack the party at random.

Varian in this phase was in Aggro Mode. It would randomly pick a target and ambush from the sky. His attacking speed was much faster than Charge and many members had died as they were not able to evade it in time.

“Everyone hold on. Everything will pass soon.” Xiao Changfeng started to panic as the party members started to die one after the other.

It was easy for Xiao Changfeng to speak as he was laying on the ground. Varian’s attack would not decrease because of him and a dozen people had died in the blink of an eye due to consecutive sneak attacks.

Jiaojiao had fallen. The healers had fallen. Ultimately, the main tanks were not able to escape their fates as they fall one after the other.

The entire party was left with one survivor as Varian’s HP was down to 10,000,000.

It was up to Li Yi!