Translator: Sparrow Translations Editor: Sparrow Translations
After they had killed the Fantasy Serpent, the path in Hurricane Cavern became much clearer.
After walking for several minutes, they reached a fork in the road.
“Should we go to the left or to the right?” Sanguine Warflag asked.
Because the Hurricane Cavern was a dungeon, there were no minimaps to guide the players along the way. They did not know which path would lead them to the boss/
“Just go to the right, as with all other games.” Fearless decided.
Walking on the right, just like holding your hand to the wall in a maze, was an age old tradition in games. Players often just chose the path of the right in this sorts of situations.
After taking the path on the right, they encountered another group of monsters.
<Hidden Serpent (LV35) (Elite)>
HP: 20000
MP: 1000
Skills: [Conceal], [Venomous Ambush]
These serpentes were gray in color which allowed them to blend in very well with their surroundings. If one didn’t pay attention to their surroundings, they probably wouldn’t have seen it.
Other than the fact that these monster’s still made “ssss” sounds like normal snakes did, their movements were completely silent.
The difference between this monster and the Golden Ring Snake and Silver Ring Snake, was that they were spread quite evenly distributed around the area. But once they attacked, they would do so in a large wave.
Because of their torches, the players had accidentally drawn the aggro of all the Hidden Serpent’s in the area. Their hearts had nearly jumped out of their chests just looking at these monster’s attributes and skills.
[Conceal] was pretty much similar to a Thief’s [Stealth]. But in a since they had no way to detect the presence of these monsters once they used their skills, players often dreaded these kinds of foes.
[Venomous Ambush], not only did it do additional damage to the players, it could even poison them… an attack of this degree from a level 35 elite monsters was more than enough to kill these level 20 players two times over.
Furthermore, there were no landforms that the players could hide behind to dodge the attacks from these Hidden Serpents. Even if they were to use a defensive formation, there was no way to completely prevent these monsters from getting behind them.
It looked like Abyss tier dungeons weren’t that easy to clear after all…
“Don’t panic!” Fearless hurriedly shouted when he saw that everyone else was starting to lose it: “Everyone, move back! Towards your 5 o’clock position!”
Everyone listened to Fearless’ command as they retreated to a much narrower position. Fearless pointed at two rocks by their side as he shouted: “Get two Guardians to stand here!”
Heaven’s Bird and Sanguine Wall immediately ran to the position that Fearless had pointed out.
“But we probably can’t stop them all even in this position…” Heaven’s Bird complained.
The path in Hurricane Cavern was roughly nine metres wide. Even if these two Guardians stood in between these two large rocks, they would only cover about five metres. There was still a gap of four metres.
“What do you want to block them for? Let them in!” Fearless laughed.
“Let them in? Then what’s the difference from fighting the whole swarm of them head on?” Everyone grumbled.
“The difference is huge! This way, we can lure them in and slowly kill them!” Fearless explained.
These monsters that could hide themselves were rather similar to Thieves. They had decent burst damage but extremely low sustained damage. Once they failed their first attack, they would hide themselves and prepare for the next one…
But the problem everyone was thinking of now was how to effectively trap the monsters…
There were no Dark Shamans in this party so trying to use crowd control on them was quite hard. But even if they had a Dark Shaman, trying to trap all these monsters in a single [Distortion] went beyond the ability of a normal player.
Fearless’ solution to this was to use a formation to lure them in an skill them in one fell swoop…
“You must be joking right? Even if we line all fourteen of us up in a single row, we’d only be eight or nine metres long… we can’t even block the whole path and you want us to surround them?” Sanguine Warflag asked.
“If we’re dealing with this kind of stupid monsters, it’ll be fine as long as they don’t change aggro. We just need to just this formation!” Fearless explained as he showed a V shape with his hands.
“A formation again…” The expressions on the faces of the players of the Sanguine Alliance immediately became serious when they saw Fearless’ hands.
Everyone here knew that regardless of whether they were clearing a dungeon or fight a guild war, a proper formation would make the difference between victory or defeat. Every guild had their own special formation.
In a battle where both parties had the same strength, victory would go to the one with superior tactics.
Everyone immediately perked their ears when they heard Fearless mention a formation.
Formations were used in the past, before the advent of missiles. But these formations had already become stuffs of legends in the eyes of people in society.
Even though these sorts of online games were set in an era of might and magic, what kind of player would have so much time as to analyse tactics and formations?
But the players from the Quan Zhen Sect were different from the regular players, they only had six players to begin with… this ragtag bunch of lawless players had always been hunted down regardless of what games they played in the past. But these experiences had given them plenty of opportunity to test their ideas.
Everyone knew that they Quan Zhen Sect was deceitful and cunning, in fact none of the guilds that had ever faced them were able to see through their ploys.
But what Sanguine Warflag realised today was that being cunning wasn’t the only reason that a small guild like the Quan Zhen Sect could defeat them. One of their key success factors were these fabled formations.
The V shaped formation was one of the formations that the Quan Zhen Sect always used.
The people at the front were to act as baits. Once they had lured the attention of the enemies, their teammates would strike when the enemies revealed themselves to kill the bait.
But because they were in a PVE, the two tanks couldn’t really be considered baits, they were merely there to block the path. Behind the tanks were four Assassins and behind them stood Wang Yu and Sanguine Warflag, protecting the Priests and Magicians in the back line.
Everyone followed Fearless’ instruction as they neatly formed up.
“Boss Fearless, what should I do?” Sanguine Asura dejectedly asked when he noticed that he was the only one left out.
“Lure the monsters over!” Fearless pointed into the distance.
“But I’m a Warrior… you want a close ranged player like me to lure them over? Boss Fearless, are you sure there aren’t any misunderstandings between us…” Sanguine Asura began to suspect that Fearless had a hidden motive behind his decision to send him to the lure monsters over.
“What the f*ck are you whining about? I asked you to lure them over not to go there and die! What, you want to take over me to perform the healing?”
“I…”
Sanguine Asura was beside himself in rage, but he held himself back.
He knew that the person that was guiding them through this dungeon was Fearless. If Fearless was so cruel as to ask him to lure the monsters over this time, there was no telling what Fearless would make him do next if he had offended Fearless.