The Terror of a Level 5 Elite
Su Luo pulled out a bottle of [Mana Potion], removed the stopper, and tipped his head back to drink it down. The cool liquid slid down his throat, then turned into a warm current that rapidly replenished his nearly depleted mana pool.
He held his right hand out flat, his gaze intensely focused.
Eight-Trigram Fireball Formation!
In an instant, sixty-four miniature fireballs, each the size of a pigeon's egg, appeared at his call. Rather than floating haphazardly, they were bound by precise, invisible paths, responding to one another to form a complex, stable three-dimensional formation above his palm. It radiated a terrifying pulse of energy.
He let go, and the miniature formation, filled with destructive power, drifted slowly downward as though it had been given life. Its trajectory was steady enough to make one hold their breath.
Su Luo looked down and fixed his gaze on the enormous figure below, precisely "delivering" the formation right in front of [Earthshaking Boulder]'s giant face, which was covered in spiraling fangs.
Boom—!
The deafening explosion once again resounded across the scorched earth! Blazing flames and billowing dust instantly swallowed the troll's head and nearly half its chest!
Yet when the dust and flames cleared, the sight made his heart sink.
The glaring flames were indeed clinging to its obsidian-like carapace and burning fiercely, but that was all.
It merely shook its relatively small head. Its carapace had become somewhat battered and even darker, as though tempered by intense heat. The [Crystal Core] on its chest had not dimmed at all. Instead, stimulated by the flames, it pulsed more strongly and shone with an increasingly dazzling light!
It simply stood stubbornly right beneath Su Luo, occasionally grabbing rubble from the ground and throwing it into the sky.
Su Luo spread his hands. There was nothing he could do.
His compound spell with the greatest explosive power and destructive force had gone off right in its face, yet the thing still looked completely unharmed.
Bro, if you're going to be like this, why don't we just call this round your win?
Su Luo continued trying helplessly. Over twenty minutes, he drank the remaining three bottles of [Mana Potion] and whipped up seven Fireball Formations to throw at [Earthshaking Boulder]'s face.
Explosions rang out one after another, and the ground was blasted apart repeatedly.
Amid this intense, nearly exhausting expenditure and manipulation of mana, Su Luo suddenly caught a subtle change in the numbers on his personal panel.
[Mana: 21 (↑1)]
His mana attribute had actually increased by one point during battle!
He immediately recalled something some survivors had shared on the forums: repeatedly pushing an attribute to its limit under extreme conditions had a very small chance of triggering a breakthrough and naturally increasing that attribute. He hadn't expected to see it happen to himself today.
Normally, a breakthrough in battle was unlikely to begin with. Even if one did occur, it should only have raised his maximum mana by a tiny amount, not directly added a point to his mana attribute and greatly increased his mana.
That could only be credited to the system's mighty power.
"Not bad. At least this wasn't a total waste."
Feeling a little better, Su Luo released another Fireball Formation and thoughtfully fed it to [Earthshaking Boulder].
[Earthshaking Boulder]'s carapace had cracked, and the crystal on its chest had spread like a living thing, flowing over its entire body to form crystal armor that covered every crack in its carapace and gleamed with a magnificent, hard luster.
This new armor was even more ridiculous. Three Fireball Formations had blasted it without leaving so much as a mark.
Su Luo was numb. He finally gave up on the pointless attacks and stopped paying attention to the behemoth below, which continued to roar soundlessly and pound the earth in vain because it couldn't reach him.
Su Luo focused his mind and let the breeze carry him as he entered a state of meditation in midair, doing his utmost to restore his nearly depleted mental strength and mana.
[That defense is ridiculous.]
[Honest question: what's the deal with that monster's crystal?]
[Why not freeze it with a freezing spell, then heat it with fireballs to weaken its armor? Haven't you ever played a game?]
[What nonsense is the person above spouting? Have games rotted your brain? What about the carapace's heat conductivity? Besides, embrittling a material this tough and hard would require an extremely long buildup of low temperatures, assisted by temperatures below negative two hundred degrees...]
[Secondly, we don't know what the carapace is made of. If it has biomineralized structures like calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate, freezing and thawing would only make it denser...]
[But it's crystal armor now.]
[Then it makes even less sense. A crystal of that caliber would need a temperature difference of at least a thousand degrees in an instant to crack from stress. Freezing and heating it would probably make it tougher.]
[Didn't understand, but you wrote a lot, so you're awesome.]
[Just got here. Why is the streamer sleeping?]
[He can't hurt it... Is this what a Level 5 elite is like?]
[Whenever I think about how we'll have to face monsters like this someday, I want to laugh.]
[I'm suddenly starting to feel like I can't survive.]
[My nostrils ache from thinking too hard: Boss Su Luo can one-shot me with a fireball → Boss Su Luo's strongest spell can't hurt this monster → I'm level 2, it's level 5 → What kind of demonic curve does this level system and attribute growth have?!]
A trace of despair spread through the Livestream Room, but at the same time, a longing and awe for the powerful system of power that awaited in the future quietly began to grow.
Would they, too, have a chance to reach or even surpass such heights in the days ahead?
[Wave seven ended]
[Challenge failed]
The system notifications appeared coldly.
As the notification sounded, Su Luo clearly felt the oppressive Fighting Alone effect that had surrounded him all this time finally dissipate.
Below, [Earthshaking Boulder] let out a soundless roar of unwillingness at Su Luo in the sky, a roar that made the air tremble. Then its massive body slowly receded, disappearing into the darkness in the distance.
Su Luo slowly landed on the still-scorching, vitrified ground and let out a long breath.
Although he hadn't defeated the monsters of the seventh wave, what he had learned about monsters with high attributes and that one-point increase to his mana attribute made him feel it hadn't been a loss.
He found a relatively flat spot to sit down, opened the system interface, and waited for the system to tally the results. The Monster Tide wasn't completely over yet, and the other two Livestream Rooms were still active.
Song Shige and Ye Xu had both chosen to challenge the eighth wave.
"Let's see what a normal-difficulty Monster Tide looks like," Su Luo murmured to himself after resting for a moment. He entered [Song Shige]'s Livestream Room.
On the screen, Song Shige still stood like a god of war atop the walls of his Level 3 Sanctuary. The flames of [Flame Attachment] on his body were denser and more violent than before, like a suit of flowing flame armor.
He was currently facing his eighth wave of attackers.
The monster pack below consisted of three level 4 ordinary monsters, [Bedrock Berserker]s, and ten level 3 ordinary [Shadow Ripper]s. Their assault was fierce.
But Song Shige showed no fear. He even leaped down from the wall, swinging his burning Zhanmadao into a whirlwind of death. Alternating between [Explosive Flame] and [Flowing Fire], he fought his way in and out of the monster pack. His brutally violent fighting style drew frenzied cheers from the Livestream Room chat.
Clearly, without the Fighting Alone debuff, the monsters he faced weren't even in the same league as Su Luo's.
He had single-handedly cut down the Monster Tide and protected his Sanctuary.
[666, Boss Song is his Sanctuary's sanctuary.]
[Insane!]
[The gap in strength is way too huge... Survivors aren't supposed to be challenging a Monster Tide at this wave at all. Only bosses with cheats like him would dare.]
[Facing an army all alone, just to protect that one behind him... Boo-hoo, you couldn't ask for a better husband than Boss.]
[Showing off your depression now, are you...]
Su Luo watched for a while and nodded slightly.
Song Shige's individual abilities were so powerful that his Sanctuary was practically useless against a Monster Tide of this level.
After all, he was just too overpowered...