Golden Wyrm

After ending his call with Lan Yu, Lu Yang continued leveling like mad, determined to claim first place on the Level Rankings before the game servers shut down tomorrow morning.

This was no ordinary first place. It meant standing out among tens of millions of players who had all started at the same time, a feat that would be officially recorded in the future.

In his previous life, Lu Yang had remained unknown during the early days of the game. Even after gaining the ability to establish a guild, most of the skilled players had already been snapped up by the major guilds.

Since he had been reborn in this life, Lu Yang decided to make a name for himself from the very beginning. Even if he did not establish a guild early on, he could still form an elite team of twenty. It would make dungeon runs and leveling in the wilderness much more convenient.

Lu Yang was not worried about becoming a target. The game closely resembled reality; players had neither health bars nor names above their heads. Unless they added each other as friends, they had no way of knowing who stood before them. Even if someone was unhappy that he had taken first place on the Level Rankings, among more than ten million players, they would never find him in the crowd.

The thought of surpassing the leaders of the major guilds and all the leveling fanatics to become number one on the first day's Level Rankings made Lu Yang feel thrilled. Once his mana had fully recovered, he continued farming monsters.

He kept at it until he had killed every bison in the valley. Looking at the empty ground littered with nothing but bison corpses, Lu Yang felt a little depressed.

He had killed several hundred bison in a row, yet not a single piece of equipment had dropped. Lu Yang could not help sighing at just how abysmal the drop rate in Second World was.

Fortunately, everything in Second World mirrored the real world. Players could use life skills such as skinning on the bison, then sell the materials to NPCs in the beginner village. Otherwise, ordinary players simply could not afford to play this game.

After eating a piece of Crispy Electric Eel Meat to restore his mana to full, Lu Yang used the rope to descend into the U-shaped valley and began skinning the bison corpses within.

A piece of cowhide was worth three copper coins. It was not much, but every little bit counted.

As Lu Yang skinned the corpses while keeping an eye out for respawning monsters, a golden figure suddenly passed by the entrance to the U-shaped valley. In an instant, a shiver ran through his entire body, and his eyes reddened with excitement.

"Golden Wyrm."

If one were to ask which boss in Second World was the strongest or hardest to defeat, ten thousand people would give ten thousand different answers. But when it came to the boss that had killed the most players in Second World, no one would disagree.

As a level 5 wilderness boss outside the beginner village, the Golden Wyrm was small, about the size of a dog. Its entire body was golden, its wings were still immature, and its dragon head looked not the least bit ferocious—if anything, it was somewhat cute. Yet this little creature made every player both love and hate it.

They loved it because it truly dropped good loot. It could drop every top-tier level 5 piece of equipment from the beginner village. They hated it because the little thing had high attack, great speed, high defense, and massive health. Many players thought encountering this boss was good luck, but in truth, it was only the beginning of their misfortune.

Players who had just left the beginner village possessed only a beginner sword and a set of beginner clothing. Equipment drop rates in Second World were extremely low, and even at level 5, their gear would not improve much. Against the Golden Wyrm, even tanky knight-type classes would fall in three hits. Other classes needed only two, while frail mages died in one.

Even having lots of people was useless. In the past, a Golden Wyrm had once slaughtered more than a hundred players before casually leaving. Without skilled coordination, enough players, and good equipment, it was impossible to defeat it.

However, the Golden Wyrm had a weakness—it could only attack at close range. If he had encountered it on flat ground, Lu Yang would have stayed as far away as possible. But he was currently standing at a bugged location. As long as he lured the Golden Wyrm into the U-shaped valley, could he not use the terrain exploit to kill it? Thinking of the top-tier equipment it had once dropped, Lu Yang felt that he was about to strike it rich.

Throwing aside the half-skinned hide in his hands, Lu Yang turned and climbed up the rope to the mountaintop, then ran toward the upper left side of the U-shaped valley.

When Lu Yang reached the spot, the Golden Wyrm was passing beneath the cliff. Seeing that it was about to leave his attack range, Lu Yang immediately cast Fireball.

Three seconds later, just as the Golden Wyrm was about to leave Lu Yang's range, Bang! The Fireball struck the Golden Wyrm's body dead-on.

"-35"

"Roar~"

After being attacked, the Golden Wyrm turned and charged straight at Lu Yang. Just as it reached the base of the cliff, it suddenly spread its wings and leaped high into the air. It was only two meters away from Lu Yang when it fell back down.

The Golden Wyrm kicked hard against the rocks on the cliff face, but the steep wall offered it no foothold. After its claws scraped at the cliff several times, it fell back to the ground.

If the Golden Wyrm could hit Lu Yang even once, it would instantly kill him. Unfortunately, those two meters made it impossible for the Golden Wyrm to reach him.

Watching the Golden Wyrm leap anxiously beneath the cliff, unable to fly up no matter what it did, Lu Yang finally relaxed. That previous pounce had given him quite a scare.

He lured the Golden Wyrm deeper into the valley. There were too many monsters outside, and Lu Yang feared that even if he killed the Golden Wyrm, he would not be able to retrieve the equipment anytime soon.

In his previous life, Lu Yang had never once killed a Golden Wyrm. Bosses like this had always been prized targets fought over by the major guilds. From the beginning of the game until its later stages, every Golden Wyrm respawn had meant war between the guilds.

Lu Yang had not expected that he would get to take advantage of it in this life. After luring the Golden Wyrm into the valley, he cast Fireball at it again.

Under Second World's settings, players received five free attribute points every time they leveled up. For all his previous level-ups, Lu Yang had put his points into Intelligence. With the one attribute point automatically gained per level included, his Intelligence had reached 16. Adding the 10 Intelligence granted by the Demon God's Heart and the 5 Intelligence from Crispy Electric Eel Meat, it came to 31.

The benefit of having so much Intelligence was that Lu Yang had more mana, reaching 310 points, while his spell damage had also risen to 31.

Facing a Golden Wyrm with 10000/10000 health, Lu Yang truly would not have dared provoke it without so much mana and spell damage.

After attacking continuously for more than two minutes, just as Lu Yang was about to reduce the Golden Wyrm's health to 7000, he suddenly realized awkwardly that he was out of mana.

In the game, system NPCs did not sell instant recovery potions. Only players could brew them through alchemy, and with the game having just begun, no one knew how to make them yet. Seeing his completely empty mana bar, an ordinary player would have been depressed to death in this situation. But while others had no solution, Lu Yang did. Relying on the Crispy Electric Eel Meat buff's mana recovery effect of 8 points every 5 seconds, Lu Yang spent two hours and slowly ground the Golden Wyrm to death.

With an unwilling roar from the Golden Wyrm, a massive 4x4 loot explosion erupted. Among the sixteen items, Lu Yang immediately spotted a gleaming golden staff in the very center.

"Arsonist Staff."