Snake Formation

"Be careful. The snakes summoned by Eliki have relatively low individual attack power, only in the single digits, but their numbers are terrifying, numbering in the thousands!" Bai Xiaowen warned Li Shuyi. Bai Xiaowen learned about the Guanzhong altar from fragments of memories from Snakefolk residents he had previously captured.

Despite her formidable strength, Li Shuyi, being a girl, still felt a chill run down her spine at the sight of the swarm of venomous snakes. While dodging Eliki's melee attacks, she asked, "What should we do? You must have a plan, right?"

Based on her understanding of Bai Xiaowen, and knowing that Bai Xiaowen must have already devised a plan beforehand, she was only coming to challenge the two big bosses Eliki and Kasares. Therefore, Li Shuyi was not flustered.

Bai Xiaowen smiled and said, "Of course."

With a wave of his hand, Bai Xiaowen delivered Targeted Airdrop, and Fatty appeared precisely in front of the Hydra Statue.

The dozen or so venomous snakes at the front, having caught the scent of the enemy, slithered onto Fatty's feet without hesitation and began to bite him mercilessly. In the blink of an eye, the bleeding effect on Fatty's body reached level five.

Five layers of Septic Venom trigger, dealing 15 points of poison damage to surrounding enemies per second!

These venomous snakes were strong due to their sheer numbers; each individual had pitifully low Life Value, only around ten points. Any snake within Fatty's venom area-of-effect (AOE) range instantly died, their bellies turned white.

The swarm of venomous snakes that followed couldn't even last a second within the poisonous cloud formed by Fatty's Septic Venom.

"This... is impossible!" Eliki was somewhat exasperated.

The Snake Formation formation of tens of thousands of venomous snakes is a key trump card of the Snakefolk Tribe. Ordinary people have little chance against such a large swarm of snakes; they can only be surrounded and bitten to death. A few points of damage from one snake may seem insignificant, but with dozens or even hundreds biting you simultaneously, and countless more relentlessly crawling in afterward, it's an endless battle; even Advanced Boss can't withstand it.

After learning the secrets of the Snake Formation, Bai Xiaowen considered how to deal with it and devised three solutions.

First, similar to the "Corpse-Insect Rain" skill used against the Nightmare Alligator, equipping the golden ring with the Petrified Monitor Lizard Tailbone and casting the Stone Armor would absorb a fixed 10 points of physical damage, effectively making Bai Xiaowen safe. However, this method cannot protect Li Shuyi or the summoned creatures. Eliki isn't stupid; she could easily redirect the Snake Formation's attack direction to target Bai Xiaowen's friendly units.

The second method is to use the Orochi Nagi to give the swarm of snakes a barbecue feast. However, the Orochi Nagi's Blade is tactically important and is very effective against bosses, awakened beings, and groups of minions, so using it here would be a waste. Moreover, the Orochi Nagi only lasts for three seconds, which can at most clear out a portion of the venomous snakes, and more and more venomous snakes will continue to crawl out from under the Hydra Statue, so it cannot be a one-time solution.

Bai Xiaowen quickly thought of a third method, which was the Corrupting Blood skill possessed by the evolved Fatty.

After evolving, Fatty has an extremely long Life Value bar of 700 points, but its default armor and resistances of zero mean it is no longer suitable as a main tank against boss attacks. Bai Xiaowen's new role for it is: a mobile AOE attack against large groups of melee minions.

(AOE: a term referring to area of effect, indicating a skill with a wide area of effect.)

This idea arose after Bai Xiaowen acquired the new summoned creature, the Skeleton Champion. For Bai Xiaowen, the Skeleton Champion Warrior, in combination with the Rageclaw, was already sufficient to tank the boss—moreover, Bai Xiaowen also had six Skeleton Sword-and-Shield Soldier to fill any gaps.

Another important reason is that the space for melee summoned creatures is already overflowing when attacking the BOSS. If we also include a huge and Stitched Monster Fatty, it will inevitably take up the melee space of one of the Skeleton Champion, Rageclaw, or Li Shuyi. And the output capabilities of these three are completely incomparable to Fatty's.

In this evolution, Fatty's Life Value doubles, but his dual resistances drop to zero, which can be said to have sacrificed some survivability (compared to the original bulky skills that increased Life Value by 30% without any negative effects). However, he gains valuable sustained AOE output ability in return. Moreover, the five-stack Septic Venom effect will reduce the movement speed of nearby enemies by 25%, which has a certain control effect and makes up for some of the team's shortcomings.

This attempt proved remarkably effective. With Fatty's 700 Life Value, even with five stacks of the Bleed effect, it would take nearly a minute for his Life Value to reach zero. At least within that minute, Bai Xiaowen didn't need to worry about the Snake Formation's harassment and could focus all his energy on taking down one of the bosses first.

This unfortunate boss was none other than Casares, the warrior of the Amotawa faith. His mental energy was almost completely drained, and he couldn't even unleash a single skill. Although he managed to hold out for more than thirty seconds thanks to his high strength of 70 and high constitution of 55, and even seized an opportunity to trade his life for the skeleton warrior, turning him into a broken bone, this was his limit.

With a thud, Kasares's strong and burly body collapsed to the ground.

A Large Golden Treasure Chest appeared and was quickly picked up by Bai Xiaowen.

Bai Xiaowen took a light breath and immediately manipulated his summoned creatures to pounce on the Amotava Faith Priest Eliki, who was standing to the side.

Eliki's output is quite terrifying, but it is only reflected in the doubled attack speed of the Six Arms and the high magic damage attached to the Amotava's Gift skill. Bai Xiaowen had already seen her most obvious weakness, which is that her strength and agility attributes are too weak. As a level 7 melee BOSS, having only a little over 20 strength and agility attributes is very unacceptable.

The Bone Warlock immediately cast the Ghost Path skill. Of course, Eliki's Willpower attribute should be very strong, and she passed the Willpower check without hesitation. The Ghost Path's 10-second fear effect did not take effect, only causing Eliki's windmill-like attack state to pause for a moment.

But Bai Xiaowen only needed that one moment of pause. The Rageclaw, which had already found its position, immediately activated its "Howl" ultimate move, leaped into the air, and pinned Eliki beneath it.

The ultimate Suppression, with its superior strength, agility, and size, was executed flawlessly by the Rageclaw!

"So hasty?" Li Shuyi said softly. Under normal circumstances, Rageclaw Bai Xiaowen liked to keep his two skills with long cooldowns, Howl and Suppression, hidden away and use them as trump cards. In Li Shuyi's opinion, having already killed Kasares, killing Eliki was basically a sure thing, and there was no need to use these two precious skills.

Bai Xiaowen shook his head. "Delay could lead to unforeseen problems."

Today is my lunar birthday. I'm thirty years old, though it's the traditional Chinese age... Thank you to my wife for remembering my birthday and celebrating with me, and thank you everyone for your continued support, really. I took the day off yesterday, and my updates today haven't been great, I'm so sorry. Once I get my thoughts organized, updates will pick up speed, yeah!