Chapter 234-3: A Hunting Surprise, Starnet Recompense (3) |
“Let’s go!”
With a low shout, Phase Kill charged straight into Rend’s pounce.
Their figures crisscrossed in the mine, fist wind and claw shadows interwoven, erupting in deafening thunder.
Every one of Rend’s attacks was precisely evaded by Phase Kill, while every punch from Phase Kill carried explosive power, hammering hard into Rend’s body.
The Champion Fighter’s words echoed again and again in Phase Kill’s mind.
“Every exchange is a chance to gather information about your opponent.”
He gradually grasped Rend’s attack style. His dodges went from hair-raising to practiced. Phase Kill’s growth was visible to the naked eye.
Competitive-scene players in the livestream cheered at the sight.
Their leader had made new progress again.
At this time, Phase Kill had already changed his own oppressive, heavy-pressure offensive style.
He adopted full-time evasion as primary and attack as secondary, with clear priorities.
Only by avoiding the attacks would there be an opportunity to counter.
Qi Eater provided sustained recovery throughout, helping him stabilize his constantly dropping health bar.
This high-intensity battle lasted half an hour.
Phase Kill’s breathing grew rapid, his chest heaving. His throat was so parched it felt scrubbed by sandpaper, but each breath brought a cool sensation that quickly suppressed the body’s heat.
Beads of sweat crowded his forehead and slid down his cheeks, dripping to the ground.
After another narrow dodge from Rend’s strike, Phase Kill retreated repeatedly to open distance.
“Huff… huff…”
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, he could feel his internal vitality energy nearing exhaustion.
Even maintaining the operation of his Vital Qi inherited soul had become difficult, but in his eyes the fight was not over. Rend was at its limit as well.
“Kill!”
His Vital Qi inherited soul suddenly roared to life. Beads of sweat sprayed like raindrops in all directions as Phase Kill pounced again like a fierce tiger.
Another five minutes of high-intensity evasion and counterattack.
At last, Phase Kill caught a huge opening as Rend lunged to bite, and unleashed a punch charged up and boosted by the Force Savage Axe.
Crimson Vital Qi erupted like a volcanic blast, carrying golden airflow, bursting open Rend’s already cracked hide and driving into the heart.
The raging currents inside Rend instantly became a vortex, churning its internal organs.
Boom!
Rend’s body was blown backward by the punch, slammed into the rock wall, then slowly slid to the ground.
Its dark green eyes gradually dimmed. Its body twitched a few times, then finally went completely still.
Phase Kill slowly withdrew his fist and began to turn.
Just then, the unmoving Rend suddenly snapped its ink-dark eyes open. Its bloody maw yawned wide as it sprang up and pounced at Phase Kill.
At the instant the bloody mouth was about to bite him, his body shifted aside in advance. The Vital Qi compressed in his palm, coupled with a hip twist for leverage, smashed hard into Rend’s head.
Boom!
That strike sent Rend flying again.
Whether Rend was dead or not, how could a player not know.
In a player’s eyes, there is a standard two-piece set to determine a target’s death.
Challenger Notification, and the target turning into black mist. If these two conditions do not trigger, it is all treated as playing dead.
His turning just now was precisely to give Rend a chance to attack from behind.
He was testing whether Rend was feigning death or unconscious, while in fact he had already begun storing power to strike.
The vitality grid was like a spiderweb, and he was the spider at its center. With feedback from vitality perception, he precisely judged the point of Rend’s lunge and, following through, finished it with one strike.
His gaze went to Rend. Its body turned into black mist and was swallowed by the Guide clone.
It finally condensed into a dark bead, within which Rend could faintly be seen roaring.
At this moment a Challenger Notification chimed.
[Challenger Notification (All Channels): Congratulations to player ‘Phase Kill’ for successfully containing the First-Generation Primordial monster ‘Rend.’ Rewarded sacrificial power: Ten thousand points. Gained star vein slot +1 (increase of star vein slots by containment is limited to before level 10).]
The prompt sounding in his mind was sweet to the ear, and a smile appeared at the corner of Phase Kill’s mouth.
“Battle, hell yeah.”
In the livestream, competitive-scene players flooded the screen with messages.
Defeating the strong with the weak, Phase Kill’s bounty mission once again proved the value of combat technique.
Just as Phase Kill was about to head back, a transaction request notification sounded in his mind.
After agreeing, a transaction pane hovered in his mind.
The Gold Coin Chamber’s liaison directly paid the mission bounty for completing this task into the transaction pane.
After deducting the 5 percent cut, it was a total of 18,310 points of sacrificial power.
On the right side of the transaction pane, a message popped up from the other party.
“Brother Phase Kill, please accept your mission bounty.”
Phase Kill did not hesitate and clicked ‘agree.’
At once a transaction completed prompt sounded in his mind, indicating the sacrificial power had been received.
Then another message appeared in the right-side dialog of the transaction pane.
“Brother Phase Kill, do me a favor and collect the bounty for me. Tiger Stripe Island is far from me, and you are right there. Just ask the Tiger Stripe warrior who is liaising with you.”
“No problem.” Phase Kill nodded, then looked at the Tiger Stripe warrior who was already staring in a daze.
“Mission complete. Pay up!”
—
Azure Star Sea Region, Dream Island.
With the first bounty mission successfully completed, Liu Yi clenched his fist in excitement.
Before long, in the livestream, Phase Kill followed the Tiger Stripe man to their homeland.
After receiving an audience with the priest, he successfully obtained the pre-agreed reward, a basket of spirit ore.
[Challenger Notification: Player ‘Phase Kill’ requests to trade with you. Approve or deny.]
After the trade window popped up, Phase Kill said nothing extra and tossed the reward ore into the trade pane.
“Done.”
“Haha, thanks for the assist, Brother Phase Kill.”
After the transaction was completed, Liu Yi immediately updated this trade information in the Gold Coin Chamber’s chat group and recorded it in the trade info tab.
The group members were all especially excited, cheering that the Gold Coin Chamber had opened up another channel to get rich.
He opened the Assassin Organization chat group. Competitive-scene players were all posting screenshots from the livestream, and many friends were @ mentioning him, hoping he would publish a new mission soon. They were already ravenous.
“Brothers, do not rush. This model has only just started running. Next we will contact other sea-region races, and bounty missions will soon be released in batches in the group.”
After explaining the situation, Liu Yi switched to the Gold Coin Chamber group and posted the latest notice.
He required members of the guild to explain the Gold Coin Chamber’s newest order-taking service when interfacing with foreign races on Dream Island, stating that it could help them solve any problem.
Liu Yi then sent the details of forming the Assassin Organization and the first bounty mission to the Guild Leader Buying Sacrificial Power.
At this time, the player forum had already begun a heated discussion about the newly contained Rend inherited soul.
In particular, the research-party players rushed to the simulation space as soon as the new inherited soul was contained.
In testing, players found it was a physical-type stacking-damage inherited soul trait. The level 1 inherited soul effect added an extra 5 percent rend damage on top of base damage, with duration affected by inherited soul level.
It was like the Wither inherited soul used by spellcaster DPS, where damage stacks through repeated hits.
But this inherited soul was not suitable for tank builds.
The reason was that the damage value caused by Rend was influenced by the damage of that particular hit. The lower the damage, the lower the rend effect.
Gargoyle builds basically did not embed damage-boosting inherited souls, focusing on bearing damage.
Embedding Rend brought a negligible increase in damage.
Research-party players found in testing that two hits dealt 100 and 50 damage respectively.
These two hits could stack two layers of Rend, but the damage of the two layers was not the same. For the 50-damage hit, the continuous damage from Rend was lower.
Therefore, Rend was more suitable for melee DPS builds, producing higher damage amplification on top of base damage.
Rend’s effect was the complete opposite of Accumulation.
Accumulation absorbed damage and, upon reaching a certain load, unleashed a burst strike.
Rend stacked damage, eroding the opponent’s life bit by bit with continuous damage until the target was killed.
Its performance in testing made Rend the target of many melee DPS players.
The main reason was that it was a passive inherited soul trait.
Once embedded, it consumed no vitality and still provided a stable extra damage boost.
In the forum discussion, the top-liked star vein combination was: Force Savage Axe, Extreme Speed, Black-Scaled Serpent, Vital Qi, Rend, Backwind Whip, Blood Soul Pull, Unyielding.
The recommended weapon enchantment particle combo was the resonance effect ‘Breath of Wind Pressure’ built around Gale Particles, whose effect was to speed up attack rate.
The feature of this star vein set was violent damage output. Force Savage Axe, Black-Scaled Serpent, and Vital Qi were all offensive methods.
Among them, Extreme Speed was used for burst and to increase attack speed. Backwind Whip was used for knockback to apply close-range control or forcibly interrupt the target’s damage output rhythm.
Blood Soul Pull was an effective means to close in on the opponent.
Unyielding was used to break free when controlled.
This was a very standard melee star vein setup. With Rend added, damage output efficiency could be raised another level.
The successful containment of the Rend inherited soul brought a small climax for melee builds.
Passive plus melee all-rounder attributes made this inherited soul one that melee players considered a must-embed in the future.