Chapter 160: Skill Mutation

In a brief moment, Ye Chen sprinted right up to the first Gold-Devouring Beast. There was no need to deliberately attack such high-level elite monsters; the moment anyone entered their aggro radius, they would automatically initiate an assault on the intruders.

Glaring with bulging frog eyes and letting out a fierce roar, the giant golden toad leaped aggressively toward Ye Chen. Defying its rather bulky appearance, this Gold-Devouring Beast moved with astonishing speed and agility. Fortunately, Ye Chen’s current speed was monstrously high, and with a swift sidestep, he easily dodged out of the way. Even so, Longteng Zhanxing and the others watching from behind broke out in a cold sweat. Having witnessed the toad's terrifying speed with their own eyes, they completely lost confidence in their ability to take down the beasts in three waves.

Seeing the giant toad give direct chase, Ye Chen bolted in a straight line. His current speed far exceeded that of the giant toad, leaving the wildly bounding creature eating dust far behind. The second, the third, the fourth—as long as he avoided the initial strike, these giant toads were completely helpless against Ye Chen. The toads scattered near the mechanism were quickly lured away by him in no time.

"All team members, get into position quickly! The four melee players, secure your spots! Mages behind the melee, and healers at the very back! Get ready to dish out your damage!" Ye Chen shouted loudly in the party channel while sprinting deep into the corridor.

Not daring to delay, Longteng Zhanxing and the others rushed to the vicinity of the gourd-shaped recess according to Ye Chen's instructions, immediately forming up. The melee players jammed the entrance, shielding the mages and healers behind them, and raised their weapons in readiness for area-of-effect attacks. The healers rapidly cast buff after buff onto the melee tanks, while the elemental mages chanted their respective Tier 2 AoE spells, preparing to assist Ye Chen in a mass slaughter.

Rushing all the way, the wind howled past his ears. Ye Chen was like a roaring locomotive, pursued by a massive swarm of howling, enraged giant toads. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight—he finally rounded up all the Gold-Devouring Beasts. With a sharp pivot, Ye Chen charged back toward Longteng Zhanxing and the others, the thirty-eight Gold-Devouring Beasts hot on his heels.

Accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. Ye Chen boosted his speed to put some distance between himself and the beast swarm, rapidly closing in on the battle-ready Longteng Zhanxing and his crew. He hurriedly barked out an order: "Zhanxing, make way!"

Longteng Zhanxing was fully prepared. Hearing the command, he instantly shifted his position, vacating the spot he had been blocking. Ye Chen leaped into the gourd-shaped recess in a few strides. At that moment, the pack of Gold-Devouring Beasts had already closed in.

"Block the entrance!"

The moment Ye Chen’s voice fell, Longteng Zhanxing lunged right back into his original position. The entrance of the gourd-shaped recess was instantly plugged tightly by the four melee fighters.

"Melee, defensive stance! Don't get hit by the first wave of lunges!" Seeing that the melee players actually looked ready to go on the offensive, Ye Chen quickly shouted a warning. He had experienced the terrifying impact of those giant toads firsthand; if they weren't careful, they would likely be knocked flat on their backs by a single charge.

Longteng Zhanxing and his team trusted Ye Chen implicitly. Hearing this, they immediately dropped their offensive posture and assumed a defensive stance with their center of gravity pulled back.

Boom, boom, boom, boom...

The giant golden toads at the front leaped into the air simultaneously, hurling themselves at the four blocking warriors.

"Crap! They hit like a truck!" Longteng Kuangniu, a primary tank anchorite, was knocked reeling, taking a small step backward. The other three melee players swayed precariously; had Ye Chen not instructed them to take up a defensive stance beforehand, they undoubtedly would have been bowled over.

"Hold the line! Hold it, don't back down! Just this one wave, we cannot let all our previous efforts go to waste!" Ye Chen shouted as he deactivated his speed aura, waved his staff, and activated his attribute aura. A Level 3 attribute aura could grant a flat bonus of 20 points to all attributes at once. While not overwhelmingly powerful, it carried considerable weight in skirmishes like this—at the very least, the strength bonus would slightly enhance the impact-resistance capabilities of the four melee classes.

With the minor boost from the attribute aura and Ye Chen’s rallying cry, the four men gritted their teeth and managed to weather the brunt of the first wave of impacts. Just as they let out a sigh of relief, Longteng Kuangniu, standing firmly at the very front, suddenly cried out in panic: "Night, my first Gold Elemental Stone is almost a third gone!"

"Mine is down by a fifth!"

"Me too!"

The secondary tank Longteng Zhanqi and Longteng Kuangzhan also chimed in anxiously. The consumption rate of the Gold Elemental Stones was unexpectedly fast. Although each of them carried two, and Longteng Kuangniu even carried three, it wasn't enough to give them peace of mind. After all, they were facing thirty-eight high-level elite monsters with over 80,000 health points each. Could they really manage to wipe out these monsters before the elemental stones dissolved completely?

"Brother Night, will—will we make it in time?" Longteng Zhanxing felt extremely unconfident inside. He knew the limits of his Third Group; facing a situation like this was genuinely perilous. He knew full well how much damage those mages' AoE spells could actually output, so he could only pin his hopes on the terrifying attack power of Ye Chen. However, it seemed Ye Chen had never used an AoE spell before, which was the most unsettling part for Longteng Zhanxing.

Facing thirty-eight Gold-Devouring Beasts simultaneously, although not all of them could attack the four melee players at once, the skill range of "Devour Metal" clearly exceeded 15 yards. Therefore, the rapid consumption of the four melee players' Gold Elemental Stones was entirely within Ye Chen’s expectations. Yet, he offered no comforting words to Longteng Zhanxing and the others, because no amount of talk could ever compare to concrete action. Without another word, amidst a low chant, abyssal flames began to materialize upon the Abyssal Staff. Those faint blue-black flames not only lacked any searing heat, but instead radiated a bone-chilling cold.

The temperature inside the entire gourd-shaped recess dropped instantly with the appearance of the Abyssal Demonic Flames. The mages couldn't help but shiver, subconsciously looking toward Ye Chen as he cast the spell. At that moment, Ye Chen's entire body was enveloped in a shroud of blue-black flames, his short hair standing on end, looking for all the world like a primordial demon god.

The mages let out involuntary gasps of awe. Such overwhelming momentum was definitely not a normal spell. The four melee players snatched a glance backward amidst their busy fighting, and couldn't help drawing in sharp breaths of cold air. Longteng Zhanxing even swung his longsword while shouting, "Brother Night, this magic looks insanely cool! Absolute top-tier gear for picking up girls."

The female players also nodded repeatedly, their eyes sparkling with brilliance.

Ye Chen smiled, just about to trigger the Demonic Flame Boiling when a prompt suddenly rang in his ear.

"Ding, using the Abyssal Staff allows Abyssal Demonic Flames to evolve into Abyssal Blood Flames, increasing damage by 50%."

Hearing this prompt, Ye Chen couldn't help pausing slightly. The Abyssal Staff actually had such a hidden trait; good thing he hadn't sold it just because he couldn't equip the Lich's Staff yet, otherwise, he would have taken a massive loss.

With a whoosh, the blue-black flames covering Ye Chen suddenly transformed entirely into crimson-red fire. At the same time, the incantation finally finished.

"Blood Flames, boil!" Ye Chen muttered lowly. The flames all over his body rushed like rivers converging into the sea, vanishing into the Abyssal Staff in the blink of an eye, only to erupt violently from the tip of the staff, transforming into terrifying spheres of fire that slammed down onto the swarm of Gold-Devouring Beasts on the ground.

Boom, boom, boom, boom! The blood-red flames burst apart, brilliant as fireworks, yet signaling nothing less than death and destruction.

-900, -900, -900, -900...

The frigid blood flames burned fiercely upon each and every Gold-Devouring Beast, wringing out a series of piercing, miserable screeches from the giant toads and noticeably slowing down their offensive momentum.

Longteng Zhanxing and the others stared blankly at the hellish spectacle before them, swallowing hard with great difficulty. Heavens! An AoE spell dealing 900 damage was simply driving people mad. One had to know that the health pools of most fragile classes didn't even reach 800 at this stage, and those with poor gear had a mere five or six hundred. In a large-scale battle, wouldn't a single spell like this wipe out entire swathes of players?

Meanwhile, the seven or eight magic-users gazed at Ye Chen with faces full of worship. This was the ultimate pursuit of a true mage; this was a genuine heavy artillery piece; this was the role model of their generation!

"Stop standing there like idiots! All mages, unleash your AoE skills! Make good use of time!" Ye Chen was slightly astonished by his own battle results as well. While any of his single-target attack spells far exceeded this AoE magic in damage, damn it, this was area-of-effect damage! No matter how overpowered a single-target skill was, it could only kill one enemy. An AoE spell like this might deal slightly lower individual damage, but on a battlefield, it was a literal human-harvesting reaper.

"Got it, Team Leader Night! Watch my Sea of Flames!" "Check out my Raging Lightning Descent!" "Behold my Frost Rain!"

Upon hearing Ye Chen's command, the mages felt as though they had been injected with chicken blood, howling as they vied with one another to cast their spells.

-196, -256, -186...

Patches of damage numbers floated up from above the Gold-Devouring Beast swarm. Only the lightning-type Raging Lightning Descent packed a decent punch, while the rest barely managed to break 200 damage. However, the Frost Rain carried a slowing effect, which was quite useful.

The fifteen-person team included a total of eight mages counting Ye Chen. A single round of AoE attacks could shave off over 2,000 health points from the beast swarm. Although the cooldowns for AoE skills were somewhat long, fortunately, the team members Longteng Zhanxing had selected at Ye Chen's prior behest all knew vertical-type magic—spells that came raining down from the sky, meaning they wouldn't be obstructed from attacking even when wedged deep inside the formation. Ye Chen now also possessed the Dark Demonic Lightning, a skill that was equally formidable. Each time it struck and zapped these elite monsters, the damage exceeded 1,500 points, leaving the group of Longteng players green with envy. Furthermore, the Thorn Aura had finally found its true calling. Applied to all four melee fighters, the Thorn Aura played a significant role; its 9% damage-reflection effect made the four heavy armor users immensely thrilled, allowing them to passively drain the monsters' health simply by standing still.

As long as the heavy armor tanks holding the choke point could endure the pressure and the backline damage output kept pace, handling a bottleneck monster-grind presented no major issues. In no time at all, over half of the Gold-Devouring Beasts had fallen, and many of the remaining seventeen or eighteen were already on low health. Meanwhile, the depletion rate of the four heavy armor players' Gold Elemental Stones also slowed down as the number of monsters dwindled. By this point, Longteng Zhanxing and the others could finally relax completely. Victory in this choke-point mass-slaughter battle was already in sight; the only thing left to worry about was whether their killing speed was fast enough to successfully open the second door.

"Brother Night, you said we have to finish them off within a specified time limit to open the second door. Are we going to make it in time?" Longteng Zhanxing voiced the question on every team member's mind.

"No problem. Timing started from the death of the first monster, and it's only been about 8 minutes so far. As long as we wipe them out within fifteen minutes, we have more than enough time. Just focus on your output with peace of mind," Ye Chen said with a smile. Noticing that the cooldown for Blood Flames Boiling had reset in his skill bar, he immediately unleashed another wave of blood flames upon the remaining cluster of low-health monsters.

Three minutes later, as the final Gold-Devouring Beast collapsed onto the ground, an ornate gateway composed of golden radiance materialized out of thin air before everyone. The heavy doors automatically swung open to both sides, and through the glowing portal lay an entirely different world—the World of Martial Souls.