"Huh?" The creature grunted, twisting its withered head as if it had sensed sothing wrong.
A shadow was already falling across its back. Ethan burst from stealth, his body surging forward as Wild Charge detonated beneath his feet.
As the creature’s eyes finally caught the movent behind it, Ethan struck.
"Rake!"
The blow landed cleanly before it could even raise its staff. The stealth bonus triggered instantly, locking the creature in place as the stun icon flickered above its head. Normally, the effect would last five full seconds. This ti, the tir barely crawled past two.
’Level difference penalty’, Ethan noted without surprise.
When Ery had attacked earlier, the boss’s information had finally revealed itself.
Level 95.
It was the highest-level enemy Ethan had ever encountered, excluding the Crowling God that had once hunted him across the wilds. Its health pool was obscene, a staggering 120 million HP, yet there was no rank indicator beneath its na. No Elite. No Rare. No World Boss. Just a Level 95 creature with a health bar that felt fundantally wrong.
Even if it stood perfectly still, could they actually kill it?
The answer seed doubtful. The thirty-sothing damage Ery had dealt earlier had already regenerated away as if it had never happened. Massive HP, paper-thin defense, and regeneration so aggressive it bordered on absurd.
Ethan’s opening strike told a different story. Over 1,000 damage from the hit itself, followed by a bleeding effect ticking for 600 every half-second. For a creature of this level and supposed durability, its defenses were laughably low. Ery, at his level, should not have been able to scratch it at all. Even Ethan should have been hitting for double digits at best. Instead, his numbers were comfortably in the thousands.
The trade-off was obvious.
Its strength was monstrous.
Even fully braced Shield Tanks had been unable to hold it. Without a solid tank wall, no one dared to commit to sustained damage.
Still, Ethan’s brief stun bought exactly what they needed. Ery’s scattered backline finally had ti to disengage fully. A single full-powered Keg Toss into that clump would have been catastrophic, layered with slows and knockdowns that could have wiped them outright.
The stun ended the mont the creature hit the stone floor. It shook off the daze with terrifying speed. By then, Ethan was already retreating at full sprint. His damage output had locked the creature’s attention onto him completely, his threat far outstripping everyone else’s. He could have stayed for another combo, but against 120 million HP, that effort would have been aningless.
"Kite him! Hit him when he’s chasing !" Ethan shouted, switching plans on the fly.
The monkey-like abomination was clearly a lee fighter. The tomb chamber itself worked in their favor, filled with thick pillars and jagged stone formations perfect for line control. As long as Ethan kept dealing damage, the creature would stay on him. In Panther Form, his movent speed gave him the edge, and if needed, he could always shift into Owl Form for ranged pressure. The rest of the team could attack from behind whenever he dragged the boss close enough.
A war of attrition.
Of course, there were unknowns. He hadn’t tested its full movent speed yet. He knew Leo’s kit well enough, and seeing the creature use Keg Toss confird it was so kind of Monk variant. Probably not a full Brewmaster, but close enough to be dangerous.
"Boss, just keep running! Normal Monks only have one movent skill, Roll, two charges! Watch out for Drunken Sphere, don’t let him drop it in your path! And he’s got a Charge that pulls you to him!" Leo called out from the back, tank instincts kicking in as he rattled off the essentials.
"Got it!" Ethan replied.
In the sa breath, he shifted into Owl Form. At maximum range, he flicked his wrist and unleashed two instant-cast DoTs.
Sunfire.
Moonfire.
Both spells latched on imdiately. The damage numbers confird his suspicion. Its magical defense was even worse than its physical. Each tick of Sunfire burned for over 2,000, while Moonfire followed close behind. When Sunfire crit, the numbers spiked past 3,000, almost certainly boosted by Ethan’s heavily stacked stats.
"It’s weak to fire! Like an undead!" Leo shouted.
Ethan had already figured that out.
The creature’s gaze snapped toward him the mont it regained full control, its lips peeling back to reveal yellowed fangs.
"ROAR... YOU DIE!"
It activated Roll, covering more than twenty ters in a heartbeat.
’There it is,’ Ethan thought calmly. The distance was nearly identical to Leo’s Energy Burst, but there was no lingering speed boost afterward.
The tomb chamber itself was enormous, a square nearly three hundred ters on each side, with a ceiling high enough to swallow echoes. Space was not the problem.
As the creature completed its roll and surged forward, Ethan turned and ran.
’Don’t let it get close.’
A poorly placed Drunken Sphere could cut off his escape path instantly, and that would be the end of him.
The chase began.
Stone pillars blurred past as Ethan sprinted through the chamber, the sound of heavy footsteps and rattling casks thundering behind him. Ery’s group had plenty of ranged damage dealers, but once the chase started, the problem beca obvious. They simply couldn’t keep up. The creature was fast, far faster than expected. Even in Panther Form, Ethan was only slightly quicker.
That made sustained lee pressure impossible. The close-combat fighters had no choice but to wait for Ethan to deliberately loop the boss back toward them.
They tried to adapt. Ery coordinated several interception attempts using the remaining tanks, hoping to briefly pin it down. Each attempt failed spectacularly. Whenever a tank ca close, the creature lashed out wildly with its staff and cask, sending them flying like broken dolls. Strangely, attacks from behind barely seed to register.
After enough failures, the strategy settled into sothing grim and exhausting.
Ethan ran.
Lap after lap. Pillar to pillar. Corner to corner.
Two hours passed.
By the ti anyone dared to check the health bar again, the withered monkey had only lost 15% of its total HP. Nearly all of that damage had co from Ethan’s fire-based DoTs, relentlessly ticking away.
’If I could just stand and fight it,’ Ethan thought as his legs burned, ’with defenses this bad...’
He dismissed the idea imdiately. One of Ery’s Level 59 Shield Tanks, boasting over fifty thousand HP, had been reduced to paste by a single direct swing. Ethan, even in Bear Form, only had around seventy thousand HP and better defenses. Whether he could survive even one clean hit was a gamble he wasn’t willing to take.
Fifteen percent in two hours. At this rate, the Ethereal server would reset long before the creature fell.
Ethan’s mind raced as fast as his feet, there has to be another way.
The thought was cut short by a shout echoing from the entrance tunnel, sharp enough to draw everyone’s attention.
"Holy shit, it’s real! A Level 95! Quick, notify the guild master, bring the whole—"
Swish. Swish. BOOM.
The excited voice vanished as several spells struck the speaker mid-sentence, reducing him to a flash of departing light.
A new group had pushed through the cleared valley and entered the tomb. From their reactions, they were clearly scouts, likely from one of the major Carnage-aligned guilds. Word had spread too quickly. The deaths of the earlier scouts had already triggered verification teams. Even killing these newcors wouldn’t stop the information from spreading now.
Major guild forces would arrive soon.
"Wipe them," Lily Silverwood said coldly. "lee, seal the entrance tunnel."
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