“Temporarily grants an ability of someone else. This looks like a buff potion. Why is it so expensive? Are the effects very strong?”
In order to increase their strength, these teams did not hold back on spending. Hao Tian immediately bought an Ability Potion from Rezar. After drinking it, a notification of temporary Character Summoning Card popped up. Its effect was increasing the damage of magic attacks by seventy-seven percent; he was quite shocked by it.
“Sadly, I’m not a Mage, or this enhancement would be quite strong. It can be used in key moments in the team fight or to kill the weaker opponents in a short time. It can turn the tables if used properly!”
This was not the first time that the players had come into contact with Character Summon Cards. The Character Summon Cards could enhance one’s strength and were very practical. Usually, only special missions awarded such things, so they did not appear often. They did not expect Han Xiao to sell Character Summon Cards. Despite these being temporary ones, this was the first time that they had seen them. They were shocked and joyed.
Frenzied Sword’s eyes sparkled, and he hastily bought the only Black Star Ability Potion. He was a Mechanic, and so was Black Star. Thus, the ability was definitely going to be suitable for him.
Not bothering about the other teams snatching the rest of the Ability Potions, Frenzied Sword walked to the side and drank Han Xiao’s potion carefully.
A notification appeared on the interface.
_____________________
You have received [Character Summon Card – Han Xiao (Temporary)]
[Character Summon Card – Han Xiao (Temporary)]: Black Star’s Advent
Increase your Machinery Affinity by 247%.
Duration: 3 mins
Usages: 0/1
_____________________
Frenzied Sword instantly opened his eyes widely. The shock was stuck on his face. He could not help but to rub his eyes, afraid that he had read the wrong numbers.
“Tw—two point five times enhancement!!”
Frenzied Sword could hardly believe it.
“My Machinery Affinity is barely half of this number even after using all my enhancing abilities. Black Star’s attributes are way too strong. How strong is he?”
‘Overpowered’ was not even enough to describe this!
The enhancement was almost like a bug!
Using this Character Summon Card at this level, even a pig could defeat the opponent!
Han Xiao had many abilities, and this Character Summon Card granted the user his Machinery Affinity. This was not considered an ability but Han Xiao’s basic attributes, so its effect became a buff.
Without using any abilities, Han Xiao had 247% Machinery Affinity from his talents and passive abilities. When abilities were used, this number would be increased by another 100% to 200%. This was the simplest effect but also the strongest one.
That was because Machinery Affinity was the core attribute of the Mechanic class—it directly influenced one’s strength!
As the level of the Mechanic class continued to increase, the Machinery Affinity would continuously increase as well. However, the effect of the temporary Character Summon Card was an extra enhancement. Hence, this was like giving the user the attributes that he would have dozens of levels later!
And dozens of levels higher… happened to be the level that the Mechanic class started to be strong!
Luckily, the temporary Character Summon Card could only be used once and was very rare. If it was a fixed ability, it would make the player invincible!
Seeing that Frenzied Sword was breathing heavily in excitement, Han Xiao touched his chin, very curious.
Which of my abilities did this kid get for him to be this excited?
…
“Frenzied Sword, third place in Planet Aquamarine Singles, Mechanical Pugilist class, known as the strongest Mechanical Pugilist in China…”
In the Club Key stronghold in Planet Winterfrost, Key of Solomon casually browsed the information of his next opponent in Singles. He sneered and said with pride and confidence, “Looks like there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Are you planning to use Howling Gate?” an old member, Cursed Staff, asked.
“You’re overthinking, there’s no need to use my trump card to beat the next opponent. I bet that people like Lost Angel, Golden Champagne from Rose Knight, and Scarlet Marshall from Devil definitely have trump cards up their sleeves. Although I’m ranked seventh now, I can definitely reach the top if I used my trump card. However, just qualifying is enough for now; it’s best to leave the trump card to use in the finals.”
Key of Solomon was very confident in his trump card. [Howling Gate] was a special spell item that he had gotten from an extremely difficult hidden mission. Although he did not know what the trump cards of the others were, he was confident that he was close to invincible in this level in a one on one. Even if he did not use his trump card, his skills were among the highest. Being able to reach seventh place had already proved that.
“After winning this, my ranking will go up another place. The opponents in the last few matches are all quite difficult to deal with. I can deliberately lose these matches to hide my real strength. This way, my ranking should drop to about fifteenth place, just enough to qualify. And that’s enough…”
Based on the assumption that he would win the next match, Key of Solomon started planning for the rest of the matches. In his eyes, the next match was free points before facing strong opponents. He was certain of his victory and did not even consider his chances of losing.
…
Frenzied Sword was one of the few Mechanic class players in the international Singles and the only Mechanic class from China. With the title of ‘Strongest Mechanical Pugilist in China’, he received a lot of attention from many fans and viewers.
From the start of the competition, Frenzied Sword’s performance had been nothing extraordinary, and his ranking was only average. Even for the matches that he did win, the viewers could see that he had a hard time winning. His ranking could not go up; it seemed like he had reached his limit.
Between the three Singles contestants from China, King Admiral had a very high ranking and did not have to worry about qualifying; SnowFlower was at the bottom, and due to the fact that more than half of the matches had been completed, unless he won every match from now on, there was no chance for him to qualify; Frenzied Sword’s ranking was fluctuating around sixteenth place, which meant that he had a chance of being the second contestant from China to qualify. He had the hopes of many fans on his shoulders.
The rest of Frenzied Sword’s journey in the competition was rather extreme. His opponents were either very strong in the top ten or very weak at the bottom. The fans analyzed according to his performance and realized that even if he could beat all the weaker players, he would still need a few more points to qualify. He had to beat at least one strong player in order to qualify. However, Frenzied Sword had a very low win rate against strong players at this time.
The situation did not look good.
And the opponent of this match was ranked seventh, [Key of Solomon].
Many fans were secretly anxious and encouraged him. There were also people who were bitter and complained, saying that Frenzied Sword was falsely given the title of the strongest Mechanical Pugilist in China and embarrassed himself in front of the entire world. As always, the forums were filled with all kinds of comments.
No matter how they looked at it, time would not slow down even the slightest. The day of the match arrived as usual.
Frenzied Sword and Key of Solomon entered the match venue. The image that the viewers saw included the health, stamina, status bar, and all their attributes. The situation was clearly laid out for the audience to make watching the match simpler.
The venue was a huge city. Tall, thick walls made of concrete and steel surrounded the city. The two of them landed on the two sides beside this dozens of meters tall, four to five meters thick wall.
They could see each other’s tiny outline from far away.
Storm clouds flew above the sky of the desolate city.
The audience pulled the bird-eye view higher and realized that on the outside of the wall, there was a huge oil painting of a few words.
Black Phantom Sanctuary Three.
“Haha, this is the random venue.”
“I know this place. Isn’t this Sanctuary Three from our planet?”
The Chinese fans were pleasantly surprised.
Chapter 427 - BOSS Type Player! (2)
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios#
The commentary from the two commentators appeared timely to introduce the battle.
“The two contestants in this match are Key of Solomon and Frenzied Sword. Demon Mage against Human Mechanical Pugilist. Key of Solomon’s ranking at the moment is seventh place, and Frenzied Sword is at eighteenth place. The win rate estimation is 57% to 43% in favor of Key of Solomon. From their performance in the previous matches, Key of Solomon is slightly advantageous.”
“As you might have noticed, the venue is Planet Aquamarine’s Black Phantom Sanctuary Three. The Chinese contestants come from Planet Aquamarine, so Frenzied Sword should have the advantage of knowing the terrain well. One thing that I would like to mention is that Black Phantom is Black Star, the first NPC to lead the Chinese contestants into space. Since the Chinese players are following Black Star, I have to say it’s quite fated.”
“They have started moving. Okay, let’s look forward to an exciting battle…”
As soon as the battle started, Frenzied Sword avoided fighting head-on. A steel cable shot out from his waist armor and hooked onto a house under the wall. With the sound of the steel cable retracting, he was pulled down and moved away from the wall. He took out a high caliber machine cannon and fired. A string of orange bullets flew toward Key of Solomon.
Hum!
Key of Solomon held a bone staff and activated the standby rune. A translucent blue and green magic sphere surrounded him and protected him; the bullets created a dense scattering of sparks on the shield. The audiences could see that Key of Solomon’s status bar had a shield durability bar, which was decreasing slowly.
At this time, Frenzied Sword had already disappeared between the houses. Bullets were fired at him from time to time, small grenades too, blasting clouds of black and thick smoke on the wall. Key of Solomon squinted and said, “Because of his familiarity with the terrain, he plans to first deal some damage to me through ranged attacks. Hmm…”
As he was speaking, jumped down from the wall as well. He took out a few magic scrolls and tore them. Various colors of magic light then appeared. Many buffs appeared instantly on his status bar.
“Tracking, Stealth, Misdirection, Shadow Demon Cloak, Fake Death…”
“Damn, that is so costly. Magic scrolls are very expensive.”
The Chinese spectators felt nervous for Frenzied Sword. Although they had not come into contact with magic much, they had learned about many magic effects through the forums.
The enemy’s location suddenly disappeared from the radar of Frenzied Sword’s armor. He frowned and thought, Magical stealth, a troublesome ability. I’m at a disadvantage in terms of detection, so I can’t kite him easily…
As he was thinking, he changed the detection method of the radar into detecting air movements in order to relocate the opponent’s location. The detection range was smaller than before.
The two of them moved stealthily and tracked each other, both attacking and receiving attacks. They were mainly testing each other, and as soon as they noticed the opponent’s weakness or mistake, they would immediately launch a thunderous strike on the opponent. The audience could not move their eyes away from the match, and the tension grew as the distance between them became shorter. They were both making micro-movements on each other.
“Huu, huu…”
The sound of breathing echoed in the armor helmet. Frenzied Sword hid behind a house and looked at the tactic screen. The trace of the air movement appeared in his vision, showing a blue snake-like line. The end of the line was the opponent’s position. Frenzied Sword was good at melee battles, but he decided to distance himself. This was because the information on Key of Solomon showed that he was not as paper-like as other Mages; many melee Pugilists had lost tragically because they got too close. Frenzied Sword’s plan was to find an opportunity to land a stealth attack followed by a combo, controlling the opponent and maximizing the damage output.
Although he had an invincible trump card, he was not going to use it easily. If he could win by himself, the Character Summon Card could be saved to use the next time that he faced a strong opponent.
There is a time limit to his magic shield, and it costs him mana. I have quite a lot of ammo left, so I should be able to deplete around twenty-eight percent of his mana and fifteen percent of his health…
As he was thinking, he fired at the enemy’s location, hitting on the magic shield. However, at this time, a new buff appeared on his status bar—[Marked].
Reverse Revenge Mark! Frenzied Sword knew that this was bad. This ability was very rare, and it was the first time that the opponent had used it. There was no information about it in the data that he had received. Its effect was very simple, locating and tracing the attacker if the user was attacked in a certain duration. This was a spell used to deal with stealth attacks.
The next moment, a blaze quickly approached.
Boom!
A Frostfire Ball blasted through the house that Frenzied Sword was hiding behind, turning the environment into a sea of blue flames. Key of Solomon slowly walked over from afar, his face expressionless. He was a Demon Mage trained in both ice and fire. He combined the two of them and formed the Frostfire style.
The spell combining function was similar to the blueprint invention function of the Mechanic class. The difference was that the chance of it succeeding was quite high, but at the same time, its experience cost was much higher as well. The combining method was to put two or more spells together and form a new effect. It also cost a certain material to do so. The Frostfire Ball spell, for example, required the spell [Frost] and [Huge Fireball] as well as the material [Fire Trapping Ice Crystal]. The spells used for the combination would be forgotten. There were two ways of relearning these forgotten spells—one was to separate the new spells that were formed through combining these spells, and the other was to learn it again by spending experience. It cost a lot of experience as well.
The specialty of Frostfire was the ability to quickly reduce the durability of metals, it was an extremely effective way of dealing with the Mechanic class.
At this time, a layer of magic light appeared on the surface of Frenzied Sword’s NCO Class armor. The Frostfire was repelled, and the speed of the armor’s durability reducing slowed down. The enchantment from the Volga brothers gave his armor a certain level of magic resistance.
Frenzied Sword’s armored legs stomped heavily on the ground, and blue fire shot out from the thrusting device on his back. He charged forward like a rhinoceros. A huge foldable alloy shield ejected from his left arm’s armor, big enough to block his entire body. His right hand pulled out a short metal rod from his waist. The metal rod automatically extended and turned into a long, thin gunlance spear.
He entered melee mode instantly!
The alloy shield smashed on the magic shield with a force so huge that it made Key of Solomon take two steps back. This time, Frenzied Sword saw an opening and jabbed with his spear, penetrating into the magic shield. A Concentrated Explosive Bullet slid into the chamber of the gunlance. The next instant, a violent explosion was released from the tip of the spear, exploding from within the magic shield!
Boom!
Black smoke spread out.
“A beautiful attack!” a commentator complimented. “Mechanical Pugilist’s tactics are very flexible; Frenzied Sword changed his weapons again. Speaking of which, he has yet to use the same weapon in
all the matches of the Singles…”
“Wait, the health loss is very little. It did not seem to hit completely!”
In the black smoke, Key of Solomon had disappeared, replaced by a stone that had already turned into ashes, while he appeared more than fifteen meters behind Frenzied Sword, not taking much damage.
“He used the Object Swap Spell on himself in an emergency. The cooldown of this ability is very long, five minutes. Apparently, Key of Solomon is very cautious about keeping his health up. That’s right, after all, Frenzied Sword is wearing a mechanical suit, so his health is almost 1.7 times Key of Solomon’s.”
After the stealth phase of the match ended, the two of them entered a tug of war. Frenzied Sword continuously poked Key of Solomon in close range, and Key of Solomon cast Frostfire from far away. It was a back and forth and exciting battle. They looked to be on par, but the status bar showed that Frenzied Sword was at a disadvantage and was losing health faster than Key of Solomon. The battle between two pro players was definitely not just standing still and attacking each other; they were both using very delicate dodging abilities. Obviously, Key of Solomon’s skill was higher.
However, it looked like Frenzied Sword had the upper hand. With his armor, his health was way too high, and he would be able to win even by exchanging hits.
But the commentator was not optimistic.
“Frenzied Sword has eighty percent health and sixty-six percent armor durability left; Key of Solomon has seventy-three percent health, thirty-one percent magic shield, and sixty-eight percent mana left. The situation is actually very disadvantageous to Frenzied Sword. Although he has a lot of health, if the durability of his armor is depleted, he will lose at least half of his strength! He only has one set of armor, but the opponent can create a new magic shield as long as he has mana.”
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