MMO: Pierce Heaven Til’ It Breaks

The Scarab King was an elite among elites. It had high movement speed and high attack speed. Furthermore, this monster only appeared within Large Labyrinth Maps, and was known to players as the “Killer of Labyrinths”.

“So, we can’t beat it?”

Li Yi shook his head. The Scarab King was terrifyingly strong. Additionally, the area before them was very narrow, which would seal their fate if they were unfortunate enough to get caught.

“Let’s take a detour to avoid fighting it.”

Li Yi led Jiaojiao to another path and they trudged onward.

After ten or so minutes, the two of them had mysteriously ended up at the same spot again, which was in front of the Scarab King.

“This isn’t possible. Are we lost, or did we just locate the second Scarab King?”

Li Yi groaned, “The Scarab King is a boss-level monster, and it spawns only once per dungeon. We’re definitely lost.”

“Let’s take another path then!”

The two of them headed off to another path, and after going through countless twists and turns, they ended up at the same spot once more…

“Damn it, could it be that the Scarab King route is the correct path?”

“It appears so…”

“We’re wasting time!”

After taking plenty of detours, Jiaojiao’s patience had worn thin.

“We can’t brute force this. I’ll try to sneak past him.”

Li Yi used Beast Soul’s Possession to turn into Lightning Leopard. Then, he attempted to ‘Stealth’ his way past Scarab King.

The Scarab King was not big by any means, as it was only around the size of a cow. Unfortunately, the entrance was too narrow and with the Scarab King standing guard, it had effectively blocked the entrance. Li Yi tried numerous times to squeeze through but to no avail.

“Skkrrtt! Skkrrtt!”

The Scarab King let out a feral cry and the shell on its back continued to rumble as it lunged towards Li Yi.

‘Cr*p, I’ve gotten too close to it. Stealth attempt failed!’

“Jiaojiao, forget about me and leave!”

Li Yi shouted as his dispelled his transformation. He immediately placed a Frost Trap below his feet and used his Rocket Propellants to make a quick escape.

He fled not to the back and had instead fled towards the front!

The Rocket Propellant left a blazing trail, and once the effects had worn off, Li Yi had successfully made it past the Scarab King and into the path it had been guarding!

Jiaojiao heard Li Yi’s commands and immediately retreated. However, the Scarab King had not noticed her presence, and instead, its attention was focused on Li Yi.

“Pseudocide! Camouflage Mode!”

Li Yi chained two escape skills together, but the Scarab King was still faster. In a blink of an eye, it had teleported before Li Yi and made a head-splitting attack, instantly flat-lining his health.

Seeing that he had nowhere else to run, Li Yi took out Cardiac Pacemaker Model V5 at the spur of the moment and held it onto his chest. After doing so, he laid still as he awaited his death.

The cardiac pacemaker was not only capable of reviving teammates, but it was also capable of reviving the user as well. However, the probability of success was lower than 5%, and although Li Yi had already reached Legendary-level within the Engineering skill tree, his odds of success were still lower than 10%.

However, Li Yi was out of options and he had resigned himself to fate.

Scarab King used Relentless Tackle and Li Yi was instantly killed…

As his previous experience had shown, Li Yi was indeed blessed. However, just this once, the cardiac pacemaker’s effect had failed to activate.

A small jolt of electric shot out of Li Yi’s body and disappeared, turning the cardiac pacemaker’s surface into an ominous shade of gray…

The resurrection had failed, and Li Yi was now dead!

“Perverted Wing, did you just die?” Jiaojiao screamed out from within the bedroom.

“Don’t move, I’ll corpse run to look for you.”

He lost no equipment, but he had lost five bottles of Divine Essence Formula from his inventory, which were all snagged by the Scarab King.

Li Yi no longer lost any experience when he corpse-ran. Nevertheless, the durability of his equipment was still forcibly deducted.

After using half an hour or so, he had finally returned to the place of his death.

He chose not to revive instantly and instead walked several steps ahead until he had distanced himself from the Scarab King. Then, he chose to revive.

With his corpse suddenly transported to a distant location, Li Yi immediately Camouflaged after reviving. With that, he had successfully escaped the Scarab King’s line of sight.

“Perverted Wing, since you’ve passed and I haven’t, should I attempt the same strategy as you?”

Li Yi sighed, “They say the bigger the b*obs, the emptier the brain, but yours aren’t that big.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jiaojiao was furious.

“Your man has a friend summoning tool, all he has to do is to pull you over, no?”

“Hmph!”

After moving further, he took out the friend summoning tool out.

Jiaojiao was pulled over, and aside from her, Li Yi had taken in another two comrades.

Pretty Good Mood and Pale Blue Elegance had also been pulled over.

“Guild Master? What’s up?”

“Master, why have you called your apprentice over?” Pale Blue Elegance blinked as he asked.

“Pale Blue, what’s your level now?”

“I’m currently Level 40.”

“Alright, that’ll do.” Li Yi nodded his head approvingly and pointed over to the Scarab King. “This thing’s attack is OP, but it has a glaring weakness. Its vision is so poor that you could form a contract with it and it still wouldn’t attack you.”

Pretty Good Mood glanced over the Scarab King several times and gave an agitated reply. “Guild Master, are you saying that this bug can be contracted as our pet?”

“You got that right!”

“90,000,000 HP!” Although Pale Blue Elegance was still confused about the current scenario, she had instantly understood the power of Scarab King immediately after seeing its HP.

“You can form a limitless contract with it here. However, the success of the contract would depend on your own abilities.”

“Great! With this beast under my command, I would no longer have to die.” Pretty Good Mood was very excited.

“Be careful though. Don’t go too close to it, otherwise, you’ll definitely die.”

“Understood!”

Pretty Good Mood carefully trudged towards the Scarab King, and only stopped once he was in Soul Contract range.

Glittering pillars of colorful light enveloped the Scarab King, and a channeling bar appeared above Pretty Good Mood.

1%…2%…Boom!

“Sh*t, I was so close too,” cursed Pretty Good Mood.

“Only 98% more to go, am I right?” Pale Blue Elegance copied Pretty Good Mood and moved forward to use Soul Contract.

“We’ll take turns, no stealing!”

“Okay!”

The two Contract Summoners took turns using Soul Contract on the stationary Scarab King.

“Let’s go.”

Li Yi patted Jiaojiao’s shoulders and urged her to move on.

“Why aren’t we waiting for them?

“What for? Even with good luck, it would take around ten days to half a month to successfully form the contract; and if their luck is bad, it wouldn’t be unusual to take around five to six years and still fail.”

“Please don’t tell me that’s true.” Jiaojiao’s small mouth had dropped in surprise.

Li Yi turned around to give Pretty Good Mood and Pale Blue Elegance another look, before sighing, “It’s possible that they would never succeed in their entire lifetime.”

“You crazy b*stard!”

Li Yi placed two fingers on her jaws, and observed her cute little lips as he teased, “Why don’t you blow my whistle once we’re done with this.”

“F*ck off! In another life, maybe!”

“Why’s that?”

“Ask it one more time, and I’ll shove a cucumber down your throat. Then you’ll understand why!”

“…”

The Scarab King was a rare sight and since it would not attack spellcasters that were ‘forming a contract’ with it, there were plenty of summoners that had attempted to tame it in Li Yi’s past life.

Alas, the number of successful summoners were few and far between. Within King of Pantheon’s eight years of operation, there were only three summoners that had successfully tamed the bug.

Before Li Yi and Jiaojiao proceeded any further, he placed another Magical Road Sign into the ground. Their intuition had been correct, as they were definitely on the right path. Within five minutes of walking, they had encountered three elite scarab monsters.

Li Yi placed another road sign whereas Jiaojiao advanced to hack at the monsters. The battle was easy, but unlike last time, there were not any good drops, not even a single piece of white-colored equipment. Instead, they dropped three bottles of Advanced-level HP Potion. However, it was to be expected as their drop rates were usually trash, Jiaojiao getting three pieces of equipment set at one go was nothing short of a miracle.

They walked and stopped intermittently and had faced several dead ends. Using the Magical Road Signs, they pressed onward, and throughout the journey, they had only encountered one type of monster, and that was the trio of scarab elites.

“Perverted Wing, how much farther is it? Where can we find the bracelet?”

“We still have a ways to go before reaching the recesses of Wailing Grotto.”

Hiss! Hiss!

A mysterious hissing sound came from ahead of them. This time, the monsters they encountered were no longer scarab elites, and instead, they had encountered several hundred poisonous patched snakes.

The tightly-winded patched snakes filled the entire pathway. They flicked out their long tongues as they emitted hissing noises.

System Notification: [You have entered the central region of Wailing Grotto…]

Jiaojiao was ecstatic, “Central region? Are we close to the recesses now?”

“Quite.” Li Yi grinned.

Back in his past life, he took seven days to reach the ‘snake area’. This time, with the aid of the Magical Road Sign, he had only used half a day to reach the same spot.

“Once we make it through the snake area, we will finally reach the depths of the dungeon. However, we’ll need to be careful since we’ll be facing more than just monsters from this point onward. There will be traps up ahead as well.”

“Traps?”

Li Yi picked up a stone and flung it to the snake area.

Kaboom!

A loud sound rang out as the floor crumbled, revealing a sinkhole.

“It’s filled with snakes within there. So, if we ever fall down, hehehe…”

“What’s up with that sinister laughter…” Jiaojiao latched onto Li Yi’s arm. Although she was brave, she absolutely despised snakes.

“Cause if I fell into it, the pleasure of having several thousand snakes crawling over my body is oh so agonizing…”

“I’ll immediately log out if I fall down!” Jiaojiao laid down a difficult decision.

Li Yi laughed internally. In reality, there was only one small snake within the hole and it gave no experience points for its death. Furthermore, another one would spawn right after it died. Since most players did not possess any flying skills, they would not be able to escape the pit. Thus, the little snake was there for players to commit suicide.

“There’s only one path ahead and it had crumbled, no less. How are we going to make it through?”

“We could look for wooden planks, or I could Engineer a floating staircase.”

Li Yi stood before the hole and leaped high up. He used Fly in mid-air and had safely arrived at the opposite end of the hole.

With his Legendary Engineer skills at play, he created a sturdy floating staircase in a short span of a few seconds. Under Li Yi’s motivation, Jiaojiao gritted her teeth and traversed over the hole.

She was scared beyond words…

“The snake area is a good place. Follow me closely and I’ll let your experience soar!”

“God-mode!”

Li Yi activated God-mode and used Elimination Arrow on the snakes.

A Level 20 Eliminate had an effective range of five yards, and it was able to ignore 30% of the target’s DEF. Furthermore, it dealt damage that was three times of the user’s ATK stat. Furthermore, it was a guaranteed critical attack if the target was below 90% health and its cooldown was reduced to one minute!

The patched snakes only had 20,000 HP. In other words, they died within two or so hits. Jiaojiao had borne witness to the exponential growth of her experience points…

Ding!

[Level-up!]

…