VRMMO: The Unrivaled

I carefully walked toward the edge of the cliff before turning around. From where I was standing, taking even one step backward would result in a long, long fall to my death. When I looked behind me for a bit, I was shocked to find that the ravine was so deep that the bottom was literally invisible to me. Heaven knows how this unnatural formation came to be at the center of Dragonbone Mountain Range.

The bottom of the ravine looked like it was obscure by snow, wind, and something blue. It was impossible to see what was lying behind the mist. One thing was certain though, a fall from this height would almost certainly result in death. There could be icy spikes at the bottom waiting to turn someone into a skewer, or just flat, hard ice that would smash anyone into a pancake. The possibilities were endless, and all of them were tragedies.

Meanwhile, the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf was standing at the front and growling with its teeth bare. It realized that the upcoming battle was going to be a fierce one, and if we won it would get at least half or an entire Snow Rabbit to feast on. Now that I thought about it, I was a stingy master, wasn’t I? I had been collecting Snow Rabbit Meat from the start but my little wolf was still starving even now.

I took control over the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf and moved it so that it would block half the space in front of me. The remaining half was just wide enough for Lin Yixin to fill in once she had finished aggroing most of the mobs in the area. Once she had returned from her little excursion, both her and my pet would use Guard to defend themselves while I rain hell on the enemies from behind. Mn, if everything goes well, our grind efficiency would improve drastically!

……

The whole process took about 4 minutes or so, and I dared not interrupt Lin Yixin even once for fear of breaking her concentration. Right now the girl was swimming through a sea of monsters like a dancing elf, and when space became too tight to round she made quick, decisive zigzags to escape the encroaching horde. A while later, Lin Yixin returned with a sea of Level 115 shadow-rank Snow Rabbits behind her!

“Oooh, Lu Chen, catch me…”

Lin Yixin was charging toward me at almost top speed to avoid being caught by the Snow Rabbits. However, I nearly screamed as my eyes widened in fear. “No… I don’t want to die!”

Where I was right now, I was literally one or two steps away from certain doom. If Lin Yixin hit me like this, we would both fall down the cliff and die!

There was no avoiding the impact though, so some quick thinking later I gritted my teeth and ran toward Lin Yixin in an attempt to cancel out her momentum with my own. If I fail, well, we die. It was that simple.

Lin Yixin’s beautiful eyes widened when she saw me running toward her. Her lips actually spread into a heart-throbbing smile for some reason.

“Fuck, I can’t believe you’re smiling in this situation…”

I opened my eyes wide and stretched open my arms to catch her wholesome body.

Thud!

A loud thud later, we both started sliding toward the cliff edge! Our boots were dragging against the ice, but it was still too fast and too little!

Staring at the empty space behind my back, Lin Yixin involuntarily closed her eyes and held me tight, “Ah shit, we’re going to die. Make sure you’re at the bottom when we fall, Lu Chen. I don’t like pain…”

“...”

……

I panicked. There was just too little friction being generated to avoid the inevitable. We’re dead!

With little to no time to spare, I made a snap decision to pull out the Purgatory Sword and slammed the blade into the ice beneath us!

Clang!

Bits of ice flew everywhere as the sword cut a long, deep hole in the floor. We were still sliding backward, but we finally slowed down enough that we stopped when the back of my heels were one step away from hitting thin air. We just barely survived an absolute disaster.

When Lin Yixin noticed we were safe and looked up, she gave the chains on my metal armor a pull before giggling, “Hehe, you look so cool just now, Little Cheat~~”

I didn’t know if I should cry, get angry or laugh at her comment. I couldn’t help myself from saying, “Are you insane, Yiyi? You literally balanced your life on knife’s edge with your stunt just now!”

Lin Yixin was unpredictable if nothing else. She simply smiled and pretended she didn’t hear me. “Come on, the Snow Rabbits are here!”

She turned around and raised her left arm to use Guard. At first, all the aggro were focused on her, but after both her and the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf used Guard, the aggro shifted to me instead!

Standing still and fighting down the rising fear in my heart, I pretended that I wasn’t standing atop a ten-thousand-meter-tall cliff, raised the Purgatory Sword and fired a Rank 9 Thousand Mirage Slash!

Bang!

Chips flew everywhere as the nine sword aura hit the mobs and elicited painful screams from them. Thousand Mirage Slash IX was pretty powerful, and every hit dealt at least 3400 damage or so. Unfortunately, it only had a maximum coverage of 9 yards, and on a long cliff like this, the Ice Flame Slash would’ve been a better choice.

That being said, the 20% splash damage from the Purgatory Sword was more than enough to mitigate all that potential loss in DPS. The splash damage could almost triple the skill damage against such a group and dealt around 12k damage in total to each rabbit. It was pleasing to see the tanky Snow Rabbits lose 25% HP in one go, to say the least!

I then stomped my foot and dealt even more damage with War Crush!

After that, I used Wild Roar and increased the whole party’s Attack by 15%. The moment Lin Yixin received my buff, she suddenly broke out of her Guard and launched Ice Flame Slash. Quick as lightning, she produced her dagger and hit the closest Snow Rabbit with Moon Gaze and Extreme Break!

Thousand Mirage Slash had a cooldown of 15 seconds, and Ice Flame Slash, 10 seconds. Technically speaking, these two AoE skills alone were really all we needed to farm these Snow Rabbits. However, it wasn’t like we had anything better to do, so I copied Lin Yixin’s behavior and fired Dragon Slaying Slash after Dragon Slaying Slash at the Snow Rabbits. Too bad my new trainer, Rinser, hadn’t taught me a real forbidden spell, or it would be fun as hell annihilating these mobs with it. Even if the forbidden spell turned out to be an AoE magic skill, I could still combine it with a physical skill to make it work for me.

Unlike the traditional dual cultivators of legend who wielded combat skills with their right hand and forbidden magic with their left, my “dual cultivation” was a combination of magic spells and combat skills such as my Dragon Slaying Slash. That being said, the Dragon Slaying Slash was still a physical skill despite having magical effects merged into the base skill. I was still an Undead Swordsman, except I was a lot stronger than I was supposed to be.

……

While my energy blades landed in the middle of the mobs, Lin Yixin suddenly smiled and said, “Lu Chen, did you notice something?”

“What?”

“Try attacking the mobs at the center!”

“Okay…”

I fired a Dragon Slaying Slash into the middle of the Snow Rabbits and deleted 3876 HP from its health bar immediately. But this time, I noticed that the skill caused a tiny shockwave that affected 8 other mobs in direct vicinity of that Snow Rabbit. They all lost 775 HP at the same time!

Holy shit, is that splash damage I’m seeing?!

I was pleasantly surprised by this. Although Dragon Slaying Slash was a long-ranged single-target skill, it still benefited from the Purgatory Sword’s passive. Yesss!

Our grind speed up shot even higher since I could fire a Dragon Slaying Slash every 2 or 3 seconds or so. Tsk tsk, this is great!

“Haha! You’re so smart, Yiyi!” I praised her from the bottom of my heart.

Lin Yixin curled her lips in response. “No, you’re just too stupid…”

While saying this, she broke her Guard again and launched another Ice Flame Slash. The burning blade of ice collapsed atop the sea of Snow Rabbits and devastated everything that stood in its path. Seriously, what an insane skill. Though I had to mention that those wailing Snow Rabbits were still better off than the poor thing standing right in front of Lin Yixin. The merciless Fruit Knife Goddess was just pulling out her fruit knife out of its heart.

She drank an HP potion immediately after that. Although she was in her defensive stance most of the time, she still took a lot of beating and lost a fair amount of HP. She only had less than 6000 HP or so, and a Rank 8 Health Potion could only heal half of that. Still, she was the manufacturer of her own potion, so she didn’t hesitate to spam them on cooldown. Thanks to her decisiveness, she wasn’t in any real danger yet.

For a while, the icy cliff was illuminated by our skills. The snow continued to fall as the Level 115 shadow-rank Snow Rabbits dropped en masse and turned into huge amounts of experience and equipment.

I had to admit that our bold choice of choke point and logical positioning made us a ton of profit. The secret to being successful was in fact, to be completely unscrupulous with your methods. There was no such thing as a tactic that was too shameless, just as strength and tactics weren’t mutually exclusive. Every expert in the world was a slimy bastard who did the unconventional to become the champion of their field.

Had we chosen to use traditional maneuvering to AoE down the mobs, we would be in all manners of trouble right now. At the very least, the Snow Rabbits were too risky to kill the traditional way considering our current level. One moment of bad luck was all it would take to be one-shot by these powerful mammals.

I tried my best to draw the Snow Rabbits’ aggro away from Lin Yixin with Dragon Slaying Slash as much as possible. Although she was in Guard most of the time, it was still too dangerous for a paper-thin Wanderer like her. If she was as tanky as He Yi or Gui Guzi, then I wouldn’t be nearly as worried.

Now that I thought about it, He Yi hadn’t come online for a long time, hadn’t she...

……

“Hello? What are you waiting for? Use Thousand Mirage Slash!” Lin Yixin suddenly turned around to look at me.

“Oh, right!”

I hurriedly swung my sword and scattered the mobs in front of us.

Lin Yixin smiled slightly. “Thinking about sister He Yi?”

“N… no…” I denied.

“Hmph, like hell you’re not!” Lin Yixin rolled her eyes once before muttering, “At least pay attention when you’re leveling with me, stupid…”

I couldn’t help but smile back. “Yiyi, look to the front about 5 yards away from you. Does that chest armor look familiar to you?”

“Oh, yeah it is…”

It was a blue-colored leather chest armor and without a doubt a part of the Frozen Earth set. Tsk tsk, I supposed that our dream to gather a truckload of Frozen Earth set pieces with our level of karma and luck wasn’t a dream after all!

The Snow Rabbit was truly a tough foe befitting of its rank. Its HP was insane, and its offensive power was deadly. Even with our choke point, it took us almost two hours to finally clear out the Snow Rabbits Lin Yixin had aggroed. I estimated that we had killed at least 2000 Snow Rabbits, or with our level of power we would’ve cleared out the area a long time ago.

Our work done, I petted the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf’s head and smiled. “Alright, you can eat two Snow Rabbits!”

“Aoo aoo…”

My pet howled happily before digging into the corpse of a Snow Rabbit, causing blood to splatter all over the place. It’s the bastard of a wild wolf alright, it’s totally different from the dogs we keep in our backyards.