Bone Dragon Raid (2)
The Bone Dragon hasn't taken that much damage.
If the opening blows had only scored its hide, everything since had at best cut into muscle. The problem was that none of it, from the Bone Dragon's perspective, amounted to a fatal wound.
We need to hurt it worse while the city walls are still standing.
Finding its core would be best, but that would take pure luck. And even if they did find it, with their present firepower it was anyone's guess whether they could smash the bone and destroy the thing.
Jin-soo drew a bow from his inventory. The string creaked as he hauled it back and flooded his Piercing skill with mana, and the arrow he loosed screamed straight for the Bone Dragon's neck vertebrae.
A tremendous blast erupted. The neck bone held. Jin-soo's attack, however, did not end with a single shaft. Arrow after arrow, each one charged with Piercing, hammered into the same vertebra in rapid succession.
From every Bone Dragon he had hunted, the core was most likely to lie in the neck, the spine, the breastbone, or the skull.
Right now, the neck is the only thing I can reach.
Its durability was at least lower than the rest, and if those bones broke, even a core seated in the skull would have to take the shock. The trouble was that even the comparatively fragile neck was still monstrously hard.
Still, it isn't as if we're doing nothing.
As his blessings had grown, Jin-soo's stats and skill levels had climbed with them, and unlike the other players' attacks, the arrows he fired were producing results that actually mattered.
A low, grinding growl rolled out of the Bone Dragon. Until now it had taken every blow on its body, swatting only now and then with tail, wing, and foreleg. This time it yanked its long neck back and met Jin-soo's arrows with the hard dome of its skull.
"The neck bones are the weak point! Aim for the neck!"
"Focus fire!"
The players who saw it poured everything they had into the Bone Dragon's neck. Attribute-laced arrows and a riot of offensive spells crashed into the vertebrae, while the melee damage dealers, unable to reach that high, kept hammering its forelegs instead.
Enraged, the Bone Dragon unleashed a roar thick with cursed energy.
"Ghk!"
"My head's going to split!"
"My body's getting heavy!"
The players hit hardest by the curse faltered, and in that instant the Bone Dragon's tail swept the ground.
"Aaaagh!"
"Gaaah!"
More than a hundred players died in a heartbeat. The Bone Dragon lashed its tail like a whip and drove its wing-bones in like spears, then went further still, using its fanged maw and the blade-like claws of its forelegs to tear into the players clinging to it like a swarm of ants.
"The Bone Dragon's going berserk!"
"Fall back to the walls!"
"Get into the safe zone!"
Under the onslaught, the players fled for the city walls. A wet, rattling growl rose as the Bone Dragon's mana surged and gathered in its mouth.
Breath.
Jin-soo, still loosing arrows, went rigid.
Can the city walls hold?
Already the focus of the Bone Dragon's assault, they had taken no small amount of damage.
Nothing for it but to trust them.
All he could do now was keep his summons attacking and keep the arrows flying.
Pitch-black Decay Breath erupted from the Bone Dragon's maw. With a thunderous blast and a grinding roar, the city walls shuddered violently.
Thank god.
They had not collapsed under a single breath. That was no reason to relax. The stretch struck by the Decay Breath was corroding at a frightening speed, and the Bone Dragon's physical blows had already worn their durability badly down. Hit by the breath on top of that, the walls were visibly losing their proper function, fast enough that anyone could see it.
Even so, the safe-zone function is still alive.
Because of it, the players atop the walls took no damage at all. Then the Bone Dragon rammed the fortification with its body, and the wall began to shake as if an earthquake had struck. Half-melted bricks crumbled and fell away in limp heaps.
"Attack! Keep attacking!"
The guild leadership ordered an all-out assault.
"Tanks to the front!"
At the same time they massed the tanks, bracing for the moment the walls came down.
Can the tanks even hold?
If the walls fell and the tanks went down with them, the players would almost certainly break and run.
Time to get ready.
Still wearing his archer gear, Jin-soo kept loosing arrows as he prepared to step forward.
Good thing I bought the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set.
He had acquired it to face Demirichi, the gatekeeper of Floor 100, but it would serve just as well against the Bone Dragon.
The Bone Dragon is an existence beyond the standard. So is this armor.
In rank, the Bone Dragon stood higher. In level, the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set surpassed it.
And I've raised every core skill, tank skills included, to 722.
He also carried a weapon unlike any other: Baekcheonsingeom.
No matter how high a monster's rank, it can't nullify the power of items, stats, and skills.
That was precisely why the attacks of Jin-soo and his summons dealt meaningful damage where the other players' did not. High-level items and skills, built on an overwhelming base stat line, were doing the work.
While he fired and watched the walls' durability, the vanguard rotated out for the center.
The rotation's faster than I expected.
The drain on stamina and mana was severe, but the real problem was the stacked curses. As they piled up, movement dulled, the melee damage dealers took heavier losses, and the vanguard and center had to swap far sooner than planned.
Daehan Guild, in the rear, is still on standby.
Before his regression, the walls had probably collapsed and the tanks been swept helplessly aside before the rear ever committed, and a full retreat had followed.
This time, I won't let it happen.
Jin-soo looked at Shin Sua.
"Sua. Put every buff back on me."
"Okay."
Shin Sua reapplied the archer buffs, then layered on every kind she had not yet cast—mage, warrior, assassin, tank, healer, and the rest. Wrapped in them and ready to charge at a moment's notice, Jin-soo kept firing. Their efforts had not been wasted. Cracks, large and small, spidered across the Bone Dragon's neck bones.
Then a foreleg drove into the wall. The Bone Dragon raked the fortification as if it meant to tear it apart, and with a tremendous roar the earth shook. A section of the city wall collapsed completely. In the same instant, the broken stretch and the ground around it lost the function of a safe zone.
"Tanks, move in!"
"Hold the breach! Don't let any more of the wall come down!"
At the guild commanders' shouts, the tanks threw their bodies into the gap. The Bone Dragon roared in fury, cursed energy boiling off it as it swung a foreleg. Plastered in Protection and every other buff they had, the tanks triggered Guardian and the rest of their class defenses, raising shields to meet the blow.
"Guhk!"
"My arm!"
"My knee just folded!"
"Koff—koff!"
They had blocked a single attack, and still the dead and wounded poured in. More than ten tanks died on the Bone Dragon's claws, and more than thirty suffered grave injuries, arms, legs, and spines bent or snapped.
"Healers, heal them!"
"Rapid Recovery!"
"Holy Restoration!"
A shower of heals poured down on the tanks. The Bone Dragon only growled and swung, and swung again, its forelegs moving far faster than the healers could close the wounds. In moments the dead and injured multiplied.
This is done.
The tanks can't hold.
Do we pull out?
If we retreat now, the losses will be enormous.
The players' confidence collapsed. Even the guild leadership, still calling for the assault, had begun to think of retreat. Raiding something like a Bone Dragon required tanks. If the tanks broke, the slow mages and healers would be wiped out, and the raid would fail completely.
And then it happened.
Clad in pitch-black armor and wielding two swords—one pouring out pure-white aura, the other a blood-red aura—Jin-soo charged the Bone Dragon. Both blades swept for its neck. The Bone Dragon yanked its head back and gaped its fanged maw wide. Jin-soo smashed its skull, fell back a step, and charged in again. White aura and crimson aura hammered the Bone Dragon's body without pause. Every blow opened wounds, large and small, and shards of bone went spinning across the ground.
With a shrieking cry, the Bone Dragon ignored the tanks and damage dealers and swung a foreleg straight at Jin-soo. He crossed his swords. The foreleg crashed into him, and his body skidded back with a shriek of metal on stone. Unlike the tanks, who died or were crippled by a single hit, Jin-soo was unharmed. He launched himself forward and struck again, blow after blow, and the Bone Dragon did not dodge. It answered with a ferocious assault of its own.
"Waaaaah!"
"Attack! Attack!"
Jin-soo had halted the Bone Dragon's advance and locked with it in what looked like a one-on-one duel, and the players' morale surged.
The guild leaders, meanwhile, stared with eyes wide and mouths hanging open. They were the top players of Floor 100, and even to them Jin-soo's movements belonged to another dimension entirely. The same men and women who had prided themselves on being the strongest on the floor were shaken to the core.
"What?"
"Who the hell is that?"
"I've never seen a player like that in the hunting grounds."
"That man's with Daehan Guild!"
At the words of an officer from the American Alliance Guild, every leader's gaze snapped to Daehan Guild, still waiting in the rear.
"Is that true?"
"Young-cheol, is that player really one of yours?"
"To think you were hiding a secret weapon like that. Kim Young-cheol, you sly bastard."
"Hahaha."
Under the barrage of questions, Kim Young-cheol let out an awkward laugh. In truth, he was more than a little rattled.
I thought something was off from the moment he started shooting, but what in the world is that? Wasn't he a summoner?
Kim Young-cheol was himself one of Floor 100's top players, and that was exactly why he understood how high Jin-soo's level truly was. Weaving in and out with fluid mastery, Jin-soo fought the Bone Dragon without a single visible flaw—absurd speed, crushing offense, iron defense, and technique to match.
"Just what is that player?"
"That's an assassin skill. And that one's a tank skill."
"Huh? That's a warrior skill!"
"How many class skills is he even using?"
"One person, using skills from multiple classes? Is that even possible?"
"And those movements—how high is his level? Can you even raise it that far on Floor 100?"
"His combat experience is no joke either. He's absurdly practiced against a large monster like a Bone Dragon."
The guild leaders' curiosity about Jin-soo exploded, and every eye turned on Kim Young-cheol at once.