The Almighty Ring

Back in the game, Jiang Fei used the Abyss Door to enter the 10th floor of the Abyss. Instead of greeting the Nephilim King, he was there to ask for Sharaz’s help.

If he wanted to bait Evil Laughter out in the open, he would have to draw him in by exposing himself. He would need to be exposed to danger or Evil Laughter would not be drawn it. The best way to do that was with Sharaz’s help. Only a Celestial tier boss could really be a threat to Jiang Fei. He would ask Sharaz to engage him in a pretended fight in order to lure the motherf*cker out in the open.

No one would, or rather, could fulfill Jiang Fei’s requirement as Jiang Fei himself was too strong. Since there were no other Celestial tier NPCs out there to ask for help, Sharaz was the only one he could turn to.

Jiang Fei thought of asking Sharaz to chase and kill Evil Laughter in his stead, however, that was against the rules of the character’s programming. It would be as easy as snapping a branch since any Celestial tier boss had an instant teleportation ability. No matter how far or how fast Evil Laughter ran, the only way to be truly safe was to log out of the game.

Unfortunately, the programming limited how NPCs could interact with players. Unlike players themselves, NPC could never attack a player without first being triggered into a battle state. The best example was the Divine Light God. Jiang Fei had inadvertently triggered a world-tier quest in which a public statement of hostility against Jiang Fei was issued.

Jiang Fei had another idea where he would find an opportunity to “give” the Sword of Abraham to Evil Laughter. That way, Sharaz would have more than enough reason to hunt and kill him. However, Evil Laughter was not worth it for Jiang Fei to just give up the Sword of Abraham. He had other plans with the sword—to deal with Ulysses.

Since Sharaz could not directly inflict damage to Evil Laughter, Jiang Fei would have to think of another way to deal with him. The one problem he had with Evil Laughter was his movement speed. If Jiang Fei could find a way to just freeze Evil Laughter for just a fraction of a second, Jiang Fei could then kill him instantly.

To deal with Evil Laughter, Jiang Fei had spent a considerable amount of time on preparations. He had requested Seven Star Warrior to gather a few veteran Hunters. These Hunters were contract workers that had signed a deal with Empyreal Dragon. Their loyalty to the guild that had paid them extremely well was beyond irreplaceable.

After choosing a suitable venue to set the stage, the Hunters were ordered to set up multiple Freezing Traps around the battlefield. To add more insurance to the plan, he gathered many magicians from the guild that excelled in casting debuffs. These magicians were cast with stealth skills to hide in the battlefield. If the Hunters’ traps failed to capture Evil Laughter, the magicians would then cast slow and other binding spells to lock him in place.

When everything was ready, Jiang Fei used his quest-issuing-privilege to make one last quest to cast the bait.

Ding! Bonus Quest: Retribution! Seek and Destroy the Evil Demon Sharaz!

The quest was made public to all. Anyone from anywhere could take the quest and complete it. However, even when Jiang Fei had purposely marked up the reward, no guild or party had signed up for the quest. The problem was Sharaz herself! The Celestial tier boss was too strong for everyone in the game! Even Jiang Fei!

Since the quest was made public, Evil Laughter would not suspect that the boss fight would be staged. When Jiang Fei engaged with the boss, the man would surely be present to execute Jiang Fei.

The die had been cast. All that Jiang Fei needed to do was to start the staged fight with Sharaz. The battle erupted with spells and skills bombarding the entire battlefield. The pretty little thing was holding back her power. All the skills and spells that she was casting were the weakest ones in her skill list. Instead of channeling the more powerful wide-scale AoE spells, she merely used instant-cast AoE spells.

It was a general rule of thumb. Instant-cast single target spells were the weakest in the entire game, followed by channel-cast single target spells. There are certain AoE spells that were stronger than single-target spell but almost all instant-cast AoE spells were extremely weak.

Sharaz was weak in magic while she excelled in physical attacks. Her instant-cast AoE spells were used to only reveal invisible magic and to annoy channeling magicians. Even so, at her strength, the damage that she was dealing to Jiang Fei was so strong that one skill could hack away two-thirds of his total health points.

Thank god for the Cauldron of Spirit or Jiang Fei would have been dead by the second cast.

Even though Sharaz was deliberately holding back, anyone that was not engage in the battle did not think so. Instant-cast AoE spell might have low damage but the aesthetic effect of the spell was so flamboyant that everyone swore never to fight this boss unless necessary. No one knew that Sharaz was supposed to excel in physical melee fights. All they paid attention to was how ravishing she looked when the Flame Dancer danced in the air, casting flames and powerful explosions that covered the entire battlefield.

To play along, Jiang Fei swung his Soulcutter, purposely missing his target. Everytime he did, the large “miss” text would pop out. If he did attack Sharaz directly, he would cause Sharaz’s Reputation to drop.

In no time at all, the “news” about Jiang Fei fighting a Celestial tier boss spread. Members of the Empyreal Dragon played an important role then. In no time at all, many players from all corners of the faction area joined to see how Jiang Fei fought. Fortunately for Sharaz large AoE skills, players dared not come closer to spectate the fight else they would be able to see how Jiang Fei was deliberately missing his hits.

In less than half an hour, Jiang Fei received a system notification that the Cauldron of Agility was close!

From the spectator’s point of view, the intense battle had reached a stalemate. The boss’ attacks were strong but she was not able to kill Jiang Fei because of his insane recovery speed. Jiang Fei looked like he was attacking but the boss did not seem to be affected by his attack. Fortunately, they were too far to judge anything.

There was a problem that Jiang Fei had overlooked. How was he going to attack Jiang Fei when one single blast from the boss would instantly kill him? To kill Jiang Fei, he would have to approach him, but that would kill himself as well. To kill Evil Laughter, Jiang Fei would have to approach Evil Laughter, but if he tried to drag the fight towards him, Evil Laughter would immediately sense something wrong and run away.

At this point, Jiang Fei figured something out. He then ran up closer to the boss and bellowed, “The fight has gone too long for the both of us. It’s time for me to end this! Time to die!”

Jiang Fei leaped back and got into a stance, activating the Soulcutter’s skill.

Sword Form: Bloom!

Jiang Fei’s sword immediately split in two. A fraction of a second later, the two swords split into four. The swords continued to split into two more until there were a total of 128 swords.

Sword Form: Blade Dragon!

Jiang Fei released the sword in his hand, letting it float into the air to join the other swords. With his hands, Jiang Fei controlled all the sword to form a large dragon made of blades. It was not as large as the Blade Dragon that he had fought before but it was still daunting to look at!

Once the Blade Dragon was formed, Jiang Fei commanded the Sword Soul to take control of it to just spin it around the boss. At the same time, he gave Sharaz a look and a wink.

From the vantage point of the other audience, the Blade Dragon circulating around the boss looked like it was charging up some sort of skill. No one suspected anything when Jiang Fei was just buying time to tell Sharaz to run!

“How strong you are! I give up! Victory is yours!” cried Sharaz when she noticed Jiang Fei’s subtle message. She immediately stop attacking and vanished.

“This is my chance!”

Evil Laughter was present amongst the audience. He was one of those that was completely deceived by Jiang Fei’s act. He was bought, thinking that Jiang Fei was charging an ultimate form and could not move! That would be his ultimate chance to assassinate him.