On the edge of the Abyss Sea, Lin Bei—standing atop the Altar—gazed at the distant, massive Teleportation Array, a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
He glanced at the BOSS challenge token in his hand and spotted a problem.
The token's energy had already dissipated, leaving it dim and lifeless.
Yet no BOSS figure had appeared inside the huge array.
"Strange… has the World BOSS spawn limit been reached?"
Lin Bei was puzzled.
But he quickly dismissed the idea.
The Altar itself still blazed with brilliant light.
The only difference was the challenge token in his hand.
"One isn't enough?"
He frowned and took out another World BOSS challenge token.
Light flashed across the new token as energy gathered.
A few breaths later, though, the energy was spent and the token dimmed once more.
The huge blue Teleportation Array, however, grew noticeably richer in power.
Lin Bei naturally saw this.
Eyes narrowing, he produced yet another token.
Again the energy drained away.
"Still not enough? Then another!"
Without hesitation he kept taking out and using tokens.
He had plenty; a single first-place reward on Tianjian City's Dark Forest honor ranking had given him 10,000. Using a few now was nothing.
Each time a token's energy vanished he replaced it. After more than a hundred, the distant array finally changed.
The array's deep-blue radiance had turned utterly black.
Ten figures slowly solidified, their auras sharp and cold.
A single glance told Lin Bei they were different.
"Combat Power… every one of these bosses exceeds 100 billion!"
"And they're all Epic Four-Star rank!"
"Compared with the cannon-fodder before, they're in a whole different league!"
"And ten of them showed up at once!"
Lin Bei stared, stunned.
Then his shock turned to wild joy.
Though these ten bosses had just stepped into Epic Four-Star, his own strength verged on Epic Five-Star—several times greater.
To him, they weren't a threat.
They were juicy, mouth-watering experience babies.
"Looks like the mastermind behind the curtain can't sit still any longer."
"But if it's only this level… it's far from enough."
"Who'd have thought burning a hundred tokens would summon ten bosses worth over a trillion Combat Power!"
"This time… I've hit the jackpot!"
Lin Bei grinned, eager to begin.
Inside the array the ten figures fixed cold eyes on him, smirked, and without a word teleported together into a Special Combat Space.
They spread out, encircling him.
"Strong and coordinated?"
"Seems they're determined to finish me off."
"Well then…"
Lin Bei smiled; black shadows condensed around him, forming over a hundred Death Avatars.
With a wave of his hand the avatars surged into the dark energy passage and, the next second, appeared inside the Combat space, launching a frenzied assault on the ten Epic Four-Star bosses!
Lin Bei's own Vitality now topped one trillion, so each avatar inherited ten percent—an immense reserve.
Their might was terrifying.
The only flaw: lacking Spirit, they would struggle against mental attacks.
Lin Bei wasn't worried.
These Death Avatars were merely scouts sent to probe the bosses' abilities; they cost only a few Shadow Points—no real loss.
[Death Avatar: an Epic skill that condenses Shadow Power to create avatars. Each possesses ten percent of the caster's Vitality and all shadow-related abilities.]
[Note 1: Avatars cannot wear gear, use other skills, or gather Spiritual Power.]
[Note 2: The caster can Teleport to swap places with any avatar at any time.]
[Note 3: On death, an avatar explodes, applying Mark of Death and Execute to all nearby targets.]
These Death Avatars could use every shadow-type ability Lin Bei had mastered; strictly speaking, their strength was anything but weak.
And once they died, they would release "Mark of Death" and "Execute" all around them. Targets afflicted by Mark of Death would take double damage and suffer a huge stat reduction—a disgustingly nasty debuff.
As for Execute, it needed no explanation: it directly dealt true damage equal to 10% of the target's max HP—utterly unreasonable.
However, it could only trigger once per day on the same target; if it could stack, he would truly be invincible.
Besides that, the Death Avatars also possessed a "Clone" ability, but due to energy limits each avatar could summon only ten Shadow Clones, each at 1% of the Death Avatar's power. These Shadow Clones could only use "Shadow" skills, far inferior to the "Death" skills Lin Bei's true body commanded.
Even so, as long as his own Combat Power was high enough, the Shadow Clones produced by a Death Avatar could still perform admirably on the battlefield!
At the very least, clearing out some cannon-fodder was no problem at all.
For instance, right now Lin Bei's own Vitality stat was 1.2 trillion; the Death Avatar he summoned had 120 billion, and the Shadow Clone a Death Avatar summoned still had 1.2 billion!
Say what you will—if Xue Yi revived, he wouldn't even need to act personally; a single clone-of-a-clone could instantly obliterate her! (Xue Yi: The hell… I'm not cannon-fodder!!!)
Therefore, the current Lin Bei truly was an army of one.
If he wished, he could wipe out every Survivor in all Thirty-Six Main Cities of the King-Level Dungeon World using only Shadow Clones.
Inside the Special Combat Space, over a hundred Death Avatars split into groups of ten and launched fierce assaults on ten Epic Four-Star World BOSSes.
Any one of them alone would be no match for a World BOSS.
But with ten avatars fighting together, they actually fought the BOSS to a standstill!
At this moment the ten World BOSSes felt misery they couldn't voice.
They believed their own strength far surpassed these humans!
The problem was, these people's coordination was simply too Perfect!
And their skills were just as disgusting.
Mark of Death plus Grasp of Death not only reduced their stats but also controlled their movements, leaving them completely tied down and unable to fight at full strength!
That alone would have been bearable, yet whenever they gathered power to attack, those guys slipped away like loaches, moving at extreme speed, stealthing into the shadows with unpredictable trajectories so that their strikes rarely inflicted serious harm.
Moreover, as the fight dragged on they noticed these opponents had weak Mental Attributes—but the moment they unleashed Spirit attacks, the shameless enemies summoned a swarm of clones to form a meat shield, blocking the mental impact.
Meanwhile the others dived into the shadows like turtles withdrawing into their shells, leaving them no way to strike!
The worst part: these humans' Vitality rivaled their own!
Fighting ten-against-one left them utterly miserable.
And for some reason, as time passed they were shocked to find these people's strength still climbing!
"Damn it—tell me, are we the BOSSes here, or are they?!"*
Finally, one Epic Four-Star BOSS broke down and cursed aloud.
On the Altar Lin Bei sat cross-legged, enjoying the battle feed from the special space while absorbing the blood soul crystal stones obtained from previous BOSS kills.
With each crystal absorbed, his own Combat Power rose a notch, and the aura of his Death Avatars strengthened in step.
[Notice: You absorbed and Refined a blood soul crystal stone! Successfully triggered the 10,000× Critical Hit effect!]
[Notice: Your Vitality +100 million! Your Spirit +100 million!]
[Notice: …]
Notifications scrolled past Lin Bei like a barrage of bullets.
A smile played at Lin Bei's lips as he analyzed the BOSS intelligence relayed by the Death Avatars on the battlefield; his grasp of the overall situation became ever more effortless.
"It's been so long and these BOSSes haven't even killed a single clone—how disappointing."
"Forget it, let me give them a little… Execute shock."