80: Chapter 80: Players Crying and Wailing

Though his words were extremely arrogant and the stream was highly entertaining, PD quietly swallowed hard, his body involuntarily stiffening.

What a joke! After experiencing the earth-shattering "beatings" of Chapters 6 and 7, he knew Old Thief Gu's true colors all too well.

This dog of a developer specifically bolded and highlighted this high-difficulty stage in red, and even Da Vinci jumped out to warn him; how could it just be a simple stat check?

PD might have been shouting about a "faceroll," but his hands were incredibly honest.

He didn't dare bring any flashy, acrobatic lineups; instead, with a tense expression, he placed the max-defense Mash at the head of his team.

In the DPS slot, he didn't hesitate to slot in his new waifu—Ereshkigal—whom he had just spent over a dozen packs to max out in the Chapter 7 gacha.

For the Healer slot, he steadily placed the medical-type Caster Servant, Tamamo-no-Mae, who possessed team-wide healing and certain support capabilities.

Furthermore, to cope with a potentially high-pressure start, PD replaced even his Vanguards (Lancer) responsible for early-game cost generation with the highest specs.

He had long since abandoned the "Big Dog" Cu Chulainn he'd suffered with in the early game, opting instead for the current meta's top-tier dual five-star Vanguard rotation:

The Queen of the Land of Shadows, Scathach, who offered flexible deployment and handled both damage and cost generation, along with Enkidu, who brought high sustained cost generation and AoE stun control upon deployment, though his damage was slightly lacking without special attack bonuses.

After setting up this luxurious lineup that reeked of money and practically had stats overflowing off the screen, he still wasn't at ease, subconsciously sliding the quick-acting heart pills on his desk closer to his hand.

However, when he truly stepped into the H6 and H7 battlefields, he realized in despair that the "comprehensive high-pressure challenge" Old Thief Gu spoke of wasn't just testing stats, but was ruthlessly torturing players like him who only knew how to play when things were going their way!

In H6-1, PD had assumed it would just be some buffed mobs, but the tactical sandbox immediately spawned a hellish start—three whole waves of Knight of Orders and Mana Sphinxes!

"Holy crap! Why are these mobs so tanky?!" PD roared in the stream.

As a mega-whale player who had cleared the Seventh Singularity, PD's gaming skill, if not outstanding, was at least proficient.

In reality, if he just died a few times and memorized the spawn timing, he could absolutely steamroll these high-difficulty stages with his eyes closed using his maxed-out lineup.

But the problem was, this was a "blind first run" where he had no preparation.

Facing the first wave of incoming Knight of Orders, for the sake of the stream, he controlled the newly deployed Scathach and Ereshkigal and dumped all his burst skills and Noble Phantasms at once!

"Eat my Noble Phantasm! All of you, die!" The flashy Noble Phantasm effects instantly cleared the screen.

Before PD could even feel smug, the next second, three full rows of extremely fast, high-defense, high-HP Mana Sphinxes spawned simultaneously at the four corners of the tactical sandbox!

"Holy crap! Why are there so many?! All my skills are on cooldown!"

Facing this sudden, high-pressure tide of monsters, the unprepared PD truly showed what it meant to panic.

Seeing the pressure on his defense line spike, in his extreme panic, he triggered Tamamo-no-Mae's life-saving healing ultimate when his Servants had only lost a sliver of HP!

As a result, when the real elite monsters swarmed in and his defense line started losing health in large chunks, his healing and damage skills were all on cooldown, and he could only rely on his Servants to tank with their faces!

The stream chat instantly burst into laughter:

"Hahahaha! PD, that old blind man, his first-run death is killing me!"

"Dumping all skills on the first wave of mobs and using a healing ult at full health—classic Old P!"

"With how he's throwing skills around, even a dog would shake its head!"

"To be honest, if it weren't for Boss P's max-NP top-tier lineup bought with money, his defense line would have crumbled to dust in ten seconds with that kind of micro-management on a first run!"

"Phew... these mobs are too dense..." Relying on the stench of money and absolute stat-checking, PD managed to scrape through the first wave of high pressure by throwing lives at it.

However, just as he thought he was about to clear the stage, a blinding pillar of sunlight suddenly descended from the sky!

The Sun Knight Gawain, buffed with the "Nightless" damage reduction, descended onto the sandbox without warning like a god of war as the final boss, sending PD's low-HP, cooldown-locked defense line straight back home with a single Flame Holy Sword!

"Damn it! There was a full-health Gawain hiding after the mobs?! Old Thief Gu, why didn't you write that on the UI?!"

This was a pure first-run kill!

By the time he reached H7-3, the pressure increased exponentially.

Not only were there invisible enemies targeting his units and toxic blood all over the ground, but countless Chaos Dragons spitting poison circled in the sky!

When the ground defense reached its limit, the high ground was wiped out, and survival space was compressed to the extreme, the final boss Gorgon unleashed a mass petrification, turning players across the net who didn't know how to bait mechanics, like PD, into statues of despair!

"Can't heal! I can't heal at all! My max-NP Ereshkigal just stepped into a poison pool and evaporated the moment she hit the field!"

It wasn't just PD; the official forum had become a massive mourning site of people wailing and crying for help: "Help! Is this monster wave in the H-stages even something a carbon-based lifeform could design?!"

"F2P players can't even clear the first wave of mobs!"

"I cleared the screen with one Noble Phantasm, but then ten Berserk Lahmu spawned behind them—who can handle that?!"

PD's eyes were bloodshot; relying entirely on the strong foundation of his luxurious lineup, he stumbled and scraped his way through the previous stages.

When his hands began to tremble from the high-intensity, blind tapping, he finally arrived at the final barriers symbolizing the highest difficulty—H6-4 and H7-4.

Here, the fig leaf of stat-checking was ruthlessly ripped away by Gu Yi.

Because it was a first run, PD had no idea when the Boss would descend. To clear the fierce wave of elite monsters in the first five minutes and preserve his formation, he was forced to exhaust all his Servants' life-saving skills and burst Noble Phantasms completely.

When his defense line was at its breaking point, the final boss, the Lion King, rode in on a white horse, bringing full health and cold divine might as she descended onto the sandbox.

She raised her holy lance at the start, coldly pronouncing PD's death sentence.

"This light shall extend to the horizon—Rhongomyniad!"

A torrent of light, carrying [Invincible Pierce] and true damage effects, roared and wiped the field clean!

"Invincible Pierce?! Ignores defense?!"

PD's eyes widened. Under his first-run playstyle of throwing skills randomly, his defense line, which hadn't utilized any mechanics to evade, was instantly evaporated by this light cannon, leaving not even ash behind!

Turning to click into H7-4, the feeling of despair was suffocating.

The entire map was covered in "Chaos Tide (black mud)," unreasonably swallowing up the already scarce ground deployment slots, while the sky was filled with flying Lahmu that ignored blockers and directly raided his backline.

When PD's defense line became riddled with holes due to his panic, the final boss, Tiamat, awakened.

Accompanied by a sorrowful song, a forced-release "Nega-Genesis" sonic wave swept across the entire screen, instantly shattering PD's remaining high-ground DPS into particles of light!

[MISSION FAILED]!

A whole night passed, and millions of veteran players worldwide—who had been full of confidence and smiling happily while holding their thirty compensation stones—were left littered across the battlefield in front of the final barriers of H6-4 and H7-4.

"It's impossible! Absolutely impossible!" PD grabbed his already thinning hair and screamed in despair in the stream:

"Old Thief Gu is definitely scamming us! At this stage, no Servant can tank this kind of full-screen wipe combined with Invincible Pierce! If we can't even clear this first stage of the abyss, there's no way we're clearing the second stage in a week!"