81: Chapter 81: The Beginning of the Strategy Team

Just as players across the entire network were falling into deep self-doubt, and even beginning to curse the game's broken balance on the forums...

Inside a high-end apartment on Blue Star, White Night, a top-tier technical streamer, was staring intently at the holographic tactical sandbox before him, sporting two massive dark circles under his eyes.

Scattered at his feet were seven or eight empty cans of energy drinks. Over the past twenty hours, he had failed on these two maps over three hundred times.

"This won't work. The Boss's berserk mechanic and full-screen instant-kill are mandatory. Relying on the current card pool and investment levels to stack stats and tank the ultimate skill head-on is absolutely impossible. We must utilize the game's underlying aggro mechanics and deployment cooldowns to make something happen..."

White Night muttered to himself. He rubbed his throbbing temples, lifted half the visor of his VR helmet, opened a third-party voice chat software on his computer, and pulled up a private voice channel named "Assault Operations Room."

He pulled in four people.

[Data Maniac], [Ah K], [Zero], and [Black Cat].

These four didn't have much of a reputation in ordinary streams, but they were all high-level players White Night had met in various obscure, hardcore games and social forums.

"Old Bai, you're stuck on these last two levels too, right?" As soon as the voice connection was established, an ID named [Data Maniac] sighed.

"I've calculated it fifty times. The Lion King's ultimate skill comes with Invincibility Pierce; Tiamat is immune to crowd control, and her ultimate is a forced full-screen attack. Without powerful survival cards, we can't even survive the Boss's first Noble Phantasm."

"That's why we need to change our approach."

White Night's voice was exceptionally calm. "Since we can't defend against the ultimate skill, then we won't."

"Won't defend? That's a full-map instant-kill ultimate!" [Data Maniac] was stunned.

"Facing an unstoppable nuke that wipes the map, what is the perfect solution? It's not relying on raw stats to tank it, but rather the 'Empty Fort Strategy' and 'Airdrop Single-Target Strike' after mastering the timing!"

White Night pulled up the catalog of all the low-star cards, a light called madness burning in his eyes.

"The Lion King's ultimate in H6-4 ignores invincibility. Fine. The moment her ultimate gauge is full, we won't leave any main units on the field! We'll only leave one one-star cannon fodder on the field!"

"Let her earth-shattering, full-screen ultimate blow up a piece of trash that only costs a few points!"

"Once the ultimate is unleashed, her energy bar will be empty, and she will enter a skill vacuum period. This is the perfect window for damage! In that very instant, we will [Airdrop] all our core damage dealers that we've been holding back and whose redeployment cooldowns have finished, right onto her face, and take her out in one wave!"

The voice channel was silent for a moment, and then [Ah K]'s voice erupted in disbelief:

"Holy crap, a sacrificial style to dodge the ultimate?! Using airborne troops to burst? But at this stage, even a five-star Saber's burst damage isn't enough to deplete the Lion King's health bar in a few seconds!"

"Who said we were going to use five-stars?"

White Night smiled slightly and selected a three-star Saber from the catalog—one that shone brilliantly in the story but was rarely leveled by players.

"Use a knight of Camelot to end the king of Camelot! Bedivere's Noble Phantasm comes with massive bonus damage. As long as we pair him with the right supports, like the buffs from Caesar and Shakespeare, his burst power will absolutely be able to pierce through that White City!"

"What about Tiamat in H7-4? She doesn't have a skill vacuum period!"

"Tiamat is immune to crowd control, so we'll use another extreme solution!"

White Night abruptly pulled out a one-star Berserker card that almost no player on the entire network had ever used—[Asterios (Mini-Bull)].

"This one-star card's Noble Phantasm, [Eternal Frozen Cage], can inflict a massive [Attack Down] on all enemies! Combined with other supports' attack-reduction skills, and Mash's defense buffs... as long as we can stack the debuffs to the max when she unleashes her full-screen ultimate, we can reduce that earth-shattering damage... to zero!"

After a long silence, [Data Maniac] let out a laugh of extreme excitement: "Hahahaha! Sacrificial airdrop style! Attack-reduction stacking style! Old Bai, you are truly a f*cking genius!"

"Come on, let's figure out this timing sequence today!"

For the next forty-eight hours, this encrypted voice channel seemed to turn into a top-tier actuarial laboratory.

They calculated every one of the Boss's moves, every second of skill cooldown, and even the jump of every point of Cost recovery, down to the absolute extreme.

Then, through failure after failure and review after review, they constantly revised this timeline for victory, paved with brain cells.

The dawn of the fourth day...

When wealthy, clumsy players like PD across the network were still wailing that "the H-levels are impossible for anyone to pass," White Night quietly turned on his stream.

Without any buildup, he changed the stream title to a few words: [H6-4 / H7-4 Slack-off].

Seeing White Night start his stream, many players stuck on the levels flooded in.

But when they saw that White Night's tactical formation was filled with low-end cards that they usually wouldn't even glance at, and that even the core damage dealer was the three-star Bedivere, the chat was instantly flooded with question marks.

"Is Boss Bai crazy? Bringing this pile of junk to an Abyss campaign?"

However, ten minutes after the battle began, the chat in the entire stream came to a complete standstill.

On the screen, White Night's hands were like those of a top-tier master playing the piano, turning into a blur over the holographic control panel.

In H6-4, after a brutal melee with a sea of monsters at the start, the Lion King, the final boss, descended.

Just as the Lion King's energy bar was about to fill, White Night performed a maneuver that left all the viewers dumbfounded—he manually retreated almost all the Servants on the field! He left only the two-star [Spartacus] standing alone on the spot.

"Boom!" The Lion King's holy spear wiped the ground, obliterating Spartacus into specks of starlight without any suspense.

But just at that instant when the Lion King's ultimate ended and she fell into her attack recovery period!

"Now, Airdrop!" The Cost that White Night had accumulated for so long poured out in an instant.

[Caesar] landed, activating the party-wide Attack and Noble Phantasm damage buff!

[Shakespeare] landed, activating the Buster card performance buff!

Finally, the Saber [Bedivere] descended like a meteor in front of the Lion King!

Carrying all the buff bonuses, Bedivere drew that silver severed arm.

"Take this, my King! [Switch On - Airgetlám]!!!"

A crimson critical damage number shot into the sky. This nuke-level extreme single-target burst directly pierced through the Lion King, who had just finished her ultimate and was in her vacuum period! Her health bar dropped to zero instantly!

"Holy crap..."

PD, watching from the stream next door, was so shocked that his cigarette fell out of his mouth. "Sacrificing cannon fodder to bait the ultimate, and then airdropping the core unit for a single-target strike?! You can play like that?!"

"Think back to P-Zong's operation where he tried to tank the ultimate with all skills on cooldown and got wiped out... This is f*cking dimensional reduction strike in terms of IQ!"

"Using Bedivere to end the Lion King... this lineup is just too romantic!"