15: Chapter 15: Nightmare Difficulty Bonus Dungeon That's Impossible

Lu Yang didn't stop moving. He shuttled between dead trees with a surging torrent of skeletons dragging behind him, while opening the Soul Talent selection interface on the side.

Prismatic light flickered on the panel a few times before three options slowly floated up.

[Dodge Charge (Blue Fine)]: Every successful dodge grants 1 layer of charge. Upon reaching 3 layers, the next attack deals an extra 120% Attack Power as additional damage.

[Health Regeneration (Blue Fine)]: Restores 0.5% of maximum HP per second.

[Smile of the Goddess of Fortune (Red Demigod)]: The Goddess of Fortune smiles upon you. Your luck is increased.

Lu Yang: "????"

Lu Yang's eyes widened, and he slammed to a sudden halt, his soles dragging a brief scrape across the dry gray dirt.

The skeletal pursuers behind him crashed into him, their blades and bone arrows clattering against his back, but he was completely oblivious to it.

Holy crap?! Red Demigod!

He clenched his fists, unable to hold back a muffled cheer, then pumped his fist forcefully.

Isn't his luck finally turning around?!

Looking back, he had rerolled Soul Talents so many times before, and it was always white, green, blue—a unbroken streak of ordinary trash.

Just now he finally got a Golden Legendary, and before he even celebrated enough, a Red Demigod Rank popped up right after!

Lu Yang stared at that brief description for several seconds, pondering over it in his heart.

What exactly did this "luck increase" boost?

Drop rates?

Enhancement success rate?

Or could it even boost crit rate and dodge rate?

Lu Yang wasn't quite sure.

But no matter what, luck was definitely useful, let alone Demigod Rank luck.

Lu Yang didn't hesitate and directly chose this Soul Talent.

After finishing his choice, Lu Yang thought of something and looked at his drop log.

[Ding! You killed Skeleton Archer, obtaining some experience, Bone Ash (Excellent) *1, White Bone Bow (Excellent) *1]

[Ding! You killed Skeleton Warrior, obtaining some experience, Soul Fire (Excellent) *1, White Bone Armor (Excellent) *1]

...

"Hiss...!"

Lu Yang took a sharp breath of cold air, making a modest contribution to global warming.

Isn't the effect of Smile of the Goddess of Fortune way too overpowered?!

Previously when he farmed elite-level skeletal monsters, most drops were white common quality Materials, sometimes one, sometimes two.

Excellent quality Materials were actually quite scarce in quantity.

Let alone equipment.

But now, almost every monster Lu Yang killed dropped green-tier items!

Either Materials or equipment!

This drop rate was like night and day compared to before!

Setting aside other things, just the drop rate increase alone was enough to dramatically boost Lu Yang's power growth speed!

After all, with higher drop rates and better loot, even if he couldn't use it himself, he could sell it for cash and hit the auction house for equipment and skill books tailored to him.

For professionals, with money, anything is possible!

Besides, if he got lucky, maybe a skill book would drop for him directly?

The more Lu Yang thought about it, the happier he felt. With wind beneath his feet, he continued pulling crowds of mobs through the forest.

With the luck bonus, Lu Yang's gear acquisition speed noticeably sped up.

As long as it was usable gear, Lu Yang equipped it right on the spot.

He swapped his chestpiece for White Bone Armor, bracers for Skeletal Bracers... dark bone gear covered his body piece by piece, gleaming with a cold white sheen under the red glow of Flame Aura.

As his Strength attribute rose, his Attack Power steadily climbed, and stacked with War Frenzy's fivefold overall buff, Flame Aura's range and damage surged accordingly.

The orange-red light circle spread wider and wider. From a distance, it looked as if a vast expanse of flowing lava had been splashed across the desolate gray forest.

Another half-hour passed, and his experience bar hit max again.

Level up!

Rank 8!

Lu Yang took a deep breath, rubbed his hands together, and opened the Soul Talent selection again.

The prismatic light faded.

Three options laid out quietly on the panel.

Lu Yang's gaze swept across them, and his footsteps halted once more.

Taking advantage of this, the pursuing skeletal monsters swarmed around him, bone blades and bone arrows raining down on him with loud clatters.

-0!

-0!

-0!

...

Damage numbers indicating zero defense penetration popped up one after another, but he didn't even bat an eye.

Because the three options before his eyes were simply too surreal.

One Purple Legendary.

Two Orange Epics!

Lu Yang's heart beat violently faster.

Suddenly, he realized a problem he had completely overlooked earlier.

Were the Soul Talents that appeared every time he leveled up also random?

Since they were random, it came down to probability.

Now that his luck had been forcibly yanked up a huge notch by Smile of the Goddess of Fortune, the quality of the Soul Talents drawn was skyrocketing along with it?!

Otherwise, it was completely impossible to explain why all three Soul Talents this time were of such insanely high quality!

This was simply absurd!

In the past, he wouldn't even dare dream of such probabilities!

Lu Yang drew a deep breath, suppressing his trembling breath, and carefully read the contents of the three talents.

[Battle Frenzy (Purple Legendary)]: For every 10 seconds survived in battle, Attack Power increases by 2%, stacking up to 50 layers, lasting 60 minutes.

[Kill Cooldown (Orange Epic)]: When killing an enemy, the cooldown of Orange Epic and lower quality skills is reduced by 1 second.

[Frost Aura (Orange Epic)]: Deals Frost Damage equal to (Attack Power * 150%) per second to enemies within a radius of (100% Attack Power) meters, with a 20% chance to slow enemies by 30% for 10 seconds.

Truth be told, all three Soul Talents were remarkably good.

Fully stacked, the first one could grant a 100% Attack Power boost, pushing Lu Yang's damage output even higher.

However, it had a prerequisite: survival time needed to be calculated.

But Lu Yang wasn't sure if reviving through Immortal Talent would cause the survival time to reset.

Keep in mind that the previous War Frenzy didn't have this prerequisite!

The second one, Kill Cooldown, was also very strong, favoring a skill-spamming playstyle; reducing cooldowns on kill, applying to all Orange Epic skills and below.

Combined with area-of-effect attacks, it would be practically a perpetual motion machine.

The third one, Frost Aura, was an aura type just like Flame Aura.

But Frost Aura was higher in quality, reaching Orange Epic Rank, with its damage scaling jacked straight up to 150%, plus a 20% slow chance attached.

His current DPS was almost entirely carried by Flame Aura...

Lu Yang hesitated for a second before decisively choosing Frost Aura.

A lazy man's gospel!

Anyway, he didn't even have to move. As long as he didn't die and could break through defense, damage would pop out automatically.

One more aura meant double the joy of dealing damage while lying back.

The moment he finalized his choice, with a soft hum, an icy-blue aura expanded from beneath Lu Yang's feet, stacking together with the originally light-red Flame Aura.

Intertwined red and blue light spread across the desolate gray earth. Cold and warm hues reflected off each other, enveloping Lu Yang completely within a brilliant halo of light.

The dead twigs underfoot were coated in a thin layer of white frost, then sizzled and popped from the heat of the fire, tiny ice crystals constantly shattering and reforming.

Flame Aura plus Frost Aura: under the simultaneous effect of both auras, two series of high damage numbers began popping up over the heads of all skeletal monsters within a radius of over three hundred meters.

Not a single monster could last more than two seconds under this dual aura!

Skeletons collapsed into piles in vast swaths, bone splinters mixed with ice shards cascading to the floor, paving a long, shimmering trail of bone fragments across the ground.

Although in terms of pure mob-clearing efficiency, there wasn't much room left to improve.

But Lu Yang's overall DPS had genuinely more than doubled!

In the future, when up against tanky, high-defense tough nuts, this extra bucket of damage would come in extremely handy.

Having gained a new talent, Lu Yang completely cut loose.

The attribute growth from leveling up, combined with the Agility stacked from constantly switching gear, made him faster and faster; his figure darting through the Withered Forest became almost an afterimage wrapped in a red-and-blue halo.

No longer satisfied with pulling small groups of mobs, he unleashed his range to charge recklessly ahead, clearing wherever he went, leaving behind nothing but shattered bones and flickering residual flames and frost.

Before long, he fought his way to the deepest depths of the Withered Forest.

The scenery before him changed.

The color of the ground transitioned from grayish-white to gray-green, squishy beneath his feet like treading on an old piece of fabric that had rotted for countless years.

A pungent stench of decay permeated the air, a sickly sweet yet sharp rotten odor burrowing deep into his nasal passages.

The surrounding trees were rotted through and through, their trunks covered in soggy black patches; some had collapsed to the ground, blending seamlessly with the mud.

The forest tightened here, the terrain sloping gently downward to form a low valley.

Dead trees on either side of the valley mouth stood like crooked doorposts, their branches entwining above into an eerie archway.

Passing through the valley mouth, Lu Yang's field of view suddenly opened up.

The interior of the valley wasn't large, surrounded on all four sides by gray-green rotten soil, with fine gray spores floating in the air.

Right at the center of the valley stood a tall skeleton warhorse silently, its hooves planted motionless upon the rotten soil.

Its skeleton was thick and sturdy, a dull grayish-white, with two clusters of eerie green bone fire burning in its eye sockets—colder and brighter than any skeletal monster he had seen before.

Mounted on the warhorse sat a skeleton knight clad in dark iron-colored armor.

The surface of the armor was covered in fine scratches and rust, with only a pair of ghostly green eye-flames visible beneath the helmet, coldly gazing toward the entrance of the valley.

In his right hand, he held a long-handled war scythe nearly as tall as himself, a thin veil of black mist wrapped around the scythe blade, slowly writhing in the air.

[Undead Skeleton Knight · Gu Feng (Hero)]: Rank 10, HP 25,000, Attack 300.

Rank 10 was the ceiling for novice professionals, just a step away from Tier 1.

As long as one completed the advancement quest, they could advance.

Even soloing, Lu Yang had only reached Rank 8, still a bit of XP away from Rank 9.

If it were a five-person party, their Rank right now would probably only be around Rank 5 or 6.

Even at Rank 6, with five novice professionals, no matter how fine their gear or powerful their talents, they would likely struggle to deal with a Rank 10 Hero Rank boss.

With such a massive Rank gap, Rank suppression was already in full effect!

The boss dealt higher damage, took less damage, and its dodge, block, and resistance chances were all massively increased!

One could imagine how hard it was to clear a Nightmare difficulty dungeon.

Killing a boss above one's Rank!

And a Hero Rank boss at that!

It could be said that a Nightmare difficulty novice dungeon was simply not meant to be cleared by novices in a single run.

The normal process should be grinding the dungeon several times, obtaining enough gear, raising one's Rank, and only then challenging the Rank 10 Hero Rank boss.

But the bonus dungeon granted only a single attempt.

Therefore, ever since bonus dungeons came into existence, the Withered Forest had never been cleared by any novice professional.

The corners of Lu Yang's lips hooked up slightly, an eager-to-try look floating into his eyes.

He was very curious: if he cleared this dungeon, what rewards would he receive?

After all, clearing a dungeon for the first time came with rewards from the Will of the Universe!