36: Chapter 36 Lu Yang's affirmation is an honor

Just as Rebecca blocked the attack, Shen Qingci also made her move.

She had already been chanting a Spell for a moment.

Ice-blue mana light quickly gathered in the blue crystal at the tip of her staff. At first, it was just a small, faint halo, but as her chanting grew more condensed, it finally gathered into a spinning ice ball.

White mist continuously drifted out from around the crystal, condensing into tiny ice crystals in the air and falling rustlingly to the ground.

In just two seconds, the staff trembled violently, and the ice ball shot out with a whistling sound.

The ice ball was entirely deep blue, dragging a bright blue trajectory through the dim cave.

During its flight, it continuously expanded, growing from the size of a fist to the size of a human head, and finally becoming as big as a washbasin. Wherever it passed, the air was frozen into a thin tail of white mist.

The ice ball flew past the Hobgoblin grappling with Rebecca ahead, and accurately smashed right into the center of the Goblin Shaman, Goblin Hunter, and Goblin Slinger in the rear.

Boom!!

The ice ball shattered.

Countless sharp ice fragments splashed in all directions at an extremely fast speed, each piece carrying a piercing chill, flashing into a dense array of blue micro-lights under the dim light of the cave.

The shattered ice crystals covered an area of more than thirty meters in radius, a thin layer of ice instantly formed on the ground, and even the flames of the campfire were extinguished by the exploding chill.

Above the heads of all the elite Goblins within this range, high damage numbers floated up one after another.

-131!

-130!

-250! (Critical Hit)

Above the head of each elite Goblin, four or five damage numbers popped up consecutively.

Before the sound of the ice shards piercing flesh had even faded, their health bars had already been emptied.

That Goblin Shaman didn't even have time to cast a new healing skill before dying; its bone staff was still raised mid-air, and its body had stiffened into a sculpture covered in white frost.

Several Goblin Slingers were frozen in place maintaining their throwing posture, the ice layer on their arms so thick that even their joints were invisible.

Shen Qingci, who possessed the [Piercing Frost] Soul Talent, perfectly interpreted what a turret mage was!

No fancy operations were needed, no redundant actions were necessary; as long as she was given two seconds to chant, no matter how dense the monster pile was, it could be turned into a ground full of ice sculptures!

And almost at the exact moment the ice ball shattered, Zhu Tongchen's figure silently appeared behind a Hobgoblin.

His action of emerging from Stealth was extremely light, not even stirring up a trace of excess air fluctuation; his whole person looked as if he had grown directly out of the shadows.

The two short daggers in his hands flashed with a faint dark light, and the edges of the daggers were coated with some kind of dark toxin that couldn't be clearly seen under the dim light of the cave.

Exerting force with both hands simultaneously, the daggers fiercely stabbed into the gap between the two shoulder blades on the Hobgoblin's back.

-132! (Critical Hit)

-126! (Critical Hit)

After two critical hits, Zhu Tongchen didn't pause in the slightest.

His slender hands were so fast that their movements were almost invisible, and his daggers stabbed out continuously like a rainstorm, each time landing precisely in the exact same area.

Damage numbers floated out uninterruptedly from this Hobgoblin's body.

Zhu Tongchen's critical hit rate was very high, basically triggering a critical hit every four or five strikes.

But very soon, Lu Yang noticed something was wrong; Zhu Tongchen's critical hit rate seemed to be constantly increasing.

From originally triggering a critical hit every four or five strikes, it improved to once every three strikes, and eventually, a critical hit was triggered basically every two attacks.

Not only were critical hits becoming more and more frequent, but the critical damage was also constantly increasing,

from the original one hundred plus, eventually increasing to nearly three hundred—the critical damage had almost doubled!

Not only that, Zhu Tongchen's attack speed also continuously increased with each critical hit.

Originally, as an Assassin, Zhu Tongchen's attack speed was already very fast, but later on, he could dish out two or three attacks almost every second, his daggers almost throwing off afterimages.

If every hit was a critical hit, this per-second damage could even reach five or six hundred!

For an Assassin who hadn't yet stepped into the First Tier, this was already quite terrifying.

Lu Yang leaned against the large rock behind him, watching and nodding slightly.

It had to be said that the strength of Shen Qingci, Rebecca, and Zhu Tongchen was quite impressive.

Although they couldn't compare to him, compared to ordinary professionals, they truly deserved to be called geniuses.

Over a dozen elite Goblins in a small camp, facing their small team, were cleared out in mere seconds.

The campfire in the center of the camp had been extinguished, and the ground was littered with corpses and shattered ice.

Moreover, everyone was very clear about their duties and positioning, knowing what they should and shouldn't do.

The entire set of attacks flowed like moving clouds and flowing water, coordinating quite tacitly.

As expected of geniuses who could join the Dawn Pioneering Team.

As the battle ended, Rebecca and the others were obviously no longer as numb as before.

Looking at the corpses on the ground, confidence lingered between their brows and eyes.

Rebecca raised her heroic eyebrows, looked at Lu Yang through the gap in her faceplate, and let out a smug chuckle mixed with pride: "Although we're not as good as you, Lu Yang, the strength of the few of us is still pretty good, right?"

Lu Yang smiled and nodded: "Indeed quite good. Even without me, you guys should still be able to go a fair distance in this dungeon."

Having received Lu Yang's affirmation, all four of them revealed smiles.

Unknowingly, they had already placed Lu Yang in a position much higher than their own.

Being able to receive Lu Yang's affirmation was already an honor in itself for them.

Afterwards, the team continued to push deeper into the cave.

Because Lu Yang suppressed his own dual auras, the speed of farming monsters was a bit slower than before, but in reality, it wasn't much slower.

After all, originally when Lu Yang's auras were fully open, monsters hundreds of meters away were directly one-shotted, but the team itself still had to walk over step by step; the walking time wouldn't be shortened just because the auras one-shotted monsters.

Now they still had to walk over step by step; it was just that whenever they encountered monsters, they needed to stop and fight.

And if they didn't encounter a boss, a battle took at most five or six seconds.

In fact, the efficiency wasn't all that different.

The only obvious gap was the drops.

Because these Goblins were not killed by Lu Yang and didn't receive the luck blessing of [Smile of the Goddess of Fortune], the dropped items were relatively ordinary.

Most of the items dropped by elite monsters were white, ordinary-quality items, and some didn't even drop anything, cleanly transforming into experience points and floating away.

Comparing the two, this drop gap made Shen Qingci and the others begin to doubt life.

As they went deeper and killed more and more monsters, the experience bar was also silently rising.

Lu Yang was also getting closer and closer to level 10.

According to this progress, once this dungeon was finished, Lu Yang might even have hope of directly reaching level 10 with full experience and unlocking the advancement quest!

After consecutive battles, all four of them showed obvious fatigue.

Rebecca held her shield in one hand, panting slightly beneath her faceplate, the tip of her golden longsword hanging down toward the ground.

A layer of fine sweat oozed from Shen Qingci's fair temples, a few strands of stray hair glued to her temples by sweat.

Lance even wiped the sweat from his face directly with the back of his hand, his round face flushing red.

The usually taciturn Zhu Tongchen's chest heaved with an amplitude noticeably larger than usual.

Lu Yang glanced at them and smiled: "Rest for a bit first?"

Rebecca nodded slightly: "Yeah, safety first. I feel like my strength is already a bit less than before."

Since Rebecca, the main tank, said so, Shen Qingci, Lance, and Zhu Tongchen naturally had no objections.

Several people knew clearly that stubbornly fighting through fatigue in a real dungeon like this was definitely fatal!

Even the newest beginner wouldn't make this kind of mistake.

Because the Goblin camp was too dirty and messy, they didn't rest in the camp. Instead, they walked back a short distance along the passage and found a few relatively clean large rocks to sit down on.

The surface of the rocks was cold and dry. When sitting down, Shen Qingci, Rebecca, and the other four couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

They took out water and food from their backpacks and began to eat to replenish their energy.

Under normal circumstances in a dungeon, even when resting, someone needed to be left to keep watch.

But it was different here; Lu Yang slightly enlarged the coverage range of his aura, extending it to two hundred meters.

Within this range, once any monsters approached, the damage numbers would pop out at the very first moment.

This was much more effective than keeping watch with the naked eye.

The subsequent battles were basically handled by Rebecca, Shen Qingci, and the other four, while Lu Yang watched the show from behind.

This also made the four of them exceptionally exhausted.

But the four of them didn't have the slightest complaint.

In their hearts, they all understood that Lu Yang was giving them an opportunity to train.

If it weren't for training them, as long as Lu Yang fully opened his dual auras, they wouldn't even be able to see a single living Goblin!

After resting for more than ten minutes, the few people packed away their water bottles and dry rations, readjusting their state back to the best.

Rebecca stood up, tidied her golden long hair, buckled her helmet back on, and stretched her wrists, hands, and shoulders.

Shen Qingci patted the dust off her light-blue combat uniform, and the Ice Armor Spell lit up with a faint cold light again.

Zhu Tongchen propped himself up from the rock wall, and black mist silently covered his figure.

Lance grabbed his staff, his round face full of drive.

The team began to venture deeper once more!

However, just after dealing with two small Goblin camps, the passage suddenly opened up brightly ahead.

The few people paused their steps, slowing down in unison.