Chapter 17 Hellfire Cave

Rolling waves of heat surged from the cave, the rock walls scorched and scalding. Players needed to be at least level 25, with a fire resistance of 7 or higher, to enter the Hellfire Cave and farm the Hellfire, just to avoid continuous HP loss. A fire resistance of 30 or more was needed to withstand the Hellfire's skills. Thus, in his past life, guilds didn't form groups to come here and take the Chapter of Wisdom until they were in their thirties.

After a Hellfire was killed, it would take two days to respawn. Guild players often camped here, calling for reinforcements the moment a Hellfire respawned. Countless people had died fighting over Hellfires.

The Hellfire itself was powerful and, situated in a narrow cave, it was extremely difficult to deal with.

Nie Yan’s figure blended into the rocky background as he slowly moved inside, weaving through the narrow tunnels. He noticed many red crystals embedded in the nearby rock walls, dazzlingly bright. This was a mine producing a large quantity of Fire Crystals.

Looking further into the cave, flames blazed, and a figure moved in the depths.

Nie Yan could only vaguely see the shadow of the Hellfire. He didn't dare go any further. Hellfires were extremely perceptive when awake. If he got within about thirty yards, it would sense his presence. At his current level, escape would be difficult if he were discovered.

Nie Yan lurked behind a rock, patiently waiting for an opportunity.

Time ticked by, minute after minute. After five minutes, his fire resistance potion wore off, and his health began to drop at a rate of 8 points per second. He drank a slow recovery potion, restoring 5 health per second for 120 minutes. Coupled with his natural health regeneration, this barely kept his HP from dropping.

After the 120 minutes were up, the slow recovery potion wore off. Nie Yan continued waiting. The searing heat constantly drained his health. When he had only twenty-odd health points left, he consumed an intermediate fire resistance potion and sat in a corner, eating bread to recover his HP.

He endured like this. He should have bought a few more pieces of fire resistance equipment. It would have saved him a lot of trouble. But fire resistance gear for thieves wasn't particularly sought after. There was little highly-rated fire resistance equipment for thieves in the auction house. The equipment with the greatest appreciation potential was for warriors. Consequently, most of what Nie Yan had bought were warrior items. He hadn't paid attention to fire resistance gear for thieves.

Anyway, the Starry Night Potion Shop was his own. The raw materials for these potions weren't worth much, so Nie Yan didn't mind the consumption of potions.

If the Hellfire had just woken up from its slumber, he would have to stay here for another two hours, waiting for its next sleep.

For the sake of the Chapter of Wisdom, waiting two hours was worth it. The Chapter of Wisdom was almost the easiest of all the Chapters of Order to obtain.

After waiting for more than thirty minutes, the heat waves in the cave suddenly subsided, and the flames in the depths slowly dimmed.

The Hellfire had fallen asleep! Nie Yan abruptly stood up, activated Shadow Dance, and sprinted towards the depths of the cave.

Finally, relying on his blurry vision, Nie Yan could clearly see the appearance of the Hellfire. It was a huge stone giant, about 5 yards tall, with joints made entirely of stone. When it was active, its whole body burned with raging green flames, but when it was sleeping, the flames subsided, with only the joints burning with a faint blue flame.

The Hellfire was curled up in a corner.

Nie Yan carefully crept past it, a single slight movement potentially waking it. At the same time, he couldn't be too slow, because his time was limited to about two minutes.

There were shallow pits in the ground, flowing with red lava, radiating scorching heat.

These lava flows seemed calm, but touching them would cause players to lose a lot of health.

Nie Yan carefully watched his step, brushing past the Hellfire.

The Hellfire's faint snores rumbled like muffled thunder.

Passing the Hellfire, Nie Yan quickened his pace, rushing forward, and entered the spacious stone chamber inside the cave at top speed.

This open stone chamber was entirely composed of Fire Crystals, releasing scorching fire elements. It was said that collecting Fire Crystals in this chamber could result in a 200% higher yield compared to outside. However, miners often couldn't enter because this area was frequently monopolized by various large guilds.

The stone chamber was enveloped in scorching fire elements. Inside the flame-burning stone chamber, a page of the Chapter of Order floated silently in the sky, emitting a dazzling red glow.

Nie Yan stretched out his right hand towards the Chapter of Order. As his fingers touched it, the flames burning around the chapter suddenly disappeared, and it fell from the sky.

He grasped the Chapter of Wisdom and put it in his bag.

Three Chapters of Order in total.

If he used a random teleport scroll to escape immediately, he would be absolutely safe. But then he thought, he still had a little over a minute left. Wouldn't it be better if he could save a random teleport scroll?

Without any hesitation, Nie Yan used an acceleration scroll and sprinted outside.

He was as fast as a cheetah, because every second was extremely precious to him now.

The Hellfire's body gradually ignited with cyan flames, becoming more and more intense. Nie Yan could already feel the scorching temperature radiating from it.

Nie Yan leapt forward, performing a heavy jump, soaring more than three yards high, flying over the Hellfire.

His left hand shot out a strand of spider silk, sticking to the top of the cave in the distance. With a sudden pull, he swung forward more than ten yards, like a fleeting shadow, quickly widening the distance between him and the Hellfire to more than ten yards.

The Hellfire finally awoke from its slumber. After discovering Nie Yan, it immediately rushed towards him in a rage.

Roar! The Hellfire emitted a violent roar. Its strides were large, and its heavy footsteps caused the entire cave to tremble.

Nie Yan had to balance his body and sprint outwards.

But his speed was clearly not in the same league as the Hellfire's. The Hellfire was getting closer and closer. Nie Yan took out an intermediate flash powder from his bag. With a *bang*, the flash powder exploded, and blinding light bloomed.

The green flames in the Hellfire's eye sockets flickered. It emitted a shrill cry, and a raging heat wave surged out of the cave, as if to engulf everything.

Nie Yan clenched the random teleport scroll in his hand. If anything uncontrollable happened, he would not hesitate to crush the scroll and escape.

Seeing the heat wave approaching from behind, Nie Yan dodged behind a rock.

The heat wave swept past.

In the tumbling heat wave, Nie Yan's health rapidly plummeted, losing more than two hundred points. He quickly drank an intermediate instant recovery potion, instantly restoring his health to full.

Intermediate instant recovery potions could restore 500 health points. Players usually couldn't use these until around level 30.

In his previous life, the Hellfire's wave-type attacks weren't particularly strong. As long as you weren't hit by the frontal impact, it would only deal about 50 damage to a level 30 player. Therefore, Nie Yan guessed that as long as he dodged the direct spray of the Hellfire's heat wave, he would only take about 200 damage.

Once the heat wave stopped, Nie Yan continued sprinting outwards.

The Hellfire was disoriented. It didn't spot Nie Yan until a few seconds later, by which time Nie Yan had already run more than ten yards away.

The Hellfire chased after Nie Yan for a while. Seeing that Nie Yan had run out of the cave, it turned back.

Rushing out of the cave, he immediately felt a lot cooler. He checked the stats of the Chapter of Wisdom he had obtained.

Chapter of Wisdom: Chapter of Order, Volume 1, Chapter 4. (Legendary Item Fragment)

Item Description: The holder of the Chapter of Order will receive the inheritance of the gods. Your mission is to spread the glory of the gods.

Item Attributes: The holder of this item gains an additional 2 Intelligence and 1 skill point for every 5 levels, Intelligence +30, Focus +15, Willpower +15, Toughness +16, Jump +15, Reflexes +15, Speed +16. Skills: Spell Concentration, after casting this skill, the cooldown time for all single-target elemental magic skills is zero, and magic consumption is doubled. Sea of Fire, ignites a sea of fire within 30*30 yards, damage is related to Intelligence.

Usage Restriction: This item is limited to Lawful Good alignment.

Note: The effects of this item are applied as soon as it is placed in the bag.

For Nie Yan, this Chapter of Wisdom was of little use. Both skills were only effective for mages.

Nie Yan looked at his own stats. The Chapter of Wisdom had no bonus effect on him. It was only effective for magic units. He could only feel disappointed. But Nie Yan's goal was simply to collect all the fragments of the first volume of the Chapter of Order and synthesize it. So whether the Chapter of Wisdom had any bonus attributes or not had little impact on him.

Nie Yan put the Chapter of Wisdom in his bag, entered stealth mode, and disappeared into the jungle.

Now that players' levels were increasing, there were already other players active in this area, so Nie Yan had to be careful.

His next goal was the Chapter of Justice, placed in the Monastery of Light. It was the essence of all the Chapters of Order in the first volume and the first chapter of the first volume!

The Monastery of Light was very far away, so Nie Yan could take the opportunity to open the chests along the way to train his lockpicking skill.

He checked his current lockpicking skill proficiency.

Lockpicking Expert: Novice 171/100.

Lockpicking was the most difficult of all skills to train, but as a thief, he had to train it. Otherwise, he would be no different from a useless person. At Nie Yan's speed of finding chests, he had only found 12 locked chests in nearly two hours. If it were an ordinary player, it would probably take at least thirty days to open enough of them, since wild chests were hard to find.

But before reaching level 30, they had enough time to train their lockpicking skills, and there would be more locked chests in dungeons. Joining a group to clear the Medusa's Lair or Sothas Valley would encounter at least three or four locked chests.

Fa Biao De Wo Niu