Chapter 1 The End

Nie Yan counted them. There were sixteen giants wielding iron hammers. These were all Furnace Smiths, a relatively well-known monster. In the underground mines of the City of Gold, they even played the role of a dungeon boss. Their physical attacks were very strong, their defenses extremely high, and their fire resistance was also high. Their attacks included dark corrosive damage, making them famously troublesome. The Furnace Smith in the underground mines was a level 60 Lord, while these were just some level 90 ordinary monsters.

Nie Yan slowly crept over, checking their health.

Furnace Smith Guard: Level 90, 10,000/10,000.

With Nie Yan's strength, facing these Smiths would obviously be suicide. His purpose here was only to obtain the components of the Abak Set.

At the end of the hall was a very small door, half-open, only allowing two players to pass side by side. Such a small entrance, yet there were sixteen giant guards. Their bodies almost blocked the entrance. Unless he killed them, there was no way to pass through here.

Their defenses were too high. The damage Nie Yan's attacks dealt to them was extremely limited. Fortunately, they were ordinary monsters, not elites, and their health was not much, only ten thousand.

With his own strength, Nie Yan couldn't kill them. He could only use external objects. Nie Yan rummaged through his backpack. The things in his backpack that could deal with the Furnace Smiths included the three Bloodshadow Totems he obtained from infiltrating the Bloodshadow Army headquarters, the Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb that Ziyan made for him, and the Death Ripple Scroll he harvested from underground. In addition, he also had things like Advanced Vine Entanglement Scrolls, Area-of-Effect Magic Scrolls, and the like.

With these things, Nie Yan could easily play them to death.

Nie Yan began to set up in the hall, planting a Bloodshadow Totem, calculating the distance to be about sixty yards from the Furnace Smiths. He glanced at the top of the hall, about thirty-five yards away. He had an idea in his mind.

Nie Yan slowly walked to the corner of the hall, sneaking to about fifty yards away from the Furnace Smiths. He raised the Headless Horseman Doro's Repeating Crossbow and aimed at one of the Furnace Smiths. Swish, swish, swish, five arrows shot out towards the Furnace Smith, all piercing his chest, causing spurts of blood.

After being attacked, the Furnace Smith let out an angry roar. His eyes searched the hall and quickly locked onto Nie Yan in the distance. He faced the other Furnace Smiths beside him and uttered a series of difficult words. He couldn't understand what he was saying at all. After the other Furnace Smiths heard his words, they looked at Nie Yan.

They discussed something in a flurry. After a moment, the sixteen Furnace Smiths surrounded Nie Yan's location.

"Damn, they're all coming over, but that's fine, saves me trouble!" Nie Yan took out an Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb and threw it towards the Furnace Smiths in the distance.

With a bang, the Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb exploded on the group of Furnace Smiths, erupting into a ball of fiery heat that engulfed all sixteen Furnace Smiths.

After the flames extinguished, damage numbers of five hundred floated above the bodies of the Furnace Smiths.

Only five hundred. Nie Yan wasn't very satisfied with the damage effect of the Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb. Under normal circumstances, an Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb could cause at least a thousand damage. It seemed to be related to the Furnace Smiths' fire resistance. The Furnace Smiths' fire resistance was too high.

The group of Furnace Smiths was stunned by the shock wave generated by the explosion, and immediately accelerated to surround Nie Yan again.

Nie Yan took off and ran, using a Death Ripple Scroll. A series of death ripples swept across the group of Furnace Smiths.

-1000, -1000, -1000...

The attack effect of the Death Ripple Scroll was quite good. The only flaw was that the Death Ripple Scroll had a two-second casting time, unlike the Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb, which could be thrown out.

After using the Death Ripple Scroll, Nie Yan had an idea. Why not use the Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb in conjunction with the Death Ripple Scroll?

The shock wave generated by the Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb could momentarily stop the movement of the Furnace Smiths, giving him enough time to cast the Death Ripple Scroll.

Nie Yan fled madly towards the direction of the Bloodshadow Totem. A large group of Furnace Smiths were hot on his heels. Seeing that the Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb and Death Ripple Scroll had cooled down, Nie Yan threw another Elementary Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb behind him. Anyway, both the Elementary and Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bombs had a shock effect. Nie Yan naturally wanted to save on their usage, after all, Intermediate Area-of-Effect Magic Bombs were very rare. Ziyan had only completed more than twenty of them in total. Once they were used up, they were gone.

The Elementary Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb exploded with a bang, and the shock wave swept through.

-200, -200, -200...

Just as the attack effect of the Elementary Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb passed, a ripple in the air swept across the group of Furnace Smiths.

-1000, -1000, -1000...

After two rounds of attacks like this, the group of Furnace Smiths had caught up to Nie Yan and blocked him.

Nie Yan glanced into the distance. A Furnace Smith had approached the Bloodshadow Totem. There was a slight sign of fluctuation in the Bloodshadow Totem. He raised his eyebrows. It was time!

At this time, he was also within the explosion range of the Bloodshadow Totem. More than ten Furnace Smiths surrounded him. One of the Furnace Smiths swung the huge iron hammer in his hand and smashed it down on Nie Yan.

"I'm not playing with you guys anymore." Nie Yan smiled slightly and suddenly jumped upwards. He used the skill on the Jumper's Ring, and his height suddenly increased by more than twenty yards. He stretched out his left hand and shot out a strand of spider silk. The ten-yard-long spider silk stuck to the top of the hall and suddenly contracted, taking him to the top of the hall.

Looking down, the group of Furnace Smiths condensed black balls of light in their hands, preparing to attack Nie Yan with Dark Arrows.

At this moment, the surrounding air fluctuated violently. The Bloodshadow Totem was finally triggered.

With a loud bang, blood splattered everywhere. The blood light generated by the explosion of the Bloodshadow Totem swept across all the Furnace Smiths on the field.

-5000, -5000, -5000...

The explosion damage of the Bloodshadow Totem was obviously much higher than the damage of the Death Ripple Scroll and the Area-of-Effect Magic Bomb.

The effect of the Bloodshadow Totem's explosion interrupted all of the Furnace Smiths' Dark Arrows. They let out furious shouts, just preparing to launch another attack on Nie Yan. Nie Yan shook out a Summon Ice Rain Scroll and uttered a series of incantations. As soon as a set of syllables passed, the surrounding temperature plummeted, and the sky was filled with a vast expanse of white fog. Ice shards like a torrential rain smashed down, hitting the Furnace Smiths with a crackling sound.

-500, -500, -500... More and more damage numbers floated above the bodies of these Furnace Smiths.

After five waves of ice rain, the Furnace Smiths fell to the ground one after another, turning into a pile of corpses.

The ice rain lasted for a full eight waves before subsiding, and the white fog in the air slowly dissipated.

Seeing this, Nie Yan revealed a hint of a smile, jumped down from the top of the hall, landing lightly. All done!

Nie Yan looked at his experience points. Although the experience points given by these Furnace Smiths were quite generous, his experience bar only rose by about 3%. After his level increased, the amount of experience required to increase each level was too much, and it was very difficult to increase levels.

Nie Yan cleaned up the equipment dropped on the ground. There were five pieces in total, one of which was Gold-grade. He really couldn't muster any interest in it. He would put them all in the guild warehouse. However, he did get a rather peculiar thing, a silver-white iron hammer, a special tool for blacksmiths.

Artisan's Furnace Hammer: Special Item, limited to blacksmiths. When forging weapons and equipment, using this iron hammer can obtain an additional 5% success rate and a 20% probability of obtaining an additional point of skill proficiency.

"Good stuff!" Seeing this iron hammer, Nie Yan couldn't help but say. For a blacksmith, using this iron hammer to forge equipment could definitely achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Niu Ren Tribe was still very short of blacksmiths. Guo Huai was working hard to cultivate them. With this thing, it could save a lot of trouble. Nie Yan planned to hand this iron hammer over to Guo Huai and let him make good use of it.

Dungeon crawling was good, he could always get good stuff.

After Nie Yan dealt with this group of Furnace Smiths, he walked towards the door at the end of the hall and disappeared at the end of the corridor.

A few minutes later, six Thieves appeared in the hall. The leader was a young man in his thirties. He was wearing a set of silver-gray leather armor. He looked at the corpses on the ground and counted the number. There were sixteen in total.

"Guild Leader Tianfa, sixteen level 90 Furnace Smiths." A relatively young Thief, about twenty-five or six years old, said with a trembling voice. He couldn't hide the shock in his heart.

"My God, were all of these killed by Mad Rogue Nie Yan alone!" Another Thief said in disbelief.

With their strength, two or three people together might not be able to kill a level 90 Furnace Smith. The attacks of level 90 monsters were too strong, and they were thirty levels lower than the Furnace Smith, so their attacks couldn't cause much damage at all. Nie Yan actually killed sixteen by himself. Was he a monster?

The Thief named Tianfa frowned. It was indeed a bit strange that Nie Yan killed so many level 90 monsters alone. His eyes fell on the Furnace Smiths' shattered clothes, which had some scorched marks on them. He bent down and touched the Furnace Smith's clothes. There was still some unmelted ice powder on them. He was thoughtful. Although he didn't know how Mad Rogue Nie Yan killed these Furnace Smiths, he could be sure that Nie Yan definitely didn't fight these Furnace Smiths head-on.

How did Nie Yan do it? It was a mystery that they couldn't fathom.

Tianfa turned his head and said to the other Thieves, "Everyone move faster, follow me, be careful, don't alarm the monsters on the road."

Tianfa took the lead and walked towards the door in the distance. The five Thieves behind him looked at each other. At the thought of fighting against a monster like Nie Yan, they felt a little apprehensive. Seeing Tianfa walking away, they quickly sped up and followed Tianfa.