Chapter 16 The Smelting Giants

Nie Yan counted them. There were sixteen giants wielding iron hammers. These were all Furnace Smiths, a fairly well-known type of monster. In the underground mines of the City of Gold, they even played the role of a dungeon boss. They had high physical attack and extremely high defense, as well as high fire resistance. Their attacks inflicted dark corruption damage, making them notoriously troublesome. The Furnace Smith in the underground mine was a level 60 Lord, while these were ordinary level 90 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 be suicide. His purpose here was just to obtain the Abak Set components.

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 guarded by sixteen giants. Their bodies almost blocked the entrance. Unless he killed them, there was no way to get through.

Their defense was too high. Nie Yan's attacks would inflict very limited damage to them. Fortunately, they were ordinary monsters, not elites, and didn't have much health, only ten thousand.

With his own strength, Nie Yan couldn't kill them. He could only rely on external items. Nie Yan looked through his bag. The things in his bag that could deal with the Furnace Smiths included the three Bloodshadow Totems he obtained from infiltrating the Bloodshadow Legion headquarters, the Intermediate AoE Magic Bombs Zi Yan had made for him, and the Death Ripple Scroll he had obtained from underground. He also had things like Advanced Vine Entanglement Scrolls and AoE magic scrolls.

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, and came up with an idea.

Nie Yan slowly walked to the corner of the hall, sneaking close to the Furnace Smiths to about fifty yards. He raised the Headless Horseman Doro's Repeating Crossbow and aimed at one of the Furnace Smiths. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, five arrows shot out towards the Furnace Smith, all hitting his chest, causing bursts 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 next to him and uttered a series of difficult words that were incomprehensible. After hearing his words, the other Furnace Smiths all looked at Nie Yan.

They discussed something among themselves. After a moment, the sixteen Furnace Smiths surrounded Nie Yan.

"Damn, they're all coming. But that's fine, saves me trouble!" Nie Yan took out an Intermediate AoE Magic Bomb and threw it at the Furnace Smiths in the distance.

With a bang, the Intermediate AoE Magic Bomb exploded on the group of Furnace Smiths, erupting into a ball of scorching flames, engulfing all sixteen of them.

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

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

The Furnace Smiths were staggered by the shockwave of the explosion, but immediately accelerated and surrounded Nie Yan again.

Nie Yan ran away, using a Death Ripple Scroll. Waves of death energy swept across the group of Furnace Smiths.

-1000, -1000, -1000...

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

After using the Death Ripple Scroll, Nie Yan had a flash of inspiration. Why not use the AoE Magic Bomb in combination with the Death Ripple Scroll?

The shockwave from the AoE Magic Bomb explosion could cause the Furnace Smiths to stop moving for a moment, giving him enough time to cast the Death Ripple Scroll.

Nie Yan rushed towards the Bloodshadow Totem. A large group of Furnace Smiths chased after him. Seeing that the Intermediate AoE Magic Bomb and Death Ripple Scroll had cooled down, Nie Yan threw another Beginner AoE Magic Bomb behind him. In any case, both the Beginner and Intermediate AoE Magic Bombs had a shock effect. Nie Yan naturally wanted to save the better one, since the Intermediate AoE Magic Bombs were very rare. Zi Yan had only made about twenty of them in total. Once used, they were gone.

The Beginner AoE Magic Bomb exploded with a bang, and the shockwave swept through.

-200, -200, -200...

Just as the attack effect of the Beginner AoE Magic Bomb passed, a wave of energy swept through the group of Furnace Smiths.

-1000, -1000, -1000...

After these two rounds of attacks, the Furnace Smiths had caught up to Nie Yan and blocked his path.

Nie Yan glanced into the distance. One of the Furnace Smiths had approached the Bloodshadow Totem. There was a slight fluctuation from the Bloodshadow Totem. He raised an eyebrow. It was time!

He was also within the explosion range of the Bloodshadow Totem. More than a dozen Furnace Smiths surrounded him. One of the Furnace Smiths raised his huge iron hammer and smashed it down on Nie Yan.

"I'm not playing with you 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 Furnace Smiths gathered black orbs in their hands, preparing to use Dark Arrows to attack Nie Yan.

Just then, the surrounding air fluctuated violently. The Bloodshadow Totem was finally triggered.

With a loud bang, blood splattered everywhere. The blood energy produced by the Bloodshadow Totem explosion swept across all the Furnace Smiths in the field.

-5000, -5000, -5000...

The explosion damage of the Bloodshadow Totem was obviously much higher than the damage from the Death Ripple Scroll and the AoE Magic Bombs.

The explosion effect of the Bloodshadow Totem interrupted all the Dark Arrows of the Furnace Smiths. They roared in anger and were about to attack Nie Yan again when Nie Yan shook out a Summon Ice Rain Scroll and uttered a series of incantations. As soon as a group of syllables passed, the surrounding temperature plummeted, and the sky filled with white mist. Ice shards fell like a torrential rain, hitting the Furnace Smiths with a crackling sound.

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

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

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

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

Nie Yan looked at his experience points. Although these Furnace Smiths gave a considerable amount of experience, his experience bar only increased by about 3%. After leveling up, the amount of experience required to level up was too much. Leveling up was very difficult.

Nie Yan collected the equipment that had dropped on the ground, a total of five pieces, one of which was gold-grade. He wasn't really interested in it. He put it all into the guild warehouse. However, he did get a rather peculiar item, a silver-white iron hammer, a special tool used by blacksmiths.

Artisan's Furnace Hammer: Special item, limited to blacksmiths. When forging weapons and equipment, using this hammer grants an additional 5% success rate and a 20% chance to gain an extra skill proficiency point.

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

Nirvana's Tribe was still very short of blacksmiths, and Guo Huai was working hard to cultivate them. With this item, he could save a lot of trouble. Nie Yan planned to hand the hammer over to Guo Huai and let him make good use of it.

Raiding was good. He could always get good things.

After taking care of the group of Furnace Smiths, Nie Yan walked towards the door at the end of the hall and disappeared into the depths of the corridor.

A few minutes later, six thieves appeared in the hall, led by a young man in his thirties. He was wearing a suit of silver-gray leather armor. He looked at the corpses on the ground and counted the number, a total of sixteen.

"Guild Leader Tian Fa, sixteen level 90 Furnace Smiths." A younger thief, about twenty-five or six years old, said with a trembling voice, unable to conceal the shock in his heart.

"My god, were these all killed by Mad Rogue Nie Yan alone!" Another thief said in disbelief.

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

The thief named Tian Fa frowned. It was indeed a little strange that Nie Yan killed so many level 90 monsters alone. His eyes fell on the Furnace Smiths' broken clothes, which had some burnt marks on them. He bent down, touched the Furnace Smith's clothes, and 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 they couldn't fathom.

Tian Fa turned to the other thieves and said, "Everyone move faster, keep up, be careful, and don't disturb the monsters on the road."

Tian Fa took the lead and walked towards the door in the distance. The five thieves behind him looked at each other. The thought of fighting a monster like Nie Yan made them a little apprehensive. Seeing Tian Fa walking away, they quickly sped up to catch up with Tian Fa.