Chapter 223: The Mage Falls, Top 8 to Top 4 Matches Begin (1/3)

The terrifying necromancer!

A truly terrifying profession!

In past battles against bosses, its sheer dread had never felt this palpable.

Until this very moment, the entire audience finally realized how overwhelming this seemingly filthy class, which dealt with corpses day in and day out, could actually be!

Even without any corpses, with the tactics of the bone sea thoroughly restricted, this class could still unleash its horrifying power!

Before the massive screen, the crowd erupted like a boiling cauldron, seamlessly murmuring in endless discussion over the necromancer's various skills and the match that had just unfolded!

This was perhaps the greatest dark horse of the entire tournament!

Won?!

"I won?" Wang Tai removed his virtual visor, casting his gaze all around.

Even he himself could hardly believe it!

Even though victory was now his, the present reality still felt remarkably like a dream!

In truth, he had originally thought himself completely doomed; aside from finding a single opportunity to cast Decrepify upon his opponent and commanding his clay golem to slow them down before executing a frenzy of damage, his performance in other aspects had been terribly flawed!

Yes, terribly flawed! It was even worse than his previous matches against other opponents!

For instance, opening with Bone Wall before following up with Bone Prison—had he been more confident, a single Bone Prison would have sufficed! It would have saved him the time of an entire cast.

And if that saved casting time had been used to unleash Iron Maiden instead, the outcome might have been entirely different!

It was simply because his opponent was a master, both in reality and within the game! He had been so incredibly nervous!

So nervous that even now, his palms were still slightly trembling!

"Not bad!" Fang Qi stepped forward and patted his shoulder, speaking up, "From now on, you are the shop's number one necromancer."

"The number one... necromancer?" Fat Wang swallowed with some difficulty, hurriedly waving his hands, "No... no, I'm not."

"Little fellow! Fight well in the rounds ahead! You are the only necromancer to make it into the top eight, so if it isn't you, who else could it be?" Old Fu had never expected to accidentally capsize his own ship at the hands of this fat youth; a lingering embarrassment still hung upon his face, for who could have anticipated that a profession almost nobody played would be so fiercely aggressive? A single minor detail, hardly even a careless mistake, had left him with virtually no chance to turn the tide!

Compared to most other people, Wang Tai, a fat youth possessing a round face and small eyes whose appearance could only be described as not entirely ugly, was merely an ordinary, unremarkable little figure. In truth, to have formed a party with geniuses like Song Qingfeng to pioneer new territories, and to have even participated in the national examination and achieved results, already felt entirely miraculous to him.

Perhaps, like every common soul, he harbored a sense of inferiority and self-deprecation when facing these geniuses and powerful figures, viewing himself as small and unable to compare with others.

It was even more so in real life, where there were those he could only look up to, and others so high he could not even catch a glimpse of them.

He had always maintained this sense of inferiority, quietly following behind the throng of geniuses, mechanically passing each of his days, never once daring to hope that he might one day surpass them.

He possessed no presence, nor would he ever be valued by anyone.

So it was in reality, and so it was in the game.

Yet at this very moment, a feeling suddenly stirred within his heart; in this brand-new world, there was no absolute nobility or lowliness, nor was there any absolute genius or mediocrity!

Even if, in reality, he was merely a somewhat humble, somewhat self-deprecating fat youth.

Just like when Fang Qi's shop had first opened, and it was said that if one could not pass the examinations for the Lingyun Academy, they could always try for the civil service—who knew how much bitterness was hidden beneath those plain, almost jesting words.

But within this virtual world, he had slowly shed that humble and weak identity; he was no weakling!

Unconsciously, the inferiority in his heart seemed to diminish significantly, replaced instead by a wave of confidence—not particularly intense, yet entirely unprecedented in his life.

In this city where he lived merely at the bottom of the social ladder, before these nobles and powerful experts, this was perhaps the first time he had ever conceived an emotion other than inferiority.

"Thank you!" Wang Tai did not know what he ought to say; his somewhat flushed face tensed for a long while before he managed to spit out those two words.

He did not know what he was supposed to do, but he understood clearly that if he were to fight the coming battles with the same flawed execution as before, relying solely on the overwhelming strength of his skills and his opponent's lack of familiarity to grasp victory, he would be unworthy of such praise.

Even if it was merely praise spoken half in jest.

"The next match must be fought well!"

And just as Wang Tai's mind was continuously weighing the errors of the past battle and devising methods for improvement, the next match began.

Song Qingfeng vs Ouyang Cheng

"Young Master Xiao, these two...?" Many nearby who did not understand Diablo began to ask around once more.

"They are evenly matched... I think it is a toss-up...!" Xiao Yulv spoke up, "After all, the Cloak of Shadows tactic has already been used once, so Ouyang Cheng will certainly be on his guard."

Before his voice could even fade...

"The teleportation was interrupted!"

"What skill was just used?!"

A chorus of startled cries suddenly erupted from the surroundings!

The moment Ouyang Cheng entered the battlefield and intended to teleport to open up a distance between them, he suddenly felt as though his brain had been struck by a hammer, a wave of dizziness washing over him!

Along with it, the casting of his teleportation was instantly severed!

Stun from Diablo was somewhat different from other games; even if a player felt dizzy, they could still manage to execute attacks and spells as long as their mind remained sufficiently focused, unlike other games where a stun rendered one completely helpless.

Nalan Mingxue's gaze focused slightly; she had clearly noticed just now that Song Qingfeng had unleashed his spell the very instant he entered the field, evidently interrupting the cast through pure anticipation!

She simply had not expected that an assassin's range for interrupting teleportation could be so remarkably vast!

In almost the next breath, Song Qingfeng had already teleported over, his ensuing attacks interrupting the teleportation once more!

Seeing such a scene display itself upon the battlefield, Fang Qi sighed inwardly; at a time when all players had transformed into powerful figures like martial artists and cultivators, teleportation was by no means devoid of flaws. Back when he played the game before his reincarnation, how could any player have ever interrupted a teleportation with such flawless precision?

A mage approached by an assassin possessed almost no ability to resist; they could not run, nor could they successfully cast teleportation. Furthermore, the freezing effect of the mage's Shiver Armor was entirely ineffective against Song Qingfeng, who wore equipment bearing the "Cannot Be Frozen" attribute, causing the outcome of the battle to be decided in an instant!

Immediately following that, Bai Lang's health bar also plummeted to the bottom under the coordinated onslaught of Bu Che's druid, who carried a teleportation staff and commanded a pack of bears and wolves through several rounds of teleportation ambushes!

Meanwhile, the other dark horse, Fu Jianghe, had also obtained a teleportation staff at some unknown point; utilizing the vision restriction of Cloak of Shadows alongside the mobility of teleportation, he cut down the remaining mage beneath his blade!

And this very mage happened to be the head of the Ouyang family, Ouyang Zhen!

By this time, many had already perceived the decline of the mages.

In the end, the mages who had shone so brilliantly during the preliminary rounds were almost entirely defeated in the round of sixteen after players discovered various ways to counter them!

The sole survivors left standing were merely An Huwei and Li Haoran!

At this juncture, four spellcasters (consisting of two mages, alongside a druid and a necromancer) and four melee combatants entered the fray to contend for the top four spots!

The rules of engagement still followed the previous guidelines, with the first match featuring An Huwei's mage against Bu Che's druid.

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Seeing some people say that the necromancer's Decrepify curse isn't all that strong, and that Bone Spirit deals no damage in Player versus Player combat...

One is a skill that must be banned in competitions, while the other is one of the primary means of dealing damage for a bone-tree mage in PVP; are you truly being serious when you say that?

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