As usual, the Shadow Assassin managed to hide its presence with the zombies. I did not have the Enhanced Perception skill that will be added in the Expansion Patch so I have no means to determine the exact location of the Shadow Assassin but to be reliant on my senses.
To pull out the Shadow Assassin and force it to go out and stop blending in is to defeat all the zombies. The limit of the zombies going to spawn would be around 200 and I have defeated some around 50 from my previous attacks. Therefore, there would be around 150 more to defeat.
"Hellfire!"
The incoming horde of undead was immediately put into flaming suffering from my skill. All of the enemies that passed by on the targeted area that were not part of the first victims of the assault also suffered damage.
"Rain of Bolts!"
A cloud similar to a cumulonimbus cloud appeared above the targeted area and the zombies passing by did not bother to notice it. Before they can even get out of the targeted area, lightning bolts rained down like there was a thunderstorm occurring in that particular place. The zombies who are too brittle in burst damage like the [Rain of Bolts] immediately disintegrated. In one particular group, the zombies disintegrated, leaving the slowed Shadow Assassin that got caught by the lightning bolts.
"Ha! You are not going to get away this time! Don't make my job hard!"
I did not wait for the Shadow Assassin to come close. With his terrifying ignore defense attacks, that will be troublesome if the Shadow Assassin manage to proc a critical while he managed to ignore my defense values. I just have to be preemptive enough and destroy him first. He is not the only one with the ability to ignore defense.
When I managed to get close to the Shadow Assassin, I immediately swing the Versatile Weapon in the form of the Magic Sword.
"Flaming Sword!"
The blade of the Versatile Weapon immediately got covered into flames. I may not be able to damage him that hard due to the difference of levels, at least I can give him enough pressure that would cause him to back off and stop in the meantime.
The difference between intelligent enemies like the Shadow Assassin is that they can attack and will also retreat if needed to do so unlike the normal enemies like the normal monsters I usually farm to get experience. In short, you need an actual strategy like you are in a real battle to take down an enemy and not just stand there and let all the damage soak in.
As the blade of the Versatile Weapon is getting near, the Shadow Assassin immediately showed its prowess. like a real warrior. As soon as the blade is inches away from his neck, he immediately raised his dagger and blocked the sword using it.
KLANG!
Normal players would panic when they will saw this counter but to me, this is nothing. As the blade of my weapon and his weapon collide, I immediately grinned.
"You are dead!"
The Shadow Assassin's eyes that were only shown slightly on the shadowy look on his face grew bigger in surprise. The Magic Sword that I used to attack him suddenly changed looks and turns into a familiar-looking short weapon. The gun form of the Versatile Weapon which is, in this case, is a revolver.
"I don't know if this will give a lot of damage but at least I can show you some surprise like how you did earlier, motherf*cker."
And with that, I point the muzzle of the gun to the surprised Shadow Assassin and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The Shadow Assassin's face exploded when the bullet pierces. I was not sure if the damage is big but I saw the body of the Shadow Assassin fell to the ground and slowly disintegrate. I will be used to it if the enemy is a normal mob but I am confused. Did I just kill it that easily?
The remaining zombies are still a threat so I killed them all. The fight was very easy after the main threat that the Shadow Assassin possess disappeared. It was really anticlimactic but I am not sure what happened. The single bullet I shot earlier is not enough to cause an Instant Kill and I am quite sure that I can't instant kill the Shadow Assassin without knowing it's weakness. I don't even know its traits so how would I be able to kill it?
After killing all the zombies, a notification appeared in my interface all of a sudden.
[You have completed the secret Challenge Quest (Kill the Assassin). As a reward for the quest, you can choose to activate one of the five effects for the duration of the Dungeon diving.]
1. Increase the drop rates and gold earned from killing monsters to 100%.
2. Skill Cooldowns are removed.
3. Experience gained and Skill mastery is increased to 100%.
4. The defense of all enemies are reduced to 100% and they will have 50% less attack power.
5. Clearing this difficulty will also clear the remaining difficulty of this dungeon that is left uncleared. (Rewards and first clear of the other difficulties will also be carried along.)
Uh? Secret Challenge Quest? That is the first time I heard of that. There is no such thing in my past timeline before, is this also one of the few changes that appeared? Never mind that, the most important thing is the reward of the Secret Challenge Quest! This is quite the reward I have seen so far! However, I can only select one. It was like a starting perk but you can only select one. I was tempted to get all of them but I can't be too greedy.
All of them are good but the last one catches my attention. A perk that will allow me to mark the next difficulties as cleared and all the rewards for clearing the corresponding difficulties can also be obtained? Isn't that convenient for my situation? I really don't have much need for the experience and items obtained in the harder difficulties. I just needed to obtain the first clear other than that, there is no need for me to get it.
On the other hand, the others are all good too. The 2nd perk is quite good, having a no cooldown skill allows me to spam a lot of skills without a problem. But then, I decided to weigh down the benefits on the perks. All of them are good but there are two perks that really marked as something I will consider getting, the 2nd option and the 5th option.
It was quite hard for me to decided but since time is running, I decided to use the most convenient of all. If I want to steal the first clear from that guy, then I have to choose this perk. Although I am hesitating, I clicked the 5th option. The benefits of the 5th option outweigh the benefits you can get on the 2nd option since the second option will only be useful in this dungeon and after that, I will be struggling in the next difficulty. With this perk, I will easily cheese out everything. Stealing the first clear of the Abyss difficulty without clearing it, that has a nice ring to it.