A Polluter was taken down.
The pressure on Marcus and his team's rear was significantly reduced.
The beautiful young girl with the staff had an excited glint in her eyes. "Someone big came to help us! Could it be the Shadow from the leaderboard?"
Actually, the girl's beauty was hard to notice now, as she was covered in mud, with only a sliver of health left.
However, her figure still remained as alluring as ever, causing people to glance at her a few more times.
Her long legs moved gracefully, making her appear lively and flexible…
"Hold on."
Marcus's skills were off cooldown.
He released his skill, Holy Shield, with a solemn expression.
Golden light enveloped his burly form, rendering him invincible for three seconds, allowing him to withstand a bit more of the Sprint Runner's attacks.
The others now had room to maneuver.
With one less Polluter, the ranged threat had decreased significantly.
Nearly half a minute later, Riven appeared behind another Polluter.
He struck without warning!
Once again, he instantly killed the Polluter!
"No evolution points…"
"Greedy Hand!"
"Huh, did a skill book drop?"
Riven casually picked up the skill book dropped by the Polluter.
He opened his inventory to check the skill book:
Toxic Dagger (Normal): Assassin skill. Throw a poisonous dagger with a max range of 12 meters. Upon hitting, it adds 40 damage and inflicts the "Poison" status. Cooldown: 5 seconds. Learning Requirement: Level 2.
Poison: Deals 30% attack damage per second, lasts 5 seconds, cannot stack.
Finally, an attack skill, and one with mid-range and sustained damage!
Even ordinary players would see significant growth in their development speed by learning a skill like this early on.
However…
The drop rate for skill books from regular monsters was low.
After killing so many ordinary monsters, Riven had only seen skill books drop twice.
The first was from the first Creeper, which dropped the mage skill Ice Spear.
This was the second one, and it was from the Greedy Hand skill.
"Gear and skill books are still more likely to drop from bosses…"
"But for regular players, without gear or skills, it's impossible to take down bosses, even the weakest Bronze-tier ones."
Riven thought to himself.
Without hesitation, with 3 evolution points remaining, he evolved Toxic Dagger twice!
Toxic Dagger (Normal → Bronze → Silver): Assassin skill. Throw a poisonous dagger with a max range of 12 → 13 → 14 meters. Upon hitting, it adds 40 → 80 → 120 damage and inflicts the "Poison" status. Cooldown: 5 seconds. Learning Requirement: Level 2.
Poison: Deals 30% → 40% → 50% sustained damage per second, lasts 5 seconds, cannot stack.
After evolving the skill twice, the total damage more than doubled!
Riven's movements were swift.
He picked up the skill book, learned it, and evolved it in one smooth motion.
By the time the last Polluter turned around and was about to spit mud at Riven, he was already faster.
He raised his hand and threw a Toxic Dagger.
The dagger immediately hit the Polluter's head!
If it had been any other beginner player, it would have been impossible to hit such a precise shot.
But for Riven, after nine years of playing Eclipse of Eternity, ranged attacks had become second nature…
With a casual toss, the Toxic Dagger hit the weak spot on the Polluter's head!
-237 (Critical Hit)!
The damage didn't seem very high, but that was because there was no stealth break, no backstab, and the enemy had already noticed Riven, so the Shadow profession's passive didn't activate, meaning no double damage…
After striking, Riven immediately went invisible!
As the Polluter was hit by the Toxic Dagger, it turned green.
Two damage numbers appeared above its head.
-158!
-158!
After taking two rounds of sustained poison damage, the Polluter finally died.
"The sustained damage is pretty high."
"And after I attack, I go invisible. The poison damage seems to be doubled due to my profession's passive?"
Riven, sensitive to damage numbers, quickly realized the cause.
The third passive of the Shadow profession is that when not in the enemy's line of sight, damage dealt is doubled.
Since he was invisible, it naturally counted as not being in the enemy's view.
Thus, the sustained damage was indeed doubled!
Unfortunately, the last Polluter also dropped nothing.
Only the Bronze-tier BOSS Sprint Runner remained, and that was the main event!
At this moment, Marcus was sweating profusely. "I can't hold on much longer."
The middle-aged priestess in the team kept healing him, but the effect was limited.
Marcus's health bar was steadily nearing the bottom.
Clearly, although the team had reached level 2 by killing the small monsters, they hadn't received any useful gear or skill books, which left them fighting in a very basic way.
At that moment, a figure suddenly appeared behind the Sprint Runner BOSS.
At the moment the Sprint Runner turned to attack Marcus, a Toxic Dagger flew straight for the BOSS's head!
It hit with pinpoint accuracy!
-845 (Critical Hit)!
Stealth break, backstab, and weak spot attack all triggered.
One shot, one kill!
Marcus and his team, who had been tense, watched as the BOSS's health bar dropped by almost half in an instant. Their eyes went wide.
"Holy shit!"
Marcus couldn't help but curse.
Their entire team had been fighting the Sprint Runner for a long time, barely dealing 10% of its health.
But this mysterious figure had just used one skill to take out half of the BOSS's health?
And that was just the base damage of the Toxic Dagger!
What followed was even more terrifying.
-324!
-324!
-324!
-324!
As the Sprint Runner turned green, four numbers for sustained damage appeared, and the Sprint Runner didn't even have time to struggle before collapsing in front of Marcus.
Of course, Marcus's team couldn't see the damage numbers of others.
They could only see the BOSS's health bar.
Each time it dropped, their hearts skipped a beat!
They watched, wide-eyed, as the Sprint Runner—which had nearly wiped them out—was slowly poisoned to death!
"I can't believe the damage… Is this even a person?"
"Wait, is this the same player who started the game with us?"
"You didn't see the key part—the important thing is, while the BOSS was moving around, this person could still hit the BOSS's head with a dagger!"
"That's right! We can't even hit the BOSS with ranged attacks, but he casually hits the weak spot…"
Marcus and his team all sucked in a sharp breath.
They watched the BOSS drop a pile of loot, but clearly, they didn't have permission to pick it up.
In Eclipse of Eternity, the loot drop from monsters belongs to the player or team who dealt the most damage.
Now, Riven had dealt 90% of the damage to the Sprint Runner.
It was only natural that he had the right to all the loot!