We teleported to Rayshire and were immediately met with two system messages.

  [You are in a semi-safe Zone. Player combat disabled. This area might become a hostile zone in the future.]

  [For the duration of the red moon, the death time-out has been reduced to thirty minutes]

  The mist itself felt thicker under the light of the red moon, obstructing the view more. The streetside NPCs weren’t smiling. Their postures were anxious, as if they’d heard the news of a disaster happening nearby. Something was definitely off.

  Players crowded the street with their eyes on the dragon statue, their weapons ready. We weren’t the only ones to catch this idea, it seemed. When Veyra and I teleported in, however, a chunk of attention shifted toward us.

  “Oh, shit, Assassin A?” a ranger player said from fifteen feet away. His nametag read [Bombcraft] Finiorc. He wore a decent upper mid-game dark ranger set. When I glanced his way, he took the chance to speak to me and nervously said, “Uh, I’m a fan! Do you know what’s happening here?”

  “No clue,” I said and gave him a quick smile before turning to Veyra. “Let’s portal up to the walls. Is that possible?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been up there,” Veyra said. “I need to be a bit closer for the portal range, though.”

  Now that the city had turned to a semi safe-zone, [Stealth] followed its normal rules instead of city rules, meaning that we couldn’t totally exit from others' attention. A lot of services, like the auction house and taverns, were closed with NPCs outside telling customers that the city was not safe during the red moon.

  We got closer to the walls, where Veyra pointed her staff up. She couldn’t spawn a portal directly atop the wall, as we lacked line of sight, and spawning a portal near the side of the wall would send us falling straight back down. Instead she placed a portal on the battlements, on the inner side of the large square nooks for safe travel. I hopped in and waited for the portal cooldown, and she followed.

  The air was chillier up here, the creepy mist covering the city below. To our right, the sleeping petrified dragon rested calmly with its head having crushed the battlements, facing the city. Its body was large enough to span from wall to wall, poking slightly outward, wings drooping down with cracks on the stone where its weight rested.

  Half a dozen players from three different guilds already stood up here. The standouts were, [LastTrain] Hawkhunter, who was a very good top 100 support player despite his name. There were familiar faces as well. [Mythforged] SpellDao and his guild, and [Warmaxx] Lapadin.

  As I walked up, Lapadin was the first to scowl at us, his purple paladin armor glowing in the mist. I spoke first, casually saying, “Hellooo.”

  “You’re lucky PvP is disabled,” Lapadin said.

  “We’re all going to peacefully team up for a boss fight, right?” I asked with a grin.

  He crossed his arms. “Looks like you didn’t complete the quest either, seeing as you’re here.”

  “No, we’re in the correct place,” I said. Then I ignored him and walked past, to the dragon. I [Shadow Dashed] up, climbing to the top of the dragon.

  If this works, I’m rich, I thought.

  I picked up Sablethorn and drove it into the petrified dragon.

  Nothing. The blade hit the stone and clinked off with no effects.

  Well, I thought. Of course the devs would think of this.

  I kept looking around. Some of the cracks in the petrified stone were wider, exposed more to the red moonlight. I heard a slight crumbling sound to my left, and I saw one of the cracks grow wider.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  At the source of the crack, the stone layer had a small gap, revealing some darker, shinier surface underneath.

  I hit Sablethorn at that.

  The dagger’s blade blinked, like it did when stealing defence from an opponent. My defence stat rose by 52, and a stack of evisceration was applied to my target.

  The widest, most wicked grin came out on its own.

  Assassin: “Jackpot”

  I kept stacking [Eviscerate] onto Ray Dragon Embridge, stealing her defence.

  ***

  “Oh my god, that’s a bug,” Ji-soo’s voice rang in Hyunwoo’s ears, as if relayed through headphones.

  Hyunwoo, with over twenty of Wind Virtual’s employees, floated in the air as ghosts, surveying Ray Dragon Embridge. Each employee was invisible to the players and unable to interact with the game, silently spectating. They had perfect vision and insight to the game’s inner workings, such as player inventories and hidden stats. For such an important event, surveying the game directly in virtual reality as ghosts was much more effective than meeting in the office.

  “How much damage has he done?” Hyunwoo asked. His voice was picked up and sent to Ji-soo, as if he was speaking to a microphone.

  “He’s not doing damage,” Ji-soo said. “But he’s stealing defence with his dagger! His defence stat is already at seven thousand! That’s close to the defence record between all players, and it’s still growing! He’s also stacking Eviscerate!”

  “Joon?” Hyunwoo asked, calling out the head of monster design. “Embridge is supposed to be invulnerable, is she not?”

  “She is invulnerable,” Joon insisted. “She is not taking any damage from Assassin’s daggers, and she will remain immune to damage until the petrification fully wears out.”

  “But she’s clearly not immune to status effects!”

  Joon clicked his tongue. “An oversight. I am terribly sorry. I have no excuse.”

  “His defence hit fifteen thousand!” Ji-soo said in a panic. “That makes his attack force over thirty thousand! Embridge’s defence is at zero! He took it all!”

  Hyunwoo could only stare at the scene, feeling like something was going to go very wrong.

  “Do we pause the game?” Ji-soo asked. “This needs to be addressed!”

  He bit his lip. Pausing the game was the worst outcome, next only to the event itself being completely ruined. A pause would break immersion for everyone involved. Not to mention, if they removed Assassin’s strategy now, the company’s credibility would fall. Wonderwind was known for its limitless potential and perfect immersiveness—something that would be stained by random unannounced global pauses.

  The Ray Dragon boss fight was supposed to be one of the largest to date. Unlike most events, where the final boss resided in a dungeon for the top players to fight, broadcasted by a livestream, with this event everyone would have a chance to fight Embridge. The dragon was designed to wake up in the city and cause havoc, letting lower level players deal damage—or die. Items would then be distributed by contribution, letting everyone have a chance at rare drops.

  When Embridge hit sixty-five percent health, an escape event would be triggered, and she would fly to the dragon canyon, where the top players could then fight the boss as normal, finishing her off.

  It had to go well. Hyunwoo knew how hard his team had worked to orchestrate this battle.

  “Eviscerate stops stacking at two hundred and fifty-four,” Joon said. “Even if he lands a critical strike, he won’t one-shot her. There’s also a good chance Embridge’s wake-up explosion kills him before he can land a hit.”

  Hyunwoo nodded. He was inclined to agree. Interfering now would be disgraceful. Assassin had found a clever strategy that the developers had missed. Robbing the opportunity would be unfair.

  In the worst case, they could give Embridge an unexpected healing effect to make up for any excessive damage Assassin could do. This wouldn’t be the first time they’d underestimated player damage. Once, they’d had to artificially heal an event boss by 50% to make the fight closer. Players had chalked that up as an intended healing effect.

  His team watched nervously, while Assassin kept occasionally hitting to make sure his defence and the stacks of evisceration wouldn’t wear off. That continued for fifteen minutes, until Embridge finally woke up.

  Hyunwoo could only hope that Assassin would be blown off into the death time-out.

  ***

  The mist faded and red moonlight shone directly on the layer stone. The petrification cracked open, and the dragon underneath showed its first sign of movement.

  Its head was freed, revealing a sharp and black dragon face with deadly orange eyes. It opened its mouth, and a loud rumbling shriek escaped.

  The shriek itself cast a shockwave, dealing damage. Everyone too close to Embridge received a knock-back to the face. Lapadin and SpellDao fell off of the battlements.

  I, however, was an assassin. And I had one overpowered ability that no other class had.

  I [Shadow Dashed] through the shockwave, straight to the shrieking head, where activated [Eviscerate] and drove my dagger of 34,589 attack force into the Ray Dragon’s eye. Each stack amplified the critical strike by 290% for a total of 73,660% amplified critical strike damage from [Eviscerate] alone.

  [Critical Strike]

  [Cry Of The Abandoned Phoenix - Active Conditions Met]

  [Critical Strike!]

  All 254 stacks of evisceration blew open, the damage doubled by [Blood Desperation], and increased again by a blazing inferno, as millions upon millions of damage blew up in the dragon’s head with the most violent burst of damage I’d ever inflicted.

  20 chapters ahead on !