"Boss, did you just one-shot the BOSS?"
Zhang Ergou, the leader of the Cloudrise Guild, pointed at the corpse on the ground, swallowed hard, and cautiously asked Jiang Yuan.
"Yeah, just a minor BOSS."
Jiang Yuan waved his hand dismissively, as if it were nothing significant.
"Damn, that was a level 90 BOSS!"
Zhang Ergou looked at Jiang Yuan's relaxed expression, his face full of admiration. If the Cloudrise Guild had to take on this BOSS, it would have taken them ages!
"Boss, are all these your summons?"
Staring at the thousands of Dragon-Tiger Beasts before him, Zhang Ergou was utterly incredulous. In his memory, he had never seen a summoner capable of conjuring so many summons at once.
"Yeah."
Jiang Yuan nodded with a faint "mm."
"Awesome!"
Zhang Ergou muttered two words, then gave Jiang Yuan a thumbs-up. Internally, he felt relieved that Jiang Yuan was helping them; otherwise, with Cloudrise's strength, they could never have taken the Dragon Ridge Branch!
They continued forward, and when they reached the next courtyard, they encountered another BOSS—the Hall Master, Ding Shan.
"Boss, let our guild brothers give it a shot."
Staring at the BOSS with a whopping 80 million HP, Zhang Ergou said to Jiang Yuan, then gathered all the Cloudrise players.
As Cloudrise was a subsidiary guild of Cold River City, Zhang Ergou wanted to contribute to the alliance. He ordered all guild members to stack various buffs, intending to take on this Hall Master-level BOSS.
"Warriors, get ready to pull! 3, 2, 1—attack!"
After counting down three numbers, Zhang Ergou roared, and all Cloudrise Guild players immediately launched their assault on the BOSS!
"Lightning Bolt!"
"Ice Roar!"
"Flame Blade!"
"Reverse Dragon Strike!"
The mages of Cloudrise unleashed a barrage of magical skills, while the warriors at the front swung their weapons, using powerful abilities to hack at the BOSS!
For a moment, a kaleidoscope of colorful lights flashed across the BOSS's body. Jiang Yuan, arms crossed, leaned against the doorframe nearby, observing the battle between Cloudrise and the Dragon Ridge Hall Master.
Jiang Yuan had agreed to Zhang Ergou's request and held back because he wanted to gauge the combat strength of the Cloudrise Guild. By understanding the capabilities of both Cloudrise and the Hundred Flowers Palace Guild, he could roughly determine whether Cold River City could hold out against the joint assault of Emperor State and Ten Thousand Mile Alliance for half an hour during the upcoming alliance raid, allowing him to execute his "cutting the grass by the roots" plan smoothly!
About ten minutes passed, and while Cloudrise hadn't suffered any casualties yet, they were struggling heavily. Due to the Hall Master's high attack power, all the healers in the team were casting healing spells nonstop, and their mana bars were already more than half empty.
The increased mana consumption of the healers meant the warriors holding the BOSS's aggro weren't getting timely heals, and their HP began to plummet!
"What are the healers doing! Heal the warriors, now!"
Zhang Ergou, standing at a distance, threw skills at the BOSS while shouting back at the healers.
"Guild leader, we're almost out of mana! We can't keep up!"
Hearing the guild leader's roar, the female healers in Cloudrise immediately whined in protest.
Jiang Yuan could clearly see that Zhang Ergou was unfairly blaming the healers. Glancing at the HP bars of the warriors at the front, none exceeded 40,000—even less than Jiang Yuan's buddy Ding Ye. Facing a BOSS with over 10,000 attack power, each warrior could only take two or three hits before their HP was drained. From that perspective, the healers' output was actually quite impressive!
"Guild leader, I can't hold on!"
The warrior responsible for holding the BOSS's aggro let out a roar, his HP bar vanished, and he slowly collapsed, triggering a chain reaction!
First, the other warriors fell one after another, then the melee assassins. In the blink of an eye, all of Cloudrise's melee classes were wiped out. Next, the squishy mages and healers met the same fate, dropping to the ground as corpses.
In just a few seconds, the several-hundred-strong Cloudrise Guild collapsed like a giant domino set, toppling from the first piece pushed!
"Still a bit weak."
Jiang Yuan, who had been watching from the sidelines, glanced at the BOSS's HP—still at 70%—and shook his head slightly, gaining a fairly intuitive understanding of Cloudrise's strength.
"Swish!"
After Cloudrise was wiped out, Jiang Yuan raised his hand and summoned a thousand Dragon-Tiger Beasts, swiftly taking down the Hall Master BOSS and gratefully pocketing 200 million experience points.
"Ding! Congratulations! Your alliance has defeated Hall Master Ding Shan and successfully captured the Dragon Ridge Branch!"
A notification sounded, and with Jiang Yuan's help, Cloudrise Guild finally secured the Dragon Ridge Branch of Cold River City.
Ignoring the Cloudrise players respawning at the revival point, Jiang Yuan summoned a Dragon-Tiger Beast, mounted it, and headed straight for the White Mountain Branch, twenty kilometers away.
When he was less than two hundred meters from the White Mountain Branch, Jiang Yuan saw a blaze of light from afar and heard the roars of "Hua Qiangu," the burly guild leader of Hundred Flowers Palace.
"Brother, hang in there! Watch me heal you till you puke!"
Jiang Yuan shuddered with goosebumps, a grotesque image forming in his mind: a warrior in armor, fighting a BOSS to the brink of death, when a burly man dressed like a loli walks up, slowly unbuttons two chest buttons, revealing a tuft of chest hair, and says, "Hehe, here, have a heal!"
Shaking his head violently to dispel the horrifying image, Jiang Yuan entered the White Mountain Branch and saw that Hundred Flowers Palace had already whittled down the first Incense Master BOSS to critical HP!
The battle was intense, so the guild leader "Hua Qiangu" didn't notice Jiang Yuan's arrival, fully focused on healing the warriors up front.
About five minutes later, relying on their own strength, Hundred Flowers Palace defeated the first BOSS guarding the White Mountain Branch!
Jiang Yuan quietly followed the main force of Hundred Flowers Palace to the second Hall Master, again staying on the sidelines to assess their performance.
To his surprise, Hundred Flowers Palace, which seemed weaker on paper than Cloudrise, managed to take down nearly half of the Hall Master's HP in less time than Cloudrise. Though they ultimately couldn't avoid a wipe, their overall combat prowess impressed Jiang Yuan.
"Even if it wasted some time, consider it a baseline test."
After all of Hundred Flowers Palace's members had revived, Jiang Yuan emerged from the shadows. The two Hall Masters served as his baseline test, giving him a clear picture of the combat strength of Cold River City's other two guilds.