Chapter 400
Chapter 400 Invitation to a Trap
The hardest part about dealing with the manticores was how to restrict their numerical advantage.
Nine adolescent manticores: two of which were as powerful as elite adepts, three as powerful as veteran adepts, and four of which could be compared to newly advanced adepts.
There was more than enough firepower to crush Greem’s party. After all, there were only three adepts among them! Moreover, Gargamel and Eva were veteran adepts, while Greem could only maintain the power of an elite adept for a limited time!
The other adventurers and apprentice adepts were useless in battle; they hardly even qualified as meatshields. Trying to get them to form a solid defensive line was no different from having a mantis stop a chariot. Their deaths would be gruesome.
If they wanted to win despite this disadvantage in military force, they would have to resort to traps. They needed to bait the manticores into a narrow chokepoint and shave away at their numerical advantage. The only reason Greem was so confident and daring in his plan was due to his understanding of the manticores.
Manticores were fearsome beasts, even among magical creatures. However, they did not possess any long-ranged attacks. It was part of the reason most adepts didn’t fear them! They might even be weaker than those pathetic wyverns if they hadn’t been relying on their unique home ground advantage within the underground tunnels.
Dong.
Another thunderous rumble.
The Roaring Monster’s hands smashed to pieces in the collision. If it weren’t for the Monster planting its legs deep into the stone ground, it would have been sent flying from the force of that clash.
What terrifying strength!
The chip’s scans indicated that the manticore’s strikes had reached a shocking one hundred and thirty-five points. This was already far above any damage that an ordinary adept could aspire to deal out!
This manticore possessed far superior Physique and Strength compared to the first manticore. Apart from a couple of teeth falling out, and a bloodied head, it seemed utterly unfazed by the impact. That wasn’t all. It took advantage of the Roaring Monster’s imbalance from the blow and lack of hands to strike again. Without anything to defend against the manticore, its scorpion stinger stabbed at the golem’s stone armor, as fast as a flash of lightning.
The thick stone armor was pierced right through like it was made of butter. The sharp stinger quickly injected its paralyzing venom into the body of the Roaring Monster. At the same time, the Monster lifted its right leg and slammed it into the ground.
A tremendous shockwave rippled across the ground with the Roaring Monster at its center!
Every entity that struck by the shockwave was thrown into the air. Their bones and flesh rattled and trembled from the shockwave. The spell had caused them to lose their ability to react flexibly to any other situation that might arise.
This particular manticore was an elite-level creature. Both its Physique and Strength were equal to the Roaring Monster. Sadly, it had no choice but to take the Monster’s Trembling Earth head-on. The manticore had never expected its paralyzing venom to be completely ineffective!
Any other manticore would have needed three to five seconds to break free of this detrimental effect. However, an elite-level manticore only required a single second.
Unfortunately for the beast, one second was enough for Greem to cast his spell!
Greem didn’t intend to hold anything back. Without hesitation, he used the strongest single-target fire spell stored in the Scroll of Voodoo- Fire Core Explosion!
Under the effects of the Blaze of Destruction, Greem’s Fire Core Explosion had been further enhanced. It now dealt a monstrous one hundred and twenty-five points of damage; a whole ten points more than before.
One shouldn’t underestimate this difference of ten points. It was ten points of damage on a spell that already had powerful defense-penetration properties!
Most people tried to apply as many elementium and magical defenses as they could on themselves in a duel between adepts. Ordinary magical spells were not capable of penetrating these multiple layers of defense. They had no choice but to wear away at the durability of the spells slowly.
The higher the strength of a single instance of a spell, the less it was affected and neutralized by layers of defense, and the more likely it would simply shatter the protective spells. The opponent would have to take on every single point of what remained of the elementium damage!
An elite-level manticore like this one could only endure and ignore a maximum of ninety points of spell damage.
Anything below ninety points might be able to damage part of its body, but it would never be able to break through the forcefield formed by its powerful life energies. Consequently, weak spells weren’t able to damage any of the manticore’s vital organs.
And this was the foundation of its ability to continuously battle!
However, it was different when it came to Greem’s Fire Core Explosion. Even with the damage reduced, there was still thirty-five points of fire damage that directly affected the manticore’s flesh.