Genius Chapter 45: Leaderboard

Chapter 45: Leaderboard

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

The mechanics of Dashan weren’t difficult. With numerous completions under their belt, the [Fruit Platter] team was highly proficient in maneuvering around the first two mechanics. When Dashan roared, they would dodge accordingly, and when he unleashed his Earthquake, healers would promptly top up the team’s health. However, the problem lay with the skill Sacrifice.

Sacrifice featured a targeting mechanism along with an explosion effect. In previous encounters, whenever someone was targeted, they would find a spot to die alone, avoiding harm to their teammates. With three healers on board, they could resurrect a fallen teammate roughly every minute. But this time, with fewer healers—only one with a 3-minute battle resurrection skill and two with a 10-minute resurrection skill—the difficulty increased significantly.

“It’s about to target someone. What’s the plan?” Strawberry Yogurt asked.

Su Mo’s voice remained steady. “Teams 2 and 3, array masters, prepare shields immediately upon targeting. Clerics, stack damage reduction buffs. Magical swordsmen, activate the big sword formation. Except for the healer and the warrior in Team 1, everyone else, position yourselves to avoid damage.”

One of the healers asked, “Do we resurrect fallen members immediately?”

“Yes,” Su Mo replied simply. “Healers first, then clerics.”

Watermelon, hidden behind the sword formation, glanced at the two teams being systematically protected in the distance. Just then, Dashan began charging up for the Sacrifice.

The targeted player wouldn’t be revealed until the last 3 seconds, but the charging could be discerned from Dashan’s movements. Watermelon immediately activated his protective skill when he noticed the charge-up. At that moment, he saw ClearWindIsHere, the physical swordsman in Team 1, activating a large sword formation, covering everyone closest to him.

The attacks landed.

Watermelon barely dodged two single-target attacks. The charging time passed in a flash, and just as he noticed the Sacrifice emblem above his head, the bomb landed on him. He had no choice but to activate his sprint skill, immediately fleeing from the crowd.

3, 2, 1… At this moment, his vision remained unchanged, and death had not descended upon him; he still held onto 1% of his health.

“Assassin, use your potions and return to your original position,” the calm voice of the commander reminded him.

The rest of the team was stunned. Shouldn’t Watermelon have died and exploded at this point?

“Why isn’t he dead?” Apple exclaimed.

“Sacrifice isn’t necessarily a guaranteed death skill; it mainly depends on teamwork,” Su Mo explained briefly while continuing to command the others to attack. “Under Sacrifice status, if the targeted player doesn’t die, then the explosion won’t occur as originally expected.”

This was a very unique mechanism. Su Mo had noticed it after watching about a dozen strategy videos collected by ClearWind from online sources. In one of the videos he watched, a targeted player didn’t die while under the Sacrifice effect. At that time, the player didn’t use any life-saving items or skills. The leader of the team in the video thought it was a bug and didn’t pay much attention to it.

However, Su Mo noticed it and kept it in mind. While bugs might occur in other games, the chances of bugs in Celestial Horizon were extremely low. Although some game mechanisms might be rigid, the official announcements about bugs had not been issued since the game started. This meant that the player’s survival under the Sacrifice effect wasn’t a coincidence but a result of some special hidden mechanism.

He watched that video repeatedly and noticed two things: First, the targeted player had very high health. Second, before the targeted player was chosen, the team’s positioning and damage avoidance were done quite well. After that, he tested it with ScarletFruit, UnchainedWanderer, and ClearWindIsHere, attempting a four-person clear. They encountered a special situation when targeted. If the accumulated damage on the targeted player during the charging phase wasn’t enough to cause their death, then the subsequent explosion effect wouldn’t occur.

Dashan’s Sacrifice skill distributed the damage that should have been dealt to the entire team onto the targeted player. In other words, from the moment of charging for the Sacrifice, the damage accumulation began. The targeted player would bear all the damage and then die. If they didn’t die during this process, then the subsequent explosion effect wouldn’t occur.

The key to this skill lay in the array master’s double defense array, the cleric’s Banana Palm, and the Mountainless Blade Sect’s physical swordsman’s and magical swordsman’s Big Sword Formation.

This was a combination of skills tested by Su Mo. It provided complete immunity within its range. The double defense could evade 50% of the damage, the Banana Palm reduced damage by 80%, and the Big Sword Formation acted as a shield, absorbing 30% of the damage. With all these layers stacked together, it ensured complete immunity for five protected individuals.

The physical swordsman’s Big Sword Formation could assist in damage reduction, and the assassin had life-saving skills. Even the summoner, after reaching level 70, learned to summon the Black Tortoise beast. Black Tortoise could absorb damage on behalf of its master until it was full, then it would die. After death, there was a cooldown of 3 minutes, but if it didn’t die, it could be re-summoned after 30 seconds.

In other words, their lineup could evade most of the damage, as long as the team members were willing to cooperate and the reactions of Team 1 were agile enough. Knowing that the targeted player hadn’t died, the excitement spread among the other players in the team. So, could this mechanism still be avoided?

They began discussing enthusiastically— “Fuck, we can still play like this?”

“No wonder the array master needs a cleric… and each team needs a magical swordsman too.”

“Can only full mage lineups pull off this kind of avoidance? Melee professions don’t have so many group protections.”

Suddenly, Watermelon understood why Momo used this special team composition. The lineups of Team 2 and Team 3 were identical, all for the sake of the boss’s hidden mechanism to achieve the safest damage absorption. The assassin was currently the profession with the lowest health in the entire team. If even he could survive, it meant that this lineup was completely feasible, and it had to be this kind of full magic lineup… But could their subsequent damage output keep up? They were still ten minutes behind [Temple of the Gods].

“This was something we tested several deaths for,” ScarletFruit proudly responded, “And it can only protect 4-5 people. It’s not safe for more than 5.”

Only God knew how much effort his elder brother and Brother Wanderer put into testing this mechanism. It took them a full two hours of testing to find a completely stable method. This lineup was also highly variable, with the main core being the array master, cleric, and Swordsman. Even if it wasn’t a full mage lineup, it could swap out the mage and Doaist priest, making it highly flexible.

Just then, the voice of Commander Momo rang out again in the team voice channel, “Team 3 mage, your attack rhythm is slow, and you missed 250 burst damage.”

This voice interrupted the discussion in the voice channel, and several players burst into laughter.

The mage who had been targeted felt embarrassed and immediately responded, “Sorry, my hand was tired! I’ll catch up right away.”

But the commanding voice didn’t stop there; it found faults with extreme scrutiny. Except for the flexible positioning of Team 1, the other two teams were almost huddled together. Any mistakes were glaringly obvious.

The skills of the two teams’ array masters and clerics were impeccable, but the Doaist priest, mage, and magical swordsman— the three main damage dealers— became the focus of the command’s attention. Any errors in positioning or skill usage were glaringly obvious, especially in comparison to the surroundings. They were immediately pointed out by the commander.

“Team 3 Doaist priest, your positioning is chaotic.”

“Use your burst skills when you have the buff.”

At this moment, he didn’t call out the player IDs, but he remembered every single person in the team clearly. With a few words of criticism, the lively discussion in the team disappeared without a trace.

Seeing this, Watermelon immediately brought out his management aura to regulate the atmosphere within the team. “Using the buffs from the array master and cleric for your damage output, are you here to climb the ranks or chat? Why don’t you come to Team 1? Be serious, okay?”

“Pull up your battle statistics. Your equipment isn’t bad, so there shouldn’t be such low burst damage,” Su Mo controlled his summoner to deal damage, and the field of view listed output statistics, threat statistics, and other combat assistance plug-ins. “We can finish this within 20 minutes. Everyone, don’t waste your teammates’ time.” He paused for a moment and then added, succinctly, “And assassin, your burst damage is 50 lower than the physical swordsman’s. Pay attention.”

Without saying anything else, his words carried an inexplicable sense of ‘you shouldn’t be performing like this’ concern.

Watermelon shivered, immediately responding, “I’ll improve right away.”

The other team members were speechless.

“D*mn it! That’s terrifying!”

Next, everyone in the team geared up and started outputting with all their might. Besides reminding of boss skills, the commander’s voice was only heard when pointing out flaws. His voice was too calm, his pronunciation clear, and his intentions were precise. Even though his voice wasn’t loud, it carried an inexplicable aura, and his words were as sharp as a blade. There were no curses, no calling out of player IDs. It was as if a young mentor, Director, was standing behind them, calmly reminding them whenever they made mistakes… Seemingly ordinary, yet it felt like the whisper of a demon.

For ten minutes, everyone was on edge, afraid to make any more mistakes. Their burst damage soared above the passing line. The boss, Dashan, with its particularly thick health, was actually defeated three minutes faster than the other elite teams in [Fruit Platter] under such intense conditions.

As soon as the boss fell, everyone didn’t dare to slack off and hurried to the location of the next boss. The next boss was a bit of a distance away from Big Mountain, and there were a bunch of ordinary people under demonic control in between. To deal with these ordinary people, they could only reduce their health to below 50%. Once their health dropped below this threshold, they would lose their mobility. However, they couldn’t kill the ordinary people, or else the entire dungeon run would fail. Yet, once their health dropped below 50%, without the support of the demons, they were as fragile as paper and would quickly perish.

So, although these ordinary people seemed simple, they posed a great challenge. You had to deal with them to progress through this path, but hitting them too hard would spell disaster. This was also one of the difficulties of the guild dungeon. Many teams rushed in recklessly, without careful coordination, only to end up failing the dungeon run.

“Should we pull a wave of ordinary people and use skills to grind them down?” Apple asked.

Su Mo responded, “We won’t deal with the ordinary people.”

He set the summoner’s summon, ‘Black Tortoise,’ to follow the assassin, Watermelon. Then, he instructed the cleric and array master to support the assassin. “Watermelon, pull the mobs to the left, and the rest of you follow me to the right.”

Watermelon was taken aback, seemingly unable to react to this command. “Me? The assassin? Pulling mobs?”

Wasn’t he the squishiest one in the entire team? Why was he tasked with pulling this wave of ordinary people?

“Then who else?” Su Mo said simply. “I assigned you as the assassin to pull mobs. Didn’t Apple tell you?”

Watermelon looked towards Apple.

“I forgot, but it’s not a big deal. Just pull some mobs,” Apple replied.

Watermelon looked at the commander sincerely. “I’m going to die.”

“You have fast movement speed. After pulling the mobs away, use your invisibility to lose aggro and then rejoin us,” Su Mo instructed simply. “If you’re sure you’re going to die, die further away, outside the attack range of those ordinary people. Don’t add pressure to the healers by making them revive you. Understand?”

ScarletFruit followed his elder brother decisively, “Ready to go? Time is money.”

ClearWind added, “Comrade Watermelon, the whole team is counting on you.”

Apple said, “You’ve got this, we believe in you.”

Strawberry Yogurt looked sympathetically at his teammate.

Other team members quickly followed behind Momo, fearing being called to pull the next group of mobs. They watched in awe as Watermelon performed the daring act of pulling the mobs, and as soon as he made a move, everyone else dashed off in the opposite direction. 

During this time, Su Mo briefly explained in the team channel, “These ordinary people are humanoid monsters controlled by demonic power. Their behavior is very mechanical, and they only have two mechanism skills, unlike the other dungeon mobs. Have you noticed the status under their health bars?”

Everyone looked at the status: “Controlled by demonic power, will actively attack enemies nearby.”

Su Mo continued, “These are humanoid monsters, which means they can be controlled by crowd control effects. Since their behavior is predictable and easy to manipulate, as long as we stay away from them, we won’t get entangled. Besides, there’s no rule that says we have to fight these mobs, so let’s not waste time.”

All the team members understood, but their hearts felt heavier.

“Is Watermelon still alive?”

“It’s been 2 minutes already.”

“…He should be alive, right?”

“The commander told him to die further away, maybe he’s died too far away??”

At this moment, Watermelon, who had been struggling to pull the mobs, stealthily returned, standing in front of everyone with a meager 2% of his health. The healer hurriedly gave him a heal, without time for him to recuperate. The commander’s voice sounded again in the team voice channel.

“Warrior, get ready to initiate the fight,” the commander said. “The rest of you, don’t drop your output. Understand?”

Everyone immediately perked up. “Yes, sir!”

It was eight in the morning, and members of the [Fruit Platter] guild were gradually coming online. The guild master of [Fruit Platter], who rarely logged in early, eagerly asked about everyone’s situation as soon as he logged in. However, both elite team leaders were present, yet neither replied to his messages. He could only ask other administrators to find out what was happening. Upon learning that there was a rush for points in the morning, he briefly checked the list of those who opened the raid and realized that Apple had invited an outside expert named Momo.

The guild master asked, “Everyone is working so hard, how’s the progress?”

One of the administrators replied with a complicated mood, “Guild master, have you checked the group chat?”

“What’s wrong? Is there something big happening in the group?” The guild master had to switch back to the group chat and saw a series of messages. Scrolling to the beginning, the first thing that caught his eye was his beloved Watermelon leading a group of mobs in a pitiful state, with dangerously low health, his back resolute as he ran in the opposite direction of everyone else, as if determined to embark on a distant journey.

Scrolling down, Apple posted a candle emoji after the screenshot, and within a short time, dozens of people followed with indescribable candle emojis. And at the forefront were the guild members who were in the same team as Watermelon and Apple. After scrolling through the candle emojis, the guild master inexplicably felt a sense of indescribable bitterness.

This was a message from fifteen minutes ago, and this group of people hadn’t bubbled up in the group chat since.

The guild master asked, “They’re already at the ordinary people mobs… When did they start the raid?”

The administrator replied, “The raid was scheduled to start at 8 am, but they started at 7:30.”

The guild master paused for a moment before replying, “It looks very tough.”

The administrator nodded, “It’s not just tough, Watermelon hasn’t replied to my messages for over half an hour.”

The guild master was speechless. After a moment of silence, he sent a red packet in the group chat.

Author’s note:

Watermelon: After this raid, I’m done with Apple.

Apple: Young man, don’t talk about breaking ties so easily.

Guild master: Are they in the rush-for-points raid?

Administrator: …Possibly the tribulation raid?