Boom!
The Thunder Lion let out a roar and spat out a bolt of lightning.
That lightning also counted as magic damage.
When it struck John, all it produced above his head was a huge [-0].
John shrugged. "That's it?"
Sensing his contempt, the Thunder Lion flew into an instant rage.
Crackle!
With an explosive burst of thunder, three identical Thunder Lions appeared before John in a flash of lightning.
It had activated Lightning Double.
The three Thunder Lions charged at John at the same time.
At the same time, they summoned a massive violet chain of lightning and branded him.
They drew upon the electricity coursing through their bodies and gathered a thundercloud over the entire platform.
Countless bolts of lightning rained down.
The whole platform turned into an ocean of crackling electricity.
As John walked through it, even though he was immune to the damage, he could still feel waves of numbness spread through his body.
"Boring."
He snorted coldly and abruptly activated Instant Move.
The skill was completely unaffected by the lightning storm.
When John reappeared, he was already behind one of the Thunder Lions.
He flipped Bloodfang in his hand and stabbed down viciously!
[-6193!]
[-6193!]
[-6193!]
Three identical crimson damage numbers popped up.
The HP of all three Thunder Lions dropped by a chunk instantly.
They howled in pain, their roars rumbling like thunder.
Sheets of lightning poured out in all directions—
enough to reduce any living thing that came near them to charred ash.
But John, wearing gear that granted absolute immunity to magic, remained completely unharmed.
This Thunder Lion did not know how to dodge. Its intelligence was even lower than the Thousand-Faced Mage's.
John was like an old farmer tilling a field, stabbing one knife after another into the Thunder Lion's back.
[-6183!]
[-6162!]
No matter how the Thunder Lion struggled, John's dagger kept plunging down without pause, and the HP of all three Thunder Lions fell rapidly.
Until, at last, all three bars bottomed out completely!
Thanks to the effect of Annihilation of All, John had no need to carefully manage their HP and finish them off at the same time like the guilds in his previous life had done.
The HP of all three Thunder Lions was emptied simultaneously.
It did not matter which was the clone and which was the original.
At this moment—
all of them had to die!
[Congratulations, player, for slaying the hidden S-Rank Boss Thunder Lion Lv.40! Rewards: EXP +15,000, Gold Coins +100, Fame +5,000!]
[Experience pool has reached its limit. Overflow EXP has been cleared.]
[You have plundered S-Rank skill "Lightning Double"!]
[You have plundered S-Rank skill "Lightning Chain"!]
Ignoring the experience pool that had already reached its cap, John immediately opened his skill panel to inspect the two newly acquired skills.
[Lightning Double] (S-Rank)
[Effect]: Create 2 clones with the same HP as the original. As long as the original does not die, the clones cannot be destroyed. Duration: 10 minutes.
...
[Lightning Chain] (S-Rank)
[Effect]: Summon a chain of lightning to mark targets hit. Marked targets will receive a shared damage buff.
Maximum Targets: 30
Mark Duration: 30 minutes
...
Without the slightest hesitation, John immediately began modifying them.
First, he directly changed the number of Lightning Double clones to 99, and extended their duration all the way to 24 hours!
Then he changed Lightning Chain so that it could mark 300 targets, with a duration of 24 hours!
After the modifications were complete, John let out a long breath and exited the modification panel.
He then opened his player status window.
[Player]: John
[Level]: 30 (Experience pool overflowed; will level up automatically after class change)
[Class]: Assassin
[Talents]: Wrath of the Raider (SSS), Universal Synthesis (S), Absolute Stillness (S), Thousand Faces (A)...
[Attributes]: Strength 660, Agility 985, Mind 350, Stamina 770
[Skills]: Absolute True Damage (SSS), Godshadow (SS), Lightning Double (S), Lightning Chain (S), Annihilation of All (S)...
[Equipment]: Divine Protection (S), Thousand-Faced Mask (A), Bloodfang (A), Lightning Robe (A)
[Wallet]: 239 Gold Coins, 988 Silver Coins, 937 Copper Coins
...
At this point, he had basically cleared out every monster in the entire dungeon.
With these two skills in hand, he no longer had anything to fear from future group battles.
He would never have to worry again about being unable to fight many enemies alone in the late game.
When the time came, once the clones were unleashed and the marks were locked on,
it was hard to say who would really have the numerical advantage.
Of course, given the current situation, there did not seem to be any guild worthy of forcing him to use those two skills.
John steadied his thoughts and turned his gaze toward the Class Change Scroll floating in the center.
After he killed the Thunder Lion, the lightning cage that had bound the scroll immediately dissipated.
John walked forward and grasped the Class Change Scroll in his hand.
The moment he touched it, he suddenly sensed that something was wrong.
"Why is this glow even brighter than what I saw in my previous life?"
John focused his eyes on it, and his breathing nearly stopped.
[Class Change Scroll] (SSS Rank)
This was actually an SSS-Rank Class Change Scroll!
John instantly fell into ecstatic delight.
As someone who had been sacrificed in his previous life because his Class rank was not high enough,
John knew better than anyone just how precious an SSS-Rank Class Change Scroll was.
It was no exaggeration to say that
if he had possessed this Class Change Scroll in his previous life,
then the one lying on the sacrifice altar might very well have been Guild Master Sein.
He had never even dared dream of such a thing in his previous life.
Yet in this life, he had obtained it so quickly.
Life truly was unpredictable.
But after the initial burst of ecstasy, John suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.
According to his memories from his previous life, the scroll placed here had clearly been only S-Rank.
So why had its quality suddenly risen to such an absurd level?
Realizing something, he hurried to the edge of the platform and looked down.
There, in what had once been a bottomless abyss, an enormous crack had now appeared.
Within the crack, countless illusory scenes flickered.
There were images of war between humans and dragons, and visions from a savage primordial age...
This was the temporal rift.
But at this moment, the scale of this time-space rift was far greater than the one John had seen in his previous life.
Even from such a distance,
John could still feel a vast and distorted power of time and space emanating from it!
Rumble—!
Perhaps because he had picked up the Class Change Scroll,
the time-space rift that had originally been hidden deep beneath the abyss suddenly began to erupt.
The entire catacomb trembled violently because of it.
"This is bad. This place is about to collapse!"
The instant that ominous thought surfaced in John's mind,
large cracks began spreading across the platform beneath his feet.
John did not dare linger. He immediately activated Instant Move and dashed upward.
Almost the moment his front foot left, the platform behind him shattered into countless chunks of rock and plummeted downward.
If John had been even a little slower, he might already have fallen into the time-space rift.
No one knew what would happen if someone fell into such a rift.
But it was definitely nothing good.
"Move!"
John did not dare stop for even a second.
He activated Instant Move again and again.
His figure flashed nonstop through the underground catacombs as he fled outward at full speed.
Rumble—!
Countless stone coffins came crashing down, nearly smashing into him.
The corpses of the undead creatures were buried beneath the rubble.
Sections of the passageways broke apart and collapsed one after another, while dust filled the air.
By the time John burst out, covered in dirt and looking thoroughly disheveled,
the entire underground catacomb had already been reduced to a shattered ruin.
When he turned back, the entrance prompt had turned gray, indicating that it was no longer accessible.
"What the hell."
Thinking back to how he had nearly been buried alive just now, even someone with John's temperament could not help but curse.
Thankfully, he had still managed to escape safely.
"That disturbance just now was huge. It might attract attention.
I'd better leave first."
John did not dare stay any longer.
He put away the Class Change Scroll and quickly disappeared from the area.