Chapter 61: Dark Cage! If You Don't Help Now, the Divine Pet Is Going to Be Killed?

The Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix unleashed the skill Death Scythe the instant the freeze effect took hold, directly consuming 100,000 points of mana to condense a massive death scythe over 110 meters long—a pitch-black, wicked sc wreathed in dark crimson flames that materialized from the void and cleaved down toward the Flame Demon King's head.

This attack did not trigger a critical strike effect, but its physical damage still reached 300,000 points, breaking through the Flame Demon King's defense; immediately after, the Power of Death erupted, dealing 500,000 points of Power of Death spell damage.

The Power of Death remaining inside the Flame Demon King's body continued to deal 40,000 points of additional damage per second!

Seeing the Flame Demon King about to break free, Lu Zheng decisively had the Cloud-Riding Crane unleash the skill "Riding Clouds and Mist" to generate a massive amount of cloud and fog, while he himself cast the same skill simultaneously, using his own mana as a catalyst to release his self-created skill, Cloud Burst Art.

Under the enormous explosive shockwave, the Flame Demon King, situated at the very center, directly suffered up to 1,300,000 points of impact damage; Lu Zheng deliberately focused on the creature's wings, blasting one of them clean off.

By now, the Flame Demon King had lost nearly 3,000,000 HP in total, exceeding one-tenth of its health.

But clearly Lu Zheng had not yet gained an absolute advantage.

After this explosion, the Flame Demon King broke completely free from the freeze effect, only to immediately suffer self-destruct attacks from several thousand Undying Fire Spirits.

The relentless, dense onslaught made it impossible for the Flame Demon King to unleash its regular attack skills; in the blink of an eye, it lost over 4,000,000 more HP, and by this point roughly eighty percent of the Undying Fire Spirits had been expended.

The pressure on the Flame Demon King eased, and it immediately unleashed a Demon Guard skill, demonic power condensing into rings of black light across its body that shoved all the Undying Fire Spirits outward.

With a moment to catch its breath, it then unleashed a second skill: Lava Summoning!

The earth split open and dark crimson lava surged forth as giant lava fire demons, each over ten meters tall, climbed up from the ground and charged toward the Undying Fire Spirits.

Seeing those several hundred LV. 250 lava fire demons, Lu Zheng showed no panic—instead, a look of pleasant surprise appeared on his face.

The Undying Fire Spirits had been nearly depleted just now, so these lava fire demons were perfect for replenishing them; he immediately had his other Rare-quality and Immortal-grade summoned beasts engage these lava fire demons, then had the Undying Fire Sea transform the slain lava fire demons into new Undying Fire Spirits! Of course, for the time being, these lava fire demons did indeed block the remaining Undying Fire Spirits' attacks, allowing the Flame Demon King to pull free and look up at the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix, which was charging and recovering in midair.

Under the effect of the Inspiring Aura, the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix—whose mana recovery rate was already fast—had nearly restored its mana to full.

The Flame Demon King, meanwhile, condensed 500,000 points of mana and unleashed a black-red whip hundreds of meters long, lashing it toward the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix.

The Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix's body was enormous, and the Flame Demon King's skill was extremely fast, making it impossible to dodge by simply evading; in the next instant, it directly transformed into several thousand small fire birds that scattered and flew away, causing the Flame Demon King's attack to strike the ground instead.

This was precisely the effect of the skill Thousand Bird Avatar.

Although the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix virtually ignored fire damage and physical damage, the demonic power on this whip could absolutely inflict severe wounds, so it absolutely could not be taken head-on.

Because it was still far from the time for a desperate last stand! Over here, Lu Zheng's mana was recovering rapidly under the effects of his skill and mana recovery potions; he repeated his earlier trick, sending two bolts of Mystic Ice Spirit Light flying out to land on the Flame Demon King, which hadn't taken him seriously at all.

A summoner and their summoned beasts were one entity; although overall the Flame Demon King held aggro toward Lu Zheng, its target of hatred was Lu Zheng and all of his summoned beasts, so the aggro on Lu Zheng could be drawn away by his summoned beasts.

From the very start, the Flame Demon King's aggro target had been the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix, because in its perception, that creature was the strongest.

This was what had given Lu Zheng his opening. Although the Flame Demon King had cast Demon Guard on itself, part of its energy had been drained by the Undying Fire Spirits, and it only blocked the first bolt of Mystic Ice Spirit Light; the second bolt of Mystic Ice Spirit Light struck home and successfully triggered a critical hit effect!

Immediately, the Flame Demon King lost its ability to move once again.

The Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix once again unleashed the skill Death Scythe on the Flame Demon King, and this time the skill triggered a critical hit effect; a pitch-black flaming scythe over 100 meters long descended—900,000 points of physical damage plus 1,500,000 points of Power of Death damage—directly stripping a full 2,200,000 HP from the Demon King.

Its defense was not low, offsetting a significant amount of the damage.

But this was still a good result; the Flame Demon King's HP was now down to only half, and the newly converted Undying Fire Spirits surged forward in another wave of self-detonations.

After the freeze condition wore off, the Flame Demon King's HP was down to only 8,000,000!

With victory seemingly right before his eyes, Lu Zheng dared not let his guard down, because a monster at half health was the most ferocious—and sure enough.

The moment the Flame Demon King broke free of control, it immediately consumed a million points of mana to unleash the skill Dark Cage; in an instant, half the dungeon space was shrouded in darkness, and Lu Zheng promptly received a notification.

【You have been attacked by the Flame Demon King's skill "Dark Cage": HP recovery rate reduced by 50%, mana recovery rate reduced by 50%; the Power of Darkness inflicts 20,000 points of corrosive spell damage per second】

Lu Zheng didn't care about spell damage at all, because under the effect of the passive skill "Mana Annihilation" granted by Taotie, any spell damage whose single-hit damage did not exceed his maximum mana would not deal true damage to him.

And his maximum mana now reached 200,000 points—a mere 20,000 points of damage was completely negligible.

But having his mana recovery rate halved—that was somewhat uncomfortable.

Moreover, his other summoned beasts did not have the "Mana Annihilation" passive skill, and this corrosive spell damage was extremely difficult to defend against, dealing true damage to all other summoned beasts, so he could not keep dragging out the battle—he needed a quick resolution!

Since he still had two LV. 120 divine pets he hadn't released, Lu Zheng wasn't panicked at all; he directed the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix to charge toward the Flame Demon King.

Exhausting all its mana, it unleashed Death Scythe!

Because it had already used the skill once recently and its mana hadn't recovered much, this time, consuming all its mana, it dealt only 800,000 points of true damage to the Flame Demon King.

Immediately after, the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix flew onto the Flame Demon King's body, using its nine heads and talons, along with the Undying Netherfire on its body, to continuously attack the Flame Demon King.

The Flame Demon King immediately counterattacked, and within a few breaths, it bit off one of the Nine-Headed Undying Phoenix's heads! Hua Qing was still dutifully streaming—mainly because she had wanted to flee earlier but it was already too late; the Dark Cage had trapped her inside, so she simply continued broadcasting the battle.

And the footage here had nearly everyone watching grow tense! Lin Shuhua even said directly to Xue Mingzhen, "Elder Xue, go help him! Any later and I'm afraid this divine pet will be killed! This wouldn't just be his loss—it would be a tremendous loss for our Daxia Alliance!"

(End of this chapter)