Fang Hong quickly saw that the adventurers had completed their preparations.

However, to his slight surprise, among those people, he saw two familiar faces—if he was not mistaken, the delicate girl carrying a box was none other than Hilveld, who had left without saying goodbye before, and standing next to the girl was her maid.

Nevertheless, they did not seem to be part of the adventurer group, standing far off to the side, watching the scene unfold. It appeared she had also spotted Fang Hong from a distance, but at this range, she probably hadn't recognized him and his companions just yet.

Fang Hong instinctively shrank back—the Fairy Construct she had entrusted to him was still in his possession, and although he knew it was a bit delusional and not exactly moral, he couldn't help but hope that she had simply forgotten about it.

That would be for the best.

Unfortunately, things did not go as he wished. Just as he was entertaining these wild thoughts, he suddenly saw Hilveld look over in his direction with some surprise. Tianlan even exclaimed excitedly, "Isn't that Sister Hilveld and her group?"

Fang Hong had a face full of black lines.

But he soon had no time to ponder these issues any longer.

That was because the adventurers had finished their preparations, successfully placing the bait. The Rock Sharks in mid-air perceived the anomaly on the ground; for them, the Resonance Crystals were an irresistible temptation. Although slightly puzzled, their craving for the tantalizing morsels prevailed in the end. With a flick of their tails, they began to turn and swim towards the forest.

They slowly decreased in altitude, their spindle-shaped bodies now clearly visible, with a pair of fins front and back fluttering like wings. It had a somewhat ferocious crescent-moon shaped mouth, the corners cruelly curved slightly backwards.

It was at this moment that five or six cyan lights shot from the ranks of the distance adventurers, tracing beautiful arcs in the sky before erupting like fireworks above the head of the Rock Shark. Fang Hong was a bit surprised to see this—these people had made thorough preparations.

"What is that?" Tianlan asked curiously.

Reed now emerged from his Carry House, the Lion People had gone back inside to retrieve his weapon—a gigantic Double-Headed Sword War Gear, which he now held in his hand. Hearing Tianlan's question, he looked at the sky, the dazzling cyan light reflecting in his silver pupils, before he replied:

"Wind Crystals."

Fang Hong also happened to explain, "That's a type of Crystal Magic Guided Art created by Magic Guided Conductors. When detonated, it can disrupt the air currents in an area to create a Turbulent Zone. This Crystal Magic Guided Art is extremely useful in aerial combat; some small Floating Battleships cannot ignore the Turbulent Zone."

As if to confirm his words—

After the cyan light exploded, the Rock Shark immediately started to struggle violently, trying to return to the sky, but it was too late. The intersecting turbulence took away its control over the air currents, actually causing it to fly lower and lower, its belly nearly brushing over the top of the tall canopy of the metasequoias.

It was like an Airship plummeting towards the ground, as the loud noise of breaking trees echoed from afar.

And at this moment, the combat officially began.

The first to act were naturally the Ranged Invokers—Rangers, Crossbowmen, and Gunslingers, drawing bows and loading bullets, with a chorus of creaks and clanks. "Fire!" There appeared to be an Archer Team Leader in the Adventure Group, someone commanding the formation, and a volley of arrows shot forth in unison, a black wall soaring into the sky, directly hitting the Rock Shark's torso.

But before Tianlan could even utter a word of praise, most of the arrows had already been deflected by the solid rock Shell on the opponent's body.

Fang Hong opened the Combat Window and could clearly see a cluster of gray numbers. Although they were numerous, the highest barely reached into the tens. The Rock Shark's rock Shell was very thick, likely boasting an Armor Value of more than just tens of thousands of points.

Not to mention, Armor Value in Eteliria counts as efficient life, inherently having a hardness damage reduction, so this kind of attack could go on indefinitely without knowing when it would end.

Moreover, expecting arrows of this strength to penetrate the Armor Value and inflict concussion damage directly on the Rock Shark's body was clearly very unlikely—the Rock Shark, although only a Level 20 creature, had a body strength that generally far exceeded that of humans. Just in terms of toughness, equating it to a Level 30 or higher close-combat Invoker was not out of question.

The Archers seemed to realize this as well.

However, their first round of shooting had only been a test, and in the second round of attacks, they all switched to the "Explosive Shooting" skill en masse. Explosive Shooting used a special type of Unstable Crystal Arrow Cluster and bullets that would explode on impact with the target, causing secondary damage—this was the go-to choice for dealing with high armor units at this level.

But once Magic Power was injected into the Unstable Crystals, they would become extremely sensitive and highly prone to explosion. Therefore, when using this skill, the Archers had to use a special Magic Guided Plugin, the "Delay Injection Device," to set the timing of the Magic Power injection.

This was a complex technical task.

It required the Archers to have an accurate judgment of the distance and projectile flight time, and even the target's evasion methods; otherwise, setting the delay trigger too early or too late could result in a shooting failure. Setting it too early could cause the crystal to explode in advance, reducing damage or even failing to hit, while setting it too late could lead to crystal damage and inability to detonate.

Though Explosive Shooting itself was just a Level 5 skill, requiring Invokers to invest only 160,000 experience points in the Archer domain to learn, the skill's specificity meant that aside from professional Invokers, those who truly mastered this technique generally had to wait until around Level 20 or so.

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