secret dice.

Chapter 797: The BOSS is coming early?
The group traversed the desert, heading towards the ancient city ruins. They proceeded cautiously, using items to levitate and float slowly about a meter off the ground. With Mu Ning's ability to warn them, they encountered almost no monsters and made their way closer to the ancient city.

"So smoothly?" Mu Lanshi was secretly surprised.

“Because of the levitation spell…” Shi Lei noticed Mu Lanshi’s surprise, raised his hand, and used the energy, or rather magic, at his fingertips to write the answer in the air: “Most of the monsters here lurk underground in the sand and are very sensitive to vibrations and sounds. If you step on the sand, even the slightest movement will disturb the monsters underground. But by using the levitation spell, you can minimize the noise.”

"Then, by using the levitation spell, wouldn't it be possible to bypass most of the monsters on this level and go directly to the lord's palace?"

“Theoretically, it’s possible,” Shi Lei replied, raising his hand. “But it still needs to be confirmed. I heard that the official conquest team sent a small squad to try to use this method to infiltrate the palace. However, we haven’t seen them yet.”

The levitation spell was silent but also slow, and the group drifted leisurely along until they finally arrived at the ancient city. However, they saw no fighting, only the crumbling ruins of buildings and a bottomless pit in the sand.

"This is..." Everyone looked surprised. The size of the pit was outrageous. If it was caused by a monster emerging from the ground, how big would that monster be? At the fiftieth floor, it's impossible to find a large but weak creature. The monster's attributes must be extremely exaggerated.

"Be careful, avoid that hole!" Shi Lei gestured, and Thomas, using the prop, manipulated the levitation technique to bypass the cave and finally arrived at the palace gate.

"The commotion from the battle was right here at the entrance, but it disappeared quickly. They must have gone into the main hall," Mu Ning said.

"Could it be Luo Jun?" Mu Lan asked, tracing characters with her finger.

“It doesn’t seem like it…” Mu Ning shook her head and replied with a drawing: “Although the distance is far, I can still feel that it was a melee where many people were attacking a monster. After they defeated the monster, their presence disappeared at the doorway.”

"It should be the advance team of the official expeditionary force," Shi Lei analyzed. "Let's go in and take a look."

Thomas manipulated the props, slowly floating the group inside.

However, after they all entered the palace, a loud bang came from behind them, and the previously open door slammed shut. The levitation power on their bodies also disappeared, and they landed on the ground with a thud, instinctively freezing in place, motionless, like six statues.

Only when they realized that there was a solid floor beneath their feet and that no monsters would emerge did they feel safe enough to stand up.

"It seems that once we're inside the palace, we don't have to worry about the monsters under our feet anymore." Shi Lei breathed a sigh of relief, glanced back at the closed gate, and stepped forward to try pushing it.

“Completely sealed off, cannot be opened.” Shi Lei shook his head: “The rules of the [game] cannot be defied, we can only continue forward.”

Thomas looked at the menacing statues holding weapons on both sides of the corridor and said with some worry, "What if these guys suddenly come to life and attack us?"

“I didn’t detect any energy fluctuations from them,” Mu Ning said. “They’re just ordinary statues.”

Despite having a master of insight as their guarantor, they remained extremely vigilant and cautiously moved forward. After an unknown amount of time, they finally came upon a large door.

Looking back down the deep corridor, there was only one path from beginning to end; it seemed there was no other choice.

Shi Lei stepped forward and pushed open the door, revealing a large circular hall.

At the very back of the main hall sat a colossal statue with a dog's head and a human body, wielding a giant axe. On either side of the statue, surrounding the entire hall, were twelve other monsters of various shapes and sizes, all armed and looking ferocious.

In the center of the main hall was a huge circular altar, surrounded by a ring of extinguished torches.

Upon closer inspection, a group of people were lying haphazardly in the center of the altar.

“This is…” Shi Lei glanced at Mu Ning behind him. The blindfolded girl nodded and said, “They were all elites of the official conquest army, but they’re already corpses. I sensed their fighting outside earlier, but I never expected them to die here…”

"Is Luo Jun inside?" Mu Lanshi asked with concern.

“I don’t know Luo Jun…” Mu Ning shook her head: “But I’ve seen all the corpses here, and there’s definitely no one like the person you’re talking about.” As she spoke, she even named the corpses.

“These guys are all A-rank, even S-rank mercenaries.” Shi Lei frowned upon hearing this. “It’s too dangerous here. Let’s retreat…”

As he spoke, he was about to close the door and back away, but at that moment, a strange force suddenly surged in from outside, pushing them into the main hall. Then, with a loud bang behind them, the door slammed shut, as if it were fixed to space itself, unshakeable.

"Why were we forced in here?" Thomas was complaining when he suddenly felt a murderous aura enveloping him.

"Everyone be careful!" Shi Lei said solemnly, raising his hand to remove the tower shield from his back, drawing a warhammer with his right hand, and looking ahead.

Suddenly, the eyes of the largest dog-headed human statue sitting at the very back lit up!
"This guy came back to life?" The others also drew their weapons, and Thomas and Sakura immediately summoned their helpers: one was a metal golem over five meters tall, and the other was a giant white wolf with a body as big as an elephant!

However, the dog-headed humanoid statue they were wary of did not stand up. It leaned on its giant axe with one hand, raised the other, and suddenly pointed in a certain direction.

"Watch out, there's a high-energy reaction over there!" Mu Ning suddenly shouted a warning. Everyone looked in the direction the dog-headed giant was pointing, and saw a lion-headed human with four arms, wielding four steel swords. With a scraping sound of stone grinding against stone, its rocky outer layer peeled away as it strode towards them! "Eye of Insight!" Mu Lanshi looked at the monster: "Level unknown, attributes hidden. This thing has the ability to block detection… You're all higher level than me, can you see its health?"

"I can't see it either." Players from the main world all possess powerful basic abilities and disregard a mere hundred or so points of attack, defense, and healing; most opted for the Eye of Insight. Among them, Shi Lei was the highest level, and normally, the Eye of Insight should have been able to see the opponent's attributes regardless of level. However, in his vision, this monster's health, mana, and level were all question marks!

"There's a shielding ability here!" Mu Ning suddenly said. "The entire hall is shrouded in this shielding power, preventing us from seeing the specific attributes of these monsters."

"What do we do?" Mulan Shi asked in despair. "We don't even know the monster's health or level. Are we just supposed to fight it head-on?"

“This is actually a good thing.” Sakura, who had been silent all along and had long, straight black hair with bangs, suddenly said, “The fact that the other side deliberately limited the effect of the Eye of Insight means that if the Eye of Insight could be used normally, it would be very disadvantageous to these monsters. Therefore, the information that the Eye of Insight can see may contain their weaknesses!”

"That makes sense!" Shi Lei's eyes lit up: "At higher levels, the Eye of Insight can not only see attributes like life and magic, but also the opponent's various resistances. Perhaps one of their resistances is particularly weak; if we can target that weakness, we can easily win!"

As he spoke, he looked at Mu Ning: "How is your Eye of Insight?"

As a top-tier Insightful Spellcaster who primarily relies on her eyes to cast spells, Mu Ning's Eye of Insight, as it leveled up, merged with her own Insightful Spellcasting abilities, mutating and evolving into the more powerful "Eye of Insight"!
Compared to the Eye of Insight, the Eye of Profound Understanding can see more information, has a higher penetration power against shielding, and more importantly, it has an additional "true length" function.

Simply put, from the perspective of a normal Eye of Insight, regardless of the target's health, mana, and stamina stats, or how much they differ, the red, blue, and white bars will appear to be of equal length.

However, Mu Ning is different. Under the Eye of Insight, the red, blue, and white lines will show different lengths based on the actual data.

For example, if a person has 1,000 life points, 500 magic points, and 250 stamina points, then the red bar above their head is twice the size of the blue bar and four times the size of the white bar!
This is not only effective for a single person, but can also be used as a reference for comparison between different targets, and the length ratio can be used to roughly estimate the amount of health.

Moreover, the scale of this health bar can be adjusted. When the ability was first awakened, Mu Ning saw that the health bar, which had a few hundred points, was a meter long above her head. If she encountered a monster with several thousand points of health, the health bar would probably become more than ten meters or even longer, looking like a long clothesline pole on her head, which was very strange and inconvenient.

Mu Ning quickly discovered that this problem could be avoided by shortening the display of the health bar per unit of health.

As she encountered more and stronger people and monsters, Mu Ning had compressed her health bar to its shortest length. Now, in her eyes, a low-level NPC with only a hundred or so health points had a flat, small health bar, looking like the side of an upright coin, almost imperceptible from a distance. Meanwhile, an S-rank mercenary with thousands or tens of thousands of health points had a health bar only a little over a foot long. Although it looked a bit short, it was much more noticeable and no longer affected the display of health loss percentage.

This is also to avoid having too many health bars taking up too much of the field of vision when seeing elite monsters with health points of hundreds of thousands.

Mu Ning removed her blindfold and used her Eye of Insight on the approaching monster. Then, her beautiful, large, silver eyes revealed a look of horror…

"What? What did you see?" Shi Lei pressed, "How many health points does it have?"

"I still can't see the health bar!" Mu Ning said, "but I can see that the level is 92, and the health bar above the head... is terrifyingly long!"

"How long?" Shi Lei asked through gritted teeth.

Mu Ning's eyes swept over the top of the monster's head. This lion-headed, human-bodied monster was at least ten meters tall, but the health bar on its head was extremely long, making it look like it was wearing a giant straw hat from a distance...

“About the same length as her height…” Mu Ning said.

"That's outrageous..." Shi Lei is considered a master of defense specialization. After reaching level 70 and being equipped with various abilities, his total health points are about 40,000, which is the highest in the team besides the Ice Queen. His health bar is only a little over a meter long. In Mu Ning's eyes, this is already considered the top level among mercenaries, almost comparable to those giant monsters.

However, the approaching monster had more than ten times the health bar of Shi Lei!
Four hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? Just how many health points does it have? And with its level suppression of over ninety levels, can the few people present really defeat this monster?
"No matter how strong the enemy is, we have to try. We can't just sit here and wait to die!" Shi Lei shouted. As he spoke, he tapped his shield with his giant hammer, activated his taunt skill, and let out a battle cry. A ripple spread out, giving his companions behind him an invigorating buff!
The monster seemed to be affected by the mockery, and brandished four large cleavers, charging directly at Shi Lei!

"Immovable as a mountain!" Shi Lei shouted as he activated his skill, and at the same time, his protective aura rose up, adding an extra layer of protection to his body!

Clang!
With a loud crash, the blade struck Shi Lei's shield. The immense force did not shake the stability provided by the skill, but Shi Lei could clearly see that his shield's durability had dropped significantly!
What incredible power!
With a sigh inwardly, he raised his iron hammer and suddenly summoned a bolt of lightning that descended from the sky and struck the monster on the head.

The attack hit the target squarely, but the monster's health bar, which was over ten meters long, only lost a piece the size of a fingernail, and it was about to recover to full size naturally!
"So tough!" Shi Lei gritted his teeth and suddenly shouted, "Apply a buff!"

Behind her, Mu Ning clasped her hands together and activated a curse spell that amplified damage and halved recovery!

At the same time, a shout of "Stone Skin Protection" rang out. Suddenly, a layer of semi-transparent, rock-like armor appeared on Duan Feilan's close-fitting leather armor. However, this armor was obviously weightless. Duan Feilan leaped high into the air, nimbly twisting his body to gather strength, and thrust his spear straight at the top of the monster's head!
The monster also sensed the enemy's attack and immediately split off two arms, crossing its two blades like scissors, to slash at Duan Feilan!
Just then, the giant metal golem summoned by Thomas suddenly rushed over and crashed into the golem's back with a bang. Although the damage was not much, it caused the golem to stagger, preventing it from aiming its twin swords at Duan Feilan!
At the same time, the giant wolf summoned by Sakura rushed over and bit one of the monster's arms, doing its best to restrain it!
At this moment, although Duan Feilan's attack skill had been fully charged, she couldn't hit it at a very straight angle because of the target's movement, and the damage might be affected. Just as she was trying to adjust, an external force suddenly acted on her, pulling her to the side by about a meter, which just happened to adjust the angle to the best!
It was Mulan Shi who joined in at the crucial moment, using manipulation techniques to correct Duan Feilan's attack angle!

At the same time, Mu Ning cast a weakness-striking buff spell on Duan Feilan, ensuring that her next attack would be a critical hit!

Clang!
With everyone's cooperation, Duan Feilan's charged attack struck the monster squarely on the head!
Duan Feilan has invested most of his skill points into spearmanship, reaching the level of a grandmaster. His own strength is also greatly enhanced. In addition, with the legendary-level spear, the weak point strike, the increased damage, the increased critical hit bonus, and the fully charged ultimate move, this strike is enough to instantly kill an elite guard of a lord of the next level!

Sure enough, the monster's health bar dropped as soon as the attack hit!
However... it only dropped by less than one-tenth before stopping...

…………

(End of this chapter)