Worthless Profession: Dragon Tamer

Chapter 1151, Breaking into the Backline

Translator: Silavin

The Golden Asura King and Ye Wuxian, supported by Han Ke’s Buffs, were already stretching the Sacred Jiang Family Players to their absolute limits.

But of all the Sacred Jiang Family still held their ground against them. The one who truly gave them pause was Ouyang Bai Ge.

She stood quietly beside Han Ke, giving every appearance of being unremarkable. She seemed harmless, even. Something about her presence read as though she had wandered onto the wrong battlefield.

The moment she moved, however, the Sacred Jiang Family understood their mistake.

A casual gesture tore a Void Rift into the air. This was naturally connected to the Void World, from which poured dozens of creatures whose very shape seemed designed to unsettle the mind.

These were Void Insects, and each one was a thing of horror: a pair of wings like carved translucent jade, fragile like glass, their bodies shaped like beetles with a sharp horn growing from their crowns. They were naturally dangerous looking, but against veteran Players of the Sacred Jiang Family, who had not encountered hideous Monsters of this world? A few dozen of such odd insects hardly seemed worthy of alarm.

That assessment did not survive first contact though.

When the Void Insects took flight, they vanished. They literally flickered out of existence with such completeness that no Concealment Effect could ever account for it. An Archer Type Player among the Sacred Jiang Family immediately deployed Flare Shot and similar Detection Skills, scanning for hidden enemies.

However, nothing appeared. The Void Insects had not entered Concealment. They had stepped outside the very fabric of space itself.

The moment all eyes were searching in bewilderment, trying to comprehend how Summons could simply cease to exist, a scream cut through the noise.

Every head turned.

A member of the Sacred Jiang Family stood with a gaping cavity where his chest had been. A Void Insect had driven its crown horn clean through him and continued out the other side. The creature’s body sliced through him without resistance. And those wings, that had looked as delicate as a cicada’s, had swept through the wound as it passed without meeting any resistance.

Those wings, for all their apparent fragility, cut like scythes. In a single pass, they bisected the target.

The burst of Damage was instantaneous. That Player was killed in a single hit before the Supporters beside him could even begin to cast their Healing Skills.

Watching a man who had been standing beside them simply cut in half, the Sacred Jiang Family Players felt the chill of it settle into their bones. The realisation followed: at any moment, one of those things could take down any one of them, and that would mean death.

No one dared relax for an instant. Defensive Skills activated across the board in a massive wave, every Player surrounding themselves with layers of protection so that if an unseen Void Insect struck, they would at least have a breath of time to react and evade.

They were not ordinary Players. They were the Sacred Jiang Family’s elites, with no shortage of preservation Skills at their disposal. Layer upon layer of Defensive Skills and Protective Items were deployed until each person stood behind a wall of defences.

The Void Insects struck again, targeting several of them in sequence. This time, the attacks did not immediately punch through the layered Defensive Skills.

The Sacred Jiang Family Players moved to counter. However, every Skill they released missed. The Void Insects had struck their single blow, found no clean kill, and immediately retreated back into the Void before a single retaliatory attack could land.

Every Skill was wide-ranging, yet not one Void Insect was touched.

These Players had successfully blocked the ambushes. But it meant absolutely nothing. After all, though they had the capacity to withstand the Void Insects’ strikes, they still had no way to deal with those creatures. The instant their vigilance falters, the Void Insects would return.

They could attack at any moment. In short, they were akin to a blade suspended above every head on that battlefield, patiently waiting to fall.

Under that permanent threat, how were any of them supposed to focus against the Golden Asura King holding the line, or against Ye Wuxian burning through them like a tempest?

The answer arrived from within their own ranks. Several of the older, more seasoned Players assessed the situation with cold, clear eyes and gave the order without hesitation. They were to bypass the Golden Asura King, eliminate the backline first.

In short, their target was Han Ke, and Ouyang Bai Ge.

One was dishing out Buffs. The other was the source of the Void Insects strangling their every move. Both had to be dealt with.

The order was given, and a significant portion of their people responded at once, unleashing Crowd Control Skills against the Golden Asura King in a coordinated wave.

The Skills were varied and numerous. There were Curse Type Skills, Elemental Crowd Control Skills, and a volley of Summoned Creatures that rushed forward bodily to restrict the Golden Asura King’s movement and deny it freedom to move.

The Golden Asura King naturally had High Resistance across the board, but even it could not hold against that volume of overlapping Skills all landing at once. Within the first moments, it was locked down and rendered immobile.

With the frontline pinned down, the others of the Sacred Jiang Family poured around it, diving toward the backline.

Ye Wuxian understood what she needed to do. She needed to protect Han Ke and Ouyang Bai Ge.

But her Profession Characteristics placed limits on how much ground she could cover, and how many she could stop.

Most of them broke through. The line between Ye Wuxian and the Golden Asura King collapsed, and the Sacred Jiang Family Players reached Han Ke and Ouyang Bai Ge.

Neither woman showed the faintest trace of fear though.

Han Ke, for all her limited direct combat experience, had been studying under Ye Wuxian and the others since receiving her Ancient God Power. She had been absorbing combat techniques and battle sense with the same level of dedication that defined everything she did.

She had no talent as a frontline combatant, but she possessed something that more than compensated for this lack. She was willing to endure any hardship to improve.

Through relentless drilling, her skills in combat had grown to a level that would not shame anyone who had a Combat Specialised Profession. Now, when facing sudden shifts in the battle, she moved with calm precision, drawing on her Skills with measured steps in mind to reshape the situation.

Watching the enemy breach the frontline and converge on her, Han Ke remained perfectly calm. She ceased Buffing the Golden Asura King and Ye Wuxian. Instead, she raised the Moon in her hand and released a flood of moonlight that spilled outward and folded together into overlapping barriers, layering themselves between her and the advancing Players of the Sacred Jiang Family.

They casted Skills at those barriers without hesitation, fully expecting to tear them apart.

A Supporter might reasonably carry some self-preservation Skills. It was just that no one expected this Skill to be so absurdly strong. Against a Player with a Combat Specialised Profession of comparable Level, two or three Skills from them should have been enough to clear a path through.

Yet when their Skills landed, those expectations were stripped away.

The Durability of Han Ke’s moonlight Barriers was extraordinary.

The combined force of over a hundred Skills crashed against those Barriers in rapid succession yielded little result. All that could be seen was layer upon layer of rippling waves, but not so much as a hairline crack on the Barrier’s surface.