"That's true. Should we wait for him?" Shen Bingbing was still a bit worried.
"No. The entire Rule Barrier area is The Master of Mutation's zone of activity. If there are too many of us, we might attract its pursuit. Chen Mo is alone in that large forest; he should be fine. We should leave first."
Hearing her teammate, Shen Bingbing's beautiful eyes flickered. Though still somewhat worried, she nodded and left with everyone else.
「Outside the Rule Barrier...」
The homeroom teachers were counting their students.
The Principal looked over at Su Tianxin and asked doubtfully, "Where's that boy Chen Mo? Logically, shouldn't he have been the first one out?"
Others had run out from the forest, but Chen Mo had been right beside him, quite a distance outside the forest.
Even if he went to notify his classmates to escape, he shouldn't have taken this long to come out.
The Principal found this somewhat strange.
As the stream of people emerging dwindled, the Principal felt increasingly uneasy.
After Fang Datong, Shen Bingbing, and their group came out, Chen Mo was definitively the only one left inside the Rule Barrier.
"We've been waiting for you." Seeing Fang Datong, Shen Bingbing, and their team emerge, Su Tianxin immediately waved them over.
After the five members of Fang Datong and Shen Bingbing's squad had returned to their respective class groups, Su Tianxin let out a soft "Huh?"
"Strange, how are we still short one person? Oh, right, where's Chen Mo?" she couldn't help but ask the Principal. "Principal, wasn't Chen Mo with you? Where did he go?"
Shen Rulong said, exasperated, "He was with me. Just before the Rule Barrier formed, I told him to notify others to escape it. I don't know if this kid is just obstinate, still in the forest looking for people he can notify."
Seeing Chen Mo hadn't emerged after all this time, Shen Rulong suddenly considered this possibility. He instantly regretted telling Chen Mo to do that.
What if this kid is too earnest and insists on carrying out the task I, the Principal, gave him to the very end? Wouldn't I have ended up harming him for nothing?
"Supervisor, all classes have completed their count. Only a student named Chen Mo has not come out."
At this point, Vice Principal Liu Anfu had already summarized the count from each class and reported it to Ling Yu.
"According to what Principal Shen said, that boy might still be lost in the forest because he was trying to save others out of kindness. We can't just leave him. Immediately go to a nearby city and find a few Level 20 experts with good survival skills to enter the Rule Barrier and search for him!"
The Rule Barrier deployed by a Level 20 The Master of Mutation only allows those below Level 20 to enter and exit freely; others cannot enter at all.
At Ling Yu's command, several assistants beside him immediately began making contact. A few minutes later, the assistants reported back accordingly.
"Mm, understood."
After listening to the report, Ling Yu looked at Shen Rulong and said, "It will take at least ten minutes for one to arrive. Let's hope this boy can hold out!"
For a moment, everyone couldn't help but look worriedly towards the Rule Barrier, through which nothing inside could now be seen.
Someone from Chen Mo's class immediately suggested going in to notify Chen Mo, but Su Tianxin quickly stopped them.
"Don't be foolish. If Chen Mo is truly lost somewhere in the forest, how would you find him? Don't end up getting yourselves lost with no way back. Moreover, by now, The Master of Mutation has likely already descended. It will move erratically throughout the entire area covered by the Rule Barrier.
"If you go in and happen to encounter it, wouldn't you just be throwing your lives away?!
"Although teachers like me still have one resurrection ability this month, I still need to see your bodies. If you encounter a man-eating monster and it devours your bodies, then there won't even be a chance to resurrect you!"
Su Tianxin's words silenced everyone for a moment.
"But Teacher, Chen Mo..." Shen Bingbing was very worried.
"Don't worry, he'll be fine. Chen Mo is a clever boy; he won't get into trouble so easily. If he doesn't find anyone else in the forest, he'll come out on his own."
"So Mr. Mo went in to tell others to retreat. I thought he just wanted to see the BOSS." Knowing his good friend had put himself in danger to do a good deed, Fang Datong couldn't help but admire him even more.
Chen Mo, you have to be okay! everyone silently prayed.
「Meanwhile, inside the forest...」
Chen Mo still didn't know that his desire to take on a BOSS had instead painted him as a moving figure who disregarded his own danger to notify other students to leave, to the point that students from all classes outside were praying for his safe return.
He himself was actually quite safe, standing at the edge of the forest, ready to use his summoning skill at any time to replenish his Skeleton Monsters.
Without the Blessing of the Gift he'd received in the previous instance dungeon, the attack speed of the Skeleton Monsters Chen Mo currently summoned was truly unimpressive. They could only attack once every two seconds, and after their first strike, the BOSS would wipe out a good number of them.
Only the newly summoned Skeleton Monsters, all in invisible mode, could collectively launch a sneak attack out of invisibility to instantly stack five hundred layers of corpse poison.
After that, the poison-stacking speed was really not fast.
So, regardless of the Skeleton Monsters' casualties, as soon as his Skill's Cooldown was over, Chen Mo would immediately re-summon them to attack again.
This maintained the poison-stacking speed at roughly eight hundred layers of corpse poison every ten seconds.
The poison-stacking speed wasn't slow, but the BOSS, relying on its Resistance Expert skill, also increased its Poison Resistance Level very quickly.
Initially, five hundred layers of corpse poison directly raised its Poison Resistance Level to 2, and the poison damage it took was immediately reduced to 80%.
This made Chen Mo's damage output via poison explosion damage much slower.
However, for a BOSS that posed no threat, the slower poison damage didn't really matter.
After all, as the layers of corpse poison stacked up, the damage increased exponentially.
Grinding away, five minutes quickly passed...
And by this time, the number of corpse poison layers on the BOSS's head had already stacked to an astonishing 24,000!
But the BOSS's Resistance Expert skill (for poison) had also reached Level 5.
Now, every time it suffered poison explosion damage, it could reduce that damage by 50%.
So, even with a full 24,000 layers of corpse poison, the BOSS had only lost a total of 26.2 billion Health so far.
The regular attacks and the death explosion had also caused some damage, but combined, they totaled less than 100 million, which was practically negligible.
As a Level 8 professional, even if Chen Mo could summon several hundred creatures to attack a Level 20 BOSS, trying to deal 100 million damage with just normal attacks within five minutes would be pure wishful thinking.
Chen Mo dared to challenge this kind of group BOSS, one that would require at least five hundred three-star professionals teaming up to handle. The only thing he could truly rely on was the exponentially increasing damage of his corpse poison ability.
"You're truly monstrous. Worthy of being an outdoor group BOSS known as a Blood Bull! Twenty-four thousand layers of corpse poison, and it only took out about a third of your Health! I'd like to see just how many layers you can endure!" Chen Mo simply sat down at the edge of the woods and leisurely watched the show.
This fight was different from the last one against the god-grade BOSS. Chen Mo didn't need to use his brain or worry at all; he just needed to wave his Magic Wand from the side, watch the show, and let the Skeleton Monsters do their work.
While others worried about Chen Mo's safety, they had no idea he was so at ease he was practically about to start snacking on melon seeds.