Second World Chapter 245 - 245. Kill Steal

The fight was completely one-sided. Jack had not seen Bailey got hit at all. Her technique with the spear was remarkable. Jack surmised that the skill she exhibited was not any lower than a skilled martial artist. her fighting style was more rich, unlike players who were locked on a fixed class.
As he saw the monster's continuous decrease in its HP, he suddenly thought of something. If he could kill this boss, wouldn't the experience and its loots be marvelous?
However, he would need to deal the killing blow himself. Bailey was registered as white on his radar, meaning she was not part of his hidden party, unlike those cadets. If she killed the boss, he would not get the experience. And there was even a possibility nothing would drop since it was an unassociated NPC who made the kill. Judging from how the cadets showed no interest in the killed monster's loots, he doubted that monsters killed by NPC would drop loots if they were not under a player's influence.
He watched as the fight continued. Most of Bailey's standard attacks dealt around 180 to 230 damage, while her skills could dish out up to 800 damage without critical. In order to kill steal the boss, he would need to deliver damage more than that before Bailey's last attack hit, which was impossible with his available skill.
He looked into the Fireball scroll inside his inventory. He thought back to the Chain Lightning scroll he had used on the three guilds' members. The effect had been devastating. Although the Chain Lightning was a higher-level spell than the Fireball, they were still both under Elite class spells. Chain Lightning was an AOE spell, while Fireball was a single target spell. The single damage of Fireball should not be less than Chain Lightning's individual damage, right? The question was, could its damage eclipsed Bailey's?
Magic spells generally had higher damage output than physical skills, so it should not be that strange if the damage dealt by this spell was higher than Bailey's attacks. But he also remembered that the Ice Troll Sentinel had a higher magical defense than its physical one, this gave Jack a headache.
There was also the possibility whether Bailey would get angry if he stole her kill. Kill stealing was an abhorred practice yet often found in VR RPG games. The players who did it will become a target by the masses, especially by the victims they stole from. Unless the perpetrator was confident of their own strength, or had strong backings. Generally, players would avoid doing it.
Now Jack was just wondering if kill stealing from an NPC would yield the same response.
Damn it! His head hurt from thinking too much. No pain, no gain. Let's just give it a try! He would wait until the boss' HP was around 1000 before he made his move. He could just hope that Bailey didn't execute any high damage finishing move or scored a critical hit during that window.
He moved closer as the Ice Troll Sentinel's HP entered critical health. His right hand held the Fireball magic scroll in preparation to unleash it at a moment's notice.
Bailey never stopped his offense. The Ice Troll Sentinel's HP kept on falling, 10%, 5%. Jack went closer. A little bit more. He aimed the Fireball magic scroll at the monster. Good thing since it had lost its one leg, it didn't move much, so Jack did not worry about missing his target.
Bailey made a sweep and countless green wind stabbed at the helpless monster. Its HP received a sharp decline and fell immediately to only a little above 600. She then bent her knees and arched herself back while her spear glowed wildly with green energy.
Crap! Jack cursed, he recognized that move. The female warrior was making two consecutive high damaging moves to finish off the boss! If this second skill hit, it was as good as gone.
"Allow me!" Jack shouted as he activated his Fireball scroll. His shout momentarily disturbed Bailey's concentration, she looked at him in consternation. A huge ball made of fire in the meantime was formed and sped towards the dying Ice Troll Sentinel.
Jack was not confident of his spell damage. He followed up with Mana Bullet spell using his left hand even before the fireball reached the Ice Troll Sentinel. He then resummoned his Storm Breaker and was about to use Sword of Light, which he planned to follow up again with Energy Bolts. Four consecutive moves of the highest damage available to him at this stage, he thought they should be enough, shouldn't they?
But his sword hand stopped before he executed Sword of Light, because of the damage number above the Ice Troll Sentinel. It was 1200 damage, almost twice over what the boss had left. The boss' body was burnt to ashes. Jack's Mana Bullet passed through the scattered ashes and hit the wall behind. Several loots dropped to the ground.
Jack was dumbstruck by the result. Wasn't the boss supposed to have a high magical defense? But after thinking about it, he thought the fact that the Fireball spell was of fire element might have been the cause. After all, fire was the bane of ice. He then heard notification informing of the experience gained from killing the boss, followed up by three consecutive notifications of level up.
His Warrior class had leveled up successively two times, arriving at level 20, while his Mage class crossed through level 18 and just a tad bit more from reaching level 19. The experience from the boss was so generous! Jack thought.
But he thought it shouldn't be too strange, the boss was after all ten levels ahead of him, and was even a Special Elite grade to boot. Having multiple level-ups from killing such an over-leveled enemy was not so out of the question. If he didn't have a dual-class, maybe he would have leveled up directly to level 21. He was very satisfied with this result, this should put him back ahead of current players' general levels.
While he was admiring his advancement, he realized that Bailey was looking at him.
Oh, shit! Was she mad?
"Thank you for the help, but it wasn't necessary," he heard her say. It took a few seconds for Jack to register her words and discern that she took no offense from his kill steal. He heaved a relieved sigh.
He walked to the boss' loots, there were only four items, but the color indicated from his God-eye monocle showed that none was mediocre. He glanced at Bailey first, making sure that she did not have an issue with him picking up the items. Seeing that she didn't have a reaction, he crouched down and inspected the items.
One was a bag of coins, Jack opened it up and 10 gold coins entered his pocket. That was a generous sum, he remembered how the guilds struggled to get this amount to register their guild formally in this world.
The second one was a ring, he used his inspect skill on it.
Swift Ice Ring (Rare accessory)
Reflex +2
Ice resistance +20
A rare ring. Coincidentally, out of all his currently equipped gears, only the ring on his left hand was below rare grade. It was the uncommon grade Ring of Luck, which was the first accessory he had obtained. He took a bit of time to mull over. The Ring of Luck gave +1 to luck stats, which was the hardest stat to increase. Yet his basic luck stat was already 12, losing this 1 point from the ring should not be too consequential.
He decided then and took off the Ring of Luck and replaced it with the new Swift Ice Ring. Once he wore the ring, the discomfort from the cold temperature reduced significantly. The effect on the increase of his ice resistance was felt immediately.
He moved to the other item which was a pile of weird-looking obsidian metal in a ring shape. There were ten of them in that pile. His Inspect informed him the name of the metals was Mana Core. Apart from that, there was no description of its usage or effect.
'What are these?' He asked Peniel in his mind.
"Those are Mana Cores," Peniel answered.
'I can inspect their names,' Jack said with exasperation. 'What are they used for?'
"For many things. They are a power source for many magical tools and applications. You can consider them as the second form of currency in this world, the difference is you can't trade them normally in shops as you do with coins. You will get them from monsters as often as coins starting from monsters with level 25 and above."
Something for the future then, he thought and stored these Mana Cores into his inventory.
He picked up the last item, which was a tiny pebble with a cold aura. The aura was so thick that it formed an icy mist around it. The thing was so cold it stung, Jack was jolted by the stinging cold that he released the hold of the item, which fell back onto the ground.
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