Having eliminated the threat of the distant enemies, Wang Zhifan, standing on the mountain wall, quickly noticed that his three teammates below on the mountain path were expanding their advantage in the battle with great speed.
As players averaging level 18, these three teammates were much stronger individually than those melee Dragon Guards, which were elite monsters. When united, their power was almost overwhelming.
Specifically, the middle-aged Beast Tamer’s massive gray bear held most of the enemies at the front, the swift golden eagle with sharp talons constantly flew over the battlefield to assist the gray bear, the female swordswoman adept in melee combat swiftly killed the few Dragon Guards who broke through the gray bear’s defense line, and the young gunner with shooting skills beyond ordinary imagination constantly fired skillfully. Even though his rifle’s bullets were not easy to penetrate the dark armor of these melee Dragon Guards, he could precisely avoid the highly defended parts of the enemy’s body, concentrating fire on the small parts not covered by armor.
While his teammates were united in battle, Wang Zhifan, who had taken care of the enemy’s long-range firepower alone, did not start slacking. He quickly adjusted the barrel of his gigantic sniper rifle to the side mountain path and began targeting and shooting these enemies who were less than a hundred meters away from him.
This was done to help his teammates quickly resolve this batch of enemies and also to practice using the excellent weapon in his hands.
It was obvious that his current skill level with this weapon was still very low, and if it were handed to a player with sufficient gun skills, this excellent sniper rifle would undoubtedly exert a hundredfold deterrent power. But no matter what, having an opportunity to practice was something he shouldn’t let pass.
"The power of this gun is immense, the bullets are like cannonballs. I need to be careful not to accidentally hit allies."
Facing enemies that were both closer and more numerous, Wang Zhifan was even more cautious than when he sniped those archer Dragon Guards earlier. He deliberately ignored those enemies closer to the three teammates, the gray bear, and the golden eagle, instead locking onto a Dragon Guard in armor who was relatively further from the battle, and quickly completed the lock-on, pulling the trigger.
Accompanied by a powerful and low shot sound, without any spark or smoke effects, the upper body of the armored Dragon Guard he targeted suddenly burst like a watermelon, transforming in an instant from a menacing and formidable armored warrior into a half-corpse with only its waist and legs left. His transformation from life to death was so abrupt that even after becoming half an armored man, he continued standing for two seconds before falling backward.
"The power... I clearly only shot the head, but it shattered most of the body too..."
Wang Zhifan had witnessed similar scenes when shooting those distant hidden archer Dragon Guards earlier, but he saw it through the scope using the perspective function. In that perspective, he didn’t feel especially shocked. But now, after directly blowing up an enemy within a hundred meters and witnessing the entire process firsthand, he truly felt the terror of destroying an enemy in an instant.
After taking out an enemy, Wang Zhifan immediately began searching for the next unlucky armored Dragon Guard to continue practicing his sniping skills.
However, whether his explosive shot was too frightening or the armored Dragon Guards were already on the verge of collapse, they suddenly collectively abandoned the battle, turning their heads and quickly retreating to the platform behind them.
Seeing this, the middle-aged man in the leather coat, who had been commanding his two pets in the battle on the mountain path below, quickly activated his bear pet to give chase, charging onto the higher platform. Meanwhile, he sent his eagle pet flying upward to ensure the entire battlefield was within view.
"There are no ambushes above! Chase them!"
The middle-aged man in the leather coat then shouted, informing his teammates that those retreating armored Dragon Guards were simply escaping in fear. After reporting this intel, he immediately ran along the mountain path to the upper platform. The female swordswoman and the young gunner ahead of him also quickly accelerated, chasing after the path cleared by the gray bear.
"Enemies in this dungeon know to retreat. The ones I’ve seen before were typically those who would fight to the death like iron-headed warriors."
Wang Zhifan muttered to himself, then began practicing using the scope on his excellent weapon to lock onto the retreating enemies.
Locking onto such rapidly moving targets was much more challenging than locking onto stationary ones, as this locking function requires Wang Zhifan himself to manually operate. It wasn’t like once he activated this ability, the sniper rifle in his hands would become a living being, capable of automatically aiming at the enemy. Nor did the bullets he fired have the trait of curving to hit targets during the locking period. It was equivalent to giving his scope a quick calibration feature, helping him efficiently aim at targets.
After about half a minute, with Wang Zhifan firing another shot that blew up another fleeing armored Dragon Guard, there were no more living enemies left on the platform ahead in his sight, as all the other retreating enemies had been taken down by his teammates.
But after passing through this checkpoint, Wang Zhifan didn’t immediately jump down from his position on the mountain wall. Instead, he began using the scope’s perspective ability of his weapon to search for enemies at the next checkpoint, or even directly for the dungeon’s Dragon BOSS.
This wasn’t impossible. The excellent Endless Sniper Rifle in Wang Zhifan’s hands had an effective range of up to 5300 meters, more than ten miles away. This also meant that the sniper scope in front of him could clearly see sniper targets ten miles away, provided that the visibility was quite clear. Because the perspective function of this scope could only see through objects up to 20 meters thick, if there were too many obstacles in between, it wouldn’t be able to detect enemies in the distance.
"Up a long distance ahead, I can’t see any signs of enemies... Above are just a few steps and a massive mountain body, with no way to find any monsters or BOSSes."
After a quick attempt, Wang Zhifan knew that his plan to stay in this corner to ultra-long-range snipe the dungeon BOSS was pure fantasy. So, he quickly stored the large black sniper rifle back into his storage space, then jumped down from the mountain wall, heading towards the upper platform to reunite with his teammates along the mountain path below.
Perhaps it was because Wang Zhifan had suddenly resolved the troublesome distant enemies earlier; when he arrived at the platform, he found his three teammates were waiting for him.
"Little brother, you really are full of surprises."
At this moment, the middle-aged man feeding and healing his gray bear and golden eagle pets turned his head towards the approaching Wang Zhifan and said with a smile.
"With a powerful teammate like you, I feel we’ll definitely be fighting a double Dragon BOSS soon."
He added, with a tone that was both a bit helpless and a bit expectant.