Chapter 480: Chapter 480: Golden Ant King Youngling

“It exploded?” Song Jian was flung seven or eight meters away by a powerful force, aching all over, and he didn’t even want to get up from the ground;

Many BOSSes, when nearing death, would trigger a self-destruct-like skill. This type of skill could inflict massive damage to both enemies and the BOSS themselves. The BOSS would only use this move if it was at its last resort.

Of course, some BOSSes would flee instead of exploding when they’re close to death. They often have a special acceleration skill that could only be used when their vitality points decreased to a certain level. These BOSSes were the most hated by players: they fought for a long time only to let the BOSS escape, a feeling worse than if the BOSS yielded a bunch of useless garbage equipment.

Song Jian panted heavily with a pale face. At this moment, his status bar contained the negative effects of “fracture, bleeding,” and his vitality points had reached a dangerous level. The BOSS’s explosion was too fast for anyone to react to.

Since the high-level healing potion was still on cooldown, Song Jian, leaning against a tree, slowly stood up. He first cast “Surgery” on himself to remove the negative effects, and then looked at the BOSS.

After the explosion, the BOSS was no longer a threat to Song Jian. At this time, its whole body was covered with cracks, and some parts even exploded directly, revealing the purplish-red muscles inside;

The pair of wings on its back broke apart, and the Ant King, which had been transformed by magic, now had trouble standing up. All six of its legs, except for the one that Song Jian had cut off, were broken, bending at strange angles.

At this point, the magic-transformed Ant King had only a sliver of health left, less than 100 vitality points. Song Jian took a deep breath and stuffed a piece of food that could replenish vitality points during battle into his mouth. When his vitality reached one-third, he slashed at the magic-transformed Ant King that was on the verge of death.

Before he could reach the creature, he heard a “pop.” A crack suddenly exploded on the magic-transformed Ant King’s back, extending from its neck all the way to its tail. As the shell, which was originally shining with a black metallic luster, weathered and decayed rapidly, a wet ant struggled to crawl out through the crack on its back.

“What is this…?” Song Jian was taken aback. He pulled back the sword that he had raised and retreated two steps, feeling cautious about the strange situation before him.

In the game, monsters possessed various skills. Some seemingly unremarkable skills could cost players dearly. When encountering an unfamiliar monster, many players would hold back a bit to prevent an unexpected skill from causing them trouble.

The ant trying to crawl out of the magic-transformed Ant King’s body looked similar to an ordinary magic-transformed worker ant. Its size was many times smaller than the BOSS and even smaller than a magic-worker ant.

However, this struggling ant was golden in color, and even the two antennae on its head emitted a dark gold glow, making it look like an exquisite artifact carved from a solid gold block.

“Level 1? Just level 1?” Song Jian couldn’t help but exclaim as he saw the attributes displayed on top of the “Golden Ant.”

“Golden Ant King Juvenile, Rare, Level 1, Vitality Points: 500/500, can be captured”

Song Jian paused, seemingly realizing something, and immediately opened the taskbar to check. Sure enough, the task target “Magic-transformed Ant King: 0/3” had already changed to “Magic-transformed Ant King: 1/3.”

“The Magic-transformed Ant King died?” Song Jian was surprised but found no loot scattered around the surrounding area. This was a level 30 elite BOSS with tier-1 combat power, far stronger than an ordinary level 30 elite BOSS. Logically, when a BOSS like this was killed, the loot should be much more abundant and valuable than that of an ordinary level 30 elite BOSS.

However, Song Jian saw no spoils around the Magic-transformed Ant King’s corpse.

Next, his eyes fell on the “Golden Ant King Juvenile” struggling to crawl out.

“Could it be that this capturable Golden Ant King Juvenile is the spoils of killing the Magic-transformed Ant King?” Song Jian muttered to himself.

Song Jian was right: the Golden Ant King Juvenile was indeed the most valuable loot dropped by the Magic-transformed Ant King BOSS. Its value was even higher than a gold-class weapon;

Certainly, it couldn’t compare to a Black Dragon hatchling, but the Golden Ant King Juvenile had enormous growth potential, making it much more precious than ordinary combat pets.

Moreover, the probability of obtaining a “Golden Ant King Juvenile” as loot was not high. If it wasn’t for Song Jian’s high luck and that it was his first time hunting the Magic-transformed Ant King, he wouldn’t have had a chance of getting this rare pet.

Most importantly, if the capture attempt failed, the Golden Ant King Juvenile would still run away and eventually grow into a level 30 elite BOSS, the Magic-transformed Ant King.

As it was a spoil of war, the combat pet’s level was only 1. Thus, capturing the Golden Ant King Juvenile would be easy with just a white-quality Pet Contract Scroll, which had a high chance of capturing it.

White-quality Pet Contract Scrolls could be purchased in system stores, and players generally carried several of them when fighting monsters since even ordinary monsters had a certain probability of dropping combat pets.

However, Song Jian didn’t have any Pet Contract Scrolls in his inventory because he already had a Black Dragon hatchling and didn’t care for ordinary combat pets.

Seeing that half of the Golden Ant King Juvenile’s body had crawled out and that it would escape soon if not captured, Song Jian immediately took out the Book of the Abyss and started using its Abyss Temptation skill.

The Abyss Temptation skill had many disadvantages compared to Pet Contract Scrolls: longer summoning time, the need for the target to be immobilized, and the creature becoming an Abyss creature once successfully tempted, bearing a trace of Abyss aura. Moreover, pets captured using Abyss Temptation had a much higher chance of betrayal than those captured with Contract Scrolls.

However, Abyss Temptation also had many advantages: high success rate and the ability to tempt creatures of any quality, unlike Contract Scrolls, which required higher quality scrolls to capture higher quality pets.

Song Jian opened the Book of the Abyss, targeted the Golden Ant King Juvenile with the Temptation skill, and started casting.

A series of bizarre syllables came out of Song Jian’s mouth, and black flames ignited on the surface of the Book of the Abyss. An abyss aura emanated from the book, coalescing into chains in the air that wrapped around the Golden Ant King Juvenile.

…