I am the Arcane Archer, and all my skills are self-created.

When the white light dissipated, the first thing Li Wu felt was a long-lost sense of weakness.

He opened the properties panel, and the numbers on it had completely changed.

[Level: LV50]

[HP: 1250/1250]

[Mana Points: 1500/1500]

[Magic Attack: 385]

……

All his attributes were forcibly dragged down to a pitiful level. His magic attack power, in particular, plummeted from over 7,000 to less than 400. This precipitous drop made him even doubt whether the arrows he shot now could pierce a thick sheet of paper.

Li Wu turned off the control panel and looked up at the Sky Shield opposite him.

Sky Shield clearly sensed the change in attributes, but his expression was completely different. It was a relieved ease and overflowing confidence.

He slammed the massive tower shield into the ground with a deafening roar that seemed to shake the entire arena.

"Seeing through the fog?" A voice from under the helmet of the Sky Shield came with a hint of mockery. "I heard you were quite impressive in the first stage, killing sixteen top experts with a single arrow. That's truly remarkable."

Li Wu didn't speak, she just looked at him calmly.

"But now, your myth ends." Sky Shield raised its warhammer, pointing it at Li Wu. "Without attribute superiority, you, a trash archer, are no different from a newbie in a starting village in front of me! Today, I will end you!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the system's cold countdown ended.

"Battle begins!"

Almost the instant the sound rang out, the Heavenly Shield moved. Without the slightest hesitation, it activated its charge skill, its heavy body transforming into a silver streak of light as it charged straight at Li Wu.

The Paladin's charge is not only fast, but also has a stun effect. Once hit, it's followed by a combo that leaves squishy classes with no chance to fight back.

Faced with this fierce attack, Li Wu neither dodged nor evaded. He slowly drew back his arcane bow, and an ice-blue arrow condensed on the bowstring.

【Frost Arrow】.

A basic second-tier skill, in an environment where attributes are evenly matched, is perfect for testing damage.

"Whoosh!"

The arrow pierced the air and struck the charging Sky Shield with pinpoint accuracy.

"-104"

A blue number floated up from above Sky Shield's head.

Upon seeing this number, SkyShield almost burst out laughing.

"Hahahaha! A little over a hundred points of damage? Are you trying to scratch me?" He laughed wildly. With a total health of over a thousand, losing a little over a hundred points of health was nothing to him. He could even slowly recover with his passive skill.

He became even more convinced that the "seeing through the fog" approach was no longer viable!

The momentum of the charge showed no signs of slowing down, and the massive tower shield was already close at hand.

Just as the tower shield was about to collide with Li Wu, Li Wu's figure suddenly disappeared.

[Flash Arrow]!

The Heavenly Shield's charge missed its mark, and the immense inertia caused him to stagger forward several steps before regaining his balance. He whirled around and saw Li Wu already twenty meters behind him, calmly drawing his bow again.

"All you do is hide? Trash!" Sky Shield roared, turned around and charged forward again.

This time, Li Wu still didn't dodge. The arrow on his bowstring changed color, half of it a fiery red and the other half a chilling icy blue. The two completely opposite energies were forcibly twisted together, forming a strange spiral arrow.

【Ice and Fire Spiral Arrow】!

"It's no use! Your damage can't break through my defense at all!" Sky Shield roared, holding the tower shield horizontally in front of his chest and activating the defensive skill "Holy Light Barrier," a layer of golden light covering the shield's surface.

The spiraling arrow whistled through the air and struck the center of the shield.

"clang!"

A crisp metallic clang rang out.

The arrow was deflected, and the golden barrier of holy light only trembled slightly without even a crack.

"-189"

Another damage number, as sharp as a scraping massage, appeared.

"See that?! That's the difference between us!" Sky Shield's laughter grew even more arrogant. "Your attacks are nothing more than a tickle to me!"

However, his laughter stopped abruptly.

Because he saw a strange smile on Li Wu's face.

Immediately afterwards, a sharp pain exploded from inside his chest! It was as if a bomb had detonated in his heart, and the two energies of ice and fire were tearing at his internal organs.

"-1156!"

A four-figure critical hit damage suddenly appeared above his head!

"puff!"

Tian Dun coughed up a mouthful of blood, completely stunned. He looked down in disbelief at his intact armor and shield, then at his health bar, which had instantly dropped to less than two hundred points, his mind blank.

What happened?

He clearly blocked that arrow! Why was he still injured? And why was he injured from the inside out?

"What...what did you do?" Sky Shield's voice trembled with shock and pain.

Li Wu, standing some distance away, slowly lowered the Arcane Bow.

"Who told you that to hit you, you have to break your turtle shell first?"

The stands and public chat channels outside the arena fell into a deathly silence the moment the four-digit damage number appeared.

"Wait a minute! Am I seeing things? Over a thousand critical hit damage?"

"How is that possible! His shield clearly blocked it! How did the damage even get in?"

"What kind of skill is this? Penetrating damage? No, penetrating damage ignores armor, but it can't ignore shield blocks!"

"Moreover, the damage is coming from inside the body. Look at how Sky Shield is coughing up blood; that's definitely not something an ordinary external attack could cause!"

No one could understand the principle behind that arrow. In their understanding, an attack either gets blocked or breaks through the target's defenses to cause damage. A situation like this, where the attack was blocked but the damage exploded inside the target's body, was completely beyond their understanding of the game.

In the meeting room of the Myth Guild, Bull's mouth was agape, and he couldn't close it for a long time.

"This...this is what the guild leader meant by the difference in skill mechanics?"

Hua Zitong's eyes shone brightly as she stared intently at the screen, explaining rapidly:

"That's right! The core mechanism of the [Ice and Fire Spiral Arrow] is not 'explosion,' but 'internal detonation'! The arrow itself is merely a carrier; the real damage comes from the ice and fire energy that penetrates into the target's body after impact!"

"The shield of the Heavenly Shield can block the arrow as a 'carrier,' but it can't stop the 'energy' that seeps in! In an environment where attributes are evenly matched, this skill mechanism that ignores conventional defensive logic is a 'dimensional reduction attack'!"

……

Inside the arena.

Sky Shield's face turned deathly pale; he dared not be careless in the slightest. He finally understood that he was not facing a tiger with its teeth pulled, but a prehistoric behemoth that had changed its hunting methods.

He immediately retreated, creating distance, while simultaneously raising his hand to cast a healing spell on himself. The paladin's survivability was his greatest asset. As long as his health could be restored, he still had a fighting chance.

However, a silver light appeared faster than his spellcasting.

"Whoosh!"

An ordinary energy arrow struck his wrist precisely.

"-89"

The damage wasn't high, but it successfully interrupted his spellcasting.

"Damn it!" Sky Shield cursed under his breath, retreating again to try and create a safer distance.

But Li Wu followed him like a shadow, giving him no chance to catch his breath. One ordinary arrow after another came flying in, each one precisely aimed at his casting animation, making it impossible for him to complete a spell.

Tian Dun was forced into a sorry state, forced to passively raise his shield to defend himself. His pride in his endurance became a joke under Li Wu's precise suppression.

"Damn it! If you've got the guts, fight me head-on!" Sky Shield, his anger suppressed, let out a powerless roar.

Li Wu ignored his shouts.

Soon, Tian Dun noticed that Li Wu's attack had stopped. He was overjoyed, thinking that the opponent's mana was running low, and was about to seize the opportunity to counterattack when he saw a thin, pure white light, as thin as a hair, shining from Li Wu's bowstring, more dazzling than the sun.

The aura emanating from that light made his very soul tremble.

[Blazing Sun Piercing Arrow]!

Although he had seen it countless times in the first phase of the recording, it was only when the light was actually aimed at him that Sky Shield felt the despair of being abandoned by the whole world.

"No!!"

He let out a terrified scream, channeling all his remaining mana into his shield and activating the paladin's ultimate survival skill—[Divine Protection]!

A thick, golden shield of light, as solid as a city wall, completely enveloped him. Holy runes flowed across the shield, radiating an aura of indestructibility. This was the paladin's supposedly absolute defense, capable of withstanding any attack!

However, the pure white light did not pause for a moment.

It shot out silently, without a deafening explosion or any earth-shattering force.

It pierced through the thick layer of "Divine Protection" as easily as passing through a window, through the massive tower shield that the Sky Shield was so proud of, and finally through his chest.

Time seemed to stand still at that moment.

Sky Shield looked down and saw a small hole in his chest, its edges crystalline and glassy. He couldn't even feel any pain.

Immediately afterwards, a damage figure he could never have imagined in his life slowly floated up from above his head.

"-2222!"

A number that is full of irony.

The Sky Shield's body transformed into a sky full of white light and dissipated in the arena.