The moment Don checked its attributes, he froze completely.

[Orc Captain Larsel, Normal Boss]

[Level 20]

[HP: 450,000]

[ATK: 510–690]

[PDEF: 400]

[MDEF: 400]

[Skills: Burst Arrow, Rapid Fire, Slowing Arrow]

[Boss Introduction: One of the foremen of the Brugg base camp. Although he possesses accurate shooting skills, he is not valued by the Orc Priest because he is too lazy and gluttonous.]

Don studied the stats carefully. If there was one class that truly countered thieves, archers were the top choice. Their powerful ranged attacks often came with control effects, and their burst damage skills could pierce through a thief’s flimsy chest armor and deliver a killing blow. This boss’s three skills, chained together properly, could easily bring him to death’s door, or finish him outright, in a single rotation.

But its weakness had already been highlighted in the introduction, and that gave him an opening. He glanced at the blazing campfire, and a wicked plan formed almost instantly.

Don casually picked up a burning log and circled it around the tent where the orc was sleeping, setting the entire canvas roof ablaze. Then he immediately went into stealth and watched from a distance.

In seconds, the whole tent was engulfed. Huge flames leapt more than ten feet high. The unfortunate archer boss finally stirred, letting out a shrill scream before struggling out of the inferno, its entire body on fire.

Its health was dropping in visible chunks.

[System: Orc Captain Larsel has been burned, ATK and DEF reduced by 40%, losing 1% HP per second for 60 seconds]

Sixty seconds. That meant sixty percent of its health, gone. And with its attack reduced by forty percent, its effective damage dropped to roughly three hundred to four hundred and ten, perfectly manageable.

Overjoyed, Don circled behind it with a red potion already between his teeth. While the orc was still thrashing and trying to extinguish the flames, he took aim and drove his dagger into its waist.

[5,789!]

Hitting a weak point felt incredible.

The attack broke his stealth instantly. The orc roared furiously. "Damn human! How dare you burn me with fire! I’ll tear you to pieces!"

Even through the agony, it endured the pain, nocked an arrow, and fired with explosive force.

Don almost admired the perseverance, but the orc had overlooked a critical detail. Bows required distance. Too far and they missed, too close and their power plummeted. Realms Online clearly stipulated a minimum effective range of five meters, within which damage was reduced by seventy percent.

So the powerful Burst Arrow, which should have carried devastating bonus damage, struck Don for a pathetic ninety-eight.

Despite being engulfed in flames, the orc was sharp enough to recognize the problem. It turned and bolted, trying to create distance. But Don wasn’t about to let that happen. He swallowed his potion and gave chase, slashing at its body relentlessly.

Pushed to its limit, the orc drew two arrows from its quiver and fired them in rapid succession. But at this range, the arrows couldn’t develop their full force, thirty-eight and forty-five damage respectively. Meaningless.

Don pressed the advantage ruthlessly, running to the orc’s front and blocking its path uphill.

’You half-orc, no matter how clever you think you are, can you really outwit a human?’ He smiled

He drove the creature back down toward the potato field at the foot of the mountain, forcing it to fight on his terms. The orc became frantic, alternating between attacking Don and trying to smother the flames still consuming its body.

Don wouldn’t let it breathe. He closed in step by step, consuming red potions the instant each cooldown ended. Backstab proved devastating here, Captain Larsel wasn’t a high-level player archer who knew to never expose their back while retreating.

Real top-tier archers would sidestep or backflip to maintain facing. But bosses generally didn’t master those techniques, and for good reason, if they did, no one would ever be able to beat them.

Thirty seconds passed quickly. The orc’s health had dropped to fifty-five percent. Don felt a chill of realization. At this rate, when the fire effect expired, it would still have roughly ten percent health remaining. If it triggered some kind of berserk state, everything he’d done would be wasted, and a lucky critical hit could end his life.

He immediately shifted tactics, slowly driving the orc into the narrow corner between the potato field and the hillside.

The cramped space was perfect for trapping the creature and maintaining pressure. His target also shifted, he began aiming his blade at the orc’s neck. It was a common weakness of humanoid monsters. Once their throat was severed, they were finished unless they had a miraculous healing ability.

Captain Larsel’s mind was unraveling under the flames. It kept drawing and releasing its bow in a desperate, mechanical loop.

Between each draw, Don exploited the gaps and slashed at its neck. The frustrating part was that despite Don being 1.85 meters tall, a decent height, this orc towered nearly two heads above him. He had to keep reaching upward to land his strikes, which hurt his accuracy.

As time dragged on, the fire on the orc’s body began dying down, and the debuff timer entered its countdown.

Don stayed fully focused, pressing his body tight against the creature to maintain minimum distance. Even when the debuff expired, the orc would have a hard time escaping at this range.

Finally, with one last precise effort, his blade produced a clean slicing sound and carved a deep gash across the orc’s throat. Blood poured from the wound in heavy streams.

[Orc Captain Larsel has been struck at a critical weak point, loses 1% HP per second until death]

Overwhelmed by agony, Captain Larsel unleashed a burst of desperate strength, shoving Don aside and lunging away in a final bid for survival.

Don looked at the expired debuff and the orc’s remaining health, roughly ten percent.

He immediately did something that, frankly, he was quite proud of. He sprinted forward and delivered a Backstab straight to its heart, ripping away over twenty-four hundred HP. Then he gave chase without pause.

But at that precise moment, his foot slipped. He’d tripped over something hard on the ground. He glanced down instinctively, a potato.

Captain Larsel, barely alive, seized the opening. It drew an arrow, turned, and fired a devastating shot. The arrow flew nearly flat, piercing straight through Don’s chest with terrifying force.

[1,104!]

Don swallowed the freshly cooled red potion and dashed forward again. But in its dying moments, the orc had a final flash of brilliance. With a casual flick, it launched one last arrow in a lazy arc that struck Don’s left leg.

[You’ve been pierced by a Slowing Arrow]

[You’ve taken 301 damage!]

[Movement speed reduced by 40% for 5 seconds]

The weaknesses of low-grade red potions were fully exposed now. The healing was continuous rather than instant, and the recovery rate was poor. Don’s health dropped below two hundred. One more hit and he was dead.

The orc grinned maliciously, pulling two more arrows from its quiver and nocking them simultaneously.

Don was grinning too, even more ferociously, because his Evasion cooldown had just finished.

Two arrows whistled silently past him. The orc stared with empty eyes as the health bar above its head vanished completely.

Captain Larsel groaned once and collapsed face-first into the potato field. Dead.

Don’s experience bar surged, filling past the level threshold and settling at 17.3 percent into Level 17, plus two hundred and fifty reputation points.

The boss’s experience yield was incredibly generous.

But the joy of leveling up was quickly replaced by anxiety. ’Where’s the wine gourd?’

He walked over and kicked the corpse aside. A generous pile of gold coins spilled out, twenty-six total, bringing his reserves to one hundred and thirty-five.

His money-making efficiency was approaching mini-printing-press levels. But there was still no wine gourd. He did, however, get two pieces of equipment.

One was a streamlined longbow, not particularly beautiful, but sturdy, with a bowstring that carried real tension. The other was a gray leather helmet, equally unassuming in appearance. Their attributes, however, were superb.

[Larsel’s Bow, Bronze Grade]

[Level Req: 17]

[ATK: 120–190]

[+15 STRENGTH]

[+29 AGILITY]

[+20 CONSTITUTION]

[Sealed Slot: 1]

[Captain’s Hat, Bronze Grade]

[Jewelry]

[Level Req: 17]

[HP +240]

[Hit Chance +100]

[+11 STR]

[+18 AGI]

[Sealed Slot: 1]

Don pulled out two Unsealing Stones and applied them. Both succeeded, the stones didn’t break. The bow gained one hundred and fifty points of accuracy, equivalent to roughly twenty-two points of Agility, while the hat gained seventy points of physical defense, one of his most coveted attributes.

After equipping both, his stats shifted dramatically.

[Bane, Human, Apprentice Thief]

[Level 17]

[HP: 2,015]

[ATK: 1,438–1,523]

[PDEF: 294]

[MDEF: 219]

[Crit Rate: 1%]

[Reputation: 650]

[Luck: 0]

The bow increased his attack power by roughly two hundred points compared to the dagger, making it incredibly effective for kiting. The improvement to his minimum damage was especially significant, it smoothed out his overall output considerably.

He casually opened the American region rankings and discovered, to his satisfaction, that he had finally made the list.