Chapter thirteen: battle mania

Soft golden hair, luscious cherry lips, long eyelashes that accentuated her glittering crimson eyes, long eleven ears protruding from the sides of her face, and supple white skin second to none: she smiled a smile that could move the very heavens with its destructive potential. Her nubile figure struck through those thick white religious habits - nothing about it really encapsulated holiness, indeed it was closer to fetishist wear that could easily be spotted on Halloween more than anything. Long slits ran down one side of her skirt, purely for ease of movement during combat, though I couldn’t deny that sex appeal was also on my mind. I gulped in guilt as my eyes were naturally drawn to her alluring legs exposed through the gaps.

“Fufufu…” she chuckled softly. “Master, how very nice of you to finally drop by after all these months of leaving me alone. I hope you’ve prepared your last words because I won’t let you off so easily,” she said with the sweetest and most unsuspecting smile. Then as gently as one could, she pointed the tip of her staff and began charging some spell. It took a moment to break free from her charm and finally realize what she was about to do.

[Flame Breaker]: Master tier flame magic. Deals increased damage the longer it is charged. Leaves behind a ‘burning field’ that deals periodic damage to all opponents within.

If this was still back in the game, I would’ve easily broken her channelling, but it was noticeably harder to grasp things in reality. I felt a little embarrassed after selfishly acting like I was some kind of combat guru yet something on this level was getting to me. I was like a deer caught up between headlights as I couldn’t exactly move from the spot or else she’d shoot me with that thing however, at the same instance if I didn’t move she’d also fire that thing. “Hey Lyssa? Let’s calm down and talk about this,, okay?”

“No excuses!” she shouted as she let loose her skill. A great fiery rage was shot right towards me at a frightening speed. Everything in its path was instantly eviscerated and became either molten rock or steam. The mere heat off that spell seemed potent enough to burn off my face.

“Dammit!”

[Mouth of Naraka]: Temporarily summon a giant mouth capable of eating anything.

With little time to act I defaulted to my usual strategy. The ground next to me suddenly darkened and transformed into a murky swamp-like surface, and as if it had grown a will of its own it jumped out lashing a hungry roar. There was no face, just a giant gaping mouth lined up with rows of terrifyingly sharp teeth like a blender; imagine an amorphous black mass of ooze spawned with a mouth and jumped out of the floor. It unhinged its jaw like a snake and swallowed the incoming inferno whole. In just a few short seconds there was nothing left of Lyssa’s flame spell, as if she didn’t do anything in the first place. Content, the dark mouth sank back into the floor and disappeared.

Acting on instinct, I turned around and suddenly Lyssa appeared at my back while attempting to bash at me with the end of her staff that had turned a glossy white due to powering it up.

[Impact Strike]: Combat skill, attack a foe with a powerful hit.

“It’s bad manners to go for someone’s face!” I told her off while ducking to dodge the swing. Yet, with her ungodly reflexes she recovered and immediately attempted to strike again without losing any momentum. I promptly dashed back while her staff smashed and completely obliterated the concrete. In a last ditch effort, she quick fired some Flare Bolts at me, though I managed to easily avoid those by teleporting away a few metres.

[Blink]: instantly teleport a short distance.

“Tsk,” she clicked her tongue. “It’s no fun if all you do is dodge,” she shrugged then rushed at me relentlessly. Her staff whizzed past me making sounds that didn’t seem like it was just from a wooden stick – honestly at this point it was closer in power and weight as a steel girder and she was tossing it around as if it were Styrofoam. The way she attacked and wove in several high level skills and abilities was masterful and hypnotizing to witness, and it would’ve been more so if I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. There were no pauses or wasteful movements, just pure mastery and anger balled into one. Every time I managed to avoid an attack there would be another one coming for me, and just when I thought I had a moment to retaliate I would see fireballs flying my way. That said, if there was one advantage of having a small body it was that I had smaller hitboxes, for a lack of a better term.

“Argh, so annoying! Stop moving around!” she shouted like a teacher scolding a particularly disruptive student. Her staff suddenly glittered white and the faint outline of a sword appeared at the tip. It caught me off guard. I actually had no recollections of giving her these skills; they were from a branch of combat known as ‘Spear bearer’s technique’. Right, there was no reason for me to give a healer/support these kinds of abilities, yet she clearly used them. She slashed down at me with the edge of the blade attached to her staff and managed to cut my arm. Fortunately, with my armour and defensive stats, the most it did was make me bleed a little - nothing major. The bleeding stopped once I applied some minor healing to it.

[Spear Bearer’s Mirage]: Temporarily convert any long item into a spear.

“Spear Bearer’s Mirage? When did you learn that kind of skill?” I asked.

“Oh my, do you finally have an interest in me after all?” she continued to surprise by converting her staff from a bow to spear and shot me with magical arrows. I quickly struck them out of the air with my own Impact Strike and they disappeared quite easily. “Since you’ve left me alone in this place I’ve been doing some practice on my own and seeing the surprise on your face was worth all the effort.”

‘So, NPCs can learn skills on their own,’ I noted to myself.

“Still, I should say it’s expected of my master, but it doesn’t seem like normal melee combat will ever be enough to take you down,” a sinister smirk stretched across her face. A terribly feeling swirled down my stomach. My nightmares were answered as she proceeded to loading up on self-buffs.

[Holy Armor]: Increase physical and magical defence by 60%. Increases HP regeneration by 300%.

[Divine Strength]: Increase strength and physical attack by 60%. Increases weapon durability by 30%. Increases blunt force damage by 60%.

[Angel's Fury]: Adds 300 points of holy damage to melee hits. Attack speed increased by one stage.

[Warrior of Justice]: Increases critical hit rate and damage by 30%. Increases physical and magic defence pierce by 30%.

[Shield of God]: Decreases all damage sustained by 30%, calculated before defence reduction. Increases holy damage by 60%.

[Will of the Heavens]: Reduces the duration and effectiveness of negative status ailments by 90%.

[Inescapable Judgment]: Increases physical and magical pierce rate by 30%. Opponents hit by an attack while this status is active receive the debuff ‘under judgment’; every subsequent attack temporarily shreds 3% of the opponent’s physical and magical defence.

[Divine Armament]: Allows the use of Divine Weapon skills.

For a second she had been engulfed by a holy aura like a great white bonfire. Luckily for my eyes the effect of those spells died down to a more subtle level, though I could still feel an unmovable presence coming from her. I had always wondered how spell effects would feel when stacked and now that I know it definitely feels nauseating standing against it. Shaking off the pressure, I let out a sigh. Despite everything, Lyssa had a grand smile on her face as someone told her Christmas was tomorrow.

"You know I gave you those skills to support other people, right?" I sighed.

"It's okay, master."

"What is?" before I could receive an answer, several dozen swords of light fell from above like a hail of deadly rain. “Tch, divine armament,” without much thought and time to react, I spawned another Mouth of Naraka to eat the swords out of flight, though unfortunately one of them made it past the mouth and grazed my left arm. The moment it hit a text box appeared before me with the words, [You are now under judgment].

I was left momentarily distracted by that textbox, enough to be struck at by another skill. A blinding white pillar of light struck down at me like a waterfall and rooted me in place. “Shit,” I swore, crowd control effects were always annoying, even in the game I hated people using them. Seeing me frozen in place she must’ve thought that was her chance and got close. Her win condition was probably sticking to me like glue and making sure I couldn’t heal or retaliate. Unfortunately for my dear little Lyssa, the difference between us was that I played this game religiously; The moment she got within distance is repelled her back with a powerful repulsive spell from my shield. Luckily I had an ace for this kind of situation; activating another skill the pillar dissipated almost instantly.

[Unfaltering Hero]: break free from all crowd control effect and temporarily gain a barrier that renders all subsequent crowd controls ineffective. Upon activation of the skill all enemies with in a two metre radius are knocked back.

It was as if a powerful typhoon had just hit her as she was repelled. I didn’t let up and quick-summoned the wooden practice sword, that I had been using with Sherry, and planted it onto the floor. Like before, it started to pulse out a white aura after it was converted to a ward. However, I wanted to go a bit further than what I did with Sherry and spawned the ‘Sword of Damocles’. A gigantic wooden sword – almost ten metres in length – appeared behind me and lodged itself into the floor, crushing the stairs and half of the roof of the temple. That wasn’t the end of the spell, along side the giant wooden sword, normal-sized wooden swords started to be generated alongside it like a cell undergoing mitosis.

I couldn’t help but smile a little, after all these were my favourite kinds of skills. The ones that everyone cry out is unfair and overpowered. All the dozens of wooden swords faced Lyssa’s general direction and mercilessly fired themselves out like a machine gun, only that machine gun shot out wooden swords, and that wooden sword exploded upon impact, and that explosion was akin to a grenade – imagine a machine gun that shot out grenades and had infinite ammo. Every time a wooden sword was fired, a new one would generate in its place and the cycle would continue without rest. This was a skill that was balanced around the player’s mana reserves, but once people could get infinite mana this skill truly became broken. Lovingly dubbed the ‘Infinite Barrage’ by the player base.

I could still feel Lyssa’s presence holding out over there. She was hiding behind a large translucent shield, which was another one of her divine armaments, but it was only a matter of time before even that nigh unbreakable shield would crack. Heck, I was actually going easy on her; I would’ve used a real sword to up the attack power, yet here I was going soft on my poor children.

“What say you give up?” I asked, though I probably wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the sound of explosions. Feeling a little sorry I ceased firing my infinite barrage. However, when I noticed it, she wasn’t there. “Defaulting back to old tricks, I see,” I turned around and intercepted a very obvious attack from behind. Before she could get close enough, I surrounded her with all the imitation wooden swords that were set to go off. It was as though she were a submarine amidst a minefield.

She clicked her tongue and dropped her staff, “it’s my loss.” She threw up her hands.

“Good girl.”