Chapter 207: Burn

Quinn sat in her office simulation, pacing behind a large fluffy blue couch that sat in the midsts of an otherwise plain room. In front of the couch, multiple livestream broadcasts were on display on floating screens that hovered in the air a meter away from it. On the couch sat Ren, leaning forward on the edge of his seat watching the broadcasts unfold. The pair looked incredibly similar to their in-game avatars, minus the fantasy clothing and armor.

Three livestreams were on display for the pair. One of Aegis’ flight through the air above Kalmoore atop his gryphon Snowflake. One of Samathara’s broadcast as she looked down over the battle for Kordas along the southern walls, of which it appeared the forces of Kordas were holding their own against the abyss. And lastly, a view of Zekor’s broadcast as he watched Simon prance towards Rakkan.

“I think… It’s over.” Artaphernes’ voice spoke to Quinn through a voice call. Quinn glanced up in her peripheral vision to see the members in the voice call group, and in it was included a large number of players from all three of the top Kalmoore guilds, including Tullan, Sapphire, Herilon, Christoph, Artaphernes and Anazia, among many others.

“What? Why?” Quinn replied back with a frantic tone. A second later, Zekor’s broadcast went black, due to the broadcaster being killed - what killed him was not visible on the livestream, but the livestream quickly switched over to a studio where a host was sitting in a chair, waiting to commentate the action in the background.

“It appears our broadcaster, Zekor, has been killed by that player that just showed up. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to keep up with the action at the Palace with Aegis’ party anymore for the moment, but we’ll be doing our best to get another stream in place to keep you guys updated.” The host announced, causing Ren to let out a frustrated groan.

“Aegis was acting under the assumption that Joltblade and Simon worked together to take out our guild, but that's wrong.” Artaphernes paused with a long sigh. “That Simon guy took us all out by himself. He’s on another level.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s over, though, right? I mean, Lina, Yorgi, Rakkan, Darkshot… there’s no way he can take them all on!” Ren shouted into the voice call with enthusiasm.

Rakkan glanced behind himself to see the disintegrating body of Zekor, but had not seen at all what attack Simon had used to kill him. Immediately, Rakkan resummoned and armed his echoes and spread them out in front of Simon, but wordlessly, a blue spell flew out from Simon’s chest at Rakkan, towards his head.

Rakkan swung his mithral longsword out at the spell to hit it away or deflect it, but instead, the sword passed through the spell - or rather, the sword cut through it. The spell was a ball of water, which continued beyond Rakkan’s sword until arriving at his head, and encapsulating it in water, preventing Rakkan from breathing.

Rakkan reacted by frantically grabbing at the water bubble now encased around his head, but his hands and weapons just passed through it, unable to make it move at all. While he did this, Simon continued to prance along the garden path as if Rakkan wasn’t there, walking right up to, and around his echoes as Rakkan struggled to find a solution to the water bubble on his head.

After realizing he couldn’t remove it by grabbing at it, he turned his attention to Simon and began swinging his weapons out at him from all directions using his echoes.

Simon hardly reacted to the attacks - he made some slight waving motions with his arms, but his fingers were not visible to Rakkan due to his elongated sleeves. What was visible was the bursts of bright blue water that repeatedly appeared in front of Rakkan’s weapon swings, using bursts of force to redirect the trajectory of each of his swings. They were appearing all around Simon, regardless of which direction Rakkan’s echoes struck from.

Desperation grew on Rakkan’s face as he let out several frustrated grunts between his repeated attacks, the sounds muffled by the water surrounding his main body's face and causing bubbles to erupt out along with gurgling sounds.

“Haha, that kind of sounds like the chorus of Yumily’s new song. Have you heard of it?” Simon giggled while still prancing forward, making it all the way to the front doors of the palace despite Rakkan’s efforts. Simon then began humming the song that resembled Rakkan’s gurgling sounds.

“Hey Blondie!” Darkshot shouted as he appeared atop the outer palace walls, arrow nocked and aimed at Simon. Simon didn’t react to Darkshot’s words, though. Darkshot then fired a shot down at him, aiming true as the mithral tipped arrow soared across the garden to hit Simon in the back, between Rakkan’s echoes.

The arrow, too, was blocked by a burst of blue water appearing in front of it at the last second and knocking it to the ground.

“Ribbit!” Simon suddenly shouted, turning and looking at Darkshot. A moment later, a green bolt of magic fired from Simon’s forehead at Darkshot with incredible speed. Darkshot was quick enough to dash to the side to avoid it by moving a meter to the side, still atop the garden wall. As he nocked another arrow to fire, Simon tilted his head to the side with a sad expression.

“Aww, no ribbit?” Simon asked in a childlike manner. “Multicast ribbit!” He changed to playful voice again, this time firing three green bolts at Darkshot. Darkshot managed to dodge two, but the third was arcing and spiraling at him through the air at an odd, unpredictable angle. A moment before it connected with Darkshot, a shell appeared around him to block it. Darkshot glanced behind himself at the streets outside of the Palace walls to see Yorgi and Lina rushing towards him.

“Made it!” Yorgi shouted with relief, while Lina shadowstepped into the shade of the palace walls, then through various shadows in the garden until arriving at the palace doors, slashing out at Simon from the back once she’d reached him.

With Lina’s arrival, Rakkan stepped back with his main body and mumbled something that was muffled by the water around his head - he casted Rune:Enlarge on his head, causing it to grow gigantic and explode out of the water bubble encapsulating it. His body looked funny for a moment, like a weird bobble-headed orc, but it worked in giving him an opportunity to breathe.

Simon, of course, thought it was hilarious and burst out laughing, grabbing his stomach and bending over while simultaneously creating several bursts of water around Lina’s daggers to deflect her attacks.

“You look ridiculous!” Simon cheered at Rakkan as Rakkan shrunk his head back down to a normal size. Lina hopped back into the main hall of the Palace to create some distance, while Yorgi jumped atop the wall to stand beside Darkshot and Rakkan lined up with his echoes in front of Simon. The four of them were glaring at the laughing boy.

“Two’s a date, three’s good company, and four is a party!” Simon waved his hands into the air excitedly, but brought them back down and suddenly a demonic glare appeared on his face, sending a chill down Yorgi and Darkshot’s spine as he turned his eyes onto them first. “Let’s celebrate.”

His staff erupted off of his back as a water-copy of himself appeared wielding it, lunging at Lina, while his real body rushed forward and shot a barrage of blue spears formed of water up into the sky that began swerving downwards towards Yorgi and Darkshot, then stomped his foot down on the ground and released out a wave of freezing ice that crept across the garden, solidifying every blade of grass and plant it touched as it spread rapidly. He managed to cast all of these spells simultaneously, forcing all of Aegis’ party members on the defensive immediately.

As Rakkan jumped up over the freezing wave of ice, Simon lunged at him as if about to strike with some sort of attack. Rakkan raised his mithral weapons up defensively on his mainbody, swinging his melee weapons out at Simon while firing his crossbow, but Simon suddenly disappeared with an explosion of water, re-appearing where his water spears were as they soared in the air above the garden, replacing one of the spears.

As Rakkan landed back on the ground and turned to re-aim his crossbow, he saw Simon redirect all of the water spears back down towards him, forcing Rakkan to dodge them, while waving his hands out at Yorgi and Darkshot. Darkshot reacted by firing an arrow, and Yorgi prepared to cast a shell. The moment Darkshot’s arrows left their radius, Yorgi created the shell around them to block whatever attack Simon was planning.

The arrows expanded into 20, the shell came up, and suddenly a purple dome appeared around Simon in a 2 meter radius. As Rakkan’s bolt and Darkshot’s arrows came into contact with the dome, their movement through the air slowed down massively, almost coming to a complete halt. Then Simon created a burst of water at his feet to propel himself forward at Yorgi and Darkshot, and the pair jumped backwards to get away from him and create distance. Darkshot tried shooting more arrows, but they continued to slow down massively anytime they got inside the purple dome, making them easy for Simon to block and avoid.

All while this was happening, Simon’s staff wielding water clone had jumped at Lina, attacking her in an unsuspecting manner as she attempted to deflect the staff swings, but instead the water clone of Simon abandoned the staff mid-lunge to instead hug Lina, expanding its watery body and encapsulating her entirely in water. Before Lina could pick up on what the water was trying to do, the staff that it had dropped began glowing from a simple Lumina spellcast, of which the light became amplified as it reflected off of the watery clone that was encapsulating her. Due to this, she was unable to use any shadow spells, nor could she breathe, and any movements she made to try and escape the water clone were imitated by the clone.

“He was an archmage intermediate, he’s got a lot of powerful spells. I looked up his advanced class too, there’s a website that tracks all advanced classes unlocked so far. He was listed as a Chronoma-” Yorgi tried to explain to the group, but was interrupted as his voice suddenly left him.

“Shhh.” Simon put his index finger up to his lips, revealing his hands for the first time as he glared at Yorgi to shush him, his sleeve on his right arm sliding down to the elbow to reveal his character had 6 fingers rather than five - one was made of water. Simultaneously, a rune appeared on Simon’s forehead that expanded a white dome out of his body rapidly, extending beyond the purple dome. As the dome reached Yorgi, all sound left the area - and the dome quickly grew to capture Lina, Darkshot and Rakkan, silencing all of them and removing sound completely from the Palace garden and surrounding streets.

Darkshot accepted that ranged attacks were worthless against the purple dome, and did a head jerking motion to Darkwing to signal him to fly away before dashing forward and throwing his bow over his shoulder, swinging his fists out at Simon as he engaged him in melee while Yorgi jumped down off of the palace garden walls onto the street outside, looking up at Darkshot. Yorgi only saw Simon easily deflect Darkshot’s first few fists with bursts of water, then mouthed the word ‘ribbit’ before shooting a blast of green magic point-blank at Darkshot.

The spell instantly turned Darkshot into a frog, to which Simon excitedly attempted to stomp on, but Yorgi reacted by creating a shell around Darkshot’s frog form. The shell worked in blocking Simon’s foot, but Simon turned and wagged his finger at Yorgi as if Yorgi was being naughty. Yorgi ignored it, attempting to cast dispel magic on Darkshot by shooting a bolt of gray energy out from his staff in Darkshot’s direction, while Rakkan and his echoes arrived atop the wall and began striking out at Simon from behind. Simon abandoned concentration on the purple dome as he no longer felt he needed it, freeing him up to concentrate once more on creating bursts of water to block Rakkan’s swings while simultaneously shooting a green bolt of energy at Yorgi, which Yorgi failed to dodge due to focusing on dispelling Darkshot.

The result was that Yorgi, too, transformed into a frog - but in that time, Darkshot hopped away as fast as he could with his little frog legs along the wall, causing Simon to grab his stomach again and laugh hysterically at the hopping Darkshot - though his laughing was inaudible due to the silence spell.

Still acting as though Rakkan wasn’t attacking him despite Rakkan’s best efforts to land an attack with all of his mithral weapons, Simon began to excitedly prance forward across the palace walls towards the frog Darkshot, but before he could get to him, Darkwing swooped down out of the sky and grabbed Darkshot-frog in his talons and flew him up into the air, taking him away from the battle.

Simon shot out a water spear with annoyed expression, aiming it up at Darkwing and Darkshot, but to his surprise, the spell did no damage as it crashed into Darkwing as Darkwing activated its Fae effect to block the attack.

Simon then glanced down off the wall to try and find where Yorgi-frog had gone, but Yorgi too had hopped off of the street and hid somewhere amongst the nearby buildings outside the palace walls, causing Simon to turn to look at Rakkan behind him with a disappointed expression.

“Guys? What’s going on?” Pyri asked as the party communications had gone completely quiet, though she was quite pre-occupied by fighting off two Juggernauts and swarms of abysslings charging at her from all sides. She stood several dozen meters out in the fields in front of Rene, using her cinderbolts to deflect the gigantic blade-arms of the hulking black-skinned juggernauts. Behind her lay the body of one dead Juggernaut, and one living Juggernaut engaging with Erikson, Yuki, Josephine, Ulaipu, Farlion, and Celestian as they worked on bringing it down from atop the walls of Rene.

“They can’t reply, they’re all silenced. I think they’re fighting Simon.” Aegis answered her as he continued to fly through the air atop his gryphon, the town of Rene coming into view. There, he saw Pyri battling with the large juggernauts as they towered over the forests in the distance. But rather than continue to soar towards her, he pulled on Snowflake’s reins to bring him to a halt midair, causing him to flap idly and squawk curiously. Aegis nervously looked at his party interface and saw the frog-transformation debuff on Darkshot, and Lina’s rapidly draining stamina due to being drowned by the water clone.

“Mom, are you gonna be okay with the Juggernauts?” Aegis asked, still speaking through their party communications.

“I should be okay. You got somewhere else you need to be, huh?” Pyri asked.

“Yeah. I think so.” Aegis replied.

“Go. I’ll handle things here, don’t worry.” Pyri answered with a strained voice. With that, Aegis yanked on the reins of Snowflake, flying eastward away from Rene.

“Guys, he’s able to scry. He’s most likely going to go after something of the King’s within the palace, to scry on him and find where he’s hiding. If you can’t beat Simon, stopping him from scrying would be enough.” Aegis said into the party interface, knowing they could hear him but not be able to reply.

Lina frustratedly listened to Aegis’ words while struggling against the water clone that enveloped her as she stood in the light of the lumina spell on Simon’s staff, laying a meter from her on the floor of the Palace’s main hall. As she looked out through the front door, she saw Rakkan battling with Simon desperately atop the wall, failing to land any real attacks on him while Simon playfully waved his arms around to deflect all of Rakkan’s attempts to hit, including bolts shot from his crossbow wielding echo.

Lina was running out of air, fast, and any movement she made with her body was still continuously being imitated by the water clone encasing her, preventing her from getting out of it in any meaningful way. Frustration was taking over her, as was fear and panic from the impending sense of drowning overtaking her game character. Desperately, she took out an old tattered seeker cloak from her inventory and desperately flung it out at the staff on the ground.

The cloak landed atop the staff, blocking the light from the Lumina spell, allowing her to finally shadowstep out of the water clone and catch her breath. As she gasped for air, breathing heavily, she looked out in the direction of Rakkan’s one on one fight with Simon. Part of her was tempted to join in with the fight, but as she watched the water clone turn to where she’d shadowstepped and began its pursuit, she decided against it.

Aegis’ words ringing in her ears, she had a feeling that beating Simon wouldn’t be an option, so instead opted to shadow step away, further into the palace. Rakkan briefly glanced in her direction and saw through his party interface Lina’s name, slowly getting further away, and knew what she was going to do.

Taking on the role now of solely keeping Simon busy, he engaged him with everything he had through the silence spell. He got progressively more and more frustrated as Simon easily blocked all of his attacks, regardless of where he sent them from - but recalled his duels with Pyri as he trained with her back in the underrealm.

“Your movements are good, your spell control is good, but it's all still very predictable.” Pyri’s words rang through his ears.

Rakkan swung his longsword out at Simon from the front, then threw his Mosmir spear straight up into the sky where one of his echoes jumped up to catch it while simultaneously throwing it’s own battle axe down, essentially exchanging weapons with one of his echoes mid swing, then he did the same with his crossbow wielding echo and his longsword. A quick and rapid swap of weapons, followed by attacks using them from unpredictable angles. Simon blocked most, but finally, with a throw of his Mosmir stinger after trading it to one of his echoes, the tip of the spear got through Simon’s defenses and cut into his cheek, dealing the first bit of damage to the wizard player.

Immediately after the appearance of the damage numbers, all manner of politeness and jovial smiles faded from Simon, and he looked at Rakkan with utmost rage. He dropped the silence spell, the lumina spell on his staff, and the water clone spell, all in favor of creating 10 spells of varying elements all around Rakkan.

“YOU DARE HIT ME?!” Simon shouted in a rage, before blasting all of the spells at Rakkan from multiple angles. Ice, fire, water, wind, electricity, poison, and various others - Rakkan did his best to avoid some of them, but too many landed and dealt massive amounts of damage, killing Rakkan instantly and forcing him to log out. “I WANTED TO PLAY WITH THE FROGS.” He screamed hysterically at no one in particular. “RIBBIT RIBBIT!” He stomped his feet atop the palace walls in protest as he panned his eyes around rapidly, trying to spot where Yorgi and Darkshot had run off to. He was forced to stop when he heard an explosion coming from within the palace, and turned to see black smoke billowing out of various windows high up in the structure.

“So annoying!” He sighed in frustration before shooting several spears of water up towards the smoke. Once the spears got close enough to one of the windows where the smoke was coming out, he teleported to where the water spears were, taking their place and landing on the stone windowframe, up in the high towers of the Kordas Palace.

Peering inside, he saw a burning royal bedroom. The wardrobe, bed, shelves, carpet, - everything had been set ablaze, and standing in the doorway wielding a torch with a smirk on her face stood Lina.

“You’re good, but you won’t be able to scry on the King now. You’ll never find him.” Lina shouted at him triumphantly.

“Haha, cute.” Simon rolled his eyes at her. “Didn’t that sage kid just tell you what advanced class I took?” He asked Lina as he climbed into the burning room through the window, waving his right hand out at the blazing wardrobe of the King. A white spell circle appeared in the air in front of the wardrobe, and suddenly all of the flames froze, then began burning backwards rapidly, until quickly unburning the wardrobe and returning it to a state before it’d been set on fire.

Lina watched as this happened with wide eyes of disbelief, before throwing down the torch and utilizing the few dark spots within the blazing chamber to shadowstep to Simon and strike out at him with her daggers, but he nonchalantly waved his hands at her, giving her the same treatment he had with Rakkan and creating 10 spells of various elements that blasted her from all directions, killing her instantly and forcing her to log out. He then marched across the bedroom to the wardrobe and sifted through it.

“King’s got terrible style. Here, this should work…” Simon singled out a piece of clothing and began casting the scrying spell on it, within the red glow of flames that dominated the chamber.

The scrying sphere appeared in front of Simon and displayed the King, standing beside the Queen of Kordas, the Prince of Kordas, Princess Savika of Arallia, Sherry, Gregory, and Leonard. In addition, they were accompanied by dozens of high level Royal Knights of Kordas.

Most importantly to Simon though, was their location. They were all atop the deck of the Sky Darling, soaring high above the skies of Kalmoore, and as Simon panned the view of his scrying spell around, he got a sense of where on the island exactly they were flying.

“Found you.” Simon grinned to himself gleefully before canceling the scrying spell, then playfully prancing out of the burning bedroom back towards the window he’d entered from, and hopping through it to get outside before casting a fly spell on himself.