Chapter 228: The Spiteful Healer

“Three weeks.” Aegis spoke through his party interface. He was in a group with Pyri, Rakkan, Darkshot, and Lina, but none of them were currently near one another. “In three weeks' time, we’ll need to be ready for our final preparations to join the tournament.”

“I know it’s not a lot of time…”

Lina heard his voice as she walked through the streets of the City of the White Tree, with Dark Elf citizens staring at her curiously as she passed them. The long, thick glowing branches of the giant upside down tree were hanging above her, illuminating her face as she continued forward, approaching the Prison of the city on the ground floor of the underrealm, where she knew Viella was waiting for her.

“It might be a bit unreasonable to request it…” Aegis continued.

Darkshot walked alongside Quinn through a forest of strange trees whose branches intertwined with one another. There was no path for them to follow through the wild vegetation that grew over the gigantic roots of the nearby trees, but yet both seemed to be following a path they’d sensed using their tracking skills, carefully avoiding razor sharp, wriggling vines that slithered around the trunks of the trees.

“But I know how you guys all handle high pressure situations. We’ve already been through a lot of them so far…”

Rakkan began his ascent up a narrow mountain path, the same he’d climbed to acquire his intermediate class. There was a presence of many other aspiring Battlemaster class players, fighting their way up the mountain alongside him. Rakkan ignored them and walked beyond a few as they fought through the lower level enemies on their way to the top - his eyes focused on the ruined city that sat near the peak.

“I know that you guys will be able to handle it.” Aegis finished.

Pyri stood within the office of Archmage Jael, in the Mage Tower of Kordas. It had long been since repaired from the damage caused by him and Pyri - all of the books were neatly set back on the curved shelves that lined the walls of the circular room. Jael stood behind his desk reading several unrolled parchments, empty scroll cases off to the side. As the doors of his office shut behind Pyri, he looked up from his desk to stare at her.

“You’re finally ready to go after your advanced class quest?” Jael asked with a raised eyebrow.

“The Staff Mastery took a bit longer than I would like to admit, but, yeah.” Pyri shrugged.

“Good. As I said during our previous encounter, whatever you choose I will support to my fullest ability. But I would be very disappointed if you were still only interested in becoming a Greater Controlmancer.” Jael smiled weakly at her.

“Oh no. I owe you thanks for stopping me from making that choice. With this intermediate, I’m still able to choose whatever path I want for advanced, right?” Pyri confirmed.

“Correct.” Jael nodded back.

“What would you recommend?” Pyri asked, and Jael’s grin widened. He stood up from his desk and waved his hands at the air in front of himself, forming three runes in the air in front of him with glowing magical light. Pyri didn’t recognize the symbols that the runes represented, though.

“There are three advanced paths that are far beyond the others in terms of difficulty. Offering these paths to one incapable of fully manipulating magic would not only be a waste, but lead to a frustrated, incapable wizard. You, on the other hand, I believe would be more than capable in handling either of the three.” Jael motioned to the first rune, a white circle surrounding a shape that looked like an hourglass.

“The first is a Chronomancer. You will unlock the ability to utilize advanced spells that are able to manipulate time. Speed it up, slow it down, and even reverse it. Very difficult to understand and utilize.” He explained, and Pyri nodded along. “The second,” He motioned towards the rune directly above his desk, “A Transmutation Mage. Understand the fabric of this reality. With careful manipulations of magic, you will find yourself able to warp reality, altering the forms of your magic or the objects around you into their equivalencies. A great amount of knowledge and skill is required to draw out the true potential of this path.” Jael explained, seeing Pyri’s interest piqued.

“And finally,” Jael motioned to the last rune, a symbol made up of a dozen staves crossed over each other with a blue coloring. “A Magelord.”

“What does a magelord do?” Pyri asked curiously, leaning in with anticipation for Jael’s explanation.

Aegis approached the Kordas training hall, walking through the grounds beyond the rows of training dummies. There were, like always, a large number of players practicing their skills on the dummies. Some were dueling with each other off to the side of the grounds, practicing their combat skills with large explosive displays of magic that flashed in the corner of Aegis’ eye.

He watched them with interest, but once he reached the bottom of the stairs that led up into the training hall, he tilted his head back to stare up at the gigantic magnificent building, with the large statues of warriors being depicted flanking the huge, open archway leading inside.

He took a deep breath to prepare himself, knowing full well that all of his companions had already completed their Advanced Mastery quests in the time he’d been grinding his mithral. It wasn’t that part that was intimidating him, though - nor was it the prospect of going up against an undefeated quest. Instead, he found himself fidgeting into his interface to his livestreaming button, and held his finger in front of his face over the transparent interface floating in front of him, in his peripheral vision so that only he could see it.

Once more, a deep breath, then a release of air as he slowly tapped the button to activate his livestream. The moment he had, though, the interview button was blinking to signal that Hae-won was waiting to speak with him. In addition, despite going live, his viewership remained at 0. Aegis pressed the button promptly.

“Hello?” Aegis asked curiously, seemingly talking to himself as he remained standing at the bottom of the training hall’s wide staircase that led up to its main entrance.

“Aegis? Can you hear me?” Hae-won asked.

“Yup.” Aegis replied.

“Good! Glad you are back! Really happy. I was worried I was going to have to go back to broadcasting for all your up and coming wannabes.” Hae-won sighed with relief.

“Wannabes?” Aegis raised his eyebrow as he asked her curiously.

“Don’t worry about it.” Hae-won shook her head dismissively. “So, as you know, your old man is really laying it on thick, and most of VGN is participating…”

“Yeah.” Aegis replied with a grumble.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this happen.” Shinji suddenly spoke, joining into the conversation. “I know how to handle it, and how to come out relatively unharmed…”

“Honestly, I don’t care that much.” Aegis shrugged. “More important than that right now is that I help Rakkan deal with Seraxus. Makaroth can parade himself around with his bullshit network as much as he likes.”

“Good, I’m glad you feel that way. Because generally there are two ways to move forward - One, we try to disprove the image he is painting of you. Your committed fans will see beyond Makaroth’s words. The rest of the world’s image won’t be changed by you, those who don’t care enough to look past what VGN is spewing will continue to believe the narrative at large. But those who watch you and matter most will know the truth…” Shinji explained.

“Okay… and what’s the other way?” Aegis asked.

“Ahem.” Hae-won cleared her throat to speak up. “He’s given you a nickname. He turned the abbreviation S. from your class Shattered Healer, and has been calling you the Spiteful Healer.” Hae-won explained, to which Aegis rolled his eyes. “But his words and negative narrative, they lose all of their effectiveness if everything he says is true.” Hae-won explained.

“What do you mean?” Aegis didn’t fully grasp what she meant.

“I mean… If you call a fish a fish, does it really care?” Hae-won explained.

“Wait… but, he’s calling me an angsty, angry, spiteful kid who hates him…”

“Aren’t you, though?” Hae-won asked, and Aegis could hear the smirk behind her voice despite not seeing her. “He’s the one who took the gloves off. I feel the easiest way out of this is honesty, as your viewers would see through any fakeness.”

“I’m with Hae-won on this one, believe it or not…” Shinji added.

“You guys are just telling me to be myself?” Aegis asked as a grin slowly crept across his face as he thought to himself.

“Don’t hold back. Be yourself. Embrace the nickname, and you’ll retake control of your image. I’ll handle the rest.” Hae-won replied with enthusiasm.

“His lawyers won’t be able to do anything, given that he threw the first punch. Ready to go live?” Shinji added. Aegis didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he let out a long gasp of air, slowly stretching his arms into the air as his grin towards the sunny skies above turned somewhat demonic. He took it all in, the prospect of not needing to hide anything anymore or hold anything back - it crept into his skin in the form of overwhelming excitement.

“Yeah.” Aegis finally put his arms down and began climbing the staircase into the training hall. “I’m ready.”

“Good luck.” Hae-won replied before ending the interview. Once she had, his viewership was no longer locked at 0 and quickly shot up to 10,000, then 20,000 and beyond. He looked away, ignoring it and focusing on the task in front of him.

Walking through the large hall along the carpet that stretched down its center, he glanced to the sides where various doorways leading into intermediate class quests sat. There were lines in front of each quest door as per usual - players around the levels of 30 were waiting their turn to take a stab at completing their intermediate quests to move on from beginner. Seeing them brought back memories of Aegis’ own attempts at the quests, having completed the Shield Mastery Intermediate on his first try.

This time, though, his destination wasn’t any of the doors in this hall. As per the instructions given to him by his party, he’d learned that the advanced quests were found in the floor below. Towards the end of the hall he spotted a large staircase that led downwards. He descended the steps, leaving behind the bulk of the other players on the floor above.

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, they opened up into a large circular room with archways leading out of it in all directions. There were tons of varying archways with no doors in front of them, symbols etched into each keystone that represented every type of weapon mastery available in the game.

In the center of the circular room was an altar, with the statue of a Knight that had every type of weapon protruding out of his torso and pointing in the direction of the respective weapon’s archway. At the base of the statue were stone benches, set in a circle around him where several exhausted players sat, some looking quite dejected.

Aegis started by stepping towards the center statue where the other players were gathered, some talking amongst each other. All of them were level 150, and some he recognized - particularly Baffo and Uggard. Baffo was the main tank and guardian player for the Night Hunter’s guild, and Uggard was the same for the Blades of Kalmoore. The pair were both in a deep discussion with one another, looks of frustration on their faces as Aegis approached and interrupted their conversation.

“Ah, Aegis. Was wondering when you’d show up here.” Baffo stood up from the stone bench and extended his hand to shake Aegis’ which he obliged.

“Finally gonna take a stab at the advanced shield mastery quest?” Uggard asked as he too stood up and shook Aegis’ hand, while simultaneously motioning towards the archway with the shield embedded into the keystone.

“Yeah. I’ve heard no one has beat it yet, is that true?” Aegis asked them curiously.

“That is correct, and for good reason.” Baffo nodded.

“Yep. Like the others, the skill assistance is gone, but… man. What it expects you to do, it’s unreal.” Uggard said, and Baffo nodded.

“We originally tried looking for a gimmick of some sorts, you know? Some sort of mechanic that was required for us to understand in order to clear thq quest, but… we’ve been talking with some other players trying this quest on other islands, and that doesn’t seem to be the case.” Uggard explained, while Aegis nodded along.

“So, no gimmick?” Aegis confirmed.

“No, it doesn't seem to be. Just pure skill. You’re either a master with a shield, or you’re not.” Baffo shrugged, and Uggard nodded in agreement with him.

“There’s no line up, though?” Aegis asked as he turned towards the archway.

“Nope. It’s not like intermediate - it’s a single player dungeon scenario. Once you step through the archway, you’re teleported to a private dungeon just for you and given the quest. If you fail, you get kicked out and can start again after a 1 minute delay.” Uggard explained.

“Well, that’s good at least.” Aegis shrugged.

“We’ll see if you still feel that way after you try it a few times.” Uggard and Baffo chuckled.

“It forces your pain threshold to level 10, by the way. It’s required for all of the advanced mastery quests.”

“Oh, right…” Aegis went into his interface and adjusted his pain threshold to 10, having set it to 1 during his fight with Jealousy. “Wish me luck, I guess.” Aegis shrugged as he began walking towards the shield archway.

“Good luck. If you beat it, I’m going to watch your footage back and copy you.” Baffo called out to him as he walked away.

“Please don’t beat it on the first try, you’ll make us look bad.” Uggard joined in with a chuckle. A few quick steps later Aegis found himself standing directly in front of the archway. Now that he was close, he saw that there was a light, transparent wavy wall of blue magical energy that was shimmering beyond the archway. Seeing it, he took a deep breath, glimpsed at his viewership of now 300,000 people, then stepped forward through the archway and into the shimmering light.

Once he had, his vision went blank and he was hit with several prompts.