Chapter 250: Stay In School

The blue wall came down just as Aegis inhaled as much oxygen as his lungs could hold, as if preparing to dive into a deep ocean. His ear rang out with a moment of deafening silence as time seemed to stand still, but only for a moment.

The silence was replaced by the whistling sound of an arrow soaring through the air towards him, but he’d already tilted his head to the side to allow it to soar over his right shoulder. Following this, black smoke erupted all around him - a result of one of the other combatants being a shadow dancer and throwing a smoke bomb at him. It blinded his vision momentarily, which he was able to correct by flapping his white wings, but the smoke had served its purpose.

A shadow dancer had teleported behind him and struck out at his back with their daggers, while simultaneously a globe of water suddenly appeared around his head, encapsulating his airways and preventing him from breathing further. Within those first two seconds he’d been blinded by smoke, and was being drowned by a wizards magic, while under assault from an unseen ranger and shadow dancer. All sounds became muffled due to the water bubble around his head, but he vaguely could make out the call out of a dragoon skill.

From Finley’s point of view, he saw Aegis disappear into the dark smoke, then watched as all of the other combatants not wielding staves or bows begin charging towards him. All but for the spear-wielding dragoon class player who leapt up into the air at great height with his spear glowing bright orange.

“Sky Piercing Dive!” The Dragoon shouted before lunging through the air towards Aegis like a bullet. Finley launched himself off the ground and intercepted the dragoon’s attack by body checking him to the side, causing his trajectory to shift and crash into the ground a good distance away from Aegis. The ground cracked and erupted in dust and small chunks of broken tiles and sand due to the impact.

“Cinderstorm!” A wizard called out, drawing Finley’s attention. He saw a young gnomish female with fiery red hair wielding a glowing red staff, directing 5 multicast cinderbolt orbs through the sky towards him. He swatted at the orbs with his wings but to no avail, they stuck to him like magnets. Seeing this, Finley postured himself to charge at her, but a battlemaster rushed at him to block his path instead, all 5 floating weapons in tow. In addition, the dragoon that he had body checked quickly recovered and was turning to engage him as well.

Another battlemaster, seeing Finley occupied, decided to ignore him and join in with an assassin, monk, druid and cleric as they rushed towards Aegis within his smoke cloud, still obscured from the others briefly. It was in this brief moment that Finley caught a glimpse of the second wizard, a demi-human with orange fox ears, wielding his staff and concentrating on the aquatic magic that was being used to drown Aegis.

All of this happened so quickly that Finley almost forgot he wasn’t fighting alone, and turned to look at Aegis as he finished clearing off the black smoke with his wings. With the smoke gone, his white wing form was revealed to the players - in his left hand he was tightly clutching the wrist of the shadow dancer that had attempted to strike at him from behind and refused to let him go. It was a human male, wearing dark leather armor, and he began struggling against Aegis’ grip.

Aegis didn’t let up, though. Instead, he turned to face the shadow dancer with his back towards the rest of the players charging at him from across the arena floor, and with his free hand he began striking out at the shadow dancer with his Jealousy Claws.

The shadow dancer used one hand to parry Aegis’ strikes, the other to strike out at Aegis, but Aegis ignored the damage from the attacks to prioritize dealing damage to the shadow dancer as quickly as possible. Even parried strikes dealt damage, and with consumables not being allowed and no team work, Aegis knew the shadow dancer couldn’t last long under these conditions. All he had to do was not let go. All while not being able to breath or see clearly, due to the globe of water being held around his head by the demi-human wizard.

“Get him off me!” The shadow dancer shouted in frustration, his voice muffled as it reached Aegis’ ears through the water.

“Quake strike!” Another muffled voice called out from the center of the arena, followed by the player's large maul being slammed into the arena floor. Immediately upon impact, the ground of the arena began to crack and shake violently, breaking apart and causing chunks of rock and tiled stone to jut upwards - the floor became unstable, uneven, and difficult to navigate.

Aegis was thrown off balance briefly, but quickly dug his wings into the ground to hold himself steady so that he was not forced to release the shadow dancer. Then, ranged attacks were bombarded towards him. A crossbow bolt was fired from the Battlemaster who was running towards him, and a barrage of multishot arrows were redirected at him from an unseen ranger in the distance.

The fastest of the other melee fighters, the monk and druid, both arrived at Aegis’ back and began striking out at him. The monk opened with a flying kick, which Aegis blocked with a projected shield, throwing off the monk player's momentum. The druid shifted into a large spiked cobra beast and slithered through the quaked floor using strange, seemingly unpredictable movements before coiling his head back and lunging at Aegis’ ankle. Before hitting, though, a second projected shield appeared in front of the strike and blocked it.

The druid and monk pulled back and tried to strike again, as Aegis walked aggressively away from them - leaning into the shadow dancer whose wrist he continued to tightly grip. This allowed him the most amount of time possible to continue to strike at the shadow dancer before the other melee fighters arrived. The speed of the monk and druid's attacks, coupled with the parries and dagger strikes of the shadow dancer he was grappling with, were proving troublesome, though.

“Aura of healing.” Aegis cast, to begin the process of his self-recovery.

“He’s blocking everything.” The monk shouted in frustration as he attempted to maneuver around Aegis to get at him from different angles. “He’s keeping his shield on his back, but blocking everything with projections.”

“He can’t block everything.” The maul-wielding player shouted as he leapt into the air and crashed downward through the sky towards where Aegis was standing. Aegis jumped forward to avoid it, pulling the shadow dancer along with him and slamming him into the outer wall of the arena.

“Tch, unbelievable.” The shadow dancer cried out as he watched Aegis pull back his right claw one last time, striking the shadow dancer and killing him.

“Combatant Daelor has been eliminated.” A robotic female voice echoed out across the arena as the body of the shadow dancer faded from the arena, dropping his daggers and black leather armor on the ground at where his feet had been.

Hearing this, Finley took a moment from parrying, dodging, and otherwise retaliating against the Dragoon and Battlemaster that were on him. He glanced towards Aegis and saw the players swarming towards him, as well as the globe of water still stuck on his head. He then once more briefly glanced at the two wizards that were keeping their distance from the battle - one wizard was focusing on cinder bolts that were slowly burning down his health, and one wizard was focusing on a water spell that was drowning Aegis, risking draining his stamina rapidly the moment he ran out of breath.

“Gotta take one of them out.” Finley mumbled to himself.

“Don’t think so, pal.” The battlemaster engaged with him replied, sending his 7 weapons down at Finley from the front, whilst the dragoon lunged at him from behind.

“It’s not like you can stop me. I’m a harbinger of darkness.” Finley replied before launching himself off the ground and flapping his wings violently, soaring high into the air. The dragoon, with skills that enhanced his jumping power, was able to launch into the sky after him, but not quick enough.

“PIERCING DARKNESS!” Finley shouted, waving his greatsword in the direction of the water casting wizard. A black wave of thick dark magical energy shot out from the end of Finley’s greatsword while simultaneously he was stabbed in the back by the dragoon while the dragoon’s spear was emitting a red light.

“I know that hurts.” The dragoon smirked.

“Not as much as my attack.” Finley gestured with a nod down at the wizard, who was caught off guard by the aerial attack and the speed at which it shot through the air. It pierced the head of the wizard, dealing a massive amount of damage and killing him instantly.

“Combatant Bamrek has been eliminated.”

Finley did a quick 360 swing of his sword mid-air to clear the dragoon off of him, forcing the dragoon to pull his spear out from Finley’s back and drop back down to the ground, landing gracefully. Finley had no time to relax, though, as two separate arrow barrages came soaring at him from different directions, forcing him to focus on flying out of their path. Unfortunately, though, the arrows were redirected and began following him through the sky.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He was flying faster than them, but he saw no form of suitable cover that he could use to absorb the impacts of the arrows for him, and there were far too many - if he let them catch up to him he’d be taken out. He was quickly regretting taking to the skies, given the disadvantageous position he was now in, and the Dragoon, Battlemaster and Wizard players all saw it as they stared at him from below, waiting for him to attempt to land so that they could strike. All while the cinderbolts continued to slowly burn down his health.

Aegis, on the other hand, now with both of his hands free, immediately turned from the outer wall of the arena and charged at his incoming opponents. First the monk struck him, then the druid in his cobra-form. Following this, he took a nasty hit on his arm from the maul-wielding fighter that let out a loud, bone crackling sound that caused Aegis to wince from the pain. The monk then followed up, pursing Aegis and punching him several more times, but was taken aback by Aegis’ sudden change in behaviour.

“Why’d he stop guarding our attacks?” The monk asked rhetorically, he got no answer from the other players.

“Who cares, just kill him.” The maul-wielder shouted. Just as Aegis made it beyond them, he engaged with the assassin and dragoon, and took strikes from them as well as he ran by them, until reaching the final melee fighter near the center of the arena. The slowest of the bunch - the second battlemaster, was preparing to strike out at Aegis with all of his weapons.

“STOP ATTACKING HIM, MORONS!” An unfamiliar voice called out from across the stadium - one of the rangers who was focused on pursuing Finley with his arrows using redirects, had briefly glanced down at the melee fighters to see what was going on. Aegis briefly glanced in his direction to see who it was talking, [Iouen - Level 150] floating above his head. Aegis sucked his teeth and frantically continued rushing forward, continuing with his current plan of action despite Iouen alerting the other players to it. He could only hope that they wouldn’t react quick enough.

Aegis jumped into the air, spreading his white wings out wide and curling them forward towards the battlemaster who was caught off-guard by Aegis’ fixated aggression. A single thought ran through his mind - why is he so focused on me?

The battlemaster began to panic as he saw all other combatants rushing at Aegis’ back, striking out at his wings as Aegis landed his knees into his chest and used his weight to knock the battlemaster off of his feet. He then made use of his wings as well to hold him down.

“VIRABHADRA!” Aegis shouted.

“Don’t let him take that hit alone!” Iouen shouted to them, trying to encourage the other melee fighters to jump in and absorb the Virabhadra’s damage alongside the battlemaster. His shout was ineffective, though - the instincts of any skilled PvP player in the Shattered World online was that you ran away from the Virabhadra skill, not towards it.

Due to this, the battlemaster took the full retaliatory damage from Aegis by himself, killing him by dealing almost exactly his health in damage with very little overkill damage.

“Perfectly calculated. He took exactly enough damage so that his Virabhadra would take out the battlemaster. No more, or no less. There may have been more ideal ways to utilize that cooldown, but Aegis’ priority is to lower the number of combatants as much as possible, as fast as possible.” Hae-won spoke quickly as the battlemaster’s body vanished from the arena on Aegis’ livestream broadcast. “As we all know, in structured PvP matches, even brawls, healing will be reduced to half at the 5 minute mark, and disabled completely after 10 minutes. Even under such harrowing conditions, Aegis cannot forget these basic rules or they will eliminate any possible chance he and Finley may have for victory.” She paused to take a deep breath before continuing.

“Only 30 seconds into this match, the 14 vs 2 has already turned into an 11 vs 2.” Hae-won smiled nervously while leaning in close to the broadcasting screen, watching Aegis’ every movement intensely.

“How’d he know that he had enough damage stored in his Virabhadra already?” Sapphire mumbled with disbelief as she stood alongside the others, watching Aegis’ broadcast within the registration hall.

“Because they gave my son the one thing you should never give him if you want to defeat him.” Pyri smirked at her. “Time to study.”

Makaroth continued to watch in silence, glaring at the broadcast while Synopse anxiously glanced between Makaroth’s demonic glare and the broadcast of his son fighting alongside Finley.

As the light dome from Aegis’ virabhadra spell faded and the red arms of Shiva dissipated, Aegis took a fighting stance and faced the melee combatants staring him down. The monk, druid, dragoon, assassin, and magic-knight that was wielding the two handed maul all gave pause, spreading out in front of him. Aegis did nothing but glare at the five, and this was enough to cause them to hesitate, none willing to go in first.

“Don’t fear them.” Iouen shouted across the arena. “Their flashy attacks are over. Both of their big damage spells have 5 minute cooldowns. Right now they are vulnerable. He can’t outheal all of us.” Iouen’s words were enough to return confidence to the players in front of Aegis, much to his dismay.

“If you can’t do something about these rangers, I’m gonna be in trouble.” Finley shouted down to Aegis.

“Use your aura of darkness to blind them.” Aegis replied.

“That’ll block the use of your wings. Our skills don’t really mesh well together.” Finley replied.

“That’s fine, I’ll be okay without them for a bit.” Aegis replied back before being forced to jump backwards and avoid the swing of the large maul crashing down towards him - it impacted the tiles on which Aegis had been standing moments before and sent them flying into the air in pieces due to the hit.

“If you say so. Aura of Darkness.” Finley called out, and with his words, a black burst of shadowy abyssal mist erupted from his body, engulfing him as well as the skies above the arena, blocking out the sun completely from those below the mist. This resulted in Aegis becoming the only visible thing in the arena, due to his glowing Avatar form - though just as Finley had warned, the darkness was causing the light of Aegis’ wings to flicker in and out of existence.

No longer able to see Finley in the dark mist, the Dragoon, Battlemaster, and Wizard that were focused on him decidedly changed their focus towards Aegis. Within seconds, the cinderbolts that were burning away at Finley’s health were flown through the air out of the dark mist and planted themselves on Aegis' body in various places.

Aegis completely ignored their existence, though - relying on the healing from the new aura form of his healing wind spell to offset it. Instead, he needed all of his focus to dodge, guard, parry and block the attacks of the 5 melee combatants in front of him. This switched to 7 very quickly when Finley’s battlemaster and dragoon arrived and came at him from behind. There was nothing but the sound of metal clashing all around Aegis as he made use of all of the training he had undergone the past few weeks.

There were many of them, but none of them were nearly as skilled as Herilon or his party members. It wasn’t long before their frustrations were beginning to show - all the while Finley utilized the dark mist to soar through the sky and locate the two ranger players cleverly keeping themselves concealed by utilizing camouflage skills.

“I can’t fucking land a single. Fucking. STRIKE!” The maul-wielder yelled out in frustration, swinging more wild with every strike, until a final vertical swing was taken at Aegis, which Aegis ducked underneath just barely, causing the swing to pass by and slam into the monk player instead, dealing massive damage.

“You guys might wanna be careful with those big weapons you’re swinging around. They’re not toys, you know.” Aegis said in a mocking tone, grinning at the maul-wielding warrior. This angered him further, provoking more reckless attacks which Aegis was able to easily dodge.

“I can’t use any of my skills without hitting you idiots. Back off if you can’t land attacks, you’re just in the way.” One of the dragoon players shouted.

“How’s a cleric player so damn slippery?” the assassin added in frustration. Let me just hit him with my wire cooldown, would you all?”

“And let you take the bounty? No thankssss.” The druid hissed in his cobra form.

“None of you idiots are going to kill him if you don’t work tog-” Iouen tried to instruct them, but speaking gave away his position, allowing Finley to dive out of the black mist towards the ground on the far side of the arena towards Iouen.

Iouen had been leaning up against the wall, his clothing and skin shifting colors to match that of the wall he was up against. The moment he spotted Finley diving at him with his greatsword, though, Iouen dashed out of the path of the strike, causing the black blade to slash into the wall of the arena.

“There you are. You’re really the only troublemaker here.” Finley said as he turned to face the fleeing Iouen. “If I can just take you out, they’ll be nothing but a bunch of bumbling morons.”

“Pinning shot.” Iouen jumped in the air and spun around 360 degrees, releasing an arrow in Finley’s direction during the instant he’d been facing him. The arrow shot true, but Finley jumped to the side to avoid it. This wasn’t enough - without even turning to look at how Finley had dodged the shot, Iouen was able to perfectly redirect it to hit Finley in the back.

“Tch.” Finley sucked his teeth, quickly glancing around at his surroundings until he’d spotted a small green bird hiding on the ground nearby, staring up at him. “Hate birds.”

“I love them. Especially sitting ducks.” Iouen replied while he turned to face Finley and nocked an arrow.

“Do I look like a duck to you?”

“Quack quack.” Iouen mocked as he released the shot and it split into dozens of more arrows, all of which began to converge on Finley. Due to having been hit by the pinning shot, vines had shot out from Finley’s back and rooted themselves in the sandy tiled floor of the arena at his feet, holding him in place. Finley was able to make use of a wave of black mist that washed over his body to clear himself of the crowd control effect, then jump out of the way at the last moment to avoid the arrows as they impacted the ground and wall near where he’d been standing.

“There we go. Now your offensive and defensive cooldowns have both been used. You really are a sitting duck.” Iouen spoke proudly.

“We’ll see about that.” Finley tightly gripped the hilt of his greatsword in frustration.