Chapter 251: Momma Said Knock You Out

“Finley… I could use my wings…” Aegis called out with a strained voice, barely audible across the arena over the sounds of clashing blades. Finley was staring down Iouen, who had an arrow pulled back in the drawstring of his bow and was aiming it directly at Finley’s head. He wasn’t firing, however, but waiting patiently for any sort of movement out of the Harbinger of Darkness that stood before him. Similarly, Finley stood completely still, weighing his options. He knew full well that with his cooldowns unavailable to him, every single minor decision he made from this point on would be incredibly significant.

Finley’s eyes wandered down towards Iouen’s feet briefly, gauging his stance to get a feel for what he was posturing to do next. It was somewhat intimidating to see how prepared he looked to dodge Finley’s next move - his stance was better than that of Quiver’s, who he’d had plenty of experience sparring with in the past. This was enough to tell him that engaging Iouen, despite being so close, would be a mistake.

He took a deep breath, and with a wiggle of his fingers, canceled the dark aura of abyssal mist that had been floating in the skies above the arena, allowing once more for the sunlight to shine down on the battle. He then jumped backwards and to the side as Iouen fired off his next few shots, parrying away any arrows that were not marked as pinning shot arrows, while Iouen curiously tilted his head to the side at this decision.

“You’re running away?” Iouen asked him in a condescending tone. Finley didn’t reply, but instead smirked while a flash of light erupted from the wings of Aegis - their forms now fully restored.

With glowing wings, Aegis utilized the shield that he had fastened on his pack to repeatedly cast two guard projections around himself to block incoming strikes from the 7 opponents wailing on him. Frontal attacks, he’d parry with his claws. Back attacks, he’d deflect and redirect upwards or downwards using his wings, and any he couldn’t block, he’d turn his back towards so that they hit his shield instead. From the sides, he made use of the guard projections, changing the angles and their elevations to make it impossible for anyone to find an opening.

Adding onto his defenses, the 7 melee strikers coming at him from all sides were getting in each other’s way. The two dragoon players and Maul wielding player required wide swings to land their most powerful attacks. The assassin, monk, and druid needed much less space, and the battlemaster was forced out completely - relying solely on angling in his floating weapons to strike at Aegis, which he easily managed.

The only reliable source of damage on Aegis was that of the wizard’s cinderbolts, but Aegis’ aura of healing was managing to offset it.

Still, even when attacks were blocked and parried, he was taking damage, and forced to heal himself with his fast casted heals in between strikes. With his stat points dumped into mana regeneration, he wasn’t at risk of dying immediately, but simultaneously he wasn’t managing to land any significant retaliatory damage.

Worse, was that structured PvP in this game world was designed specifically to counteract stalling playstyles like Aegis’, in that after 5 minutes of this match starting, his healing would be halved. 10 minutes, and he’d not be able to heal himself at all anymore. This meant he was on a timer, and as the 2 minute mark went by, he began to feel the pressure. His stamina was beginning to near its halfway point, from all of the blocks and parries that he was executing.

In between his defensive moves, he found himself looking between the gaps in his opponents at Finley to see what he was doing, but only found him struggling to dodge ranged strikes from Iouen, and a still yet unseen Ranger who was firing across the arena at him. Worse for Finley was that the final and 11th combatant, who’d been standing towards the middle of the arena seemingly unsure what to do, finally jumped into action by engaging Finley with his scepter and shield - wielding the typical attire for a cleric class player.

With this in his view, Aegis knew he wasn’t going to get any help. He only had three minutes left to do something about this extremely lopsided battle, and he had to do it himself.

He made use of the training he’d participated in over the past few weeks, and started leaning into the movement of his opponents. To conserve his own stamina, he instead began redirecting the attacks at his back to hit the other opponents that were adjacent to the attackers, utilizing their stamina to deal damage to each other rather than use his own.

He’d managed to get a handle on a few of the opponents fighting styles and attack patterns - some were using oddly static damage rotations that you’d expect them to use on an NPC boss as they attempted to maximize their damage output onto Aegis. Others, like the maul-wielding fighter at his front, who was attacking recklessly with no rime or reason. The frustration from all of them however was easily seen on their faces, as at least for now, Aegis was able to prevent any direct hits on himself.

“Enough dancing around. World piercing strike!” A dragoon player behind him finally shouted out in frustration, charging up a glowing strike on the tip of his spear. Aegis had little time to react, and quickly gauged his options as he saw the orange glow from the spell mix in with the white glow of his wings from behind him. He thought of dodging, or redirecting it to make use of this dragoons cooldown skill, but then had to decide who to redirect it at. A quick glance with his eyes told him that the Monk, Druid, Assassin, and other Dragoon were all glancing in the direction of the attacking dragoon’s skill, being mindful of where it was going. The battlemaster was too focused on controlling his five floating weapons to look, and the Maul-wielding fighter didn’t care to look.

Both would be prime targets to redirect the strike at, but Aegis knew he’d still be able to make use of the reckless behavior from the fighter and instead, made the split second decision to strike both his wings out at the glowing orange spear, grabbing the shaft just beyond the dangerous bladed tip so that he could apply force to angle the shot towards the battlemaster.

The opposing strength stats of himself and the dragoon doing the attack went in his favor, given that dragoons are a dexterity-based class. This allowed Aegis’ plan to go off perfectly - the orange beam of light shot out from the dragoon’s spear just as Aegis shifted to the left and re-angled the spear to the right enough so that it shot out at the assassin player and battlemaster player. Of the two, the assassin was the only one to jump out of the way, while the battlemaster looked down at the beam as it impacted him, like a deer caught in headlights.

“Combatant Ladran has been eliminated.”

“Tch, move out of the way you moron.” The offending dragoon shouted out in frustration as the battlemaster’s weapons fell to the ground, ready to be looted by the victorious player. His body hadn’t even finished dissipating from the gameworld before the assassin player let out an angry roar.

“Back off, and I’ll keep him busy until the healing timer kicks in.” The assassin ordered the others as he spread out the fingers on both of his hands. Both dragoons complied first, followed by the monk. The maul-wielder hesitated in backing off, but eventually did so as the assassin used his spell quickly after his warning went out. Ten wires formed on the tips of each of his fingers, and at the ends of each wire appeared a dagger. Immediately after they’d finished forming, all wires began to rapidly spin around the assassin, cutting into anything and everything around him as he lunged at Aegis. Rather than completely try to dodge the attack, however, Aegis lunged at the slow-to-react druid with less dexterity and strength stats than the other classes, and grabbed onto the druid in his cobra form as he attempted to slither away.

The other players who’d backed off were weary of intervening due to the violent, high damage nature of the wire attack from the assassin as it engulfed Aegis, but Aegis made sure to yank the druid with a grapple back into the wires alongside himself, so that he too was taking damage.

Desperate, the druid quickly shifted back into his humanoid form to break out of Aegis’ grapple, with a bright puff of green mist erupting from his body which momentarily blinded Aegis as he lost grip of the druid - but Aegis had seen Ren beast shift enough times to have a sense for where the druid’s real body would form after the transformation and was able to quickly re-grapple the druid, then yank him with great force into the assassin player, allowing the wires and daggers to rapidly slice him up.

Aegis then quickly cast a heal on himself to recover from the massive damage he was taking from the wires, while watching as the druid failed to get out of them or heal himself enough to offset the damage they were dealing to him.

“Combatant Chijio has been eliminated.”

“What are you idiots doing?” Iouen shouted angrily at the central part of the arena where the others were fighting. It wasn’t just him who’d gotten annoyed by how events were unfolding, as the hidden ranger suddenly fired a large volley of arrows at Aegis while he was trapped in the wires, still taking cinderbolt damage. The amount of damage he was taking, despite his mithral armor, was massive. He was forced into repeatedly healing himself to survive, and the two dragoons, monk, and maul-wielding fighter were eagerly readying ranged attacks from outside the wirestorm to join in on the damage.

Finley, however, wasn’t letting the chance go to waste. The moment the volley of arrows had been fired at Aegis, he’d managed to finally pinpoint the location of the last combatant - a ranger hiding camouflage near the southern end of the arena. He was leaning against the wall similarly to how Iouen had been hiding, with his skin and clothing morphed to match the colors and textures of the object he was up against.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

With a flash of his black wings, he launched himself away from the cleric who was engaging him in melee combat, and maneuvered around several redirected arrows that had been swirling around him, compliments of Iouen. Within seconds, he arrived at the location of the ranger who’d been too focused on maximizing his damage on Aegis, and managed to catch him off guard by crashing down on him from above.

Engulfed in black mist, Finley’s greatsword did massive damage, and it only took a few fast swings against the ranger to take him off, despite the efforts of the ranger trying to avoid the strikes and disengage from Finley.

“Combatant Prondar has been eliminated.”

With this, the arrow barrage on Aegis ceased, allowing him to equalize his health with repeated healing casts. The other combatants who were eagerly waiting outside of the wirestorm saw this, and one of the dragoons reared up a strike while the maul-wielder prepared another earth-based spell, causing the head of his large weapon to begin giving off a brown glow. Both spells would be coming at Aegis from opposing sides. Aegis knew the one most likely to dodge a redirect would be the attentive dragoon, but he couldn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

He knew he needed to not only dodge both of their attacks, but make them hit each other. The dragon’s glowing spear shot off first, piercing through the spinning daggers and wires. Aegis couldn’t get close enough with his wings to redirect it, given the distance the dragoon was attacking from, and the fact that the wire attack was binding him up and slowing his movement massively.

The assassin continued to grin at Aegis’ predicament, proudly staring at the red damage numbers repeatedly appearing above Aegis’ head. The only thought on his mind, in that moment, was that he’d be the one collecting the bounty. The last thing he was expecting was for Aegis to dash towards him, to get closer to the source of the wires.

Still, the assassin was alert enough to jump backwards and try to avoid Aegis’ lunge, seeing Aegis’ hand extended out towards the collar of his leather armor as he attempted to grab it. Despite jumping backwards, though, he moved nowhere. A guard from Aegis’ shield was projected right behind the assassin, causing his back to bump into it and prevent his backwards movement, which in turn allowed Aegis to quickly grab the collar of the assassins armor and oppose the assassins strength stat in a grapple check. Only, Aegis already knew the stats of the assassin - he’d researched it before the brawl, and knew he’d have enough difference in strength that he could not only grab the assassin, but yank him towards where Aegis’ had been standing and switch places.

This in turn resulted in the assassin being in the path of the dragoons high damage cooldown, taking massive damage. It wasn’t enough to outright kill the assassin, but Aegis threw in an extra quick claw attack for good measure, and that did the trick.

The others barely had time to process what had happened as the wires began to dissipate from the game world. The message of a combatant being defeated hadn’t even gone out yet, and the attack from the maul-wielder fired off.

He slammed his maul into the ground, causing the arena floor to crack open and form a fissure, which quickly ripped apart the tiles as it grew outward in front of the fighter’s body towards Aegis, the fading assassin, and the dragoon who stood opposite. The dragon still had a dumbstruck expression on his face, processing the fact that he’d just accidentally hit the assassin instead of Aegis.

Nonetheless, he saw the fissure coming and made a last minute attempt to jump up into the air to get out of the path of its high, ground based damage. Unfortunately, Aegis knew this player had a tendency to dodge upwards - he’d seen plenty of footage of his fighting style on his mercenary page. Thus, Aegis used his second shield projection to form his shield vertically in the air above the dragoon, causing his head to slam into it. This, in turn, knocked him back to the ground where he ate the full force of the fissure attack, which dealt massive damage, and repeated damage for anyone who remained standing on top of the fissure.

Due to the shock of the projection forming, and the time it took the dragoon to get back to his feet, he didn’t have enough time to get out of the fissure before it took him out.

“Combatant Pagrue has been eliminated.”

“Combatant Quavio has been eliminated.”

Within the span of a few seconds, both were taken out by friendly fire. The monk, dragoon, and fighter all cautiously glared at Aegis as he flapped his wings in the air to move upwards and away from the crackling fissure, the loud sounds of the earths destruction dominating their ears.

“Come on, seriously?” The wizard, who maintained cinder bolts on Aegis, yelled out at them. Aegis landed softly a good distance away and began rapidly healing himself to recover the damage and get himself back to full. “Stop him, he was almost dead. Don’t let him just heal!”

“No, you idiots, You need a proper plan! Stop using your skills so foolishly!” Iouen shouted out at them. The monk and dragoon listened to this command, but the maul-wielder did not, and rushed forward towards Aegis with reckless abandon. Aegis lifted his shield to block a strike, then another, but didn’t need to put any effort in retaliating, as instead a pair of black wings descended down from the arena sky and crashed into the fighter, a black greatsword swinging at his back and cutting him down.

“Combatant Ouergan has been eliminated.”

As the fighter’s body disappeared from the arena, his maul fell to the floor, and Finley landed softly beside Aegis. The black and white wings contrasted heavily with one another once more as they stood side by side.

The cleric walked forward anxiously to align himself with the monk and dragoon, not but 20 meters in front of Aegis and Finley. While Iouen instead positioned himself a good distance away alongside the wizard with the fire staff.

“I’m sorry, my cinderbolts are not able to out damage his aura of healing.” The wizard apologized to the others.

“You shouldn’t look at it that way…” Iouen said in a calm voice. “Instead, think of it as, your cinderbolts are counteracting his aura of healing. And all that’s about to change.”

“5 Minutes have passed since combat has begun. All sources of healing received by players will now be reduced by 50%.”

“Good, that means that he won’t be able to keep healing through our attacks.” The monk cracked his knuckles.

“But it also means their damage cooldowns will be up soon.” The cleric commented.

“Precisely. However, we still have the numbers advantage. If you’d all just listen to me, I have a strategy that can guarantee our victory.” Iouen replied confidently, though the others did not look so confident.

“Oh really? Care to share it with the rest of the class?” Finley asked in a mocking tone, but got no response.

“Hm.” Emerill smirked as he was led back inside the meeting chamber of the Sages of Destiny guildhall. All the officer's eyes were on him, and he was reveling in the attention. “Figured you’d want me back.”

Makaroth looked up at the livestream of Aegis as he stood in the arena alongside Finley, with only 5 opposing players remaining, then glared back down to Emerill.

“Tell your friend we’ll pay. I’m hiring him. End this.” Makaroth spoke coldly.

“Seriously?” Synopse asked with a tone of disbelief, but he got no response.

“We don’t work on promises.” Emerill shrugged.

“Pay him.” Makaroth ordered the VGN employee, who stood relatively close to the doorway that Emerill had come through. He ignored Synopse’s reaction completely.

“Yes sir.” The VGN hurriedly shot up from the table and rushed towards Emeril.

“Isn’t this a bit much? Is it really that bad if he makes it to the tournament? We’ll be-” Synopse was cut off.

“I’m not gonna have that little shit ruined everything I’ve worked towards. This tournament is OUR big show. Not his.” Makaroth snapped back at Synopse angrily, silencing the room so that the only sounds to be heard were that of the VGN employee trading a large sack of coins to Emerill.

“Pleasure doing business with you. I’ll let Finley know about his new mission right away.” Emerill replied with a devious tone, before opening up his interface and fidgeting around with it for a few seconds.

Pyri, who was seemingly watching Aegis’ live stream alongside the others, let out a long, drawn out sighing sound as she canceled her invisible spell that she’d cast in the center of the old, run down registration hall. Once the invisibility faded on the spell, the others were able to see it - a scrying spell had been up in front of her the entire time of which she was keeping an eye on Emeril, utilizing the equipment that he’d dropped when Aegis had defeat him back in the graveyard of Orm.

Lina, Sapphire, Herilon, Rakkan and Darkshot were all shocked to see the appearance of the scry out of the corner of their eyes, beyond the transparent livestream viewers they were watching in their interface.

“You were scrying?” Sapphire asked curiously.

“What did you see?” Lina asked worriedly.

“One moment.” Pyri replied, as if she was inconvenienced by something minor. She then quickly logged out of the gameworld. As Jillian, she then hopped out of her Simbox and ran over to Eli’s, and hit the Simbox communicator to speak to him directly.

“Makaroth just paid him 2 million to turn on you. Knock his ass out.” Jillian said as quickly as she could, knowing full well the time shift between the gameworld and the real world was unforgivingly not in her favor.

Aegis, who remained standing beside Finley with their wings glowing closely, heard her voice traveling to his ears through the Simbox interface. He saw the five enemies in front of him, and pulled his shield off of his back as if he were preparing to engage them.

“Be careful of his Virabhadra, it’s a slow spell animation once he’s casted it, all you need to do is keep your distance and not let him gra-” Iouen began to explain to the others, but was interrupted.

“VIRABHADRA!” Aegis shouted, slamming his shield into Finley as he stood beside him, as Finley was in the middle of swinging his greatsword down on Aegis.

“Pierci-” Finley wasn’t able to get the spell off, despite them both casting nearly at the same time. Pyri’s warning had reached him just as Finley had received the message from Emerill through his friends list, but Aegis was the first to react, causing an undeniably deadly amount of damage to Finley and killing him instantly.

“Combatant Finley has been eliminated.”

“Two million well spent.” Aegis called out with a big grin, speaking to no one in particular. The other five combatants were looking at him in complete shock.