Chapter 252: Iouen the Strategist Pt.1

A few moments earlier, Finley stood alongside Aegis within the brawl arena. Their wings stood idle, the light and darkness clashing and competing for the space between them. Aegis had his shield fastened to his back and his claws in front, in a fighting pose as he glared across the arena at their remaining five opponents. At that moment, a message appeared in front of his screen, from Emerill.

“Payment received, contract signed. You’re now working for Makaroth.”

Finley eyed the message, not wanting to raise his hands to wave it away and alert Aegis that something was up. Instead, he grinded his fingers around the hilt of his greatsword, holding it in front of himself. Aegis’ attention was completely off of him, and his Piercing Darkness skill was off of cooldown. Even if a projected shield were to appear, it would still deal enough damage to kill Aegis in one hit, specifically because the skill did bonus damage to light-aligned players.

Still, Finley hesitated. His eyes wandered from Emerill’s message, to Aegis’ openings as he stood beside him, unaware of the change in Finley’s allegiance. One second passed, then another, then a third, and he continued to take no action until finally he saw Aegis casually removing his shield from his back.

“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 spoke, as Finley saw Aegis ever so subtly posturing to bash his shield at him, not the players in front of them. Even seeing this, Finley did nothing, but his lips ever so slightly began to curl up at the corners into a smirk.

“VIRAB-” the moment Aegis began casting it, is when Finley finally took action, and half-heartedly swung his greatsword down towards Aegis.

“PIERC-”

“HADRA!” Aegis finished the cast, erupting in light and causing massive damage to Finley, forcing him out of the brawl. His vision went blank, and a few moments later he reappeared inside the registration hall alongside the others, in the same place he’d been before entering the brawl. The only difference was, his greatsword was absent.

“What the hell was that?” Rakkan was the first to react, stomping forward on the creaking wooden floor towards Finley, then grabbing him by the collar of his armor and lifting him up off his feet. Similarly, Lina had drawn out her daggers and was glaring angrily at him.

“Once an evil bastard, always an evil bastard, huh?” Sapphire eyed him as she pulled a carrot from her inventory and bit into it.

“Time to throw you back in a prison cell.” Herilon joined in.

“Whoa whoa whoa, easy guys…” Finley raised his hands peacefully. “It’s not like I broke any laws. A brawl is an FFA in the end, isn’t it?” Finley smiled half-heartedly, staring down at the furious eyes of Rakkan. “I mean, you’re welcome to attack me, but, it’d just result in you being thrown in jail, not me. Unless I’m about to bear witness to the first instance of corruption by the leading Kordas guild?” He added in a condescending tone, glancing between Herilon and Rakkan.

“He’s right.” Darkshot said.

“Put him down. It’s not worth it.” Sapphire said. Rakkan was hesitant to comply, but eventually lowered Finley back to the floor so that his feet landed on the wood in front of him, then released his grip on Finley’s collar. Finley casually brushed his armor where Rakkan had grabbed him, just as the door leading inside bursted open. An annoyed Cheryl quickly stomped inside the room and pushed Rakkan out of the way, taking his place and grabbing Finley by the collar of his armor once more to lift him up off his feet with her impressively high strength stat.

“Are you kidding me?” Cheryl roared at him, taking everyone else by surprise. “What the hell was that?”

“What was what?” Finley asked, while simultaneously the group saw Pyri begin to re-materialize inside the gameworld in the room across from them, in the exact same location that she’d logged out from.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Cheryl snarled at him. Pyri quickly took stock of the situation, eying everyone in the room carefully.

“He got wind of what was going on faster than I could attack him.” Finley shrugged as best as he could given his current position.

“Heh.” Pyri chuckled loudly, causing Cheryl to turn her head to catch Pyri in the corner of her eye. “There’s no way. I scryed on your friends and discovered of the bunch, one of them was waiting around Savringard outside the Sages of Destiny guild hall. I figured something was up, so I kept my eye on that one, and the moment he made the deal, I warned Aegis through his Simbox communicator - the fastest way possible to alert him. Even then, there was absolutely no way I was able to alert him before you were told by your friend the deal was made.”

“Damn right.” Cheryl’s anger was ignited from Pyri’s statements, lifting Finley higher up into the air. “Because of you, we’re losing all our money.”

“Wait. What?” Herilon looked at him curiously.

“You hesitated? On purpose?” Darkshot asked to clarify the situation.

“Calm down.” Finley rolled his eyes at Cheryl. “The contract that I gave to Emerill specifically stated that upon payment, I would turn on Aegis and become his enemy. Nothing in the contract stated that I actually needed to defeat Aegis. I told you, always play both sides of a conflict.”

“What about playing both sides? You coulda got in good with Makaroth if you took him out.” Cheryl grumbled, but slowly lowered Finley to the ground.

“Yeah, I guess I’m playing favorites.” He smirked. “I’ve done my part, the rest is up to your party leader.” He spoke to the others, before turning back to Cheryl. “We should probably get out of here though, I don’t think we’re welcome here anymore.”

“You’re not.” Lina growled at them. Without another word, Cheryl and Finley hastily made their way out of the registration hall and headed back out into the streets of Kordas.

“Whoa, what a quick reaction from Aegis! I knew that the Finley guy was no good!” Ren cheered, his voice barely audible above the other cheering players that stood around him within the Kordas tavern. Everyone was applauding Aegis for his quick and decisive reaction to the situation, throwing fists in the air and hooting - except for Quinn and Artaphernes, who were staring at the large transparent livestream broadcast screen above the bar with a look of concern.

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Ren, in his excitement, turned to his older sister and saw her look - quickly stoppin his cheers to eye her curiously.

“What’s wrong? There’s only five enemies left! Aegis has basically already won, right?” Ren asked, but Quinn softly shook her head in disagreement. “But he was handling them no problem when there were 11 of them. Five should be easy!”

“No. It’s the opposite.” Artaphernes replied on behalf of the worried Quinn. “If Iouen takes control of the situation and they stop playing so recklessly, Aegis is still at an extreme disadvantage. From here on in, it’s going to get extremely difficult for Aegis to win, especially without Finley.”

“That certainly simplifies things.” Iouen was the first to shake off the shock of what they’d just witnessed. Aegis quickly re-applied his shield onto his back, then took his fighting stance towards the others.

“No virabhadra means we can go in without restraint, right?” The monk player asked.

“Wrong.” Iouen shouted aggressively. “You’ve all been playing this fight incorrectly from the beginning. We’re up against a unique class holder with equipment that far surpasses our own. Despite our numbers advantage, we were never the aggressors here. The optimal strategy is to not engage him.” Iouen ordered, causing the Monk and Dragoon to take a few steps back away from Aegis.

Aegis let out a frustrated huff of air after hearing these words, and broke into a sprint towards the two remaining martial fighters.

“Disengage. Do not let him into your melee range.” Iouen ordered them. Their hesitation was very apparent, neither felt inclined to flee from the claws of Aegis as he quickly closed the gap. “DO IT IF YOU WANT TO WIN!” Iouen shouted, breaking through their hesitation. Finally, they complied. The dragoon and Monk began using their superior dexterity to create space between themselves and Aegis. The moment they began running, Aegis gave up on charging forward towards them.

“The wizards cinderbolts are low damage, but once the 10 minutes are up, his healing will be ineffective and it will be enough to eventually kill him. A wizard on their own will have difficulty kiting and keeping distance from a martial fighter, but with our help, we should be able to protect him. All we have to do is stay away from Aegis and let the cinderbolts burn him down, and he has absolutely no counterplay to this strategy on his own. That is how we take advantage of our numbers. Understand?” Iouen explained to the others.

Aegis turned to glare across the arena at the distant Iouen, but made no attempts to charge at him.

“It’s unfortunate that we cannot be in a party for this brawl, that means all of our communications must be done vocally, allowing our opponent to hear everything we say. But even if he knows our strategy, there isn’t much he can do.” Iouen continued, as the dragoon, the monk, and the cleric all began posturing to protect the wizard, while the wizard maintained control of the 4 cinderbolts burning away at Aegis’ health.

Iouen, on the other hand, began to strafe off to the side slowly, an arrow nocked in his bow and aimed at Aegis’ head, but not firing.

“Remember, any damage you deal will be added to his Varibhadra that he will undoubtedly try to use in 5 minutes, once the healing is set to 0%.”

“Why is he just letting him strategize like that?” Sapphire shouted in frustration at her livestream broadcast.

“He’s not ‘letting’ him.” Herilon corrected her.

“We studied all of these mercenaries. Iouen the strategist always wins any large scale mercenary battles he leads, because on top of him having incredible game knowledge and great strategies, he never dies during the battles.” Pyri explained.

“His kiting skills are amazing. Aegis isn’t going after him because he knows it’d be a waste of time. With this many opponents to use as a shield, he’d never reach Iouen even if he went all out.” Herilon added on.

“So he’s screwed, right? If they really hold back Aegis for 5 minutes, they can just burn him down slowly with those cinderbolts?” Darkshot asked. No one had a response to this, instead the air filled with tension as they all went back to watching the livestreams on display in their respective interfaces.

Aegis quickly glanced between his opponents, then eyed the timer for the duration of the match. It had just hit the 6 minute mark, and as Iouen had instructed them, none of his opponents were showing any signs of aggression. Instead, his health was slowly being burnt away by the four cinderbolts that were being pressed on various parts of his body.

He knew from watching Pyri that trying to shake off the bolts would be a waste of time. He knew from watching the video footage of Iouen that trying to catch him would be a waste of time. A dragoon and Monk both had impressively high dexterity, they alone would be fast enough to stay ahead of Aegis and keep the wizard safe, and any attacks he did land, the cleric would block with his shield or guards and heal it back up. As he pondered all of this, he was forced to cast a heal on himself - with the 50% healing reduction, his aura of healing alone was no longer enough to offset the cinderbolt damage.

“Aura of beauty.” Aegis then cast, doubling up on his auras to boost his stamina recovery.

“Here he comes.” Iouen warned them, and all of them took a fighting stance.

“It’s a foolproof strategy, I’m really at a disadvantage here.” Aegis grumbled across the arena, just loud enough for them to hear. “The thing about strategies though, is, well, it’s one thing to plan them out and theorycraft them.” Aegis dug his feet into the tiles of the floor, taking a fighting stance as his wings postured backwards on his back, preparing to thrust him forward with a violent flap. “It’s another thing to execute them.” Aegis mumbled to himself, before launching forward towards his opponents.

The monk and dragoon reacted by jumping backwards, but Aegis immediately dug his wings into the ground to stop his forward momentum and instead opened his palms towards the wizard, emitting bright flashes of white light from his fists as he used his holy mastery to fire off multiple smites towards the wizard. The wizard was watching Aegis intently and saw the attacks coming, making an attempt to jump to the side to avoid the smites, but a shield projection formed on his right to block him - the wizard side jumping into the shield and hitting it with his shoulder.

He then attempted to jump left to avoid the linear projectiles of the smites, but a second guard projection formed, causing the wizard to hit his shoulder into that as well. With milliseconds left, he knew jumping forward or backward wouldn’t take him out of the path of the smites, and was about to take a direct hit if not for a third projected shield appearing in front of the wizard at the last second, cast by the cleric. The cleric blocked Aegis’ smites, then quickly began healing himself from the damage he took.

“Multishot.” Iouen shouted, firing several arrows out of his bow at once. “Pinning shot.” He added, causing three of the 15 fired arrows to begin glowing green. Aegis aggressively ran at the arrows rather than away from them, getting close enough to the volley to create a shield projection directly in front of the glowing green arrows, so that Iouen had no time to redirect them away from the guard. The impact on the guard caused the pinning shot vines to erupt out of the projection, which faded 2 seconds later and left the vines to fall pointlessly to the ground.

Aegis took a good amount of damage from casting guards directly in the path of the volley, but it completely negated Iouen’s attack and wasted his mana. He quickly healed himself from the damage while launching himself forward toward the wizard, simultaneously the cleric player moved to position himself in front of the wizard with his shield.

The wizard, seeing Aegis approach, began running backwards away, and Aegis postured as if he would be charging directly at the cleric’s shield, but at the last moment launched himself up off the ground and flapped his wings to get a good amount of height above the cleric. The monk dashed and jump kicked through the air to cut off Aegis’ aerial charge, but Aegis created a guard on his left that the kick hit instead.

Aegis still took the damage from the kick, but his momentum wasn’t thrown off as he dove at the wizard. Next, the dragoon came in to play defense. Using a high jump with glowing magic on his feet, the dragoon was able to leap high up into the air.

“Sky shatter!” The dragoon called out, before whipping his spear with incredible force downward directly in the path of Aegis, the spear giving off an ominous red glow. It shot like a bullet towards the ground as Aegis quickly created a second guard projection in front of himself to stop his forward momentum, preventing him from colliding with the path of the dragoon’s attack.