Chapter 253: Iouen the Strategist Pt. 2

“How dishonorable.” Kenji spoke as he stood beside Yumily, on the deck of their airship as it continued to sail above the abyss. Kaito flanked her on the other side, and the group of them were watching a livestream broadcast on display, the livestream viewer floating above the deck of the ship in front of them on a large transparent screen.

“They’re not even hiding the fact that they all intend to team up on him now.” Kaito commented. Yumily said nothing, but had both of her hands clasped tightly together into a fist in front of her chest as she watched intently.

“C’mon kid.” Shinji murmured to himself as he anticipated Aegis’ next movements with his fingers, standing anxiously within his broadcaster editor simulation with all of Aegis’ camera angles visible in front of him - including a shot of Hae-won who was watching Aegis’ stream silently, sitting on the edge of her seat. She’d lost all calm and focus, and was enveloped in the situation, as was Aegis’ audience.

A brief glance at Aegis’ livestream chat saw it moving rather slowly considering the viewership numbers were inching up towards 3 million.

“I still don’t get why he went that route to qualify for the tournament? I thought he wanted a showdown with us?” Hajax asked with a condescending tone. “The guys an idiot - 5 on one, he’s got no chance.” Hajax then shook his head dismissively. He, Zuon and Seraxus were watching Aegis’ live stream while simultaneously Seraxus was streaming, the group of them sitting in an otherwise abandoned and rundown tavern with destroyed furniture scattered about, and several large holes in the wall.

“Nah… it’s fitting. If he wants a shot at me, he’s gotta at least be able to win that.” Seraxus smirked.

“Look at him.” Zuon motioned to Aegis’ expression on the stream. “He still thinks he can win.”

“Cause he can. If he’s smart enough.” Seraxus replied confidently.

Aegis lightly flapped his wings to glide back down to the ground of the arena floor, not wanting to reveal to his opponents just how bad he was at controlling his wings to fly - at best they were tools for jumping higher and gliding down slowly from otherwise dangerous heights, or staying hovering in one spot in the air for a bit.

His feet softly touched down on the sand-covered tiles of the arena floor, his eyes focused on his opponents. The cleric in the middle, with the monk on his left and dragoon on his right. The wizard further back, and the ranger Iouen behind him. All weapons drawn, pointed in Aegis’ direction. The time ticked down, and none of them took a step forward, doing their best to wait out the clock.

Aegis had his eyes jump from the clock, to his viewership numbers. He ran his mind quickly over the abilities he had in his arsenal, then reminded himself of the abilities of his enemies. The footage he’d seen of Iouen’s incredible kiting skills repeatedly played in his mind, and the thought of ever catching him and locking him down seemed impossible. His linear smites were not so easily manipulated as cinderbolts, they were too easy to dodge and block even if he used his guards.

He slowly began to clench his fists tighter and tighter in frustration. All the variables were presented before him, like a question on an exam - but he couldn’t find a solution. The sound of laughter began to echo in the back of his mind. He briefly glanced back up to his viewership numbers, and he knew Makaroth was watching. Mocking him, laughing at this hopeless situation he’d put him in. Being able to stop him from even participating in the tournament, how pathetic was he? There were so many more obstacles before him, and he wasn’t even getting past the starting line. The laugher got louder, and he lost his focus, glaring angrily and bearing his fangs towards his opponents but still taking no actions.

‘Do I even need to participate in this stupid tournament? Aren’t I just playing into their hands?’ Aegis’ thoughts wandered. ‘Just to stop Seraxus - to have a place where he can’t flee from combat by any means…’ he reminded himself why he was doing this. The laughter slowly faded into the background of his mind as Rakkan took its place.

“How can I tell him to control his anger, when I can’t even do it myself?” Aegis mumbled out loud to himself. Not loud enough for the others in the arena to hear, but enough that his viewers could. He quickly shook off his frustration, hopping in place and shaking out his shoulders in an attempt to reset his mind. “There’s no such thing as an exam question that doesn’t have a solution…” He spoke louder, this time so that his opponents could hear.

“You’re not going to come up with a strategy that beats us. Not in the…” Iouen eyed the timer, “three minutes you have remaining. There isn’t one.”

Aegis ignored him completely, he instead pulled up his interface and began pressing buttons on it wildly, his eyes racing from various menus and documents. Seeing him so unguarded and focused on his interface caused the dragoon and monk to look to one another curiously - the temptation to strike him while he was vulnerable was becoming too much to bear.

“Don’t.” Iouen warned them as he saw the dragoon take a single step forward. This was enough to dissuade him from taking any actions. A few more moments went by as Aegis continued to fidget around with his interface, until he suddenly closed it out with wide eyes and looked forward at the group with determination.

“Two thousand, two hundred and thirty three. That’s doable.” Aegis spoke suddenly. Iouen heard this number and squinted his eyes curiously, taking a moment to process what meaning it could possibly have.

“Two thousand… What’s that number mean?” The wizard asked, looking to Iouen anxiously. Before Iouen could respond, Aegis began dashing forward at incredible speed - this time going directly for the cleric. This was enough for Iouen to have the number clarified.

“That’s the amount of DPS he needs to burn through the cleric’s mana supply before the timer is up.” Iouen shouted. “He found a weakness, because the cleric can’t kite him. INTERRUPT HIS ATTACKS!” Iouen shouted worriedly.

“Shit.” The cleric anxiously dug his feet into the ground and raised his shield up as an angry winged Aegis closed in on him. The monk and dragoon both flanked to the sides as Aegis arrived and took swings at him with their weapons, but Aegis utilized guards to block their initial strikes while slashing out his claws at the shield of the cleric, the blades scratching over its surface.

The cleric braced the hit to reduce the damage, but Aegis wasn’t making any attempts to bypass brace or the shield, instead focused on hitting it as much as possible. His rate of attack was impressively relentless.

“DON’T LET HIM SWING LIKE THAT!” Iouen shouted in frustration. The wizard was the next to jump into action, and began manipulating his cinderbolts so that they were no longer simply burning Aegis, but were wrapping their cinders around his claws and applying magical force to redirect the swings upwards and downwards away from the shield of the cleric. It was working in stopping Aegis’ attacks with his claws, so he added in his wings.

He struck out with the pointed ends of the wings, dealing high amounts of holy damage as they slammed into the shield and released flashes of holy energy upon each impact.

Taking the damage he was, the cleric was focused to start casting repeated heals on himself. The healing was being reduced by half just as Aegis’ heals were, making it difficult for him to keep up with the damage he was taking. Iouen saw this, and was forced into action. He began firing volleys of arrows and curving them down at Aegis from above, hoping to encourage Aegis to disengage in order to dodge the arrows that were raining down on him.

Aegis did no such thing, instead began swatting at the arrows with his wings to minimize the damage, while repeatedly re-angling his shield projections on his left and right to prevent the dragoon and monk from getting through.

His guards, wings, claws all tied up by his opponents, he quickly flicked his shield off of his back, then dug his left foot into the straps of his shield as it landed on the tiled floor beneath his feet. He was able to quickly, loosely fasten his shield to the sole of his feet, then suddenly kicked his shield out at the cleric’s shield to utilize shield bash.

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It worked - the sound of Aegis’ shield clashing with the clerics rang out through the arena. It didn’t do as much damage to the cleric as Aegis would’ve liked, though.

“Bless.” Aegis was forced to cast using words, given all of his limbs were now tied up. The holy energy from his bless spell wrapped around all of his weapons - claws, shield, fists, wings. “Greater heal.” He followed it up with a self-heal to offset the damage he was taking from all of his opponents as they attempted to hold him back.

The wizard warped his cinderbolts completely off of Aegis’ body, forced to use them purely defensively. His cinder controls paled in comparison to Pyri’s, and was only able to actively manipulate two at a time. This meant he wasn’t able to deflect the two claws AND the shield, but Aegis’ shield foot was forcing him into awkward, hopping and spinning movements. It worked in his favor, adding more unpredictability to his attack patterns as he repeatedly lunged forward into the cleric, pushing him back and moving their engagement further from the center of the arena and closer to the outer walls.

“You gotta be kidding me.” Iouen gritted his teeth as he saw the damage numbers hitting the cleric - Aegis was easily clearing his proposed DPS check of two thousand two hundred on the Cleric. “I’ve been pressured less by entire guild armies.” Iouen grumbled to himself as he charged forward, closing in on the battle now that he saw his volleys were completely ineffective at stopping Aegis’ damage.

“He’s running me out of mana fast!” The cleric exclaimed.

“I can’t get past these fucking shield projections!” The dragoon shouted in frustration.

“If you’re holding anything back, I suggest you stop.” The wizard called out.

“Right.” The monk took a deep breath. “Tiger stance.” He called out, suddenly causing yellow transparent fangs to magically appear around his fists and feet. Hearing this gave Aegis pause, forcing him to turn to his left as the monk’s speed suddenly increased rapidly.

“Good.” Iouen let out a sigh of relief upon seeing this cooldown being used. “You’re a tiger stance user.”

The next punch from the monk slammed directly into Aegis’ shield projection - his fists were stopped by the shield, but the magical fangs passed through it and shot out towards Aegis’ head, forcing Aegis to turn his head from the cleric and tilt his neck to the side to dodge the fanged projectile that flew over his shoulder. The monk followed up with more attacks, each sending out fang projectiles that bypassed his projections.

Aegis released the projection that was separating himself from the monk, and instead of trying to just dodge the monk's strikes, he reached out at his next punch with his claws in an attempt to deflect his fists. His claw strike was disrupted by the cinderbolts of the wizard, though, allowing the monk to punch forward directly at Aegis.

Aegis then instead moved his left wing to redirect the fist, but saw out of the corner of his eye a close range pinning shot that’d been fired at it, coming from Iouen who’d closed in to make his shots much less predictable.

A pinning shot, Aegis knew, was something he couldn’t afford to get hit by - it’d allow the cleric to create distance and reset somewhat. Any time he allowed the cleric to recover would be time he couldn’t afford.

“Smite.” Aegis could angle his hand and fired a smite below his left wing, lifting up the left wing just enough so as to not hit it with his own attack. The smite then collided with the pinning shot, exploding the arrow mid-air and preventing the strike from hitting him.

In turn, though, he had no attention left to spend on the direct fist attack the monk was sending at him, and it crashed into the center of his chest, knocking him back off his feet and causing him to slam into his own shield projection that lay behind him, separating him from the dragoon.

The dragoon however was anticipating this moment of Aegis being off balance, and violently swept his spear along the floor of the arena, slicing out at the back of Aegis’ ankles from underneath his shield projection and landing a direct damaging attack of his own.

The monk didn’t let up and took several more rapid punches and kicks at Aegis. He re-created his projection in front of himself to disrupt the momentum of his strikes, but the magical fangs were still shooting through the projections at Aegis and forcing him to dodge - all while this was happening he was not dealing any damage to the cleric.

Again, another several arrows shot at Aegis from behind, and the dragoon did another sweeping spear strike at his feet. This time Aegis lifted his foot with the shield on it and angled it at the speartip, the pain from the blade cutting through his ankles finally subsiding after two seconds as his wincing expression cleared up.

He managed to brace the spear, but was forced to use all of his limbs defensively and heal himself over the next few seconds.

“See? He’s good, but he’s not unbeatable.” Iouen shouted encouragingly to them as they were managing to get Aegis’ attacks under control despite the high amount of aggression he was outputting. Two wings, four limbs, two shield projections. "That's an impressively high APM to control all of that, but it's gotta be your limit right? How long can you stay that fo-”

Aegis took his challenge to heart. He began wiggling his fingers to cast multiple smites, all angled at the cleric. Five shots at a time fired linearly out of his hands, exploding into the Clerics’ shield.

“I’ll take you all on.” Aegis roared angrily, sending a chill down Iouen’s spine.

“Tch.” Iouen’s wide-eyed expression told Aegis all he needed to know. He couldn’t keep his eyes focused on just one opponent at a time, though - he instead glanced towards the cleric who was preparing to jump away and disengage from Aegis. Before he could, though, Aegis stomped his right foot down onto the cleric's right foot, using opposing strength checks to crush his foot and pin it to the ground against the tiled arena floor, cracking it slightly from the impact and causing the cleric to shout out in pain.

“Get off of my foot, damnit.” The cleric shouted, striking out at Aegis with a shield bash which Aegis avoided taking head on by redirecting it with his right wing. He used his left wing for balance as he lifted his left foot up again to block another few strikes from the monk. The claws would pass through projections, but not his actual shield. He then spun around and attempted to claw strike the dragoon behind him but once again had his claws sent in the wrong directions due to the cinderbolts.

“Smite.” Aegis mumbled, casting out of his fist five more smites at the cleric's shield, smashing into the shield at point blank and erupting bright flashes of holy light from them. Following this, Iouen began firing arrows at Aegis rapidly, several multishots with random pinning shots mixed in. Aegis could tell he was getting flustered - but that didn’t help him in dodging the amount of shots now coming at him from behind.

He couldn’t move - he had to keep his right foot pinning down the cleric's foot else risk being disengaged from. He couldn’t use his real shield - it was the only thing preventing him from being beaten up by the monks' tiger stance. His claws were useless - the wizard had control of them completely. He was using his projections now to stop the dragoon from hitting him, so the only thing left to deal with the arrows were his wings, and they couldn’t stop pinning shots. Not all of them, at least.

Aegis allowed several pinning shots through - some hit his wings, but several others he was able to redirect beyond his wings to impact the cleric’s shield behind him, causing both Aegis and Cleric to get bound by vines that shot out from the point of the arrows impacts and dug themselves into the sandy tiled floor of the arena.

“Shit.” Iouen said as he’d realized what he’d done. Aegis no longer needed to use his right foot to hold the cleric in place, they were both pinned for the next few moments.

“Not good, I can’t move. He’s gonna have free reign on me.” The cleric shouted out worriedly.

“Should I burn the vines on the cleric?” The wizard asked.

“No, don’t let him use his claws or this is over.” Iouen replied quickly to this. “Just disrupt those smites - if he has to heal himself he can’t use smite. Can’t you guys deal more damage? Return the pressure?” Iouen asked, eying the monk who was rapidly kicking and punching his tiger-fangs into the shield on Aegis’ left foot which he was clumsily waving around - its size was helping a lot in enabling Aegis to behave in this way.

“Yeah, I guess.” The dragoon pulled his spear back and bent his knees into a fighting stance. “Let’s see how your shield projections take this. Swarm of stings.” He cast, causing his arms and spear to glow orange. Then, like a sewing machine, his spear began to shoot forward at Aegis’ shield projection that separated the dragoon from him. The arm and spear movements were way too fast to be visible by the human eye, and red damage numbers began to rapidly appear from the points of impact that the spears were having on Aegis’ shield projection.

Just as Iouen had wanted, Aegis was forced to quickly start healing himself from the damage, else risk dying.

“Nice.” Iouen grinned as he saw it happening. Aegis couldn’t smite, he had to do nothing but heal. The spear attacks were coming through incredibly fast. Aegis knew this attack made the dragoon immobile - all he had to do was move and he’d be able to stop being hit by it, but he was hit with the pinning shot and locked in place, and he couldn’t use his real shield to brace the spears and lower the damage due to him being forced to use it on the monk. He felt completely bound and tied up, and a few more seconds went by without him able to land any attacks on the cleric. He eyed the time of the match - there was only one minute remaining now.