Sofiane glared at Koyon walking towards him. “I’d shake your hand, but I don’t like you.”

“Oh no, my poor lonely hand,” Koyon said, stepping in front of Gula and Baran.

They were probably all going to die, but Sofiane’s pride refused to make their job easy. Koyon’s move to step in front of the other two gave Sofi more information than his former teammates probably intended. Specifically, it told Sofiane that they were using the same old tactics, and that Koyon slotted in for Sofiane on a 1:1 basis.

He didn’t know Koyon’s abilities, but he could make reasonable guesses. And if Koyon was with Xiuquan’s party, then he wasn’t a top-tier Hero yet, so they weren’t staring down another Daisy. The only question mark now was where Harald’s party stood.

“So, dear little Sofi wants to die. How about the rest of you?” Gula asked.

“I’ve wanted to die for years,” Pechorin replied.

Harald grinned. “I won’t speak for my teammates, but between the side that’s got one arrogant asshole, and the one that’s got three—”

“Four,” the raccoon girl corrected.

“—Then obviously I gotta side with the team that’s only got one.”

Baran raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have to side with anyone. Just leave.”

“Leaving is siding with you,” Faisal said, unfurling his whip.

“Staying is siding with murderers. If they didn’t kill Shrike directly, they gave the means to do it to whoever has her papers,” Baran said, gesturing at Shuixing.

Harald held up his hands. “Alright, fine, ya got me. I just really, really don’t like your fucking face.”

Baran sneered and reached for his hourglass-rod.

Sofiane was anxious. Xiuquan was still nowhere to be seen, so would explaining their opponents’ tactics to Harald and them even make sense without seeing the full combo in action? And, as a better question, would it even matter if they were that much weaker?

“Holy shit guys!” Natsuko yelled, bursting out of the jungle with a tangle of vines wrapped around herself. “We’re being attacked by— oh.”

Gula smiled with such million-watt maliciousness it made Sofiane shudder. His former teammate had always been a sadist, but for whatever reason, her hunting Natsuko and Shuixing seemed a matter of personal pleasure.

Koyon, however, just tilted his head. “Do I know her from somewhere?”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s our target,” Baran said.

Koyon shot him a nasty look as a reminder to Baran that he was only gracing their team temporarily on his rise to power. It was only a matter of time before Baran was as weak and unimportant to him as Natsuko. That exchange was exactly what Sofiane was hoping to see. The last team cohesion, the better.

“Are we still waiting for Xiu?” Gula asked.

“Nope,” Koyon said, flicking his baton and stomping forward.

If Koyon was filling Sofiane’s role, he was going to get up in people’s faces and peel them off Gula and Baran who would do their best to keep Xiuquan topped up and his opponents in one place so he could keep smashing people. But without Xiuquan, Koyon would either have to ignore his squishier supporters and ruin their tactical combo, or fall back and defend them. Either way, Sofiane’s next move was clear.

Sofiane fired through Koyon as Ball Lightning and readied a Coup De Grace on Gula. He could see the whites of her surprised eyes reflecting the glowing purple lightning at the tip of his shitty little katana. Most of Sofiane’s damage was robbed from him the moment his upgraded rapier had been chucked through the ground. But Coup De Grace still hit like a truck.

Unfortunately, Baran acted quickly. A vacuum of wind to Sofiane’s left jerked him off trajectory and aimed his Coup De Grace at the bushes.

He was about to go soaring off into the woods again before a bottle shattered against his head, drenching him in a sticky liquid. His Coup De Grace released and he thrust forward in slow motion, which was still about three feet per second. But the raccoon girl bought him just enough time to Ball Lightning out of the missed charge and to zip around behind Baran.

Pechorin had enough practice now to know his job was to trigger the Conductive micro-stuns on everyone Sofiane marked with Lightning. He opened fire with his Flak Cannon.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

This accomplished nothing.

Between Pechorin and their enemies lay a transparent rainbow wall, ten feet high and twenty wide, centered on Koyon’s baton. It was raised in time to block not only Pechorin’s flak, but Faisal’s whip and the raccoon girl’s tripping brew which shattered in a curtain of greasy orange liquid against the rainbow wall.

Sofiane ground his teeth. That rainbow shield did basically the same thing as his own Perfect Parry ability, except Sofiane’s ability took skill and timing to use as a blocking maneuver. Koyon’s wall was objectively better in every conceivable way.

Without wasting a second, Koyon’s team flowed into their follow-up combo. A gust of wind from Baran threw Natsuko forward into the others right as Koyon dropped his shield and replaced it with a line of stampeding spectral horses. The horses smashed through Sofiane’s team, slamming them to the ground and dealing enough damage to knock everyone but Harald and the raccoon girl below half health.

This doubled as a movement ability, placing Koyon right in front of Harald.

“Hi there,” Koyon said before whipping his baton at Harald. The horsehair at the end was so light and dainty as to obfuscate the fact that each attack slapped 1,000 HP or more off Harald’s health while staggering the burly Bazouk with each strike.

Shuixing looked around in shell shock. It had been so long since she had to decide who and what to prioritize in a fight that her brain was locking up. Herself in triple digit HP, Natsuko and Pechorin, or Faisal, or…

“I-I— I don’t—” she stammered.

“Shui!” Sofiane yelled, struggling to put together an attack at 0.1x speed as Baran wound up like a batter to cave his face in.

Hoping she didn’t regret it, Shuixing used her Ablutions on Sofiane. This gave Sofiane the half a second he needed to ready a parry, deflect Baran’s rod, and stab his former teammate in the stomach for a laughable amount of damage. What it did do, however, was distract Baran from casting his crowd control abilities.

“Spread out!” Sofiane screamed. “Don’t let them get you in a group!”

He needed to get everyone out before Xiuquan showed up. Their opponents’ combos were already stomping their face into the dirt, and that was without the other team’s Damage Hero in Xiuquan. It was like clubbing someone to death with only the pommel of a sword.

“You know, if you keep stabbing me, I’m going to get annoyed,” Baran said, staring down at Sofiane with a patronizing grin.

With his rusty, tier-1 sword, Sofiane was doing a tenth of the damage he usually did. And the only other people nearby who wielded swords were Natsuko—who didn’t bother even carrying one—and Xiuquan. Was there a way to steal Xiuquan’s sword?

“Fuck! God-dammit!” Koyon shouted. Sofiane glanced over in time to see another glass bottle shatter, this time a glowing golden liquid that inflicted some kind of status effect that stopped Koyon’s relentless assault on Harald. Gula uncorked one of her own bottles and began coaxing liquid out of it with waves of her fingers.

“No you don’t!”

Sofiane zipped past Baran in Ball Lightning form and moved to snatch the bottle away from Gula. Before he could, he was blown off-course, crashing through Harald and Faisal’s tent.

“I told you I’d get annoyed, Sofi,” Baran called out.

The amber liquid in Gula’s bottle flowed over to a blind and flailing Koyon and relieved his status effects. Harald had barely a few seconds of reprieve to scarf down a baked potato for health before Koyon was back on the offense.

Sofiane’s heart sank. Outnumbered two-to-one, Baran, Gula, and Koyon still had no reason to take the fight seriously. They looked at Sofiane, his teammates, and Harald’s team as no more of a threat than a group of mobs. And they were probably right.

Sofiane glanced over to the rest of his teammates and they were struggling just to avoid death as both Shuixing and the raccoon girl let loose their Desperation Arts, which only barely kept everyone above half health. But for what? Pechorin did no damage without his rapier, Shuixing was focused on healing, Faisal and the raccoon girl couldn’t land their abilities with Baran fully-focused on controlling the fight, Harald was being hounded by Koyon, and Natsuko didn’t even have a weapon.

Koyon maneuvered around the other side of a desperately blocking Harald to set up another horse charge to hit Shuixing. Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the AoE, but Natsuko was still standing there obliviously. Baran blew Sofiane, still tangled in the tent poles, into range of the charge, right as Koyon released the horses. The stampede knocked Harald to the ground, followed by Shuixing, stomping on Sofiane on its way to hitting…

Gula.

Sofiane watched the Medico-Mage’s shocked eyes as blue phantom horses knocked her around, dealing a good amount of damage and leaving her stunned. In his own state of equine-induced confusion, Sofiane looked back to where Gula had been a second ago and standing there with her very own, homegrown shit-eating grin, was Natsuko.

“Gods, I love a good fight,” she said.

Baran moved to push her away but she swept his legs with a Fire Gale-powered low kick, dropping him to his knees. Natsuko then proceeded to explode herself in a shower of fire while laughing like a maniac. To her hands she summoned a sword made of deep blue flame from one of her stolen Jack abilities and swung wildly at Baran who was too stunned to stop her. She wasn’t going to be one-shotting the overpowered Hero anytime soon, but her Hothead-empowered attacks were hitting twice as hard as Sofiane for about 500 damage a pop.

When Baran tried to shove her away with wind, she leapt in the air to control her landing, then let loose another Fire Gale to hop right back to slashing away at him.

Koyon, frustrated and hyper-focused on killing Harald, ignored his teammates. Harald was hanging on by a thread from a combination of his innate life steal, shields, damage reduction, and the full attention of Shuixing, the raccoon girl, and Faisal dumping healing and evasion abilities into him on cooldown. For all the stats and overpowered abilities in the world, the concentrated efforts of four bottom-tier Heroes was still too much for Koyon to overcome.

Deciding Natsuko had Baran covered for now, Sofiane zipped over to Gula, tagging her with lightning as she was getting up from the ground. Unlike her two teammates, Gula was squishy, having only about 22,000 HP as of the day Sofiane was kicked out, and had significantly less defense. Sofiane could deal with her even with his Tier-1 weapon, and by the look of fear in her eyes, she knew that.

“Pech!” Sofiane yelled.

Pechorin already had him covered, laying down his Concentrated Fire to set up elemental reactions with Sofiane’s lightning, amping the damage against her and chain-stunning her. Now the only thing they had to worry about was if this triggered Baran and Gula’s Desperation Arts, and…

The ground rumbled beneath Sofiane. Trees trembled. And roots burst upwards from the soil.