Ayva feels like dying.
In truth, it was impossible for him to die right now. However, right now he is experiencing his own medicine.
When the Wizard casted Fireball, in truth, even if he was awake, Ayva wouldn't need to dodge it. It would not kill him. There is a simple fact that while his HP is much lower than everyone else in his party, Ayva was a player unit.
In game, most enemies does not have and cannot level up resistance like a player avatar could.
Despite their HP different, a player avatar is much tougher than an NPC due to one simple fact, their physical resistance, their dodge chance, their magic resistance, their elemental resistance. While most enemies have one fixed resistance, for example, a demon being resistance to fire, they do not have a blanket protection like a player.
That is why it is expected for a player to beat through a horde of enemies despite their max HP at end game being around the range of 500-700.
Ayva's in game party's wizard [Agade] has a flat 99% resistance to every magic spell due to her gimped build. She was fully stacked as a spell caster with 24 INT despite the game limit for INT being 20. Because of that, the resistance and damage counter kind of broke for her. In exchange, every other stats Agade has is 8, which is below the human's average of 10. If any physical enemies so much as breath in Agade's direction, she will be on death door.
[Evra] meanwhile is a bit more balance in that regard, however, she is still minmax for DEX and STR so she can't reach that level of magic resistance.
Instead Evra has Lightning Reflex that one activated will give her a flat 30% chance to parry magic attack and complete inability to be hit by a physical attack.
But right now, Ayva hasn't activated Lightning Reflex because he is afraid of Evra being in control of his body.
Instead, what happened was his passive magic resistance being used.
In the last moment, Ayva's unconscious body performs a parlor trick, twitching and jumping away in front of the eyes of everyone who was thinking he has woken up. However, he didn't wake up, it was just an instinctual action to move out of the way of the arrow.
The actions were inhuman, with the way his hands and legs was moving. Ayva was not moving as a human but some kind of unnatural outerworldly being, his body moving and twitching in a way that is not natural at all.
Everyone thought that it was over with Ayva waking up, however, since he didn't completely wake up, he was hit by the range of the giant fireball explosion all the same.
It was only until that moment did the adept wizard breathes a sigh of relief.
'Ah, I finally got that guy' He would be thinking.
Except the fireball that completely burn down an entire horse carriage and cause a great explosion serves only as a wake up call to Ayva who woke up screaming.
His passive magic resistance activates at the last moment. It, in combination with his enchanted garment passive resistance, reduced the actual damage of fireball.
A fireball deals a flat 50-80 AoE damage with its damage boosted by the caster's intelligence.
However, since all NPC in game doesn't have an INT stat, only an HP bar, a move list and some barebone resistance, a fireball used by an enemy NPC only deal 50-80 damage.
Ayva was wearing light because he was acting as scout for the party from before as well as the fact that his best armor [Mythril Dragon Armor] was given to his friend Leonel. However, the light piece of leather armor was still an enchanted piece of gear suitable for Rogue. It was also the lightest piece of armor that was used by [Evra] in his play through
Fire Leather Armor
Class: All Requirement: 3 STR (Rogue 4) Defense: 10% physical damage reduction Enhancement: INT +1
Dodge chance +10%
Fire attribute An armor made with leather. Limited defense in exchange for a freedom of movement. Enhanced with the power of Fire.
The [Fire Leather Armor] was deceptively weak. It was one of the beginner drop from the game. However the in game Evra equipped it from beginning to end because [Mythril Dragon Armor] was being used by the party's Cleric [Rah].
It was because of one simple thing, most demon used fire magic.
The Fire Attribute enhancement is the biggest draw of [Fire Leather Armor], by equipping it, the unit gain a hidden stat called fire affinity. As in, they are treated like one of the normal Fire enemy in the game, with all damage from the Fire element being reduced by half while taking double Ice elemental damage.
On principle, almost all armor in game could be found with this rare enchantment. However, only the Leather Armor can be farmed in large quantity and so would drop something with this kind of rare enchantment. An enchanted Plate Armor with Fire Attribute would be good, however, Plate Armor is already hard to find, let alone being found with a rare enchantment like Fire Attribute.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
In truth, there is a region in a game with enemies exclusively using Ice elemental damage, however, when going to that region, it was as easy as unequipping the Fire Leather armor. That region was only a short portion of the game too, with the rest of the game being dominated by Fire Elemental Demon, with the demon lord of the game using his ultra high damage fire elemental attack [Fire Ray].
Despite the low protection, the armor was perfect for Evra who breezes through physical attack with her superior dodge.
Outside of that, [Evra] has a flat 50% magic resist.
The fireball hits Ayva for 20 damage causing him to wake up.
However...
Despite being hit with a measly 20 damage to his 150HP, reducing it to 130, Ayva was screaming.
It was because it was the first time he has been hit by an enemy through out the entire journey. In his entire life, he has never been attacked like that. His skin was slightly charred, still...
'It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts.'
Ayva found himself repeating that.
His entire body suffers from first degree burn, it is not enough to kill, but it hurts so much he just wanted to scream. Burn is one of the worst injuries human could ever have.
In primordial time, man runs away from fire, they fear it, they get away from it. Only until they conquer the fire, did they conquer the animal kingdom and rise up as the top of the food chain.
Was there any doubt about fire's power?
Just like a burned animal, Ayva was reeling from the pain. It was only until now that the reality that he will be hurt by war hits Ayva in the face. Up until now, with [Evra] skill set, Ayva was invincible, as in, it was impossible to hit him.
Now, he was hit, with that kind of pain at that. Was it any doubt that his mind would shut down?
Ayva flinches looking at the scene around him, he backs away as if looking to run away. With his speed, it is true that he can run away, leaving everyone, Micah, Aeana, the enemies included back at the scene. He could run to somewhere where it does not hurt anymore.
However, at that moment, a scream cuts him out of his misery
"AYVA! SAVE US PLEASE!"
Realizing the sign, Micah lets out a scream to clear up Ayva's mental state as well as begging for the kind of monsters he has seen to come out. It was a silent prayer expecting a hero would appear, a hero that would fulfill Micah's dream.
In some way, Micah and princess Aries' dream is the same now. Aries dreams of a hero who will come and be by her side. Micah dreams of a hero coming out of Ayva and fulfill that role.
Instead, Ayva shirted both expectation and chose a way out for him that does not satisfy anyone's expectation.
Instead of bracing the pain, and becoming the big hero, Ayva instead chose to both run and not run away.
He activated what is now called his [Evra] button and lets her deal with it.
And [Evra] deals with it.
----------------------------------------
When Ayva returns to normal, there was five decapitated head with their limbs torn up. He could see the brutality from [Evra]'s eyes. The moment the young woman was called, recognizing the state of her body, instead of screaming in pain and being confused, instead, she just yells angrily and makes mincemeat out of the party most likely responsible.
Literally.
Evra was able to hit many more times than Ayva could, with each hit tearing a chunk out of anyone on her war path.
In one leap she was able to reach the wizard and tore his torso in half. Then, the human whirlwind of blade just turns over and decapitated both archers as well as tearing their limbs from their bodies.
Then, for a finale, she moves and cuts down the opponent Micah was having troubles against, both of them, with Micah trying to yell at her to get her to spare them so that they could have some one to interrogate.
However, the stare that [Evra] gave Micah chilled him to the bone.
"No mercy to demon conspirators. The Goddess will sort out the rest."
And she cuts the last remaining enemy combatant's head.
It was only after that did Ayva deactivate the skill and fall on the ground in pain.
With one stroke, he both saves everyone and dashes Micah's hope.
The person Micah wanted to see become a hero was Ayva the man who he sees himself in, not an inhuman creature called [Evra]. [Evra] was someone only Ayva truly knows.
Yet, no matter how unsatisfying it is, they have won. They survive to see another day, with all of life's struggle ahead of them