One thing I had wondered for a long time was how effective a crafter would be in a fight. They had comparable stats to anybody else, I’d always assumed they wouldn’t be particularly good in a fight given that they didn’t have the skills to back them up, but right now I was being proven wrong quite quickly.
Blair pretty clearly had either her class or subclass based around guns. That much was made clear by just how many of them she had. So far I’d seen a sniper rifle, a machine gun, and the two revolvers. That was already four, and I had a sneaking suspicion that she had more she’d yet to pull out of storage.
The fight between her and the berserker didn’t move at a particularly fast pace once she had lost her ability to fly. She took several pot shots at the man with both her rifle and handguns, with the man reacting quickly enough to either block the bullets or flat out dodge them. With the distances involved in this fight, he had plenty of time to react after seeing the guns fire, a feat that was pretty much impossible before the system came around.
This back and forth lasted for a while, with the two of them both trying to get a feel for how strong the other was. What most people didn’t know was the massive advantage that Blair had on that front. I don’t know exactly how quickly her trait gives her information about what she is studying, but I had a feeling that it was at least quick enough that she’d fully understand what she was dealing with soon enough. She had probably even been analyzing the man before their fight began. She had seen him fight me after all.
Eventually, the berserker decides it is time to make the first big move of the fight. He activates some kind of skill, and for a moment I see his calves bulge under his armor. It must have been some localized boosting skill. He sped forward towards Blair, with her being unable to run away fast enough. He caught up to her, his massive axe swinging towards her to cut her in half.
The revolver in her hand disappears, almost instantly replaced with another gun. This one looked quite similar to a blunderbuss, with the front of it flaring out like a horn. With a loud bang, she fired the gun at the axe, knocking it off of its collision course with her.
That... that looked very similar to my mana blast. Now that I am actually paying attention, a lot of what she does has similarities to my own spells. Her revolvers can mimic mana bolt, that blunderbuss mimics mana blast, and her rifle can mimic mana spike. It is interesting, sure, but likely just a coincidence. There was only so many ways you could throw around mana. I was probably just reading into it too much.
The berserker spins around, carrying the momentum from his previously missed swing into this second one. There must be some kind of cooldown between uses of that blunderbuss, because Blair can’t deflect this second attack.
“Oh you have got to be shitting me.” I say in disbelief. The entire leather tunic that Blair had just lit up, and a very familiar looking barrier of mana appears over her to block the incoming axe strike.
There was no mistaking that for anything else. That particular skill was one complicated enough that I highly doubt we both developed it the same way. Infusing a bit of mana into my eyes, I could even see that it was constructed almost exactly the same way mine was. I felt that warranted a few questions once this fight was over.
I lean over to the King. “Do you think you could invite her to this room once the fight is over?” I ask him.
“I was already planning on doing so,” He says. “assuming she wins the fight. I may have a lot of control over this event, but the system limits only the top ten participants to enter this room. If she loses, you are going to have to search through the crowd for her yourself.”
Suddenly, I am very invested in this fight. I’d already been paying pretty damn close attention before, but now that I was running the risk of searching through a crowd of 200 million, I was actively rooting for Blair to win.
Her opponent was starting to put on a lot of pressure he was and slowly speeding up, a result of a berserkers natural tendency to grow stronger as a battle went on. His axe swung through the air faster, and his armor was visibly growing in order to accommodate his growing muscles. Blair was forced to retreat further in further just so she wouldn’t get overwhelmed.
The berserker was attacking so furiously, I was beginning to think he didn’t notice the trap he was falling into.
Blair had only been using her blunderbuss and a single revolver for the past several minutes now. Each one had its own cooldown between shots, which she expertly juggled to keep from being left with no available options. During this time, one of her revolvers and the revolver on her back had begun accumulating more and more mana in them. I only noticed thanks to my mana supported vision, but I imagine in close proximity it must have been easy to sense for even a non-mage.
This all built to a tipping point as she suddenly pulled her charged up revolver from her side, firing it straight towards the man. He was too close to react in time, and took the hit directly to his right shoulder. The arm went limp to his side as something clearly pretty important had just been reduced to a red spray that exited out the back of his arm. He was forced to use his remaining arm to wield his axe, though the damage he had taken had clearly given him a boost in strength, making it manageable.
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He seemed to finally realize what was about to come, and threw up a quick shield of mana between himself and Blair. Just like he’d been anticipating, the charged rifle shot impacted a split second later. What he hadn’t been anticipating was that the attack would pierce right through his defense like it wasn’t even there.
He tried to dodge away, but that only resulted in his other arm getting blown off entirely by the powerful attack. Blood sprayed from the wound, and his skin started to take on a red shade as his berserker skills finally seemed to fully activate. His arm began regrowing rapidly from the shoulder, and his other minor wounds began healing themselves. His speed and strength both increased as he quickly picked up his axe and began putting the pressure on once more.
Now that Blair had her full arsenal again, she wasn’t letting a single bit of it go to waste. I was mentally timing the timing between each weapon firing, and quickly realized that she was using each one as soon as its attacks came off of their cooldown. I’m pretty sure this is about as high as her damage output is going to be getting. I guess that is the limiting factor of relying too heavily on weapons as your damage source. My own damage output was only really limited by how much mana I was willing to expend at a time, even if I did get diminishing returns at higher mana costs.
All of the berserker’s energy was going into sustaining his current state as well as healing the damage from the many attacks. His lack of dodging did mean that he was getting really close to Blair, and it was only a matter of time before he would get a very strong attack to land properly.
As it was now though, Blair was not getting out unscathed. Deep gashes in her leather armor appeared as the axe managed to hit her. Several spots on her arms and legs were bleeding where the axe had cut deep enough to taste flesh.
I truly did not know which one of them would win this fight. If it dragged on too long, the berserker would run out of energy. I didn’t know if it would even get to that point though, as Blair was taking more and more damage. This fight would be a lot more one sided if she had managed to gain even one more level before it started. At level 94, she was pretty damn close to getting her innate skill to be maxed out.
On the other hand, the berserker was still several levels from his getting upgraded for the final time. It was pretty clear that it was already pretty good though, as I assume it was the source of him growing stronger as the battle went on.
Something in the battle seems to shift suddenly. It is a shift that I almost didn’t catch, and by the looks of it nobody else did. Blair seemed to start moving just a tiny bit faster, like she had activated some kind of really weak boosting skill.
No... that wasn’t it. I would be able to see the mana within her at least act a little differently if that had been the case. Having a brief idea, I use identify on her, my eyes widening in surprise at what I see.
Human (Level 95)
I hadn’t known people could just level up mid-fight like that. I mean, I saw no reason why you wouldn’t be able to. Had she done anything particularly special to earn the level? Maybe she’d managed to upgrade one of her combat focused skill in the heat of battle. That’d explain the level at least.
This did mean one more thing though. Something that I am not sure many others knew about. I leaned back in my seat as I realized that she now had this fight in the bag. Just like that, she’d earned her trump card. What exactly that was, I’m not sure. I knew it had to be something good though.
I was proved right pretty damn quickly too. The energy within her suddenly began moving differently. I thought I’d already been as surprised as I could have been when she leveled up, but that surprise came back with a vengeance as her skin turned red and she grew slightly larger.
The wounds across her body began healing at a visible rate, though not nearly as fast as the berserker’s wounds healed. She did start moving faster though, closing the gap in power between her and her opponent. Her damage output didn’t really increase, as it still relied on her guns, but it didn’t need to. In fact, she had stopped firing them entirely.
The next 30 seconds were now a battle of attrition. Blair just had to wait for the man to run out of energy and collapse to the ground, while the berserker needed to kill her before that happened. My guess as to why she stopped shooting was that she didn’t want to run out of energy first. While she had clearly mimicked the skill the berserker used, it seemed to be both slightly weaker and less efficient.
The two of them danced back and forth as the mans axe flew through the air at breakneck speed. He was handling it as if it barely weighed anything, and it was clear that if he managed to land even a single solid hit, Blair would be in some serious trouble.
The worst came to pass, and his axe made contact with her arm. The limb detached from her, but instead of letting it heal Blair quickly pulled some leather from her storage ring and wrapped it over the wound. She clearly did not want to waste the mana to heal that wound.
That seemed to make the distance, as a few seconds later the berserker collapsed to the ground, helpless and defenseless. Blair quickly shot his head with her rifle, the energy expenditure draining her fully and causing her to collapse a moment later.
With that, the fight had ended. The two of them disappeared from the arena, though the berserker did not reappear in the room with us. Instead, Blair arrived in the exact spot the other man had left from.
She looked around for a brief moment before pumping her fist in the air. “Hell yeah! Top ten!”
“Good job.” I say, nodding to her. “I wasn’t sure you’d win that. Good thing that extra level saved you, huh?”
She just waves it off. “Nah. I would have won even without it. It just would have been a bit closer of a fight.”
“I don’t think it can get much closer than that.” Flynn notes.
At almost the same time, Fionna skips over to her. “You owned that fight! That last minute comeback was crazy! What was the crazy skill you used to copy his?”
The two of them start chatting animatedly, with Blair confirming my suspicion that it had been her upgraded innate skill that allowed her mimic her opponents skill, and I have a suspicion that the earlier upgrades of her trait are what allowed her to create a weaker version of some of my spells. While the two of them talk, me and Flynn gave each other a look. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that Blair won, because now the two craziest people we knew had just made first contact.