The morning sun came into the valley, brightening the dew’s gossamer spread across the leaves. The night was gone, and along with it were the black clouds, spilling out the raging rain on the ground. Animals emerged out of their dens in the hills, and birds flew out from their nests, filling the cold morning with pleasant chirping. Beavers set up to rebuild their dams, and lazy bears waddled through puddles in search of carcasses or berries.
Vasily sat cross-legged amidst it all, his hands on the spiked end of his trusty warhammer called the Merciless Storm. Bedecked in full plate armor from head to toe, only his eyes were glimmering through the occularium of his skull-shaped helmet, scaring away lurking nearby beasts. One curious bird had landed at the hem of his black cloak and immediately fell dead, its life snuffed by the dark paladin’s aura. One of Vasily’s gauntlets ended with long, razor-sharp claws, and its tips were tapping a tune against the adamantium handle of his weapon.
He was sitting in the dell of a hill, hidden from the prying eyes of any passing travelers, drawing only the bare minimum of life force out of the ground in order not to reveal his position. The black paladin’s eyes were locked to the north, to the horizon beyond the hill’s lip. There, out of the city, these two should arrive. Any moment now. A cold smile touched his lips. So what if his class wasn’t as strong as it used to be? His opponents made a mistake by challenging him in the Living Realm, of all places.
A dot appeared in the sky, burning its way through the clouds on its way to the black paladin. Vasily’s hands closed around the handle. One. Where is the other… He had a thought that they had decided to face him one-on-one and reached for a horn on his baldric. This horn worked as a projectile. If a player used it and focused on his target, then said target would be paralyzed for two seconds, provided the target heard the horn’s venomous sound.
Suddenly, the air around him screamed, and four long arrows landed on the ground around him, forming a perfect circle. A fifth arrow came down, missing him by the hair and smashing the horn out of his armored hand. The arrows’ shafts became white, releasing a net of lightning that formed a cage around the dak paladin. He brought the hammer up, tearing the chunk of ground and breaking this entrapment, and jumped back.
Chains landed on the place where he stood a moment ago. Twin-long chains, made out of gleaming mithril, were long enough to be wielded both as close-range and medium-range weapons. The ends of these chains were wrapped around the wrists of the figure encased in the burning halo. Vengeanceater stopped above the dark paladin, and flame poured down the chains, setting the dell aflame. Wary of its heat, Vasily leaped back, unwilling to combat his foes in a place where one of them got a drop at him. Enhancement in his boot and the unholy force he used to augment his physical characteristics carried the servant of unlife out of the dell, landing him in the lush forest below.
The chains followed, wrapping around the hill. Their heat melted the crust, pouring the stone down, but Vasily ignored the distraction, already calculating the AOE of this attack. Heat won’t reach him. Meaning… Llyazandra landed to his left, making the boy look aside to evade her ability. Llyazandra’s class was Nature Ranger, which, in Vasily’s view, was just a flashy Ranger with extra steps. She had chosen a medusae race, gaining bonuses to agility and wisdom at the cost of a few negative points in charisma and endurance.
Vasily tinkered with the character, making his own dark paladin as tall and imposing as he could. But the recently added race has dwarfed him still. The girl stood on a long tail covered with scales. Due to the inability to wear leg armor or boots, the developers gave Medusas two additional belt slots and one additional ring slot, which now decorate the tip of her white tail. Her torso had a mix of purple and pink scales, forming a very pleasant color. A leather jacket served the girl’s protection; hissing and adorable-shaped snakes’ heads rose above the circle on her head. She was armed with a blackwood longbow, looking at Vasily with two deep jade eyes that were too big for her round head.
Well, cartoons obviously had an impact on someone. Vasily chuckled, cocking his gaze at his pauldron.
Medusas were a long-requested race for Fantasia, added along with the previous expansion. Their six-breasted bodies had gotten the company into quite a pickle; after all, not-safe-for work images had resurfaced around the Net, and enraged parents started suing the developers. This in turn promptly made developers implement quick and decisive changes, limiting the cosmetic options for the medusas much to the player base’s great woe and disappointment. But aside from scaring away the thirsty players, medusas were a solid ranged class.
And it had one of the most overpowered and broken abilities. Once per day, a medusae could petrify an opponent if eye contact between the two was established, which is why Vasily looked at Llyazandra through reflection. The girl released a hail of arrows, but an unholy aura appeared around Vasily, beating the regular attacks aside. He heard a Vengeanceater’s grunt and smirked, realizing that his plan had worked. A moment later, the flaming body cleaved through the trees, coming into close combat with Vasily, forcing Llyazandra to stop firing at the risk of hitting her comrade.
Vengeanceater used a fire elemental, a race added in the Burning Skies expansion, and a race that will undoubtedly be hit by nerfs. Bonuses to both endurance and strength at the cost of wisdom and intelligence made them perfect for the warrior classes; the disgustingly useful flaming aura had shielded them from many poisonous clouds and regular arrows, making lower-level enemies a breeze. And this wasn’t all!
The hammer met the chains, and the air trembled as both weapons turned into blurs, spitting sparks after each hit. Vengeanceater was a pure figure made out of fire, with dark patches covering his liquid skin. The boy didn’t bother much with the cosmetics, leaving his head a skull wreathed in flame, with twin crimson embers serving as eyes. He let out a roar, which sounded like a volcano eruption, and pushed the arrow stuck in his shoulder through a flex of his muscles.
Vasily kept his advance, weathering through the rising heat. His race had neither racial benefits nor negatives, because fuck giving humans flavor, right? In spite of it, he reinforced his body through the stolen life force, using the stats gifted to him by his gear to slowly push Vengeanceater back. And this was barely enough! The boy used a barbarian class, stacking buffs he received from his rage upon receiving wounds, along with the passive ability of the flame elemental, which allowed him to trade his own life force for the superior strength. Such a simple yet hard-to-overcome combo had put Vasily at a disadvantage.
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Vengeanceater furled both of his weapons around his wrists, using them as makeshift bracelets, and rammed Vasily with an elbow, driving the dark paladin a step back. He immediately pushed forward, headbutting the flame elemental, and heard how an arrow flew behind him, bouncing off his armor and leaving a gash in his cloak. Vasily soldiered on, evading hits that left craters on the ground, and responded with his own war hammer, not allowing Vengeanceater to break distance and letting Llyazandra turn him into a hedgehog.
His chance came after the flame elemental lifted his right arm to strike. Vasily took the hit on the hammer’s head, using its handle to block a side attack. He thrust his clawed gauntlet, burying the claws in Vengeanceater’s side. 30. He had hoped that the boy would press on the attack, but he wasn’t that simple. A flame burst out of his back, spreading and becoming four gorgeous wings. With a single beat, Vengeanceater took to the sky, and Vasily followed, activating the levitation in his boots.
25… They clashed in the sky, the chains against his hammer, sending the shockwave that parted the very cloud and rocketed the ground with enough force to create new ridges and crests, fully rearranging the geography. Vasily used every stolen life force to empower his attack and still lost this exchange. Vengeanceater’s might had sent him to the ground, but this was well within his plans. The shockwave has sent the more fragile ranger away, freeing his hands for a bit. The dark paladin buried the head of his hammer into the ground, sucking the very life out of the earth itself. Plants withered. Animals hiding in their dens shivered, their breaths becoming still. Rivers dried out. And most importantly, this helped the servant of entropy arrest his recoil, stopping well within the range of his opponent.
22… Fire elementals were a simple race. All their racials were based around trading their health in exchange for boosting their attacks, following the creed of burning briefly but brightly. The longer the fight dragged on, the fewer chances his opponent would have. And Vengeanceater knew it, bringing Ing down both of his chains in a blinding arc, stretching the length of his weapon to nearly a kilometer, and fueling it with his own lifeblood.
“The Eternal Sun!” Vengeanceater thundered, the heat of his weapon setting aflame the trees’ husks.
Got ‘cha. Vasily’s lips spread in a cruel smile. The dark paladin was an old class, primarily focusing on debuffs and sucking the life out of living opponents and surroundings. Back in the day, he could tank for hours; today, even a barbarian class seven levels below him would’ve been a challenge because devs had forgotten to upgrade the racials of the human, in a subtle attempt to guide the players toward other races. And that’s okay. The sting of his clawed gauntlet had applied an exponential attenuation effect to Vengeanceater. For thirty seconds, his physical stats, including agility, would be ticking down.
“All life is destined to perish!” Vasily roared, taking his hammer with both hands. He dragged it across the ground, starting an upward arc and sucking in the last of the life force in the area.
The head of Merciless Storm was wreathed in the essence stolen from the surroundings, creating a long, jagged blade that met the coming chains with a thundering sound. The weapons locked, sending sparks and lightning from all sides, unable to overpower each other. The ground broke beneath the dark paladin’s legs, lifting whole stone hills around him, and he gritted his teeth, seeing how his opponent refused to budge either. A stalemate. One that would win him seconds. 17… And without agility and with low enough stamina, well… Vasily’s grin grew wider upon seeing his blade move the chains up. 16…
Llyazandra landed to his right, and the boy glanced at her through the reflection on his pauldron. No, he won’t be caught by her passive. The girl shot six arrows, only to have them reflected by the unholy shield popping around Vasily. A shield he made with the freshly stolen life force would last for ten seconds. All the time in the world.
“Moron,” Llyazandra sang, laughing. He grew worried. What could the girl mean? He was twenty levels above her; his entire gear should be better by far! And he had her teammate in the perfect trap. “Nature! Spear the skies with your wrath and lend me your aid!”
At her cry, a burst of energy struck from the skies, sucking into a rising arrow, and Vasily’s eyes widened. He never heard of this ability! Well, that was hardly surprising; he hasn’t logged in for a year, but what the hell was this?! He quickly used the corrupted gauntlet, sacrificing twenty-five percent of his own health to gain eighty percent resistance to the ranged damage, only to realize it would not be enough. Her attack, the new ability granted to the Nature Ranger class, has allowed her to boost her ranged damage by one hundred percent. And the passive ability granted to her by the blackwood longbow allowed her to increase this number tenfold at the cost of her inability to change the direction of the attack for the duration of the preparation.
How is this balanced? He wanted to yell but instead laughed, enjoying the show. Llyazandra let go of her arrow, sending a rainbow-colored wave of energy toward her foe, creating a whole new dell in the solid ground and making Vasily feel the arrow piercing his shield, then his armor, tearing away his arm, and finally opening him wide for Vengeanceater’s attack. The chains came down, slamming the dark paladin into the ground with the force of an exploding missile and turning everything within a hundred meters into a pool of molten lava.
I need to switch to a better class. Their artifacts and items are way too overtuned for me to keep up. The boy decided, accepting the defeat. Before joining the Academy, he was somewhat of a munchkin, reading guides online and experimenting with creating the most broken combos. His item level surpassed that of his opponents combined, but the sheer range of modifiers and passives on their rare gear was better, making his legendary gear almost useless. Luckily, the devs were aware of this blunder, offering free transfers and class changes on weekends at the end of the year, allowing the players to keep their gear and level.
“This was awesome!” Nadya cried out and jumped out of the egg-shaped VR capsule. The girl, dressed in jeans and a jean jacket, made a quick victory dance, tapping at Vasily’s and Wedge’s capsules. The boys laughed and hurried, turning off the connection to Fantasia. “Hey, you weren’t lying about playing the game! But we owned you, old-timer!”
“Old-timer? I am your age, greenhorn.” Vasily grinned, climbing off the capsule. “Nice game. I am paying. Where to?”
His smile spasmed after he saw Wedge. The boy was dressed in a leather jacket and blue tracksuit pants. Sunglasses were hanging out of his pocket. A perfectly normal look. But his body… The long snout, whispers, fur that covered every centimeter of his body, the beady crimson eyes, trimmed claws, fangs visible each time he spoke, and a nearly two-meter-long tail made him freak out.
Calm yourself, bastard. Vasily swallowed, forcing himself to shake the boy’s hand. Wedge wasn’t at fault. The flaw lies with him and with him alone. It led him to join Elina in teasing Eliza, secretly hoping that the girl would snap and do the reasonable thing like he did and visit the clinic, becoming normal. But this can’t go on. He has to be better. This is why he called Eliza’s friends.
“I know a nice place at the piers,” Wedge said. “If you aren’t afraid of some exotic food.”
“Do I look like a chicken to you?” Vasily lifted a brow. “Lead on, champ.”
I will overcome my flaw. The boy made an oath to himself and took a look at the capsules. But I will also grind you in the dust next time.