Chapter 152: Reality Check
Before Aegis had time to even blink, the white cloaked individual had moved 12 meters and was right in front of his shield.
“You might want to brace this.” He said mockingly with a big mischievous grin. Up close, his facial features were somewhat visible. Aegis saw he looked young and handsome with tan skin and short blue hair, and curled down dark red bunny ears folded under the hood of his cloak.
Aegis’ eyes went wide and he thrust his shield forward to brace the attack, and as if the player was waiting for this, he intentionally timed his attack to land in Aegis’ brace.
You take 14,321 Piercing damage.
You take 5,310 Shadow damage.
The moment the hit landed, Lina shot out a smoke bomb and several arrows flew out from Darkshot, while simultaneously cinderbolt shards warped around Aegis. The player dashed backwards quickly and dodged everything with ease.
“Whoa ho ho! I didn’t oneshot you! Nice, you’re really tanky for a level 90 in leather. Voidsilk inlay?” He asked once he’d gotten clear from the others' attacks, he then began clapping mockingly. “The shadow dancers gotta go first, though. Some of those skills, tsk, really a pain.” He shook his head to himself.
Aegis was in disbelief at how fast this player moved and how much damage he dealt - it was clear this player was likely level 150. The gear he was using was incredibly good as well, enchanted with shadow damage. He began casting heal on himself in a panic, and in that time, the assassin player dashed forward again.
“Smoke bomb!” Lina cast on herself, as the assassin was apparently going for her, but he suddenly stopped mid-dash a few meters away and threw out from his hands a dozen daggers into the air, all connected to his fingertips with thin wires. He then waved them around and redirected them around Aegis to send them like arrows down at Aegis’ companions.
There were too many to use guard, and Aegis knew if he took more than two of them he was dead. Things were going completely out of Aegis’ control, extremely fast.
“I’m fine!” Lina shouted at Aegis as he saw she’d shadowstepped well out of range of the daggers. Snowflake screeched angrily and moved defensively in front of Aegis, spreading his wings as if to protect him, while Darkshot jumped backwards as well, and Rakkan sent his echoes forward while preparing to parry the daggers. Pyri, however, immediately broke apart her cinderbolts and sent them up as 12 shards to intercept each of the daggers, preparing to deflect them from their intended trajectories.
All while this was happening, for a brief second, Aegis and his party became too focused on the thrown daggers, and stopped watching the Assassin himself.
In an instant, he abandoned the thrown dagger skill and the wires, letting them all drop to the ground weightlessly, and instead launched himself forward with incredible speed, plunging his daggers into Rakkan before anyone had noticed, killing him instantly.
“Oops, I lied, I went for the orc first.” He said mockingly as Rakkan’s body, and his echoes all disintegrated into thin air, the spear from the Mosmir queen and a pouch of gold falling to the ground.
As the assassin leaned down to pick up the spear, Lina threw a smoke bomb at him and shadowstepped into it. Aegis saw several red numbers appear from within the smoke, matching Lina’s normal damage.
“Ah, man, see…” He complained from within the smoke. “Shadow dancers are so annoying.” He added, before a huge red number flew up from within the smoke, and Lina’s health hit 0. “Too bad for her, I’ve got a ring of visibility. Smoke doesn't work!” He cheered while showing off a gold ring on his right hand.
The smoke immediately dissipated, and so did Lina as she was forced to log out. Her basilisk leather boots and gloves, and a pouch of gold all fell to the ground beside Rakkan’s spear.
“There we go, the two players who have PvP experience are gone. As for you three, yikes.” He turned to them and leaned his head back, shaking it again. “I mean, come on, not even a bless is out yet? Where’s the pinning shots?” He said mockingly to Darkshot and Aegis. “Did you think this was a PvE only game? This is a bit embarrassing.” He laughed.
“You’re really tough, picking on players lower level than you.” Darkshot shouted back at him angrily. Aegis could tell just from how Darkshot was speaking that he was shook, his adrenaline was pumping and he was on edge.
“Hey, you wandered into a high-end leveling area, you gotta expect that there are some high level players here. It’s your fault really, when you think about it.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’m not a monster, I’ll leave the pigeon alone.” He said with another smirk under his hood before he dashed forward at Darkshot.
This time, though, Aegis was ready. He wasn’t afraid, or intimidated - he was pissed. He appeared just in time in front of Darkshot to block the strike, taking another massive chunk of damage, but was able to brace it despite his speed.
“Oooh, that’s a scary face for an Eirene priest.” He laughed as he moved to strike at Aegis a second time, but this time his daggers were stopped by a burst of cinders. Pyri, too, was glaring at him angrily.
“Sorry, I got caught off guard.” Pyri said as she took a deep breath. She then waved her bolts around and sent them after the Assassin and he attempted to dash away from Aegis and Darkshot to get some distance. Despite his best efforts, though, he wasn’t able to shake Pyri’s cinderbolts, she kept them on him and was continuously dealing fire damage.
“Ah, shit. Damn Aegis.” The assassin sighed, giving up trying to get away from her four cinderbolts and just accepting the slow burning damage they were dealing to him as she pressed them on his chest and legs. “Your wizard's got some sick spell control.” He said as he spun his daggers around in his hands, then dashed forward at her and attempted to strike her.
To his surprise, she broke up one of her bolts and used it to catch his dagger and redirect its momentum with the cinders downward. When he struck out at her with his other dagger, she did the same thing but this time upwards, throwing him off balance and causing him to stumble forward. She hopped backwards to allow him to stumble without bumping into her, and while he was stumbling, Aegis cast heals on himself to get back full, and Darkshot released an arrow.
“Pinning shot.” Darkshot shouted angrily. Due to him being off balance, he couldn’t dodge or deflect it, and the arrow hit his leg. It immediately shot out several binding vines into the obsidian bridge below him. Once bound, Snowflake charged forward with his beak, ready to snap at him.
“No!” Aegis shouted, intercepting Snowflake and stopping him from charging. “Stay back, don’t go near this guy, he’s too dangerous.” Aegis instructed Snowflake, who let out an angry squawk in response to this.
“Tch. I hate wizards.” He complained as he frantically cut at the vines to break himself free, just in time to dodge a ranger’s mark skill from Darkshot that instead imprinted itself on the bridge as the assassin leapt backward. “Ok, ok.” He raised his hands up in surrender. “You’re a bit better than I thought, even at this level. 3 on one is a bit much, especially with mrs. cinders over here.” He gestured to the cinderbolts on him, dealing repeated puffs of 400 fire damage.
He then, very quickly, dashed to Lina and Rakkan’s items and grabbed up their coin pouches.
“The crafts aren’t that great anyway.” He sighed while lightly kicking Lina’s boots away. “I’ll have to come back after you’ve gathered better leather.” he added with a smug grin.
“That’s not yours!” Darkshot shouted angrily, firing several more arrows, but this time the assassin easily deflected them with his daggers.
“It is now.” He chuckled as he added their gold to his inventory, then with another quick dashing movement, ran beyond Aegis, Pyri and Darkshot back to the side of the bridge he’d come from, getting nearly 12 meters away from them in just a second.
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“You’re an idiot if you think you’re getting away.” Pyri growled at him angrily as she paced forward towards the assassin, maintaining her cinderbolts on him.
“Sheesh. Angry bunch.” He shook his head. “It’s not like you can stop me.” He said before attempting to dash further away.
“Guard!” Aegis created a shield projection in front of the assassin's path, causing him to slam into it and be dazed by the impact for a moment - he was not expecting a solid wall to suddenly appear in front of him. In the time he was dazed, Darkshot fired another pinning shot and locked him in place.
“Ah, tch. Man. Annoying. You know that’s not going to work.” He sighed angrily as he started cutting at the vines of the pinning shot, but as he did, Darkshot fired several more.
“It’ll work if I do it like this.” Darkshot sneered at him. After a few, he stopped trying to cut them.
“Ok, ok. I underestimated you guys. I might actually die here.” He sucked his teeth, but Aegis could tell this player wasn’t nervous at all despite his words. He was permanently rooted in place and taking a constant barrage of flame damage from Pyri, which meant he only had one course of action.
It was the first time Aegis had been in a PvP match, but he was slowly grasping how things went. He knew the Assassin would be trying his dagger volley attack again, before he’d even done it. He watched in anticipation as the Assasin flung 12 daggers into the air, all linked to his fingers through wires. He then used the wires to control their trajectory.
Wait - Aegis remembered the last time he’d done this it was a distraction. Aegis stopped himself from following the daggers flying through the air with his eyes, on a hunch that he was using the same trick twice, and he’d guessed correctly.
Aegis looked down while Pyri split off her cinderbolts to intercept the volley and saw the assassin abandon the wires and pull something out of his inventory, flinging it at Darkshot. Aegis quickly dashed in front of Darkshot at the last second to block it with his shield, expecting damage.
There was no damage, however, just the shattering of glass from the item that impacted the front of his shield. Aegis saw across the bridge the Assassin grew a big smile over his face.
“Checkmate!” He said joyously. In that time, Aegis saw himself suddenly affected by a debuff, [Moderate Magma Elemental Lure], with a duration of one hour. The moment the debuff appeared, the magma river began to rumble and roar. “That means I lost the bet on beating you guys alone, but, you know.” He shrugged. “You really should be more careful in high level areas.”
“Shit.” Aegis shouted anxiously as he glanced around over the sides of the bridge. Rising up from various spots in the river were large blobs of Magma that slowly took humanoid forms, with fingers and arms of magma extending out of the surface of the river.
“Yup, Shit is right.” He chuckled. “You might want to sort that out instead of hunting me down.” He added as he began cutting at the vines furiously. Darkshot stopped firing pinning shots at him to stare off the edge of the bridge with his jaw dropped.
Pyri attempted to keep her bolts on him a bit longer, but with no concept for how much health he had, she wasn’t sure if he was almost dead or not. As the Assassin player began dashing away again, leaving for the tunnel from once he came, Pyri decided against chasing him and pulled her cinderbolts back.
“He’s gone.” Pyri announced once she saw him disappear into the darkness.
“What’re we doing Aegis?” Darkshot asked as the magma elementals began to finish their rise out of the river and climb up the sides of the bridge. [Magma Elemental - Level ??] sat above their heads.
Aegis took a deep breath, he had to remain calm and think logically, else make a complete fool of himself. He was painfully aware of the viewership climbing to 90,000, watching as him and his party were mocked and taken out by a single player. But as he thought this, he reminded himself that he didn’t really actually care what they thought. What he cared about most was…
“Darkshot, get on Snowflake and fly out of here with Pyri and Darkwing. Take Lina and Rakkan’s items.” Aegis instructed him and Darkshot nodded, quickly dashing towards the items on the bridge and adding them to his inventory.
“What’re you doing?” Pyri asked him, but before answering with words, he started unequipping his items and throwing them to Darkshot as well, including a bunch of kebabs and other items he had, until he was only wearing his plain cloth.
“The lure’s on me, I’ll lure them away. Just fly back out of the tunnel to Reltrak Forest for now.” Aegis instructed them before running across the bridge in the same direction the assassin had run.
“Ok.” Pyri nodded. Darkshot added Aegis’ items to his inventory as well before running to Snowflake and climbing on his back.
“Come on Snowflake, time to go.” Darkshot grabbed his reins and tried to tug him off the bridge as the hands of several magma elementals, made purely of searing hot magma, grabbed onto the sides of the obsidian bridge. Snowflake didn’t listen, though. Snowflake continued to stay in place, staring worriedly at Aegis as he ran off across the bridge.
Snowflake let out a longing, worried squawk as he saw the Magma Elementals slowly overtake the bridge in front of them.
“Come ON!” Darkshot yanked the reins more forcefully, but Snowflake only took a few steps back, still resisting.
“Fly.” Pyri cast on herself, levitating up off of the bridge. “What’s the problem?” Pyri asked Darkshot as she watched him struggle to control Snowflake. Aegis was becoming harder and harder to see as waves of heat rose up from all around the bridge, making their vision of the surrounding area hazy.
“I don’t know, he’s not listening. Aegis, your gryphon’s not listening!” Darkshot shouted out to Aegis across the bridge, but Darkshot’s voice wasn’t audible to Aegis due to the loud growling and rumbling of the elementals. Their heads broke up over the top of the bridge, revealing dark red glowing stones for eyes and a black void of a mouth, visible between lips and teeth made of magma and sharp glowing red stones. They had no necks, their heads were like blobs on their muscular shaped magma shoulders.
Darkshot gave Snowflake’s reins another yank from panic upon seeing their faces, and this time, Snowflake ran forward towards Aegis against Darkshot’s instructions. Simultaneously, Snowflake’s name changed. [Snowflake(Elite) - Level 83].
“Seriously?! Worst fucking timing!” Darkshot shouted angrily as he desperately tried to hold onto the reins of the charging gryphon. Against its own self interests, Snowflake was desperate to somehow try to rescue Aegis from this hopeless situation. “AEGIS!” Darkshot shouted at the top of his lungs as Snowflake narrowly ran around a set of magma fingers crashing down over top of the bridge.
The elementals were huge, nearly five times the size of a normal person's hand splashing droplets of magma across the bridge from the impact of the fingers slapping on the obsidian.
This time, Aegis heard him and turned back, now standing on the other end of the bridge. Snowflake was barreling towards him, and Aegis saw the Elite over his head. He understood the logic behind the gryphons actions, he knew instructions and logic would no longer make Snowflake listen. He also knew he was not going to survive while naked against these high level enemies.
“Tell him I’ll be fine, I’ll respawn. Get him out of here!” Aegis shouted.
“He’s not listening, he’s determined to save you!” Darkshot shouted.
“There’s no time…” Aegis mumbled worriedly as he glanced around, sweating profusely from the heat as three magma elementals peered over the bridge and glared at him. Simultaneously all of them began to glow from inside their mouths as balls of magma began to form in front of their faces. “They have ranged attacks. There’s no way to get out of here with this lure on me without killing Snowflake.” Aegis mumbled to himself anxiously, but even with this knowledge, he knew he wouldn’t be able to talk Snowflake out of coming towards him with Darkshot on his back.
With this in mind, Aegis decided not to dodge. Snowflake couldn’t try to save him if he was dead, he thought.
“Don’t let my gryphon die.” Aegis shouted at Darkshot before three magma bolts shot out of the mouths of the nearby elementals, dealing each 50,000 damage and killing Aegis instantly.
The moment it happened, Snowflake slowed his forward charge and let out a horrendous screech at Aegis’ disintegrating body.
“He will be back. He’s an otherworlder, okay? But you aren’t. If you want to see him again we gotta get outta here!” Darkshot tugged at the reins again as hard as he could. Snowflake still resisted, while several of the magma elementals lost interest in the bridge now that the lure holder was dead. The one closest to Darkshot and Snowflake, however, did not lose interest and turned its eyes on them.
“COME ON!” Darkshot yelled angrily as he yanked with all his might. Snowflake gave a few more angry squawks in response before finally relenting. He turned around and spread his wings, flapping them furiously as he lifted up off of the bridge and took off back down the cavern from which they came.
It wasn’t quick enough, however, and the elemental who was watching them turned its head to follow the flight path of Snowflake while it remained hanging off the side of the bridge, its body extending out of the river below with no legs. It's mouth began glowing, and a ball of magma formed in front of it before shooting out at Darkshot and Snowflake’s back with incredible speed.
Pyri moved her cinderbolts into its path and tried to redirect it, but the cinderbolts had no effect and were swallowed up by the magma bolt as it continued to fly through the air towards the others.
“Tch.” Pyri sighed as she saw no other option to protect Snowflake, Darkshot, and Darkwing, and used her fly spell to position herself in between the magma ball and them. She blocked it with her body, but took her full health in damage as a result, killing her.
Darkshot heard the impact, looked back and saw her body disintegrating. From her body fell a coin pouch, but luckily nothing else. He then looked at his party interface to see him now the only member still alive.
“Go, flap!” Darkshot shouted at Snowflake, flicking the reins. Luckily, now that Snowflake was elite, he knew better than to listen to any maneuver instructions that Darkshot was accidentally giving him, and flew straight ahead with focus and determination.
Darkwing cooed anxiously while glancing backwards at the magma elemental, and much to Darkshot’s dismay as he glanced back as well, the elemental that had shot at them had dropped into the river and was now chasing after them with incredible speed.
Without legs, its body extended out of the river and was surfing along the surface of it, leaning forward and moving against the flow of the magma. It let out an angry roar as it pursued, leaving a ripple of waves behind it. Despite Snowflake’s fast flying speed, it was gaining on them.
“You’re not killing this gryphon.” Darkshot said to himself with determination, gritting his teeth and preparing for the inevitable attacks from the elemental that were to come.