Chapter 154: Skill Gap

“So, it’s called lure baiting.” Eli shouted to Jillian from his bedroom. Jillian was in the process of cleaning their upstairs hallway while Eli was in the middle of working out using dumbbells in his bedroom.

“That’s appropriate.” Jillain replied.

“Yeah, turns out it's easy to counter, there’s some cheap ingredient mixtures you can splash on yourself to remove lure effects. I’ll make them when we log back in.” Eli continued between his reps. “Did you find out any other cheap tactics people use? Griefers? You know, they’re called griefers by the way.” Eli said matter-of-factly as Jillian finished and moved to stand in his doorway to talk to him at a normal volume.

“Yes, I know what griefers are.” She rolled her eyes at him. “There’s a couple of things, but it's mostly just the MMORPG basics. Training enemies on people, spawn camping, ect.” She added with a shrug. “I was focused more on learning the skills of other classes. I understand now why Battlemasters are considered the best PvP class, at least.”

“Yeah, they’re basically wizards with weapons, right?” Eli asked as he finished his reps and set the weights down.

“Yup.” She nodded. “Any plan for what we’ll do when we get back in the game? We’ve got about 20 minutes left.” She asked while tapping her wrist implant to confirm the time.

“Well, I’ll make some of those anti-lure mixtures, then we’ll continue across the river again.” Aegis replied.

“You’re not worried he’ll attack us again? And what about Darkshot?” Pyri raised her eyebrows at him.

“He saw that we could beat him, even though he caught us off guard. And I get how players fight now, particularly assassins. I won’t get baited and distracted so easily again.” Eli answered confidently as he wiped sweat off himself with a towel and made for the bathroom. “And Derrick will be fine. He’s probably already in Pakro’Vielle waiting for us.” Eli said as he splashed himself with water to do one final wash-up.

“Oho, lots of faith in your friend.” Jillian smirked at him.

“He’s not just my friend…” Eli paused dramatically while stepping out to look at Jillian intensely. “He’s Darkshot.” He said in a deep voice. Jillian rolled her eyes at him before the two headed down the stairs together.

“Well, that was a good studying and cleaning session.” Jillian said as she proudly looked around their spotless home. “I’ll see you back inside.” She winked as she climbed into her Simbox in the living room.

Eli did the same, but was forced to wait out the last 20 minutes in the office simulation. He tried to finish off his waiting period by watching some high level players PvPing each other. He had the unfortunate disadvantage of being a class that no one else played, thus had no one he could use for inspiration on how he might PvP, but he watched a good deal of Cleric, Paladin and Guardian footage.

He went between watching structured fights and duels, to watching the wild open world fights where levels varied between combatants, as did number of fighters. He saw a few castle siege battles for large scale information as well, but those focused more on leadership tactics than they did individual skills, with a few exceptions.

He knew he’d need more experience in it personally to truly grasp and understand how quickly certain classes and players could move and react, but he at least felt more confident now in his understanding of what other players were capable of, how they’d try to fight him, and what underhanded tactics were available in this game.

As the forced logout timer counted down, Eli found himself too excited to watch any more footage, though. He sat at the login screen for the Shattered World online, excitedly waiting for the timer to count down. The moment it had and the login button went from grey to green, he pressed it and felt the exhilarating rush of the simulation shifting from his office environment to The Shattered World Online.

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He appeared as Aegis, nearly completely naked with no gold, standing in front of a shrine in the small village of Pakro’Vielle. Waiting for him a few meters away stood Rakkan, looking at the ground frustratedly.

“Yo… sorry.” Rakkan apologized with his head down. “I couldn’t do anything, that guy just came at me, and… yeah… no excuses.”

“It’s alright. We all got caught off guard. Went too long without any real threats.” Aegis shrugged. “I shouldn’t have let him hit you so easily.”

“Nah… a Rune Knight has decent agility. If I was quicker, I coulda dodged it. It won’t happen again.” Rakkan said confidently.

“Ok.” Aegis nodded back at him before looking at his party interface. Everyone in his party was online except Pyri, but Darkshot showed up as still having the heat exhaustion debuff. “What’s going on, where are you guys?” Aegis asked anxiously through the party interface.

“Trapped in the Red River, The entrance got caved in.” Darkshot replied.

“I’m almost there, shadowstepping to help!” Lina replied through the interface.

“I stayed back to wait for you and Pyri. No way I’m as fast as Lina.” Rakkan said to Aegis in person. A few seconds later, Pyri appeared in the gameworld behind them at the altar.

“Mom, we gotta go, Darksho-”

“I know, I heard, let’s go.” She motioned to his livestream icon. To his surprise, even despite just having logged in after losing a PvP battle, his viewership had shot quickly back up to 70,000.

“Right.” Aegis nodded, and together the three broke into a sprint. They made their way out of Pakro’Vielle through the camouflage wall, then navigated through Reltrak Forest using Aegis’ memory of the map without any need to take it out of his inventory for consultation.

They nearly stepped on a few Mosstrappers without Darkshot’s tracking to guide them, but after awhile of endless sprinting, they arrived at the hole leading down into the Red River.

The familiar wave of heat hit them as they descended down the ramp to reach the bottom, then ran through the winding tunnel until they saw Lina ahead of them. Unlike last time where the magma from the river lit the tunnel, it was blocked and caved in with large broken chunks of obsidian rock. Pyri lit up her staff with Lumina so they could see the damage, and it was substantial.

“You there?” Aegis shouted as he arrived at the cave in, trying to be heard by Darkshot on the other side.

“Shh, yeah. Keep it down.” Darkshot whispered through the party interface. Hearing this, Aegis pulled out pickaxes from his inventory and threw some to the others. Lina had already moved aside several rocks, but was struggling. With Rakkan, Pyri and Aegis help, they were able to carefully break apart and move the stones quickly, and after about 10 minutes of digging through the rubble, light from the river began to creep through into their side of the tunnel.

Another 15 minutes and a hole was big enough for them to climb through. Aegis went first, pushing the last few rocks out of the way to step out onto the obsidian cavern floor near the edge of the calm, slow flowing magma river. He looked around worriedly for Darkshot, only to spot him standing in a small crack in the wall a few meters away with Snowflake cowering behind him and Darkwing sleeping on his shoulders.

“We’re almost out of kebabs.” Darkshot said. He looked horrible - his armor was singed all over and he was covered in black smudge marks on his skin.

“What happened?” Aegis asked as the others managed to get through the rubble and join Aegis.

“Nothing.” Darkshot crossed his arms, speaking in his cool dramatic voice. “Nothing happened.”

“Is he quotin-” Rakkan whispered to Pyri and Lina so that Aegis couldn’t hear.

“Just let him have it.” Pyri whispered back to Rakkan.

“No seriously, what the hell happened?” Aegis pushed it while looking around at the damage done to the cavern entrance. There were indentations left behind all around the collapsed tunnel entrance resembling the fingers of the Flame Giant that had struck it.

“We survived.” Darkshot continued in his cool, theatrical voice. As he did, Snowflake excitedly ran forward and nudged his head into Aegis, letting out playful friendly squawks.

“I’m happy to see you too, lil buddy.” Aegis scratched his head. “Come on, let’s get out of this heat at least. I need to do some crafting so something like that doesn’t happen again.” Aegis motioned everyone to follow him back through the collapsed rubble. Aegis and Snowflake were the first to go, followed by Lina, then Pyri, but Rakkan waited for Darkshot to go ahead of him.

Once Aegis was out of sight, along with his livestream viewers, Darkshot turned to Rakkan.

“How was it, that was badass right?” Darkshot asked Rakkan excitedly. "I bet Sherry saw that."

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“Yeah, pretty cool.” Rakkan smiled back at him. “But, yo, seriously, what happened?”

“It’s like I said. Nothing happened.” He repeated in his dramatic voice. Rakkan just let out an annoyed sigh and rolled his eyes before walking forward ahead of Darkshot. “Man, I'm so cool.” Darkshot said to Darkwing, the only one who could still hear him, and he cooed back in agreement. Following that, Darkshot left the Red River and followed the others back up out of the tunnel and into Reltrak Forest.

The moment they got out of the hot air, Darkshot and Snowflake both collapsed on the cool, damp moss and started rolling around in it.

“Alright, you do all that crafting stuff. Me and this guy need a nap. Oh, wait.” Darkshot sat up from rolling on the moss beside Snowflake as everyone looked at him. “This is yours…” He held out the spear to Rakkan. “Here’s your stuff…” He gave Lina her armor back. “And all this stuff you dumped on me…” He started unloading all of Aegis’ items that he’d been given. “Oh, and don’t forget this.” He said as he pulled out one final item, a large tooth.

“It aint much, my creature harvesting is still beginner.” Darkshot smirked as Aegis took the tooth and looked at the item card.

“It’s a Salamander tooth?” Aegis said as his eyes went wide and everyone looked at Darkshot in disbelief. “You killed one of those level 135 Salamanders? By yourself?”

“Yeah, no big deal.” Darkshot waved it off as stylishly as possible before snuggling up to Snowflake. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a nap.” He yawned before getting comfortable using Snowflake’s upside down stomach as a pillow.

“Ok, seriously…”

“What the hell happened?” Lina even asked now, but Darkshot pretended he couldn’t hear them and started fake snoring, causing Pyri to giggle.

Aegis scanned their surroundings near the entrance to the Red River hole and spotted a large, relatively flat topped rock jutting out from under the mossy Reltrak Forest cavern floor and walked over to it, quickly pulling out a collection of ingredients and mixing tools.

"I dropped a few of my materials I carry for repairs, and my gold, but I guess I got lucky. Didn’t lose much.” Aegis commented.

“It’s random, but it takes into account how you died. Usually if it's someone or something much higher than you that killed you, the chance to drop stuff is a lot lower. In a way, we got unlucky that we dropped anything at all.” Lina replied as she watched him.

“I’m just happy Snowflake and Darkwing are okay.” Aegis turned to look at them and saw them all laying in the moss, trying to sleep, and smiled. “They’re all elite too, and I didn’t get in trouble for it.” He mumbled, to which Lina gave a curious look. “I’ve got plenty of materials for the lure cleansing elixir, it uses less materials than actual lures do, so I’ll brew us a bunch each. Just in case.” Aegis explained as he got to work. The others watched him for a moment before Rakkan walked over to Pyri.

“Pyri, would you mind if we dueled a bit while we wait?” Rakkan asked her.

“Hm? You want to duel me?”

“Yes, just for practice… Your spell control is really good, and well, mine with my echoes needs work. I want to see if I can land a hit on you. I noticed the assassin had trouble with it, but with two echoes and six weapons, it should be possible.” Rakkan pondered.

“Oh…” She thought on it as she looked between Aegis’ back, him facing away while kneeling over his rock and working on his mixtures, then looked at Lina who gave an awkward smile, until finally back at the hopeful eyes of Rakkan. “I guess.” She shrugged.

“Thanks.” Rakkan replied with a focused stare. He quickly summoned his two echoes and equipped them with different weapons than what he was wielding, so that all weapons but his crossbow were equipped. Once he was ready, he sent out the duel request to Pyri and she accepted. As the timer counted down for the duel to begin, she materialized her four cinderbolts.

“Don’t hold back at all.” Rakkan encouraged her.

“Okay…” She replied hesitantly. “I won’t deal any damage to you though.” She added while pulling her lips to the side.

The moment the duel started, Rakkan came at Pyri relentlessly - with much more enthusiasm than she was anticipating. One echo flanked her right, the other left, and he came from the front, each swinging down two weapons at her. Still, despite this, she easily maneuvered a single cinderbolt around to catch Rakkan’s swings in a ball of cinders and redirect them away from herself, either up into the air or downwards to the ground.

After failing to land a single hit on her after about 30 seconds, Rakkan stepped back with his echoes and sighed.

“Am I really that bad?” Rakkan groaned in frustration.

“No…” Pyri smiled back awkwardly.

“Come on, you’re barely even trying.” He motioned to her only using one hand.

“Well… You are moving really well, but the movements are really generic, if I had to explain it. It’s easy to predict. That’s understandable, though - controlling two separate characters as well as yourself isn’t easy.” Pyri explained.

“You’re controlling four bolts, and splitting them up into even more smaller bolts.” Rakkan shook his head.

“I’m older, I’ve had a lot of practice.” Pyri tried to smile encouragingly at him. Rakkan nodded at this and took a deep breath.

“I’d like lots of practice, please.” He bowed respectfully towards Pyri.

“Oooh, I can’t say no to that. You remind me of when I was in school.” She winked as she readied her cinderbolts once more. Rakkan smiled back with determination before rushing at her once again.

Lina watched the two battling a few meters away for a bit, impressed by how easily Pyri was handling Rakkan, then turned to Aegis as he focused in on his mixtures.

“Sorry for dying so easily. I should’ve anticipated him having a way to deal with my smoke. I guess I’m a bit rusty as well.” Lina lowered her head as she spoke to Aegis.

“It’s not your fault, I should’ve been able to protect you. And Rakkan. I was too slow.” Aegis waved off her comment.

“You’re not mad at me?”

“Mad? Why would I be?” Aegis turned to look at her with raised brows.

“I’m suppose to stab stuff, and you do the healing.” She shrugged shyly, kicking at the moss around her feet with her leather boots.

“When you put it like that, none of us did what we were supposed to do.” Aegis replied. He finished up the simple mixtures and added them into the last of his vials before handing two to Lina. “Here, in case you get lured.” He smiled and she took them with a nod.

“Thanks.” She replied. Aegis looked to Darkshot sleeping on Snowflake nearby, then looked at Rakkan and Pyri practicing.

“I studied a bit about what assassins do in PvP. Shadow Dancers, too. They get bonus damage from back attacks, so they utilize their high agility builds to move quickly and get behind their targets, right?” Aegis asked Lina.

“Yup.” Lina nodded back.

“Do you think we could practice too?” He asked, but before she’d answered, he had already sent her a duel request.

“You… want me to hit you?” Lina asked apprehensively.

“Yeah.” He shrugged back. “I need to practice dodging attacks from high agility players, so I don’t get caught offguard like that again.” Aegis replied.

“Are you sure?” She said while disfiguring her face with hesitance. “I don’t really want to hit you.”

“I learned that practice is more important than theory when it comes to PvP. Don’t worry, I’ll block the hits, I’m good with my shield.” Aegis answered with a confident nod, fastening his shield to his left arm.

“Okay…” Lina reluctantly accepted the duel request and took a few steps back, drawing out her daggers.

“Don’t hold back, otherwise I won’t learn.”

“Okay… Maybe I should just use my fists first, so it doesn’t do so much damage.” She suggested as the duel start timer ticked down. She slowly put her daggers back in their sheaths, much to Aegis’ disappointment.

“Really? You’re that sure that you can hit me?” Aegis asked her suspiciously. She just smiled awkwardly back. Once the duel timer ticked down, Lina vanished from Aegis’ sight using shadowstep.

You take 630 Bludgeoning damage.

You take 593 Bludgeoning damage.

You take 673 Bludgeoning damage.

His back, his shoulder, his leg. He felt the impact of her small fists on his armor, but by the time he’d turned to look where the impact was, all he saw was the remnants of her shadow dance skill. After three hits, she shadowstepped back to where she was standing before.

“What the hell…” Aegis said in disbelief. “And that Assassin player hit you?”

“He was faster than me, he had a lot more agility.” Lina shrugged.

“Man.” Aegis shouted in frustration. “Am I really that easy to hit?” Lina just smiled back awkwardly. “Come on, be honest, I can take it.”

“You haven’t had any real PvP experience… so, don’t feel too bad.” She apologized to him. “Fighting other players is a lot different than fighting monsters. Studying isn’t going to help much, you have to get used to it with practical application.” Lina tried to say it in a way easiest for Aegis to understand.

“The first step is to realize what my class wants to do. I want to hit you from the back for bonus damage. Barring that, I want to hit you anywhere that your shield isn’t, ideally in a spot where you can’t see me so you can’t react or counter-attack in any way. I’m going to use my speed advantage over you to accomplish this.” Lina continued.

“So how can I stop you?”

“Like all tank players, you can raise your agility as much as possible through training to help out. But in the end, thief class players, and some fighters, monks and archers will all still have higher agility than you. They’ll always be faster. The only way to block hits from them is by predicting where they’ll strike and blocking or dodging before they attack. The faster you can disable their speed in some way, the better.” She replied.

“Predict your strikes, then disable your movement?” Aegis asked.

“Mhm… Like I said, you know I want to try and hit you where you can’t block, and can’t see. Ideally your back. Use this knowledge to predict my behavior.” Lina answered.

“Okay… but, jeez. Thief players must be really good against tanks, right?” Aegis asked.

“Nope. Opposite. Tanks are generally the counter to high agility types.” Lina replied. “Sure, we’re faster, but you can normally take a lot of hits from us without any trouble - especially with self healing. All you have to do is catch us once and we’re in trouble, we usually don’t have much in the way of defense.”

“How should I catch you? I don’t have a pinning shot.” Aegis thought out loud.

“Hm, once you grab a Shadow Dancer, or shine light on them, they can’t step away. You also have crafting. Manacles, nets, ropes, snare traps… I even fought a Guardian player once that covered the front of his shield in this really sticky stuff.” Lina replied as he looked upwards, thinking of answers.

“You’ve fought some before? Tank players? And they usually beat you easily?” Aegis confirmed. Lina locked eyes with him and hesitated in answering. The hesitation was enough for Aegis to know the answer was yes. Yet he couldn’t even keep track of her movements, let alone catch her. He let out a frustrated sigh.

“Don’t feel bad, you’re new to games! It takes a lot of practice.” Lina tried to cheer him up. Aegis looked over at Rakkan to see him struggling against Pyri’s one handed spell control, then looked to the sleeping Darkshot, and finally back to Lina.

“Please help me get better. I don’t want to lose to anyone.” Aegis asked her with determination. Lina nodded, bending her knees down and raising her fists as she prepared to attack Aegis again. He raised up his shield and readied himself.