Chapter 201: Everything I Can
The air between Aegis and Emerill filled with tension as they glared at each other unmoving. The sounds of birds chirping, and various other animals mooing and clucking could be heard coming from the nearby farms of Orm. Players and NPCs were not present, though, instead only the faint ringing of an alarm bell warning the NPCs to hide in their homes due to the incoming invasion. The mist had not yet reached the Orm, however.
Emerill made the first move by ceasing his pointless dagger twirling to instead tightly grip the hilts, then lightly hopped off of the tombstone he stood on. The moment his feet touched the ground, he disappeared. Utilizing his insanely high movement speed, he maneuvered behind Aegis and went straight for the back of his neck with his mithral daggers.
Aegis had seen this a dozen times already now, and knew to duck and shift his body to the left. Emerill moved to attack Aegis again, positioning himself in the direction Aegis shifted his weight so that he’d lean into the attack unwillingly.
Again, Aegis remembered this style of movement from last time and had his shield ready to brace the strikes. The sound of light metal rang out as the mithral daggers impacted his mithral shield, sliding off the rounded front. Aegis then reached out with his right hand to try and grab Emerill, and prevent further movement.
Emerill dashed backwards to avoid Aegis’ grapple, but Aegis wised up to this by pre-emptively casting guard behind Emerill, preventing his backward movement as his spine bumped into the shield projection. This was enough to allow Aegis to extend his right hand out far enough to grab the collar of Emerill’s leather armor, holding it with a tight grip.
Without wasting a breath, Aegis continued his braced shield momentum to slam his shield forward into Emerill while simultaneously casting bless on himself.
“Tch, you learn a little too fast.” Emerill scowled as he struggled to break free from the grapple, but failed. “And your strength stat's a bit high, eh?” He looked flustered as Aegis pulled his shield back and thrusted it forward into him again, ignoring his words. “Fine, tough guy. Lets play it like this.” Emerill began retaliating against Aegis, slashing out at him with his daggers rapidly.
With Aegis’ new shield and enhanced armor, the attacks did significantly less damage than they had in the past.
You take 6,430 piercing damage
You take 953 shadow damage.
You take 6,430 piercing damage
You take 873 shadow damage.
“Healing wind.” Aegis spoke his first words since reviving, casting the spell on himself, then continuing his bashing of his shield into Emerill. “Heal.” He threw in as well. He could see in Emerill’s face that he was already looking somewhat frustrated and desperate.
“Typical cleric class player, you think you can just tank and outheal anything, huh? That eventually I’ll just die? Well, bad news Aegis, you’re not the only one who can heal here.” Emerill shouted angrily as tiny black mouths appeared on the blades of one of his daggers, exactly like the blade that Joltblade held.
Following the appearance of the mouths, Emerill struck the dagger into Aegis’ side again, this time causing them to steal health and drain mana from Aegis and give it to Emerill. The amount of health being drained was negating Aegis’ shield damage, and the mana drain was significant enough that Aegis had to worry about being hit by this dagger.
Maintaining his grip on Emerill, he continued bashing his shield into him and began shifting his body around to try and avoid the strikes from the mouthed dagger. He was able to dodge some, but all would be impossible given their proximity to one another and Emerill’s speed.
“Hahah. Like this, I’ll win the endurance game. Sure you still want to play it this way?” Emerill laughed mockingly. Aegis didn’t let up, he continued what he was doing for a few more strikes before digging his feet in.
“That should be enough damage. Varibhadra.” Aegis cast calmly, releasing a dome of light energy out from his shield, engulfing Emerill within it.
“Spell eater!” Emerill shouted quickly as a reaction to this, lifting his other dagger high into the air. A blue mouth appeared on this dagger, and opened wide with a loud sucking sound which absorbed the light of Aegis’ spell, negating it and causing it to deal no damage. Aegis looked unshaken by it, though.
“Not surprised? You must’ve done some research in PvP then. You must know, anything I can do to prepare for PvP, I’ve done it. I knew I’d be facing you. In fact, I specifically asked to be the one to face you. There’s no tricks or skills you can use that I won’t be expecting. You can’t win this fight.” Emerill replied confidently. Hearing this, Aegis let go of Emerill’s collar by throwing him away a few meters, causing him to stumble back before recomposing himself.
Emerill twirled his mouthed daggers around in his hands gleefully while Aegis briefly healed himself back to full, taking note that his mana was now at half. He glared back at Emerill for a moment while Emerill glanced up at Aegis’ gigantic viewership number and smiled.
“Sorry guys, I’m also a big fan, but I’m going to have to put an end to the stream.” Emerill waved awkwardly at them, but while he did, Aegis began glancing around until deciding on a direction, and running. “Aw, c’mon, don’t run away now…” Emerill sighed, but Aegis ignored him and continued sprinting in that direction.
Emerill pursued him a moment later, easily catching up with Aegis and taking some strikes out at him. Aegis blocked several, ducked others, but took an equal amount in damage from ones he wasn’t able to evade. He healed through the damage and kept running, until he spotted what he was looking for - the river on the east end of Orm.
Without hesitation, Aegis jumped into the waist deep river, positioning himself in the center of it while Emerill stopped on the shore.
“Oh, clever. The water will help you keep track of my movements, making it easier to block my attacks? But, honestly, that’s just delaying the inevitable.” Emerill shook his head disapprovingly before dashing into the water and striking out at Aegis from the back of his head again.
Aegis ducked to avoid the typical backstab attempt, but this time spun around and grabbed Emerill by the collar before he could maneuver away.
“That’s not why I went into the river.” Aegis said as he looked Emerill in the eyes with a demonic expression, one of pure rage and anger of which Emerill was not expecting. “Lifesteal through this.” Aegis shouted as he thrusted his body forward into Emerill’s to knock him off balance, forcing him under the water, where Aegis put his foot on his chest to hold him under, then created a guard projection above Emerill’s head as well.
Emerill reacted by slashing out at Aegis’ ankles, dealing full damage, but Aegis healed through the damage and continued to hold him down with all his strength.
“Did you prepare stamina elixirs? They’re hard to drink while you’re under the water, I bet.” Aegis grinned devilishly down at Emerill as panic overtook him.
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“Yo, Shinji - tell your boy to be a bit more advertiser friendly. Drowning people aint something companies want to play ads over.” Tommy said to Shinji through a voice call within his office simulation as they watched the scene unfold. The temporary broadcaster, Megan, was completely dumbfounded by what she was watching and had aboslutely no words.
“Ehehe…” Shinji replied nervously.
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“It’s gotta be getting low now, huh?” Aegis commented as he continued to heal through the damage that Emerill was doing to his ankle. Eventually, Aegis realized it was enough to just hold him down using repeated casts of the guard’s shield projection, and was able to lift his foot up intermittently to avoid the dagger strikes.
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The longer it went on, the more frantic Emerill became, until finally he hit a breaking point, shouting an ability that was muffled by the water entering his lungs. Aegis couldn’t understand his words, but he recognized the movement as Emerill extended the fingers of his hands outwards.
Seeing it, Aegis leapt backward out of the river just in time to avoid 10 daggers shooting out from the tips of his fingers, impacting various chunks of earth surrounding the river with wires extending out from his hand towards the base of the dagger hilts.
Emerill then quickly leapt out of the water and pulled the earth from the ground using his daggers, and began rotating them around himself to deter Aegis from coming any closer. Aegis took the warning to heart and backed off while Emerill landed on the shore nearby, gasping for air and grabbing his knees as he let the rotating daggers keep him safe.
“You… You’re fucking psychotic. Seriously? Drowning me?” Emerill coughed violently between his words.
“Hah?” Aegis raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m psychotic?” Aegis suddenly shouted angrily while preparing his shield, as if he intended to jump straight into the wires and earth that began speeding up as they rotated around Emerill like a tornado, the wires adjusting which part of his body they were connected to as they moved.
“You come to our island. Threaten all of my friends, and all the work I put into the game thus far. And you make a joke out of it, all for your own selfish goals… If you think I’m going to do anything less than everything I can to shut you assholes down, you’re sorely mistaken. Go ahead, say that stupid line I’ve heard you and your buddies say already a hundred times. Tell me that you’re about to get serious. Because I’ve been serious this entire time.” Aegis gritted his teeth.
With this, Emerill had nothing to say for a moment as he finished catching his breath and stood upright once more.
“Heh. I really am a big fan.” Emerill glared back at Aegis as he crouched down, preparing to dash forward towards him. Before he could move, though, the ground around them suddenly shook violently, causing the birds in the nearby trees to fly out of the canopy and flutter away. Both Emerill and Aegis paused to watch them, waiting until the shaking subsided.
“That’s the third island stone, though. Soon, the black mist will converge on here, and all of the cities. Even if you beat me, it won’t matter.”
“We’ll see about that.” Aegis replied.
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> “That’s it, the third island stone is down!” Samathara announced to her viewership. She remained standing atop the Skyport tower in Kordas, but she as well as many other reporters were now facing towards the center of the upper platform, looking at a sage player as he maintained a scrying spell.
> Through the magical scrying sphere, all of the nearby reporters were watching the destruction of the third island stone as chunks of it blasted off into pieces and scattered about a nearby forest. A Juggernaut stood triumphantly over the island stone, roaring in celebration as the black mist swallowed up the remaining light of the dimming stone, and swarms of abysslings began crawling all over it.
> “There’s just one known island stone location left, and lucky our sage friend here has had the foresight to gather leaves from the trees surrounding it, so that we may witness its destruction. Of course, we don’t expect there to be any meaningful defenses left to protect the Island of Kalmoore, given what just transpired on Aegis’ stream.” Samathara explained.
“Heh.” Finley proudly strutted out of the ruined temple with the Avatar of Jealousy following closely behind him. As he looked out across the cracked paved path ahead of him, he saw at the end of it the group of four cloaked and petrified statues of Aegis’ party members.
“Any moment now, my party will report to us the location of the final stone, and we’ll head to destroy it and put an end to this." Finley explained to Jealousy, but she seemed more interested in the ruined elven statue nearby than listening to Finley. "I bet you guys are all enjoying the show of Aegis’ last moments of struggle…” Finley spoke to the statues as he walked towards them proudly, holding up in his peripheral vision a livestream viewer of Samathara’s broadcast. But as he closed in on the statues, he spotted something a bit off on one of them that he hadn’t noticed before and suspiciously walked closer to it.
On the statue he believed to be Pyri, he noticed two odd bulges in the top of her cloak that worried him, and he hastily moved forward to inspect it.
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Just as Emerill and Aegis were preparing to re-engage with one another, they were interrupted again by the sound of a loud squawking. They both glanced up and saw Snowflake soaring high in the sky above them.
“Finally.” Aegis said with a sigh of relief, followed by a quick forward dash into Emerill’s wires and spinning daggers.
“Hah, you’re mad. You think your gryphon is going to out damage me? Anything short of a mithral armored player will get shredded to pieces in this effect.” Emerill shouted proudly as he made no attempts to dodge Aegis. Aegis easily reached out and grabbed the collar of Emerill’s armor again, but Emerill simply smirked back and watched as the wires sped up, rotating faster around him. Each time the wires passed through Aegis, he took damage, and they were hitting him repeatedly.
Aegis was forced to begin rapidly healing himself to withstand the damage from the constantly cutting wires, but he did so while making sure to prevent Emerill from moving away.
“Nah. Not the gryphon.” Aegis replied as he looked up between a heal cast. “Drop him, Snowflake!” Aegis shouted, and immediately following his words, they both watched as the statue of a player that was in Snowflakes’ talons was released, falling straight down towards them.
The statue crashed into the ground right beside Aegis and Emerill and shattered into hundreds of pieces - only, the player underneath the stone statue didn’t die and break apart. The player remained intact, and stood upright, wielding his greatsword. Aegis watched with a grin, and Emerill watched in horror as Herilon glared at him with his undying will buff up, his skin glowing red.
“You mind killing this guy for me real quick? I got some other things I need to do.” Aegis smirked.
“Yeah, no problem.” Herilon replied as he lifted his giant blade up, glowing with blue energy. Despite the wires of Emerill’s attack repeatedly cutting at Herilon, he was unable to die thanks to his undying will buff lasting for another minute. He easily stood within the wires and slashed his blade down on Emerill, dealing massive damage. One hit wasn’t enough, but Herilon wasn’t shy about swinging again, and again. Repeated strikes from the empowered berserker quickly worked its way through Emerill’s health bar as he desperately struggled to break free of Aegis’ grapple, until eventually, he died and was forced to log out, His body disintigrated right in front of them.
“One down, four to go.” Aegis sighed with relief, looking at his mana supply to see it had nearly hit empty from healing through the wire damage.
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Just as Finley was moving forward to inspect the statue of Pyri more closely, he saw in his party interface that Emerill hit 0 health and died, and let out a disappointing groan.
“That idiot can’t do anything right.” Finley complained into his party interface.
> “Unbelievable! How is this even possible?!” Samathara’s shouting voice got his attention back onto his livestream viewer. As her broadcast looked into the scrying orb of the 4th island stone, she as well as all of her viewers witnessed a group of high level players fighting off the juggernaut and defending the stone, and after a few moments, the juggernaut roared out in pain, collapsing to the ground, dead.
“Who the fuck is still alive to defend island stones on this shitty island?” Finley looked on into the broadcast with wide-eyes of disbelief, as Samathara’s footage zoomed in on the defending players.
Standing between the dying juggernaut, and the 4th island stone, stood Pyri, Erikson, Josephine, Garrick, and Yuki. Along with them stood all other white flame members, who were once again sporting their tabard of the White Flames guild, and all of the members of the Black Lion guild who had fought at the Red River and had been defeated.
Seeing this, he looked back at the four statues in front of him with anger in his eyes.
> “Uh, boss, we got a problem.” Joltblade messaged him through the party interface.
> “What now?” Finley roared back in annoyance.
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Joltblade, Cheryl, and Quiver had all entered the throne room within the Kordas palace. A long, extended chamber with a carpet running from the doorway up to a large stone throne on the far side, two statues carved into the walls behind it depicting armored Kordas knights. They had been expecting to find the King waiting for them within the throne room, under heavy guard from royal knights.
Instead, what they found was a group of three players glaring back at them. Zekor excitedly shuffled into the room behind them, with his livestream broadcast on to cover the event, and was first to call it out.
“Holy shit! It’s Aegis’ party?! They’re still alive? How?!” Zekor yelled in disbelief as he looked upon Lina, Darkshot and Rakkan all standing across the throne room from Cheryl, Joltblade and Quiver.
“Sorry, pals. But the princess is in another castle.” Darkshot smirked at them as he readied his longbow by nocking an arrow.
“Got a message from Aegis, for you guys.” Rakkan said as he created his echoes and armed them, while Lina drew out her daggers. “He says to tell Finley, step 11, bitch.”
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Finley, who had switched to watching Zekor’s broadcast, watched this unfold, then turned his greatsword onto the four statues in front of him, cutting them down and killing the players within the statues.
You have slain Amlie
You have slain Ruffily
You have slain Chax
You have slain Hae-won
“Hah… hahah…” Finley looked on as the stony bodies disintegrated. “This fucking kid… oh boy…” Finley began spinning around, looking at the Avatar of Jealousy as she stood idly by, staring at the bodies as they vanished from the gameworld. He quickly opened up his party interface once more.
> “This island just got a whole lot more fun. Show them why I picked you three to join my party. Kill those idiots.” Finley ordered them.