Chapter 209: Duel in the Town Square
“How are you holding up?” Viella asked Jael as she shadowstepped up onto the wall to stand beside him. Jael maintained concentration on his Grand Tempest spell, causing wild lightning strikes to blast the fields on the outskirts of Kordas in front of them.
“My mana will last for quite awhile, so long as my spell is not interrupted. You?” Jael asked her with a strained expression on his face.
“Just keep it nice and cloudy, and nothing will get onto this wall and live long enough to do anything.” Viella nodded back as she moved to the edge of the wall and peered over the side. There, at the base of it, she saw the abysslings crashing into the wall and desperately climbing up on top of one another, slowly creating piles and piles of them and getting higher by the second.
Arrows and catapult projectiles soared overhead, piercing into the thousands of reapers swarming towards them through the skies. Any arrow that failed to find a reaper would continue to soar downward until hitting an abyssling on the ground.
“I’ve killed 3,203 already! There’s no way I’m not getting one of those Mithral weapons!” Keldan shouted from atop the wall nearby, releasing blastwaves of magic out at the abysslings below.
“Hah? That’s it?” Rocknight turned to him with a look of disappointment before swinging his hammer through the air in the direction of the black mist at the base of the wall. From his hammer, a shockwave of brown magical energy flew out and crashed into the ground, erupting in a circle of spikes that shot out of the earth around the impact point, killing any and all abysslings near it. “I’m almost double!”
“Damn, seriously?” Keldan groaned.
“Yeah I’m higher than that too.” Swiftstar shrugged as he fired a piercing multishot into the swarm.
“The real problem is just how endless this is… My mana won’t last forever once they finally get onto the walls. And if this keeps up, they’ll be on us soon.” Vriflow replied as she turned back to look at the smoke rising out of the Kordas palace. “Any word on Aegis and his party?”
“Nope, nothing.” Swiftstar replied. “Aegis is still alive, flying on his gryphon somewhere, though. So, it ain’t over yet.” He added, but with little confidence in his voice.
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“The defenses of Kordas seem to be holding, but the question is, for how long? We’ve got one of our reporters rushing towards Rene as we speak to see how things are going over there, but one of our other reporters searched the Kordas Palace and saw no signs of Aegis’ party, or the would-be destroyers of Kalmoore. The palace is burning down, though, so something definitely went down there. We’ll keep you updated with any news as it comes in.” Samathara called out to her broadcast as she remained watching the battle from afar, atop the Skyport tower.
Her viewership, like Aegis’s, was sitting up at 4 million, both of them breaching the top 10 streamers list at spots 9 and 8.
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Pyri glanced over her shoulder to see that while two juggernauts had been slain up to this point, she had still been holding one back when she was forced to fly over and help Yorgi. As a result, two were now engaging with Erikson and the White flames, while abysslings began to swarm up against the western walls of Rene alongside them. The loud stomping of the Juggernauts, and the swings of their blades were the dominant sounds that she, Savika, Simon, and Darkwing on Savika’s shoulder heard.
“Let’s finish this quickly.” Pyri said as she saw how bad the situation at the wall was getting, then turned to face Simon and sent her cinderbolts at him unceremoniously. Simon reacted by multicasting 5 water orbs and splitting them up into tinier orbs to intercept Pyri’s cinderbolts.
“You prefer cinderbolts? I thought the fire was a bit too typical, so I went with waterbolts.” Simon commented as he managed to block all of her approaching bolts. Unlike magma, though, the water did not extinguish her magical fire, but acted as a barrier to it.
Savika watched in amazement, as like a swarm of fireflies Pyri fanned out her cinderbolts into more and more smaller bolts and barraged them towards Simon from all directions, and he rapidly reacted to each one by sending water balls to match them. They began bolting around the two of them in all directions, and Simon was attempting to go on the offensive by sending some water at Pyri, but she was blocking them.
All the while, both of them were standing completely still, focused on their control of the spells. Pyri’s fingers were visibly wiggling wildly, while Simons were concealed by his long sleeves, but both of their eyes were racing around, looking in all directions trying to keep track of everything that the other was doing.
“You’re pretty good.” Simon commented after a few moments, for the first time his voice sounding somewhat strained.
“You too. The thing I don’t get, is…” Pyri paused for a moment as she focused on the spells. “If your APM is like this, it means you played mouse and keyboard games.” She paused again, waving her arms to block several incoming waterbolts.
“Naturally.” Simon nodded back.
“But then, you’re my age, aren’t you? Why are you walking around with a kid avatar, acting childlike? It’s kind of gross.” Pyri replied.
“I don’t want to be called gross by an old hag like you.” He snapped back, losing his childlike demeanor and suddenly speaking in a deep voice.
“Ho, so you researched our group. You know a bit about me?”
“Of course. I’m aware you have decent APM, I saw you handle the Mosmir Voidreavers on your son's stream. But your class is weak, and I’m advanced. You can’t win.” Simon replied, though his voice lacked confidence as he was visibly struggling to keep up with her cinderbolts, and one shot through his defenses like a bullet finally, pinning itself on his forehead and beginning to do burning damage to him. It got a few ticks off before Simon was able to get a dispel magic cast off to remove it, breaking one of his multicast waterbolts, but simultaneously removing one of Pyri’s divided cinderbolts.
This move turned their battle of magic orbs into complete chaos, as many orbs that were being blocked lost their opposing defensive orbs, and it became a race between the pair on who could react quickly to the change as they both re-cast their 5th cinderbolt and waterbolt respectively.
They were both skilled enough to handle it, though, and neither let an attack through in the time window it took for their newly recast orbs to split into smaller orbs and fan out in the air between them. During this time, there was a loud crashing sound coming from the Juggernaut battle on the western walls, and Pyri saw out of the corner of her eyes that large chunks of the wall had been destroyed from a blade of a Juggernaut, sent flying into the town of Rene and landing on some of the nearby buildings.
Luckily, the western end was the crafting section of the town, so no residential buildings were damaged, but it provided a path for abysslings to start swarming inside, of which Savika looked on in horror. Farlion, Celestian, Ulaipu as well as Clara and other Eirene Priests jumped down off of the wall nearby to intercept the abysslings swarming in, along with other Plashrim and Rene guards.
Together, the Elite NPCs held the line and prevented the abysslings from getting far into Rene, but Pyri could see clearly that the White Flames and Yuki were struggling against two Juggernauts, as well as a swarm of abysslings.
“It’s a pain in the ass to have such weak companions, isn’t it? None of them know how to play like we do. Why waste your time with them?” Simon asked as he noticed her eyes wander in the direction of the western battle.
“You think they’re weak? Old man, listen…” Pyri turned to glare at him with a huff of air. “You may have some APM brought over from your past gaming experience, that gives you a great advantage here in the virtual world. But, I’m guessing, like most archaic players, you relied solely on your past skills, and failed to adopt any new ones.” Pyri replied while focusing back on her cinderbolts.
“Hah? What new skills would I need? This is enough to handle anything. I’ve got arguably the best spell control you’ll ever find in this game.” Simon scoffed at her as he kept up with her cinderbolts using his waterbolts.
“Wrong. We’re not playing on keyboards anymore. APM isn’t limited to our fingers.” Pyri said, then took a deep breath before suddenly dashing forward at him through the dozens of bolts. With her hands preoccupied with spell control, she swung her leg out at Simon and kicked him in the chest, utilizing the martial arts movements that Darkshot had been teaching her. “It's a bit hard to control spells while someones kicking you, huh?” Pyri grinned as several cinderbolts were able to get through and land on Simon, dealing burning damage as he recovered from Pyri’s kick. Pyri wasn’t interested in giving him a moment to breathe though, and continued lunging at him and landing several more kicks.
Each time Simon was forced to dodge, he lost focus on his waterbolts and Pyri was able to overtake him with her cinderbolts.
“Kicking like some primitive ape?! I’ve got way better spells than you, you know!” Simon shouted hysterically as he did a wide swing of his arm. “Aqua Simulacrum!” He shouted, giving up one of his waterbolts to create a water clone of himself which appeared out of his back, taking his staff along with it as it showed up.
“Oh boy, are you resorting to casting with your voice already? Am I too much for you, old man?” Pyri responded mockingly. The simulacrum acted on its own without Simon needing to control it, immediately jumping to Simon’s front and swinging it’s staff out at Pyri and preventing her from kicking Simon again. Its movements were fast and its form kept shifting due to its watery nature, making it hard to predict for Pyri, forcing her to take a few steps back to get her bearings as Simon jumped backwards and quickly dispelled all of her cinderbolts that were burning him.
Serving as a reset for Pyri, she quickly recast her bolts, but this time wrapped some of her cinders around her feet before lunging at the Simulacrum and kicking it with her flaming feet.
“If I remember that spell correctly, it transfers damage back to the caster, right?” Pyri asked, as Simon watched his water clone take the hit and sucked his teeth in annoyance.
“Shut up, old hag.” He roared back. “Haste!” He cast, creating a white spell circle on the ground beneath himself and the water clone, The moment the circle appeared, both of them sped up in their movements.
“Ooh, fancy. Chronomancer?” Pyri asked.
“How the hell do you know that? How many spells do you know?!” Simon shouted back at her in frustration as he released another barrage of waterbolts that soared through the air towards Pyri, but she caught and blocked every single attack with her cinderbolts.
“All of them.” Pyri replied confidently. Despite the haste, and despite the help of the water clone, Pyri was still overpowering him by kicking and waving cinderbolts around. Simon began to look desperate, as slowly his health was being whittled down by her small burning cinderbolt damage and her level 30 unarmed combat hits.
“I’m not going to lose to you. I’m not going to lose to anyone. I’m not having this character locked up for the next 10 in-game years!”
“Pfft. That’s how high your bounty is?” Pyri chuckled. “You shouldn’t have picked a fight with my son and his friends, then.” She turned her chuckle into a glare as she swung her feet out and landed two more hits.
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“I. DON’T. LOSE.” Simon stomped his feet. “DISTORTION!” he yelled, thrusting his right hand forward and revealing his hands for the first time as his sleeve slid back due to the force at which he thrusted. From his fist shot out a white beam of magical energy straight at Pyri. In the few seconds the beam took to reach her, Pyri shot a cinderbolt ball at it to see how it would react.
The ball warped itself and reshaped itself despite her trying to control it - teaching her that this wasn’t a spell she could block using them. As a result, she dashed to the side to move out of the way of it and it continued to fire in a straight line. The moment she had, though, a big dumb grin grew on Simon’s face which Pyri picked up on. She then followed the beam with her eyes to see why - Simon hadn’t been aiming at her, but rather Savika who stood behind her.
The white beam crashed into Savika who wasn’t expecting it, despite watching the battle. Luckily, a coo from Darkwing on her shoulder blocked the damage, but not the effects of the spell. Savika, who had just managed to get back to her feet, collapsed back to the ground and struggled to move any of her limbs.
“Ah. I can’t move, it’s all wobbly! Nothing’s working right!” Savika cried out as she tried lifting her arm, but instead her leg moved. Darkwing had been hit by the effects as well and was strangely rolling around on the ground beside her.
“Really? You’re going to stoop that low?!” Pyri shouted at Simon angrily, but rather than answer her he was preparing to cast more spells aimed at Savika and Darkwing. “Guess so.” Pyri sighed in frustration.
“That’s why it sucks to have such weak companions. BETTER TO PLAY ALONE. You think I’m Gross? I THINK YOU’RE DISGUSTING.” Simon waved his hands and sent out several black bolts of energy out from his hands. Pyri tried to block them with cinderbolts, but quickly realized as they failed to stop the bolts that Simon was specifically casting spells he knew she couldn’t block with cinderbolt.
At the same time, though, he’d abandoned all defenses in order to carry out these attacks. Pyri took advantage of it by sending all of her cinderbolts to him to start dealing burning damage. He let it happen, taking the damage as he began cackling maniacally.
Pyri didn’t have nearly as many spells as she needed - she canceled one of her cinderbolts to create an icelance that shot out and intercepted one of the black bolts, but two more were flying towards Savika.
“I can’t move!” Savika shouted, and Pyri had no choice but to dash in front of the bolts and take the hits on her behalf.
You take 13,421 Shadow damage.
You take 13,903 Shadow damage.
It was a lot, but she was still relatively healthy. Simon, on the other hand, was taking a lot of burning damage from Pyri. He didn’t seem to care - he looked desperate, and fired a barrage of 10 spells out at Savika.
Pyri pulled back fragments of her cinderbolts and fanned them out around herself and Savika, desperately blocking all of them despite their varying elements. Lightning and Fire she could intercept, Poison spells she needed to burn, Ice she needed to surround with cinders. She managed it all. But then, the Simulacrum marched forward and began taking swings out at Pyri. She dodged them easily by stepping to the side and kicking out at the staff to block it.
“No, the one on the ground.” Simon ordered his clone, and following these words, the water clone stopped trying to hit Pyri and instead began striking the wildwood staff out at the helpless girl on the ground.
“You really are the worst.” Pyri sighed in frustration. She was forced to block the hits from hitting Savika with her legs, all the while maintaining control of her spells to block Simon’s casts.
“Isn’t this fun? It’s like a DPS race!” Simon cheered excitedly as Pyri’s flames crept all over his body. He continued laughing hysterically despite the constant stream of burning damage he was taking, while Pyri repeatedly took damage from blocking the Simulacrum’s staff hits with her shins. Pyri kept her cool, her face remaining calm to not give away her current health.
Simon, on the other hand, had facial expressions that easily told Pyri the state of his health pool. He went from laughing, to glancing up at his health bar floating in his peripheral vision, to looking back at Pyri with a look of desperate panic.
“HURRY UP AND DIE. DIE. DIE.” Simon shouted at her with each staff swing of his water clone. “HURRYYYY!” He yelled frantically. “DIE DIE DIE DIE!” Pyri didn’t respond, she just watched her flames burn his health down repeatedly.
“You’ve got a few screws loose, old man.” Pyri shook her head at him disapprovingly.
“SHUT UP AND DIE OLD HAG!” He screamed at her. “DIE PROTECTING THE USELESS FRIENDS YOU HAVE. YOU GROSS, DISGUSTING HAG.” He added as he began stomping his feet and sending more wild spells out at her. His spell control had gone weak and Pyri was able to free up concentration to send a few cinderbolt shards down to start blocking the staff on her behalf instead, so that she stopped taking damage.
“No, NO NO NO!” Simon yelled as he saw this. “JUST A BIT MORE, YOU HAVE TO DIE! I’M NOT LOSING THIS CHARACTER!” He stopped his random spell casts and shot out several more black bolts at Savika. Pyri used her cinderbolts to block the Simulacrum while turning to Savika and grabbing her arm, then dragging her out of the path of the bolts.
“I’m sorry, I can’t move!” Savika cried out at her.
“It’s okay, don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you.” Pyri replied back calmly as she managed to get her to safety, but following this, several more bolts were fired.
“I’m running out of health. Please. Just die. Please?” Simon began begging as he fired another barrage of the black bolts wildly at her. She kept burning him, kept blocking the water clone, and kept trying to drag Savika to safety. “Just. DIE ALREADY!” Simon shouted with a final desperate wave of his hands, fanning a black barrage of shadow bolts out at her from all directions, aiming down towards Savika.
Pyri looked up and saw the angles they were coming at her from, desperately canceling another one of her cinderbolts to cast icelance spells which she knew were capable of blocking the shadow spells. She blocked as many as she could, and moved Savika out of the way of a few, but it wasn’t fast enough. She was forced to stand in front of several bolts in order to prevent them from hitting Savika. The bolts took her health down to zero, killing her and removing Pyri from the game world.
“Hah…. HAHAH! 300 HEALTH LEFT! I only had 300 health left, and I WON!” Simon cheered excitedly. “That old hag thought she was so much better than me, we showed her, didn’t we?” He called out to his water clone, who ignored him and began marching over to where Savika lay on the ground.
Without watching, Simon opened up his friends list interface and navigated to where Finley was in the list, and began sending him a message.
> “All royalty dead. All of Aegis’ companions dead. They don’t know where the 5th stone is, and you do. I expect a bonu-”
“MAN - HARI!” Savika shouted. Simon looked to see Savika had pulled a giant iron needle out of her inventory and used it to block the staff strike from the water clone, then casted the tailoring spell that created thousands of tiny needles in the air all around him. He was caught off guard, and frantically tried to exit out of his friends list interface in order to react and block the spell, but failed. The hundreds of needles shot forth and pierced into his body, dealing enough damage to finish him off.
“NO-” His yell was cut off as his body began to disintegrate, forcing him to log out from the game world along with his water clone.
“I’m. NOT. USELESS!” Savika screamed at the top of her lungs in frustration, tears pouring down her cheeks. Darkwing, who was slowly regaining control of his body, cooed in agreement, and wobbled across the paved stones to get to Savika. As she stood back up, Darkwing jumped onto her shoulder, and she limped over towards the western street to get a better view of the battle.
Farlion, Celestian, Clara, Ulaipu and the guards of Rene were holding the line, but struggling. Yuki was visible fighting desperately atop the walls - one of the Juggernauts was now dead with just one remaining, but the number of White Flame members visible on the walls was drastically lower - only Josephine was still standing there. The abysslings were gaining ground and slowly pushing further into the town.
“Not again. Please.” Savika whimpered to herself before turning back towards the residential houses of Rene behind her, on the eastern end of the town. “I’m the mayor. I’m the ruler. I’m the Princess of Arallia.” She whispered to herself before taking a deep breath.
“ARALLIANS. KALMOORIANS. PEOPLE OF RENE! I DON’T WANT TO LOSE MY HOME AGAIN. PLEASE, FIGHT!” She screamed as loud as she could, her voice carrying through the entire town. Yuki glanced back to see her tear-soaked face from atop the wall, and her heart sank.
At first, her words did nothing. But within a few moments, the doors of the residential homes within Rene began to swing open. Farmers, blacksmiths, architects - all armed with simple weapons and armor, came charging out of their homes.
With the first few arriving at her side, Savika led the charge with her Iron needle in hand and Darkwing on her shoulder, marching forward to reinforce the western walls of Rene.
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“Our reporter has arrived at Rene, and it’s not looking too good over there.” Samathara commentated as her broadcast went into split screen, half displaying the battle of Kordas, the other half showing the breach in Rene’s wall with Savika leading the charge for the civilian NPCs to reinforce it. “No signs of Pyri, and it looks like only a few of the White Flames are still standing. The fact is, there is no longer a force strong enough on this island to defeat a raid boss.” Samathara spoke with an ominous tone.
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“Even Simon, huh?” Finley sighed to himself as he looked at his friends list and saw Simon was forced to log out from dying along with his other party members. “Well, you know what they say…” He mumbled to himself as he closed out of his interface and looked forward through the skies of Kalmoore. He and Jealousy flapped their wings and soared forward with a purpose as a large grove of overgrown yellow leafed trees came into view.
“If you want something done. You do it yourself.” Finley grinned as he dove down towards the ground, landing in a wide field that surrounded the grove of trees. Jealousy landed beside him, and together they could see from the ground underneath the canopy of the trees. Beyond several thick trunks, a glowing white island stone was visible, concealed underneath the lush vegetation of the grove. “Do the honors, would you?” Finley turned to Jealousy, and she grew a big smile across her face.
Jealousy extended her hands as black mist began to form between her palms and expand. A few moments later it finished growing into a giant ball of black energy, then shot forth a thick black magical beam out towards the island stone.
Before it even reached the trees, though, a flash of white shot down out of the sky to block it. The black energy exploded out at the treeline and erupted out around the point it impacted, destroying the nearby trees but failing to hit the island stone. As the dust, debris, and black mist from the spell’s explosion settled, two silhouettes became visible standing between Jealousy and Finley, and the Island stone.
“No fucking way.” Finley said with his jaw dropped. Standing in front of him with his mithral shield held up was Aegis, and beside him his gryphon, Snowflake. “How the hell did you get here?!” Finley shouted angrily.
Aegis didn’t reply, just smirked at him as he cast healing spells on himself to recover from the damage he’d just taken.
“No, seriously. I want an answer. This is bullshit. We were thorough in our research, we even had Cheryl impersonate Quinn and talk to King - nothing, not a hint of information on this island stone's location. Quinn made sure no one knew. So how the hell did you get here?!” Finley asked.
“When I was in the City of the White Tree, Kagil’aktos made an offhand remark before we fought. He said he thought it was ironic that the Dark Elves hated the gods of light, when the city was relying on them. There was no other occurrence of a glowing white tree that deterred void creatures and abysslings alike in this game world. The only power in this game that does that, is my aura of light. So, I figured out what Kagil’aktos meant.” Aegis explained, and Finley let out an annoyed sigh as he too pieced it together.
“The tree’s roots were digging into the underside of this island stone, that’s why the City of the White Tree is able to exist. All I had to do was overlay the map of the underrealm I got from the Plashrim with a map of the surface of Kalmoore, and it was easy to figure out where the tree and the stone would be.”
“Quite a gamble to take a chance on something like that.” Finley replied.
“It wasn’t a gamble. I looked at all of the variables and came to the most logical conclusion. This game works on logic. Weird fantasy logic, but it’s still logic.” Aegis shrugged.
“Well. Bravo.” Finley began to clap for him while Jealousy looked between Aegis and his gryphon with disgust. “But, like I said before, this is already over. All of your friends are dead, you’re the only one left. All that hard work in trying to stop us, and it amounted to nothing.” Finley said mockingly as he drew out his greatsword. Aegis’ viewership shot up rapidly to 6 million, pushing him above Seraxus and into the top 5 spot of streamers in the world.
“Heh. I could say the same thing. You’ve been planning this attack on Kalmoore for, what, three months? Only to have it all stopped in a few hours by me.” Aegis dug his feet in and lifted his shield up, while Snowflake lowered his head and began growling in the direction of the Avatar and Finley. “You’re not getting past my shield.”