Chapter 223: Rene on Fire
The two groups glared at each other in silence for a long few moments. Sylvia had her eyes locked onto Pyri with a malicious smile, revealing her bright white teeth and incredibly sharp canines. Pyri returned the gaze, her attention drawn to the strangely large fangs out of curiosity until she eventually spotted the small pointy ears sticking out of Sylvia’s head. This lead Pyri’s eyes downward towards the long leopard spotted tail whipping back and forth behind Sylvia’s legs, revealing her race as a cat demi-human.
Zuon was eying Darkshot, while Hajax kept his eyes locked on Lina, and Seraxus grinned at Aegis, ignoring the grimace from Rakkan and his echoes. Before any action could be taken by either side, though, a long drawn out sigh was huffed by Zuon.
“Seriously?” Zuon shouted up towards the sky to no one in particular, tilting his head back. “But, mom, it’s not my fault she went on the other side. I didn’t even hit her, it was someone else. Come onnnnn!” Zuon groaned, drawing all eyes on him until he eventually sighed and tilted his head down at his feet shamefully.
“Amlie told on you?” Hajax asked.
“Yeah. Sorry guys, mom says I’ve got to log out and apologize, then reflect on my actions.” Zuon shrugged. Hearing this, Pyri smirked and shook her head to herself.
“No problem bro, we got this.”
“Aite, cool. I’ll be back later.” Zuon waved.
“Cya.” Seraxus waved, followed by Zuon logging out and disappearing from the game world.
“You sure the rest of you don’t need to leave? I think I hear your mom calling you for dinner.” Darkshot smirked at them as they all turned back to glare at Aegis and his group.
“Yo, that’s rich comin’ from your group. I’m older than Rakkan, y’know?” Seraxus replied.
“What’s the plan?” Lina asked Aegis quietly, ignoring a back and forth that began between Darkshot and Seraxus about maturity, which Darkshot wasn’t doing as well as you’d expect. Pyri and Rakkan huddled in close to listen as well while Hajax and Sylvia continued to stare at them. Aegis didn’t immediately reply, but instead began panning his view towards the nearby rooftops and burning buildings around them.
“In a straight up fight, we can’t win. I’ve seen footage of him, and that sword when I was researching PvP. Only thing we can hope for is for Pyri to buy us time.”
“Time for what? I think we can kill him. He’s right there.” Rakkan replied.
“No, that’s not the play.” Aegis shook his head. “There’s a bigger plan in motion here, if we can shut that down it’s still our win.”
“What plan?” Rakkan asked.
“I’m thinking he’s nearby, watching this unfold. I dunno his plan yet, but if we can find him, it’ll ruin it.” Aegis explained, turning to Lina. “Can you search the area?”
“Got it.” Lina nodded, followed by her immediately shadow stepping away from the group.
“What’re you doing, why are you sending her away?” Rakkan replied in frustration. “We need to kill Seraxus.” He motioned angrily towards him, shouting loud enough that he interrupted Darkshot and Seraxus’ childlike string of insults towards each other.
“Just, calm down and trust me.” Aegis replied to Rakkan.
“Who is Lina looking for exactly, Aegis? You seem to know he’s here. What are you not telling me?” Pyri eyed him inquisitively as well, neither openly co-operating with him and causing him to sigh in frustration.
“Aegis, you oughta just tell them, before it’s too late.” Darkshot suggested, seeing Rakkan and Pyri’s reactions.
“No, I’m not - there’s no need.” Aegis replied frustrated. “Just, listen to me guys.”
“Fine.” Rakkan shrugged.
“Ya’ll good?” Hajax asked mockingly.
“Trouble in paradise.” Sylvia smirked. “Wait, where’d the Shadow dancer go?” She asked, and following this, all three began glancing around for Lina but not spotting her. Aegis ignored this question and stepped forward in front of the others.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot here,” Aegis waved. “Nice to meet you all, I’m Aegis, the shattered healer.” He tried bowing politely.
“Aegis what the hell are you doing?” Rakkan whispered angrily from behind him.
“Just, Rakkan…” Aegis turned to face him, speaking angrily through his teeth. “Trust me, will you?” He ordered, and Rakkan glared back at him. For the first time in a long while, Aegis saw the angry orc that had attacked him back in Darxon hideout. He saw Rakkan completely losing control of his emotions like he had before, due to the presence of Seraxus.
“Nice to meet you, yo.” Hajax waved, while Seraxus and Sylvia smirked.
> “Still looking, nothing in Rene.” Lina said through the party interface as she continued to rapidly shadowstep around the surrounding area.
“So, you’re the Avatar of Hatred?” Aegis asked Seraxus.
“Yep, basically. The sword says so, at least.” Seraxus shrugged, a proud smile appearing on his face.
“How’s that work? Does it talk to you? Can you grow wings like Finley could?” Aegis asked him, putting a curious expression on his face.
“Nah, I get messages from acolytes. Quests’ n stuff. Don’t do ‘em though, I aint about that PvE stuff. I also aint bout talkin’ all nice. We PvPin’ or what? I saw you vs Finley, you aint bad. Let’s do this, put your glowy form on.” Seraxus motioned at him, others remaining tensely quiet.
“Eh…” Aegis replied as he began looking around at the burning town nearby. “I’m not really feeling like it.” Aegis shrugged.
“Hah?” Seraxus replied with a raised eyebrow.
“You don’t fight us, we’ll just burn your whole town down.” Sylvia shouted angrily.
“Oh, yeah… but, you kind of already did that, right?” Aegis replied while motioning to the southern buildings on fire. “Besides, it’s my birthday, and I got some really nice presents waiting for me out of the simulation.” Aegis turned to Pyri and Darkshot. “You guys wanna head back to the restaurant?”
“Huh?” Darkshot replied curiously.
“Fine with me.” Pyri smiled and nodded.
“Yo, you don’t seem to understand the situation you’re in.” Seraxus shouted angrily, suddenly dashing forward towards Aegis as he stood in front of the others. Holding his black sword in his right hand, Seraxus swung it down at Aegis from above, whilst Aegis didn’t even so much as lift up his shield. Instead, Aegis locked his eyes onto Seraxus and glared back at him as Seraxus swung the sword down, but stopped it from hitting him mere millimeters away from Aegis’ forehead.
Pyri had tried to react with cinderbolts to block it, but saw Aegis hold his right hand out to signal her to stop. Darkshot nocked an arrow and aimed it at him, while Rakkan prepared to lunge forward with his echoes in Aegis defense, but no help was needed.
Seraxus held the black glowing blade millimeters away from Aegis’ forehead for several seconds while the two remained glaring at each other - Aegis having not even flinched and refusing to blink as they maintained eye contact.
“I think I understand the situation completely.” Aegis smirked at him.
“Tch.” Seraxus sucked his teeth and pulled the sword back. “Even if he told me to leave you alive, didn’t say shit about your friends.” Seraxus roared, jumping backwards and preparing to throw his black sword at Darkshot, but stopped when he saw a projection of Aegis’ shield appear in front of him. “This how you doin’ it?”
“Yep.” Aegis nodded.
“Aegis? What’s going on, what’re we doing?” Darkshot asked anxiously, continuing to point his nocked arrow at Seraxus, Hajax and Sylivia from behind the shield projection.
“Nothing. We’re doing nothing at all.” Aegis replied.
“He’s really this petty.” Pyri shook her head to herself. “You and I are having a conversation after this.” She said in a scolding voice to Aegis, and he nodded back at her while making sure to avoid looking directly at her as she stood behind him, arms crossed.
“Fine, if ya’ll won’t fight, we torch the place. Sylvia?” Seraxus turned to his cat demi-human warlock companion, and she nodded back with a joyous mousy screech. Following this, she formed more blazing red flames in the palms of her hands and flung them at some of the nearby buildings, exploding a shop that lined the townsquare into flames and breaking the windows.
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Aegis didn’t react, he just kept his arms crossed and stared at Seraxus and Hajax, who glared back. Sylvia saw Aegis’ lack of reaction, and prepared another ball of flames, throwing it at another shop and setting it ablaze.
“Yo, Aegis, you sure about this?” Darkshot replied.
“Yeah, I’m not giving him what he wants.” Aegis replied confidently.
“Giving who what he wants?” Rakkan shouted angrily at Aegis, but Aegis didn’t reply. “What about what I want? That asshole is right there, and you’re not even gonna fight him?” Rakkan motioned angrily to Seraxus.
“We can’t win, not as we are right now. It’s suicide.” Aegis replied as calmly as he could, the sound of another shop exploding into flames overtaking his voice for a moment as Sylvia began to cackle demonically.
“Maybe if you called Lina back we could.” Rakkan shouted.
“She’s doing something more important.”
“What’s more important than stopping that guy? He KILLED FARLION! Or do you not care about NPCs anymore, now that you’re a big shot streamer?!” Rakkan added.
“That’s not it at all, of course I care. Rakkan, calm down.” Aegis turned to face him, and saw him seething with rage.
“Yeaaah, must suck that you left me, just to join a guy like him, huh? At least I had the balls to fight. This guy’s just sittin’ there.” Seraxus joined in.
“Shut the fuck up!” Rakkan shouted at Seraxus. “You told me, you said you’d help me.”
“I will, but now is not the time.” Aegis replied.
“Fuck that, I’m not sitting back and letting him destroy all this we worked towards.” Rakkan charged beyond Aegis with his echoes towards Seraxus, as Seraxus readied his weapons and Syvlia stopped flinging fire to face the approaching Rune Knight.
“Uh, Aegis?” Darkshot asked anxiously, as he, Aegis and Pyri watched Rakkan charge in by himself.
“RAKKAN!” Aegis yelled at him, but got ignored.
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“Aegis, I found them, they’re on-” Lina called out through the party communications, having shadowstepped up the mountain using the darkness of the night.
Hiding in the shadows near the peak, she’d come into view of a group of Sages of Destiny guild. Unfortunately, just as she had spotted them, they had spotted her. Mercilessly, Synopse threw a spell out at Lina before she’d properly perceived him, landing it with little effort and causing her to freeze in place for two seconds.
“Sorry, lil girl.” Makaroth said as he glared at her, followed by him drawing out his blade and engulfing it in red flames. He then slashed the sword out towards Lina and hit her multiple times in quick succession, killing her before Synopse’s stasis spell wore off.
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Aegis heard her, then saw her health hit zero, and this caused him to hesitate in his reaction to Rakkan’s actions. His hesitation gave time for Pyri to make a choice on her own, and she sent her cinderbolts forward alongside Rakkan as Seraxus began swinging his blades down towards him. Pyri’s incredible spell control was able to keep up with Seraxus’ blades and redirected the trajectory of each swing away from Rakkan.
Aegis turned to see Pyri focused on her casts, then looked at Rakkan as he and his echoes began to swing wildly at Seraxus, and finally at Darkshot who was eying him nervously.
“Guess we’re fighting?” Darkshot asked Aegis.
“We can’t win, these guys PvP for a living. Rakkan!” Aegis tried to shout at him, but got ignored.
“Sylvia, the ole one-two combo?” Seraxus called out, suddenly jumping into the air and throwing his black sword like a spear at Pyri. Pyri sent her cinderbolts up to intercept it, but all attempts to do so failed. It took her a minute to recognize why - a blackhole spell had been cast at the tip of the blade by Sylvia, and it was being manipulated to follow the swords movements. It absorbed every and all cinderbolts that came near the sword.
“Tch. I guess I should expect a player warlock to be better at spell control than an NPC like Mayiera.” Pyri grumbled to herself, forced to dash backwards to avoid the black blade from hitting her.
“That’s why PvE sucks. The only real challenge in an MMORPG is the PvP. You agree, don’t you?” Hajax replied to her as he charged forward towards Aegis, seeing Aegis moving to try and stand between Pyri and the blacksword.
While Seraxus’ main body continuously dealt with Rakkan and his echoes, he controlled his black sword effortlessly and avoided hitting Aegis while keeping pressure up on Pyri. Sylvia controlled the location of her blackhole spell carefully, repeatedly using it to disable any and all attempts Pyri made to cast cinderbolts.
“I watched you play a bit, I know you rely on cinderbolts. Unfortunately, they’re kind of useless against warlocks.” Sylvia squeaked at her with a big smile, watching Pyri struggle to manually dodge the black blade. Hajax was about to arrive at Aegis and slam his shield into Aegis to prevent him from defending Pyri, but several arrows were fired from Darkshot at Hajax. None hit, but it stopped Hajax’ forward charge when he was forced to dodge the arrows.
“Yo Ranger, I aint like other clerics.” Hajax turned to Darkshot and fired out several black bolts from his right hand at Darkshot. Darkshot jumped to avoid them, but as they flew past Darkshot the three black bolts of energy converged and formed into a black misty snake which coiled through the air and swerved back towards Darkshot. Darkshot looked at Hajax and saw him focused on the snake - he was manually controlling its movements. This gave Darkshot the idea to interrupt the spell and fired several more arrows at Hajax before moving to avoid the snake as it pursued him. From there, the two took turns dodging each other's attacks while Aegis finally managed to get between Pyri and the blade, forcing Seraxus to pull it back to his main body while he continued to handle Seraxus.
“Target swap. Lockdown healer.” Seraxus told his group. Aegis was familiar with the terminology, and the words were enough to understand what the commands meant for him, but he wasn’t completely prepared for what spells these classes would employ upon being given such commands.
Despite the sword leaving Pyri’s vicinity, the blackhole from Sylvia was left behind to continue to block her spells. Sylivia then suddenly broke into a sprint towards Aegis and Pyri, whilst Pyri desperately tried to create distance between herself and the small black ball of energy floating near her that was absorbing all of her cinderbolts.
Aegis' attention got split when simultaneously Seraxus whipped his black sword over Rakkan’s head towards Darkshot, and Sylvia came charging at him with her staff in front, giving off sparks of purple lightning before she swung out towards him.
Aegis saw that Darkshot was too preoccupied dodging Hajax’ snake - he didn’t see the sword flying at him with incredible speed. So Aegis desperately turned his attention to Darkshot, creating a guard projection beside Darkshot to protect him from the black sword, but this opening was enough for Sylvia to swing her staff down at him. He held his shield up and was able to brace the attack easily, but that was his mistake.
The spell she held on the end of her staff did not deal damage, but instead sent purple bolts of electricity outward from its tip which spread through Aegis’ shield and eventually his body, paralyzing him for three seconds.
“DISPEL!” Pyri reacted quickly, casting it on Aegis to remove the paralysis within 1 second - but 1 second was too long, and Seraxus had maneuvered the black sword around Aegis’ guard and slashed through Darkshot with it, dealing over 1 million points of damage and killing him.
“Finally.” Hajax said with relief. No longer being forced to dodge arrows, he turned his attention fully to Aegis and rammed him full on with his shield. The damage from their shields clashing was minor, that wasn’t Hajax’s intent. Rather, Hajax repeatedly bashed his shield into Aegis with great force, releasing bursts of black energy upon each impact. Aegis struggled to hold his ground, bracing each hit desperately, whilst Seraxus waved his blacksword across the battlefield towards Pyri once more. Sylvia backed away behind Hajax and went back to controlling her blackhole’s location more elegantly, pursing Pyri with it while Pyri had a look of frustration, desperately trying to think of something she could do - unfortunately she hadn’t the time yet to earn her advance class and learn new spells to circumvent a black hole spell.
It became clear very quickly to Aegis what Hajax was trying to do with the repeated shield bashes - keep Aegis busy and prevent him from helping Pyri. He fully grasped what ‘Lockdown healer’ meant, they aimed to just disable Aegis completely from the fight. This type of pressure in a PvP fight, he hadn’t fully experienced it before and his adrenaline was pumping violently through his veins as he tried to recall what he ought to do in these situations.
> “It’s common in a PvP match as a healer to have all aggression placed on you. Either to kill you, or lock you down. In situations like these, it’s up to your party members to relieve pressure from you.”
Aegis recalled the voice of one of the many PvP videos that he’d studied after fighting Emerill, but even knowing this, he looked and saw that Pyri had been completely disabled, and Rakkan wasn’t listening to anything he was saying.
“Rakkan!” Aegis shouted at him desperately, but all this confirmed to him was that Rakkan was indeed ignoring him. Aegis let out a sigh, took a deep breath and did his best to clear his head until finally coming up with a plan. He suddenly began to retaliate bashes on Hajax, and extended long claws out from his right hand. Seeing the claws, Hajax’ eyes went wide with fear and he jumped backwards, avoiding a swipe from Aegis’ claws out at him.
“Yo, he equipped those Jealousy claws.” Hajax called out to the others. Aegis didn’t give time to react, taking advantage of the space provided for him by Hajax. He ran to the side around him, sprinting towards Sylvia. Sylvia jumped to the side to get away from Aegis.
“Don’t let him hit her, we dunno how much damage those deal.” Seraxus ordered Hajax, and he nodded back before moving to defend Sylvia. Hajax jumped in and tried to block a swing from the claws while Aegis quickly cast bless on himself before the attack landed.
You deal 4312 Slashing damage.
You deal 326 Shadow damage.
You deal 291 Holy damage
“Dang, hits hard even with my armor.” Hajax commented after having braced the hit. Aegis bashed his shield into Hajax’s shield to knock it away, slashing at him from the side but his claws were parried away by Hajax’s scepter in his other hand. While this happened, Sylivia put her focus back on following the fast moving Pyri with her black hole spell, but Pyri rather suddenly began charging forward to fight alongside Aegis, avoiding the black sword that swung at her from behind due to Seraxus.
Seraxus eyed her and saw how difficult it was going to be to focus on hitting Pyri, especially given Rakkan and his echoes were still keeping his body and his other 5 floating weapons busy. Seraxus let out an annoyed sigh as he suddenly ordered the blacksword back towards himself.
“You got good, playin’ as a Rune Knight. But you still aint shit against me.” Seraxus said to Rakkan with a growl as the blacksword returned to his hand and he swung it down at Rakkan. Rakkan jumped his main body backwards out of the path of the blade as Aegis briefly glanced over to see them fighting. Frustrated with Rakkan though, Aegis wasn’t sure what to do about the fight and instead decided to prioritize Hajax and Sylvia.
“Fly.” Pyri cast on herself, suddenly leaping up into the air over Hajax and Aegis to get at Sylvia behind them, then shot herself forward with her fists extended in Sylvia’s direction, punching into her from above while encasing her hand in red cinders. Sylvia desperately canceled her blackhole spell that had fallen too far behind Pyri to be of any use, and instead recast a new one directly in front of her to block Pyri’s cinders, while simultaneously sidestepping Pyri’s fist to avoid it hitting her head.
Both of these measures, Pyri didn’t mind. She followed through with her punch with a big hug, wrapping her arms around Sylvia to grapple her.
“What are you going to do? Love me to death?” Sylvia replied mockingly as Pyri smirked in response.
“Sort of. Warlocks can’t learn the fly spell, right?” Pyri suddenly jumped up off the ground using her fly spell. She carried Sylvia up into the air with her, and within seconds the two of them were high above the town square of Rene, disappearing into the black smoke rising up from the demon fire on the surrounding buildings.
“Shit.” Hajax commented as he followed Sylvia and Pyri with his eyes, watching them disappear above them. Seraxus watched it happen as well, letting out a grunt of annoyance.
“Aite, that’s enough playin’ with you.” He suddenly sped up, rapidly swinging and flipping around Rakkan and his echoes at incredible speed. In an instant, he’d managed to get through Rakkan and his echoes defenses, slashing through Rakkan’s main body with his blacksword and killing him.
Simultaneously, though, Sylvia re-appeared as she fell down through the black smoke, plummeting to hear death as Pyri had flown her high enough up into the air to kill her with fall damage. Hajax jumped back away from Aegis towards Seraxus, while Pyri slowly hovered back down to the ground through the black smoke and landed behind Aegis.
“Can’t blackhole a fly spell.” Pyri said proudly to Aegis after having landed behind him.
“Two on two then, eh?” Seraxus grinned.