Chapter 34
Dawn Ripper
It happened again, the feeling of suffocation.
Asher was firmly planted on the ground and yet still felt himself sinking. His palms began to sweat, his heart rate sped up considerably, and he found it harder to breathe. A thousand, nay, a million thoughts seemed to race through his mind in a bid to get his attention, ravaging through him, depleting him of strength.
He grinned bitterly. For a moment there, he thought he was getting better--he hadn’t had any attacks in days, despite all the things he’d been through. But... it was too good to be true, after all. Consternation was a rooted mother of self-implosion, lurking and debasing, waiting for a perfect--or, rather, imperfect--moment to strike.
Luckily, the world remained paused. It was a bit of a loophole, it seemed, that he could take his sweet time to re-calibrate before picking a weapon. Had he been thrust into the world, he'd have likely taken well over half the time he was afforded to just calm himself down. Not to mention, if these 'people' around him were real, or, at least, behaved as such, they’d have lost all faith in him, should they even have any to begin with.
"Deep breaths," he closed his eyes and focused on one, simple thing--breathing. He erased all the distracting thoughts the best he could, killing them one by one. Fears of ineptitude, fears of death, fears of failure, fears of inutility--they all uniformly coalesced, silent beasts of decay, and he shunned them. Buried them back into the depths of his soul where they would continue to rot until another undue time when they'd crawl back up again.
One breath in--hold for four seconds.
One breath out--hold for four seconds.
Rinse and repeat.
One in.
One out.
It was the hardest at the very beginning when the whole of the body was firing off--the neurons were being pushed into overdrive, with the mind thinking that the severity of the situation was so massive that it simply... got overwhelmed. It was its own undoing, sort of like an allergic reaction--in an attempt to save itself, the body kills itself. Rather poetic, in a macabre sense at the very least.
One in.
One out.
Rinse and repeat.
He suddenly yearned for those pills that he despised, the very ones that numbed him, that turned him cold and apathetic. Though they killed desire, they also killed... this. And he needed this dead, especially in this world.
One in.
One out.
It got better. Little by little. Such is the way--the initial onslaught was the worst, but, with a bit of time and patience... it always gets better. After all, there is no real threat to life--mostly a perceived one. In a way, however, panic attacks here were at the very least justified--he was about to thrust himself into a battle from which he, more than likely, would not return. He was glad to have experienced it before if nothing else, rather than in the middle of it.
One in.
One out.
He opened his eyes, staring once more at his surroundings and taking them all in. As he couldn’t move, the amount he could see was very limiting. However, he saw enough to make him wince.
Standing within the weathered walls of stone, faded grandeur permeated the air. The ramparts lay crumbling in places where ivy and moss found settlements between the aging stones, scars of time running wild and angry.
To the left, he saw a partially collapsed tower, still manned by six young men standing in the cleaned-up rubble. There were broken arrow slits everywhere, staring out into the open like wounded, blind eyes, dark to the world before them. The wooden scaffolding could be seen across several points of the running walls, the likely remnants of when they thought the place could be fixed.
The courtyard within which he stood was a patchwork of overgrown weeds and wildflowers undergoing a reclamation of the cobblestones laid a long, long time ago. Here and there, interspersed randomly, he saw vestiges of a once lively place; a crumbled fountain of age, faded marble, stables upon which heavy stones of the castle walls fell, burying them in ash and rubble, and even what looked to be training grounds, now just a deposit for what looked to be suits of armors of the buried soldiers, punctured, broken, and so destroyed they couldn't even be repurposed as a material to forge something anew.
He could only catch a glimpse of the keep behind him--it wasn’t particularly tall, but there still existed reminders that this place, at some point, bore nobility and honor. Its weathered stones and walls were lined with tattered banners currently frozen in motion, ragged and faded, barely discernible at this point. The windows were dark, shattered glass covered up with planks of wood as well as wool and linen, likely barely preventing draft from rampaging through the interior.
The pelting of the rain had created puddles every which way--water canyoned the stone in small ways, forming tiny, glitching streams that bound backward toward the keep as its weighed stone seemed to have created an indentation in the ground, a decline toward its walls.
Though it was a bit later in the morning, the darkness was a scourge--the skies above were ashen gray in hue, blanketing the sun from shining down. Here and there, he caught glimpses of the fading embers of torches, and in one of the towers he even saw an oil lamp hanging from the side where a young man was sitting against the tower's wall, clutching a tattered shield in his arms.
The scene wasn’t one depicting the scene of valiant defense--it was more a preamble to death, where every living thing here had accepted the ultimate reality that they would soon fade, and were now simply in the process of internalizing that, dealing with the fears the best they could. It was harrowing, every last detail that he could make out. At the very least, the gates stood--the doorway heaved nearly fifteen feet tall, steel and wood molded into the last barricade. Even though the walls’ ramparts were damaged and its towers saw rot and decay of time take over, at the very least they stood tall still. They weren’t breached anywhere he could see.
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He wanted to grimace but his face wouldn’t move. Asher was far, far from an expert on medieval warfare, and even less so on castle defenses. However, he had a decent amount of experience in holding fortified positions against an encroaching force. There was always a reason why attackers always had to massively outnumber the defenders. Otherwise, it would simply become a war of attrition. Quite a few sieges, from what little he recalled of history, were precisely just that--invaders digging in around the castle or the city and just starving the people inside out without ever truly attacking.
The issue was that the attacker’s force was overwhelming--they almost had a 10:1 ratio, and considering they were monsters rather than people, that ratio was likely much, much worse. Every detail of his circumstances was more depraved and depressing than the last--there was a reason why he instinctively rejected wanting to do this quest when he first saw it. It wasn’t impossible, in all likelihood, but it was close to it.
But what was done was done.
One breath in.
One out.
He was calm, at last. He couldn't quite tell how much time had passed, but his heart was beating steadily and his mind was no longer reeling in terror. A castle, a bunker, a trench, a building... whichever it was, the principality of holding the fortified position was the same--especially if the reinforcements were arriving--which was rather simple: don't let them in... no matter what.
He knew that the moment the castle's walls were breached... it would be over. There was likely a reason why the 'game' indicated that most of the people manning the castle were just fresh recruits. In this case, it was to tell him that they were barely holding on as is, and the collapsing wall would send them over the edge.
But he only had twenty minutes. It was barely enough time to take a proper shit, let alone fortify an entire castle. He didn't even know whether the monsters would attack from just one side or from all the other ones. As far as he could see, both the left and the right sides seemed to be open, though it was entirely possible that, beyond those walls was an impassable terrain. The best case scenario, naturally, was that they'd attack from one side--that would mean he could concentrate the entire force on just one side. Worst case? All four. If that turned out to be the case, he already made a choice: he'd give up. Rather than spending the last minutes of his life desperately clinging to the impossible, he'd find a semi-quiet spot, sit down, and make peace with his wretched life... and unto his wretched death.
Thinking any further was pointless--he first had to scout the ramparts, look at the condition of the rest of the castle, talk to the two knights, and see the state of everyone else. I can hold, he convinced himself, looking at the weapons. He prayed--prayed--that the choice of the Staff would remain and that it would not be in any way, shape or form penalized. But even on a casual glance, he saw it wasn’t there. His heart broke.
However, to his shock, the weapons were all... different. For starters, none were, well, ‘Starter’ weapons. In fact, all three were named weapons, qualified as ‘Legendary’.
Moonfire Quell [Legendary Mace]
Effects:
* -- slam the weapon into the ground, sending out three arrays of moonfire forth that cleave through all enemies in their path. The trail of moonfire remains for a second before fading. Deals base (10) damage and 1 burn damage every 3 seconds (burn’s duration is until death or dispelled using specific spells)
* -- every 3rdattack will instead send a ring-like explosion with you at the center, shaking the ground within 20 yards of you, dealing 2x base (20) damage.
* -- every attack has a 10% chance to break the armor of all enemies within 15 yards of you.
* -- your attacks will naturally ignore 60% of your target’s defenses. Even if they are perfectly blocked, they will still deal 50% of the weapon’s damage.
* -- if your attack deals more than 30% of the target’s max Health as damage, stun the target for 4 seconds.
Damage: 68 (58+10)
Attack Speed: 1 attack every 2.2 seconds (can chain attacks in quick succession without stopping to increase it to 1 attack every 1.4 seconds)
Description: Moonfire Quell was first used in the Battle of Qymia by General Twor, where he defeated the Orc Warchief B’wwak in a legendary duel that saw the creation of Tywell River. Due to the weapon’s destructive nature, it was surrendered to the Royal Armory, where it’s been stored ever since.
Blood Sunderer [Legendary Greatsword]
Effects:
* -- cleave in the targeted direction, dealing damage to all enemies within range. Damage dealt is split between the number of enemies. Deals 77 damage per strike. If the strike kills an enemy, increase the damage of this attack by 1 for the duration of the stage.
* -- every 3rdstrike is a guaranteed Critical Strike, increasing the damage by 400%.
* -- every attack has a 15% chance to rip the blood out of the enemy, inflicting ‘Lethal Bleed’ which deals 1 damage per second for 20 seconds. Multiple instances of this debuff stack.
* -- you may chain attacks by using momentum; each attack in this manner will do 15% more damage than the last, but drain more stamina. You can manually end the chain at any point after 3, unleashing ‘Blood Strike’ which unleashes all the stored blood within the weapon into a massive, blood array that deals 220 damage to the first enemy it strikes.
Damage: 77 (67+10)
Attack Speed: 1 attack every 2.8 seconds
Description: The forbidden, occult weapon of the traitor, former Prince Avanash. Three hundred years ago, Prince Avanash commenced a vile ritual in which he sacrificed the lives of 72 mortals and washed his personal greatsword with their blood, creating the Sundered Blood. During his execrable rebellion, over 40,000 souls lost their lives. He was finally subjugated at the Pirrean Hills, where the Crown Prince personally fought and defeated him in a duel, executing him after the fact. Nobody knows where the Sunderer is stored as is considered an Odious Weapon, never to be wielded by another soul.
Dawn Ripper [Legendary Sword]
Effects:
* -- rapidly slash in the targeted direction, dealing base (10) damage to the targets hit. Consecutive strikes to the same target deal 50% more damage, but they must be done under 0,8 seconds of the previous.
* -- every 3rdstrike rips through the coil of reality, causing you to become invulnerable for 2 seconds and slash rapidly for 50 times in the area of 20 yards around you. Can only happen every 8 seconds.
* -- if you do not attack for longer than 2 seconds, enter Iai state. Your next attack will be a guaranteed Critical Strike, dealing 600% bonus damage, and cannot be blocked or parried. If you do not attack for longer than 4 seconds, enter the Perfect Iai state. In addition to the prior effect, this attack will ignore all defenses, pierce through every target within 40 yards, and give you a temporary, 3,4 seconds shield based on how much damage you have dealt in totality.
* -- continuously attacking without breaking the link increases your attack speed by 10% for every 5 attacks, stacking infinitely. Note that the bearings of a mortal body still apply and that ignoring it may be deadly.
* -- Dawn Ripper has no defensive capabilities; trying to block an attack with it will instead amplify the attack and you will take 200% bonus damage from it. However, you are able to attack projectiles--these attacks do not count toward any of the consecutive bonuses.
Damage: 22 (12+10)
Attack Speed: 1 attack every 0,77 seconds.
Description: A nameless, wandering swordsman appeared in the Empire 68 years ago. He challenged the row of Princes to duels and defeated them all. The whispers also abound that he challenged the Emperor and that, in their private duel, the two men fought to a draw. The only thing that is known about him is the name of his sword: Dawn Ripper, the silvery blade that strikes so rapidly, that its attacks become one with the world itself.