Inside the cocoon, Jay was left with only his HUD in the ability’s dark interior. He couldn’t hear anything outside the shell of vines, but he could see the stacks on his Shards of the Maragon buff. The buff was slowly ticking upward—Jay’s only indication of events on the outside. Somehow, his ploy had worked. The Demon players were taking the bait and attacking him.
The buff stacks maxed out at fifty while he was still wrapped inside. A moment later, Jay could see the cracks forming on the cocoon of plants. The fissures deepened quickly, exploding outward in a shower of Shard creatures.
As the Shards swarmed the battlefield, Jay could take in some details of the battle. All the other players had switched their focus to burning down his fake transformation, except for Erla. The powerful Erla was still engaged in a duel with Lucille, though numerical advantage currently favored the Lotus Warden.
Shards exploded all over the battlefield, landing their poison. Every Demon player was inflicted with the condition to various degrees, but the enemies showed no signs of quitting.
Seth was sneering at Jay from mere feet away. The Plague Knight readied his sword to murder Jay. At that exact moment, a flurry of knives hurtled from the Assassin.
Jay dropped to the ground as the attacks came, simultaneously charging up his Wild Strike ability. The thrown weapons, as well as Seth’s first strike, sailed over Jay’s head. For this, Jay benefited from his combat movement speed increase on his cowboy hat. Making use of them, he blasted a shot from his repeater at point-blank range as he rolled away. Seth’s follow-up attack thudded uselessly on the firm ground.
Despite the moment being terrible for practice, Jay used his new fighting style. Springing to his feet, Jay drew his dagger into his free hand just in time to block another attack from Seth. Jay’s muscles burned—blocking a large two-handed sword with a dagger was horribly strenuous work. To make matters worse, Seth was still reasonably quick for someone wearing plate mail.
Jay side-stepped the next attack, blasting a regular attack at point-blank range from his repeater. He was left with a single bolt in his current clip. Unfortunately, he wasn’t expecting a chance to reload any time soon, either.
Jay dodged backward, expecting another attack from Seth’s sword. Instead, vicious blood-red magic crackled around Seth’s fingertips. Jay saw the Plague Knight’s Blood Plague disease pop onto his HUD.
He would slowly lose health from the debuff, but the accumulated stacks from the Shards buff countered the effect. His recovery was flowing in faster than the damage.
Seth’s eyes widened as he finally noticed the poison Shards debuff on his screen. He summoned an unknown potion into his hand, holding his weapon in one hand, and downed it. The brew didn’t change anything about his status.
Seth spoke, his tone absolutely demanding, “What is this ability? This is no level twenty ability I’ve ever heard of.”
Jay was silent, allowing himself the opportunity for his most decisive direct attack to get off cooldown. He hoped the other player would continue talking, and Seth did not disappoint.
“Are you a hacker?” Seth asked, summoning another potion. His health ticked from 20% back to nearly full. The poison was still in effect, causing the Plague Knight to mutter under his breath.
He waited another few moments for Jay to speak. “Fine, you don’t want to talk. I’ll just send you to respawn.”
Seth still hesitated, but Jay suddenly felt a piercing pain in his left side. Then another—and another. Looking down, he realized when he had stopped moving, he had become an easy target for T’s thrown weapons.
Jay sprung back to action, wishing he owned a dagger holster attached to his repeater crossbow. He awkwardly stashed his dagger at his side, summoning another novice healing potion and drinking it. With the potion supplementing his healing buff, the damage from T disappeared as if it had never happened.
As Jay turned to face off against Seth again, he stole a glance at Lucille’s fight.
Lucille was starting to struggle. Erla was nearly dead, but the Silent Mage, Chris, had shifted to firing shimmering purple daggers at Lucille. The Lotus Warden could only dodge some of the blades while warding off Erla’s brutal assault. As Jay watched, Erla’s large axe struck Lucille in her bicep.
Seeing Lucille struggle did not ease his growing nerves. The enemy players were slowly losing their health to the poison, but it wouldn’t last forever.
Barely noticing them, Jay dodged out of the way of more thrown daggers with a spin. One still clipped him, but the healing from Maragon Blossoms was more than adequate to keep him at full health.
T decided not to play with her thrown weapons anymore, lunging toward Jay. Seth approached him from the other side. When T slashed out at him, Jay made a choice that almost surprised even himself: dodging toward Seth.
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The other player was surprised, unable to find an angle for a proper attack against Jay.
Jay raised his repeating crossbow, activating Rapid Fire at the same time. He fired a point-blank Wild Strike into Seth’s head, dealing critical damage.
It wasn’t the damage from that vicious blow that killed Seth. Eyes wide, he summoned a potion, reacting a second too late. Before he could drink, the damage of the Shard poison was just enough to kill him. Jay heard the chime of experience as the other team’s leader died.
Jay quickly switched out his repeater clip as he rolled backward. He leveled his weapon, prepared to empty all five shots into the Demon Assassin player. He blinked, even though his character didn’t need to, as he glanced around the battlefield. There was no one there.
Elsewhere, Lucille struck without reprieve. She dodged Chris’ daggers where she could and ignored him where she couldn’t. Her blades slammed into Erla’s large axe as fast as she could, striking like a windmill. The accumulated force was enough to push Erla’s weapon back. When the tide of attacks finally broke, waves of strikes slammed against Erla. The enemy Champion player fell, laid out by the assault.
With her health low, Lucille turned on Chris as the Mesmer continued his torrent of daggers. She blocked most of them, but several started to whittle her remaining health as she charged the Mesmer. With a flourish, she absorbed the plant mass of her expired Flowers of the Angerine, restoring herself to maximum health.
Jay’s eyes combed the area looking for T. Four seconds ticked by as his eyes poked the brush for something to appear. The Assassin didn’t reappear, but Jay’s nerves were on fire. Every fiber of his being said to keep his attention out for the Assassin, but he knew he needed to do something about the Mesmer.
Lucille was definitely faster than Chris, but she couldn’t move effectively as she weaved through the daggers. The blasts paused only momentarily for Chris to chug down a potion. Lucille used that brief window to bolster her progress toward the other player. She smiled sincerely, enjoying the fight more than any previous battles that day. After Chris finished his potion, the attacks continued unceasingly, and Lucille’s progress slowed.
Jay considered the battlefield, weighing his options. Lucille’s healing abilities would be on cooldown for a while. She couldn’t drink a potion while wielding twin blades and keeping up the rapid pace of her fight. The Assassin was still somewhere, and Jay felt confident he couldn’t take both Demon players if Lucille was killed. Gritting his teeth, he focused his attention on Chris.
Jay’s clip was still full from his prepared attack against the Assassin, so he ran toward Chris, drawing his dagger as he moved. The Outlaw fighting style allowed him to hold onto both, and he didn’t have any more clips in his inventory. He moved with purposing, closing the distance to attack from point-blank range.
Closing to within feet of Chris, Jay rapidly fired bolts into the Mesmer player. Only three bolts were fired from close enough to be considered point-blank attacks.
It didn’t matter.
The Mesmer was quickly killed by the bolts. His body fell, leaving Lucille and Jay alone in the space between trees. They were both exhausted, even feeling, in the full dive experience, simulated physical strain on their bodies. Somewhere nearby, an Assassin still hid.
Jay’s clips were empty again. The surrounding forest was silent—not in a magical way—but in the quiet way after all life flees. The battle had sent life scurrying to more hospitable areas of forest.
“Is it over?” Lucille asked, looking at the fallen bodies of the Demon players. She started counting them, quickly realizing one was missing. “Where’s the other? Did she escape?”
The bodies of player characters were not lootable. They would disappear in a shower of sparks as characters shifted out of combat status. Jay supposed they only remained temporarily to add a semblance of realism to the game.
“Not exactly,” Jay said, moving closer to Lucille. He wanted to be nearby if either of them needed to react to the Assassin reappearing. “She used some ability to disappear in the middle of the battle. Haven’t seen her since, so it’s possible she left.”
“That feels unlikely.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Jay and Lucille stood back to back, slowly circling as they looked around for signs of the last Demon player. Jay watched for rustling in the grass that might give away invisibility. He listened for movements beyond the swish of Lucille’s fabric robes. Lucille’s eyes darted from tree to tree, waiting for more thrown weapons to fly.
The pair maintained intense focus as they waited.
T dropped from one of the trees, landing on top of Lucille and bringing her instantly to the ground. Both of T’s daggers struck the Lotus Warden as they collided. Lucille died instantly, her character’s body collapsing and presumably awakening at the respawn point.
The Assassin turned her daggers on Jay. He reacted quickly enough to lift his dagger to his defense. As he blocked the first, the other flashed past him, cutting into his stomach. He stepped back, reorienting himself to block another strike while dodging.
T disappeared again; she didn’t reappear until she tore twin attacks from his waist to his shoulder blades.
Jay awoke at the respawn. When he noticed Lucille was already out of the fountain water, he stepped out to join her. The lingering feeling of damp clothes from the fountain quickly dissipated after he left the water.
“Well,” Lucille said, with the false cheer of someone forcibly looking on the bright side, “I did all that work for a single level, only to lose that level. I’m pretty much back where I started, experience-wise. Meanwhile, you get several levels, and Casey gets almost ten.”
“I leveled up after killing the Demon players,” Jay admitted. “Glad to still be level twenty instead of losing that ability.”
“Hello, my friends,” Ichibad said, appearing next to Lucille. One of his arms was crooked, and he used it to lean against Lucille’s shoulder.
Lucille and Jay were startled by his swift materialization, but Lucille recovered much more quickly. A moment after his appearance, she brushed his arm off her. For his part, Ichibad didn’t seem upset by the overt rejection.
The Cat Sith wore a bored expression but smiled when he saw Jay’s surprise. “I see my skills are improving—you didn’t notice me. This is good news.”
“Nice of you to show up,” she said, her frustration evident.
“I just came where you would be,” Ichibad deflected. “This is the place of resurrection nearest the dire wolf den. Pity about the Matriarch.”
“You assumed we would die? Then why didn’t you come help?” Lucille asked, rolling her eyes, dramatically drawing it out. “If we didn’t die, how would you have found us for this conversation? Maybe start answering your messages?”
“No,” Ichibad said with a Cheshire grin. “I wouldn’t have answered my messages. But I’m here, so tell him what you want to tell him.”