Maria walked over to Emily and the latter quickly thanked her after she finished giving some orders to the players around, “Thanks, Mary, you saved us back there.”
Emily looked a little worse for wear at the moment because, in the previous battle, she had been moving around the most, trying to save as many people as she could from death. As the highest level player in the group–second only to Lizzy–and as the group’s main tank, she had the responsibility to make sure that no one died. It was a tough role to be the group’s ‘babysitter’, but she gladly took up the mantle because she didn’t want any of her guild members’ time and effort going to waste.
If they died earlier in the battle, all of their progress would’ve been lost and they’d have to start all over again. Of course, her own life was put on the spot, but she didn’t have to worry about dying because right after Maria and the girls halted their exploration of the Underworld, Lizzy and her had immediately gone to complete their Third Class Advancement Quest since they had reached level 400 as it was the next benchmark that would give the players a large power spike to their Combat Power thanks to the Class Advancement.
After completing the Third Class Advancement, this meant that Emily and Lizzy were now, respectively, third order Knight and Warrior-class players. The class advancement provided them with many new active and passive class skills just as their previous class advancements had given them. One of those skills for the Knight class branch was something called [Impenetrable Spirit], which was actually an upgrade of the Knight class’s Second Advancement class skill called [Guardian Spirit].
[Guardian Spirit] was a skill that increased a Knight-class player’s DEF and M.DEF stat by 200% for 5 seconds. It was a pretty solid skill for tanking damage when an opponent tried using an Ultimate skill, but the Third Class Advancement upgraded it so that the Knight was practically invincible.
At the current stage of the game, it was a pretty broken skill. When using [Impenetrable Spirit], a Knight-class player’s DEF, M.DEF, Resistances, and SP bar increases by 500% for 10 seconds, making them practically impervious to all forms of damage and debuffs while also turning them pretty much inexhaustible, since they would practically have limitless stamina during the active duration of the skill.
When she used this skill, Emily received 0 DMG from all of the island monsters’ attacks despite how powerful they were and this was how she managed to preserve her life despite going around the entire battlefield to act like a meat shield for anyone who was about to die. The cooldown of the skill was also pretty low, being only 30 seconds, and this cooldown was further decreased to only 21 seconds for Emily, since she received a special passive skill called [Titanic Order] for being the first Knight-class player to advance to the Third Class Tier.
[Titanic Order] decreased all of her knight-class skill cooldowns by 30% and this was an incredible passive skill which was practically a cheat and even more overpowered than [Impenetrable Spirit]. Only the first player to complete the Third Class Advancement would receive this overpowered passive skill, and this practically puts Emily in a whole new class of her own. Being able to use her skills more frequently meant that she could cycle through them more efficiently and this was really important in many different scenarios.
Without this passive skill, Emily wouldn’t have been able to frequently use her skills like [Charge], [Impenetrable Spirit], [Taunt], and a few others to save her guild members and Gerald’s guild members from death in the earlier chaotic battle.
Emily hadn’t told anyone about it except for the girls, so only 4 people in the game knew about the skill. Lizzy had also been rewarded because she was the first player to complete the Third Class Advancement for the warrior-class, but she didn’t receive anything that was as overpowered as Emily’s skill. The special skill she received was called [War God’s Descent] and it was an active skill that buffed all of her stats, attributes, and resistances by 200% for 1 minute. It had a cooldown of 30 seconds after the skill was deactivated, so she could use it rather frequently though it did cost a large portion of her War God Spirit–a unique resource bar she received after obtaining the skill.
This new resource bar would replace her normal resource bar when she was in the [War God's Descent] state, and by using War God Spirit instead of the normal resource like Rage or Mana, her skills would experience different degrees of enhancements and additional effects that previously weren't there if she only used her Rage or Mana.
Despite it being a pretty powerful skill in its own right, the girls objectively agreed that it paled in comparison to Emily’s OP passive skill that reduced the cooldowns of all her skills, but Lizzy was very satisfied with it because the skill gave her a ‘transformation’ ability just like her friend, Maria.
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Maria’s transformation ability, [Metamorphosis], allowed her to swap between a few different forms and Lizzy thought that it was so cool. [War God’s Descent] gave Lizzy the ability to swap forms as well, because upon using the skill, her avatar would change as a literal War God would descend upon her. She thought that it was cool when she showed it to her friends, but the girls could only mildly laugh as they agreed with her because her ‘transformation’ was rather…grotesque, to say the least. If the transformation was to happen onto a guy, then maybe it was cool, but to the girls, it wasn’t so appealing.
When using the skill, Lizzy’s muscles would bulge as her body increased in size, turning her into a giant, while her hair and skin would change colors to a pure, blood red. She practically became a red-colored h*lk and this clearly amused her friends instead of amazed them. Also, her voice would become deeper than usual and it made the transformation even more comical in Amanda, Emily, and Maria's eyes.
During her first transformation, it really did freak out the girls, but after seeing it a few more times, the girls all began teasing Lizzy to no end.
“Liz, this is a good time to get angry!”
“That’s my secret, I’m always angy~”
“Gahahahaha!”
“Hahahaha!”
“I’m dying! Hahahahah! I can’t stop laughing!”
“H-Here’s another one! Liz angry…always angy~”
“Gahahahaha!”
“No, stop, please! Hahaha!”
“Good one, Mary, good one!”
“YOU GUYS!!! STOP! STOP RIGHT NOW!”
“Oh, no! She’s gotten angry!”
“Well, she’s been red in the face for a while now…”
“...”
“...”
“...pfffftttt!!!”
“Ahahahaha!”
“Stop, please! Hahahaha~”
“OKAY, THAT DOES IT!!! COME HERE!”
Lizzy was so angry that day that she chased the girls around that entire day out of frustration and cemented herself in her friend group as the Red H*lk even though some time in the future she would be known to the rest of the player base and even those that didn't even play the game as the Crimson War Goddess. The transformation was just too comical for her friends, so even after gaining that title, they’d still call her H*lk, Red Giant, or something like that just to tease her.
If one thing was good about [War God’s Descent]’s transformation was that all of her body parts increased in size while being in that state, meaning that her womanly assets–not like she had any in the first place–had also increased in size and volume. Even in all her glorified redness, she would flaunt them in front of her friends because she had become ‘bigger’ than all of them. They weren’t discouraged though, because that was only inside of the game and when she was in her transformed state.
In her normal state and in IRL, she was the ‘flattest’ and the most un-endowed among them, so they would just continue teasing her for being too conceited when she transformed. At the end of the day, it was all just fun and games for the girls, but when the skill was used in battle, Lizzy’s combat prowess increased by several folds and, despite being in the hulking size that she was in, her speed didn’t decrease at all.
In fact, she was even faster since the transformation provided her with a 200% increase in all of her parameters and this naturally included her AGI stat. Also, she was practically immune to all forms of crowd control in this state since her resistances had also been increased. All in all, it was a really solid and OP skill in its own right and there were no demerits to it at all. She was able to showcase her new skill in the earlier battle where she single-handedly took down so many monsters on her own, which awed all of her guild members who saw the transformation skill for the first time.
Maria, who was watching all of it happen, couldn't help but snicker to herself after she was reminded of her and her friends' first encounter with the skill where they had a pretty good laugh at her. This 'first encounter' wasn't too long ago because it was during their reunion just before they set off for the island, so the jokes were really still fresh in her mind.
"Haha, although the jokes were amusing and everything, the skill is really awesome. The transformation practically puts Liz on my level in terms of strength, which is good. Definitely good~"
It was because she was reminded of those 'funny' times that she was late to rescue them since she was just standing around, observing the chaotic fight, and snickering to herself from time to time whenever she turned her eyes over to Lizzy who was in her War God state and fighting the monsters at the forefront and yelling commands in her deep, gruff voice.