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Chapter 189: Heart of the Flame Giant
🕑 Added 2023-05-23 10:00:04 +0000 UTC“It’s high level, and giants are known for having very high health, but…” Baffo shouted out to Aegis’ party as they stood behind him, unloading their strongest attacks onto the giant as it stomped towards them, wading through the magma river. Lina had gone from throwing shadow daggers to utilizing shadows cast by the giant’s body onto its own back from the glow of the magma river to shadow step ontop of it, and was viciously slashing him with her daggers. “It won’t live forever.” Baffo shouted encouragingly.
“Finally close enough!” Rakkan said as he watched the giant take its final steps through the river to reach the obsidian shore. It got close enough to Baffo to pull its fist back and thrust it forward at him, but he carefully braced the attack and released a burst of gray energy from his body as it hit him - a guardian skill which reduced the damage further. Once he’d blocked it, Rakkan sent his echoes in and began attacking with everything he had and Kayliera threw out a heal onto Baffo.
A good number of abysslings had mustered up the courage to rush forward through Aegis’ aura of light in order to attack him. It was far too many for him to just sit around and let them hit him, forcing him to go on the offensive. With bless, not only his shield bashes, but his unarmed punches and kicks were enchanted as well, and he made use of his pseudo fighting training to engage them.
Any abyssling that he was able to connect his shield with went down in a single hit, while his unarmed strikes took several to work. Cheryl, on the other hand, drew out a scepter and moved to stand beside him, attacking with her shield and scepter and killing them in one hit with each swing. Together, the two were able to keep their numbers under control, but more and more abysslings were gaining confidence and stumbling over each other at the edge of the darkness as it continued to build up and push into Aegis’ aura of light.
In the midst of the PvP battle, Joltblade continued to manage Herilon using just two weapons, and was able to get several heavy strikes down onto Herilon that were healed up by other Night Hunter players. Despite maintaining a full health bar, though, Herilon got progressively more frustrated as he felt he was losing. He switched his attack patterns several times and utilized various combinations of attacks, but Joltblade easily managed him due to Herilon only wielding one weapon, and Joltblade having a weapon that could be manipulated to levitate around him wherever he needed it.
Trexon, focused on maintaining the grand shell to keep the battle contained, was forced to run around the edge of the battlefield as three battlemasters from the Blacklion guild, including Garrick, chased after him, and Quinn did her best efforts to peel them off by repeatedly shooting multishot pinning shots on not just them, but several Blacklion shadow dancers and assassins that were going after the Night Hunter healers. Her careful manipulation of her arrows using redirects allowed her to weave her shots in between her allies and make sure she only hit the enemies.
Several of her arrows were being blocked, dodged, or deflected, but each one that did end up hitting its target bought plenty of time for Trexon and the other Night Hunter healers to create distance between themselves and the backline diving players that were targeting them. All of this, of course, was being called out by Hae-won as she spoke a mile a minute to keep track of all the action happening for Aegis’ viewers.
“Got em.” Artaphernes shouted out across the battlefield suddenly, as he stood over the dissipating corpse of one of the Blacklion guilds high level clerics. Artaphernes pulled his spear back out of the dying player's body as all of the other Blacklion members surrounding him suddenly looked terrified.
“Got his defender.” A shadowdancer called out a few seconds later, another member of Artaphernes guild.
“Heh.” Herilon smirked as he heard the news.
“Their healer line is going down, go all out and finish them off.” Quinn shouted out to her side. Hearing this, Garrick and his backline divers suddenly lost their reckless, charging bravado and began to play defensively, more cautious about how they dodged incoming attacks. It wasn’t enough, though, as Quinn singled him out as her target now that she knew he wouldn’t be getting healing anymore, and managed to land several pinning shots on him.
“Ren!” Quinn called out, as she spotted her brother amongst the backline players.
“I got ‘em!” Ren cheered excitedly as he suddenly beast shifted into a giant crocodile-like creature with a horn on the top of its snout, and red scales mixed in with the green scales that ran up and down its body, along with 8 legs instead of four. Without any hesitation, he opened his gigantic crocodile jaw filled with razor sharp teeth, and snapped it shut violently around Garrick’s body, dealing massive damage and holding him in place.
“Shit. I can't move. I need heals!” Garrick shouted anxiously as he began swinging all of his levitating weapons down on Ren’s reptilian body to try and break free. Ren didn’t let up, and in that time Quinn shot out a red mark that landed on Garricks head, followed by a barrage of dozens of arrows.
“Nighty night.” Quinn winked at him, and the last thing he saw was a blanket of arrowheads closing in on him from all sides, killing him instantly and causing his body to dissipate from the battlefield. Immediately after he was dead, Ren transformed back to his normal humanoid body and began spitting and coughing.
“Pueh, he tasted disgusting.” Ren said mockingly.
“Well, no one told you to taste him.” Quinn rolled her eyes back at him.
“Alright. This is going poorly.” Joltblade sighed as he glanced around him and watched as his fellow Blacklion guild members began dropping like flies. He then began glaring across the battlefield, through the transparent dome to see the massive damage being dealt to the giant, then turned to see Cheryl who briefly glanced back at him, and once looking at each other, he did a slight eye twitch in her direction that she faintly nodded back at.
Herilon missed this detail, looking only briefly and assuming he was looking at just the fire giant.
“Yeah, the giant's going down. It’s our win.”
“No, no, not yet. Just means I’m going to have to put in some effort.” Joltblade sighed reluctantly as suddenly out of thin air, four more battleaxes materialized behind him, and a second longsword appeared in his offhand. Like bullets, all of the battleaxes shot forward over Herilon’s head, towards Trexon.
“Shit, watch out, Trexon!” Herilon called it out as quickly as he could, drawing many eyes onto the axes as they soared across the battlefield. Trexon, Quinn and Ren all saw them coming and tried to react as fast as they could to intercept them and dodge them, but Joltblade easily manipulated the axes to avoid Ren and Quinn’s efforts and reached Trexon, surrounding him and striking out at him several times dealing massive damage.
A nearby Night Hunter druid sprang into action to start healing Trexon, but before any heals went off, one of the battleaxes broke away from Trexon and began attacking the druid and interrupting her healing casts repeatedly. All the while, Herilon attempted to strike at Joltblade’s body with his greatsword, but Joltblade was able to block and dodge his swings using the two longswords in his hand. At first, it was bad, as Joltblade was managing it all so easily. But, Artapharnes, who’d picked up on what was going on, joined in the fight by striking his spear out at Joltblade from behind, and Joltblade easily deflected it with a longsword, using one for Artaphernes and one for Herilon. This made the situation go from bad to worse.
“Shit, sorry, I can’t…” The druid healer desperately cried out as she attempted to shake the axe off, and Ren joined in trying to help get it under control so that she could heal Trexon. It was unsuccessful, though, and after a few more strikes on Trexon, he went down - and with him went the grand shell that was separating the PvP action from the PvE action.
Cheryl, who was still fighting alongside the front lines of the Abyss with Aegis, briefly looked back and saw the shell was gone, then turned to Aegis beside her to make sure he wasn’t paying close attention to what she would do next. Then, as subtle as possible, her index finger gave off a black glow as she wagged it to cast a spell without anyone noticing it.
The moment she’d cast it, suddenly there was a loud deep roar that echoed throughout the cavern, coming from the direction of the black mist.
“What the hell was that?” Aegis asked rhetorically.
“I don’t know.” Cheryl faked nervousness as she replied.
“AEGIS, HEADS UP! TREXON WENT DOWN! We’re winning though, so hang out a bit longer!” Quinn’s voice shouted loudly across the cavern, reaching Aegis’ ears. Hearing this, he briefly glanced back and saw that the grand shell was gone. Additionally, though, he spotted several Blacklion guild member’s bodies disintegrating all around the still standing Night Hunter’s members.
Joltblade had now turned the focus of his axes onto solely the druid healer that Ren was trying to protect, and was able to take her out after a few more swings despite Artaphernes and Herilon engaged with his real body.
“Shit! I hate battlemasters!” Ren shouted out in frustration.
“Put pressure on his real body so he can’t keep doing that!” Quinn instructed Ren, who nodded back anxiously before beast shifting into a strange-looking black and green tiger and pouncing towards Joltblade. He joined in with Artaphernes and Herilon in striking out at him from all sides. It worked, this forced Joltblade to pull his axes back to defend himself, and soon, the numbers in the PvP battle went heavily in the favor of the Kalmoorians. Two assassins and a shadowdancer joined in on attacking Joltblade, surrounding him and swinging at him from all sides.
Despite this, though, he was taking very minor amounts of damage as he easily deflected and redirected their strikes using his floating axes, not unlike how Pyri controlled her cinderbolts to protect herself.
“The Abysslings are doing something weird!” Aegis called out across the cavern as he spotted them suddenly merging together in front of him at the edge of the black mist. First, he saw two abysslings liquify and merge into a larger one, increasing their level to 45, then he watched as two pairs of 45 merged abysslings merged with each other, increasing their level to 75. Then, further still, as they increased in size, two level 75 abysslings liquified their bodies into strange black goo and merged, reforming themselves into level 100 abysslings that were much larger. It wasn’t just a few that were doing it, but all of them. Their numbers dwindled drastically during this process, but what remained were much larger, braver enemies that did not hesitate at the edge of the Aura of Light, and ran forward towards Aegis and Cheryl with determination.
“Not good…” Aegis said as he anxiously took two steps back and prepared himself for the first few level 100 abysslings to close in on him.
“We got it!” Baffo called out, spreading relief to everyone still fighting. Aegis glanced over to see the giant’s body collapsing and disintegrating, and out of it’s corpse fell a rocky red glowing heart that landed on the obsidian shore. Darkshot dashed forward and scooped it up, then threw it towards Aegis who quickly caught it, and confirmed it was exactly what they needed.
Joltblade watched all of this from among the many players attacking him and sucked his teeth in frustration as he saw Aegis add the heart to his inventory.
“I don’t have time to play around anymore.” He groaned in annoyance, suddenly casting a strange rotating skill that rapidly spun his battle axes around himself and caused them to erupt in black energy, releasing a shockwave that pushed everyone near him backwards while Herilon and Artaphernes managed to jump back and dodge it.
It didn’t deal much damage, but that wasn’t what Joltblade was trying to do. It gave him enough space to break free of the surround that they had on him, and he began dashing across the battlefield towards Aegis.
“I don’t think so, buddy.” Baffo shouted as he jumped in front of Joltblade to stop his charge.
“Piss off.” Joltblade easily kicked his foot into Baffo’s shield, and launched himself off of it into the air to jump over him. Baffo anticipated this and created a shield projection in front of Joltblade’s jump to block him using his guard skill, but Joltblade was ready for it and used one of his axes as a foothold to jump further up still, over the shield projection, landing behind Baffo. Following this, both Quinn and Darkshot fired a barrage of pinning shots at him, but he easily deflected their arrows away with the axes that rotated around him. Herilon, Ren and Artaphernes all ran after him in pursuit, while Rakkan watched Joltblade curiously from a distance, without moving.
“That’s a real battlemaster. He’s moving like Seraxus…” Rakkan whispered to himself in worried disbelief, words that only Pyri and Lina heard before Lina sprung into action and sprinted towards Aegis, unable to shadowstep due to lack of shadows and not wanting to smokebomb him.
“Aegis!” Pyri shouted out to get his attention, as Aegis himself was too focused on bracing hits from the high level abysslings swarming him. He heard Pyri’s words though, and turned just in time to see Joltblade lunging down at him with all his weapons swinging forward. In that brief, split second, he saw the look of determination in Joltblade’s eyes as he flew down at him, his longswords held forward with all five battleaxes converging alongside them.
He felt, and saw, nothing but pure, raw, killing intent.
“AVATAR OF EIRENE!” Aegis shouted out just in time to erupt in white light, as he braced the attack. Something deep down in his mind told him he'd die if he didn’t get the armor bonus from his Avatar form, and once the attack hit, he was proven right. Despite bracing the strike and activating his avatar form, he was left with 430 health remaining.
“DESPERATE PRAYER!” Sapphire shouted, and a bolt of light shot out from across the battlefield from her hands, hitting Aegis and fully healing him as Joltblade jumped back off of Aegis’ shield with a look of annoyance. The moment Sapphire’s light hit Aegis, he was healed to full, and just in time as Joltblade prepared to strike out at Aegis again.
Only this time, Aegis knew to avoid it - at least one of the axes. The speed at which Joltblade surrounded Aegis with his axes was intense, he was barely able to keep track of their locations and they all immediately began attempting to strike at him from all sides.
They would’ve hit, too, if not for Pyri’s cinderbolts arriving and deflecting some, while Lina jumped in to deflect others. None of the hits landed, and Joltblade looked back in frustration to see Artaphernes, Ren, Baffo, Quinn, Darkshot, Sapphire, and dozens of other Kalmoorians rushing at him.
“Do you really think you can take us all on by yourself? All of your guild members are dead.” Cheryl shouted at him with squinting eyes. Joltblade briefly looked at her, sighed, then looked at the players charging at him.
“Fine, you’re right.” He reluctantly agreed as he began quickly walking around Aegis and Cheryl, stopping his attacks as he moved in the direction of the swarming, high level abysslings. “I guess we lose this round. Well played…” He said nonchalantly. Pyri had begun dealing burning damage to him by placing cinderbolts on his body, but he ignored it as he quickly moved into the darkness of the abyss.
The abysslings that were charging at Aegis from out of the mist simply ran around Joltblade, ignoring him completely, which all but confirmed everything Aegis had theorized. The abysslings were viewing Joltblade as one of their own and made no attempts to attack him, and their presence gave pause to Quinn and the others in pursuing him to keep attacking.
“What’s the call?” Artaphernes asked Quinn as everyone began to group up around Aegis and form a line, holding back the abysslings. Quinn briefly looked back at where the PvP had taken place and saw nothing but the empty obsidian shore - all dropped loot had already been collected.
“We got the heart, and all of those dead Blacklion guild members will revive inside the Kordas prison. Even if that one got away, this is our win.” Quinn called out to the group. “The abyss taking over parts of the underrealm, we can’t do much about that right now. Pyri, can you portal us out of here?”
“Yup.” Pyri gave her a thumbs up as she stepped back from the front lines of players now engaged in the abysslings alongside Aegis. She quickly began casting a blue portal, and after a few seconds, it opened up with a view into the portal altar of Kordas and a glowing aura around the outside of the circular doorway.
“Everyone head through. Tanks and healers go last, let’s make it quick.” Quinn announced to the group of players, which quickly complied. One by one, Artaphernes’ guild and the Night Hunter members began filing through. Aegis stood side by side with Baffo, Cheryl and Sapphire, but looked back to see Pyri, Darkshot, and Lina looking at him with concern as the abysslings continued to rush at them from the dark mist.
“Go, I’ll be fine.” Aegis gave them a reassuring nod. Darkshot shrugged and motioned them to follow him through the portal. “Wait, where’s Rakkan?” Darkshot hesitated, looking around.
“I’m here, coming.” Rakkan said as he hurriedly ran over from the direction of the cavern wall.
“What were you doing over there?” Darkshot looked at him strangely.
“Huh? Nothing.” Rakkan shrugged before moving through the portal, followed by Darkshot, then Pyri, and lastly with great hesitation, Lina. Herilon, Ren, Artaphernes, followed by Quinn all went through, until eventually it was just Aegis, Baffo, Sapphire and Cheryl looking into the portal where, on the other side of it, they could see their guildmades waiting for them in the city of Kordas.
“Let’s go through together, don’t want to leave anyone back without the aura.” Aegis explained, and the others nodded as they all backed up together towards the portal, abysslings swarming around them. As Aegis backed up, so did the edge of his aura, thus the mist was finally able to move forward into the cavern, but not by much.
Just as the group of four reached the threshold to the portal, though, suddenly Cheryl made a strange wincing sound and knelt down, then oddly tumbled backwards and landed on her butt.
“Ah, sorry, clumsy.” Cheryl grumbled. Sapphire rolled her eyes while Aegis knelt down to help her up, and the very instant he knelt, a black shockwave shot forth from amongst the abysslings, blasting Baffo and Sapphire backwards through the portal. Aegis anxiously stood upright just as the shockwave had passed over his and Cheryl’s heads, to see Joltblade’s axes thrusting forward at Cheryl. Cheryl lifted her shield to block them, but the force of the attack somehow seemed to be enough to push her backwards through the portal, leaving Aegis alone.
Aegis quickly turned to get through it, but in an instant, the portal disappeared, leaving him alone in the cavern. He turned back around and saw Joltblade smirking, rushing at him from amongst the abysslings. Unlike before where he was wielding two swords, this time he had a sword and a wand.
“Wand of dispelling. Very handy. Can’t let you get away with that giant’s heart.” Joltblade smirked. Aegis’ viewership shot up to 500,000 as his heart sank and his adrenaline began to pump rapidly. The high level abysslings ran at him from all directions, forcing him to jump backwards, and the moment he turned to eye the tunnel exit leading back to Reltrak forest, Joltblade took advantage of the opening to send his battleaxes forward at Aegis’ avatar body.
Aegis looked back nervously and saw the axes coming at him from all sides, but it was too late to block and dodge them all.
“Shit…” Aegis desperately threw up his shield to block and brace one, anticipating the damage he’d take from the others. It wasn’t necessary, however, as all other axes were intercepted and deflected away.
“Yeah, I figured you’d try something like that. You’re just like him.” Rakkan growled, as his echoes had appeared all around Aegis to help defend him. “Typical battlemaster, all ego, all think alike.” Rakkan smirked.
“How the hell?” Joltblade looked at him confused.
“I hid my real body, sent an echo through the portal.” replied.
“Huh…” Joltblade sighed. “Looks like I underestimated you Kalmoorians… Either way though, you’re still both going to die.” Joltblade replied with a hint of excitement in his voice.
