Spiteful Healer

Voidspear and mithral sword in hand, Rakkan pulled his other two melee echoes in from their engagements with Darkless and Skar as they stood in front of him, a cloud of smoke now at his back. He heard the swishing sound of daggers cutting through the air behind him and jumped forward to avoid them, and watched as Darkless and Skar attacked from the front, pursuing his echoes.

Isolated from Aegis, he knew the smoke would prevent Aegis from using guards to assist him for the moment. More dagger swishes came from behind as Alicia used the shadows of the smoke bomb to reposition, this time targeting one of his echoes.

Seeing her in his peripheral vision, he struck out with echo, pulled back his voidspear, and threw it at her with all his might.

“Rune: Enlarge,” he cast on it as it left his hands, causing the spear to become enormous.

“Guard,” Skar waved his hand and projected a shield to block the spear from hitting Alicia.

“Rune: Echo,” Rakkan replied in kind, dispelling the echo that Alicia was about to hit with her daggers, and recreating it beside himself. This was taxing on his mana, as Rakkan knew, but he also knew that his health was currently a much more important resource to preserve.

“Smite!” Darkless cast, releasing several bolts of divine energy from her hand that shot forth towards Rakkan’s Battle-axe echo. He sidestepped the echo to avoid the linear bolt, then spun the echo around and had it charge back towards Darkless, who was in pursuit of it.

Letting her freecast would only complicate matters, Rakkan thought.

“Sometimes offense is the best defense.” He mumbled to himself. He pulled the voidspear back to his hand using the item's recall ability, and shrunk it back to its normal size.

“I can’t get a shot off with all that smoke, I’d just as likely hit Rakkan!” Darkshout shouted in frustration. He ran closer to the cluster of smoke bombs that Alicia had cast around Rakkan. Darkwing flew alongside him with determination, and he’d already nocked an arrow and was aiming towards the smoke as he ran. Aegis, too, who was closer, was charging towards the smoke as fast as he could, propelling himself with his holy wings of Eirene and gritting his teeth.

“Shadow dance,” Alicia cast, and a chill went down Rakkan's spine as his memories of fighting Lina when she used this ability entered his mind. The oppressive, lightning-fast strikes that came from all angles. He reactively turned behind himself to where the thickest of the smokebombs were, momentarily ignoring Skar and Darkless in favor of trying to avoid as many dagger hits as possible.

“The shadow dancer is the real damage threat, the other two are a tank and healer!” Aegis called out through the party interface.

“I know!” Rakkan snapped back. He saw blurred images of Alicia’s form appearing in the smoke all around him, and several more smoke bombs were thrown.

His echoes were the targets, though, and without a clear vision of his surroundings, he couldn’t properly manipulate them to avoid the rapid dagger strikes.

“Fuck it.” Rakkan roared, giving up on trying to avoid the hits and rushing towards Skar and Darkless with his main body instead. Skar and Darkless raised their shields as Rakkan’s enchanted mithral weapons swung down on them. They alternated between bracing hits and using guards to avoid taking full damage, but Rakkan was relentless, swinging six weapons at them repeatedly.

Any attempt that he made to get an angle on them from behind was blocked by Alicia’s shadow dance, and his health started to plummet from her dagger strikes.

“Just survive through it and heal through the damage,” Skar ordered, and Darkless nodded back, beginning to hardcast a healing spell on herself. This, however, caused a gigantic smirk to appear on Rakkan’s face.

“Rune: Echo. Rune: Guardian.”

“Hah?” Skar looked on in disbelief as he heard this, quickly trying to process what it would mean. Rakkan’s third echo, wielding the crossbow, reformed behind Darkless and lunged at her with the rune of a shield engraved on the echo's chest.

“Staggering strike!” Rakkan cast, causing the crossbow echo to imitate Skar’s ability and lock Darkless out of her divine magic school for 10 seconds. “I’m not just an echo knight anymore, remember? I’ve got some advanced skills too!” Rakkan declared as he saw the look of shock and confusion on Skar’s face.

“Doesn’t matter if he’s dead,” Alicia replied. She appeared behind Rakkan’s main body. “Pinning shot!” She cast as she threw a dagger embedded with Darkshot’s stolen skill, and the dagger hit Rakkan in the back of his main body, causing vines to shoot out from it into the floor and lock him in place.

“Go offensive!” Skar ordered Darkless, and she nodded back, pushing into Rakkan’s echoes and hitting them with her shield and scepter, while Skar did the same with his shield and sword. “Thundering blow!” Skar roared. He raised his sword into the air, and a magical blue sword formed on the end of it that gave off a great deal of pressure, warping and swirling the smoke from Alicia’s bombs around it, almost like a small tornado forming.

Locked in place, Rakkan couldn’t dodge it and knew he was in trouble. Alicia jumped back to avoid getting hit by the strike, as the sword was swung down on Rakkan from above. Rakkan pulled his echoes away to prevent residual damage and instead angled them around Skar’s back to try and get a bit more damage before his inevitable doom.

Instead, though, a violent flap of divine wings sent a powerful enough gust of air to blow through the smoke near Aegis, finally giving him a clear view of his companion.

“GUARD!” Aegis shouted at the last second, projecting a shield above Rakkan to block Skar’s attack. The damage was instead sent to Aegis, taking him below 40% health, but that was more than enough.

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“1 more second!” Aegis called out to Rakkan, as Rakkan’s face lit up with hope. He began slashing at the vines that bound him in place, but Skar heard this and sprinted towards Aegis, ignoring Rakkan’s echoes slashing at his back. Aegis saw the red numbers flying up above everyone and knew they all had to be hurting at this point, and charged forward to meet Skar with his claws and wings. The two exchanged several strikes before his spell lockout was over.

“PURIFYING LIGHT!” Aegis shouted finally, a sense of relief briefly flowing over him. With his companions fully healed and his enemies locked out of their healing spells and at low health, they would easily be in a winning posi-

“SPELL EATER!” Skar shoved his shield into Aegis as several blue mouths appeared all over it. An enchantment that Aegis was all too familiar with, as it was a favorite of Finley and his companions. The tiny mouths sucked in the holy energy of Aegis’ purifying light, absorbing and canceling the effects of the healing spell.

“There’s no recovering from this. You’re dying here,” Skar smirked as he saw the look of shock form on Aegis’ face in front of him. “Darkless, use the cooldown now!”

“REALM OF KURAOKAMI!” Darkless called out. A sudden blast of chilling cold air shot out from her. An aura of freezing ice flashed across the ground of the battlefield, a skill Aegis had never seen before.

“How? She’s locked out?” Rakkan shouted in frustration as the ice froze over both his and Aegis’ feet, locking them in place.

You take 5,310 Cold damage.

You take 5,150 Cold damage.

You take 5,222 Cold damage.

Both Aegis and Rakkan’s health plummeted rapidly, and they noted that Darkless and Skar had not been affected by the attack.

“It’s a perk of worshiping Kuraokami - getting access to non-divine elemental magic. Arcane arts.” Darkless replied. Aegis didn’t waste time talking. He instead turned to Rakkan and began casting a Greater heal on Rakkan.

“Alicia!” Skar ordered her, and she jumped out from a nearby smoke bomb with her daggers ready, aiming for the immobile Rakkan. She slashed out at him, and he returned a strike on her with his longsword, dealing damage to each other.

Combatant Rakkan has been defeated.

5 Minutes have passed since combat has begun. All sources of healing received by players will now be reduced by 50%.

The healing spell that Aegis was casting didn’t complete in time, and Aegis watched as Rakkan and his echoes faded from the arena.

“Now, Aegis!” Skar ordered. All three players turned to charge at Aegis with weapons drawn. He started to cast a heal on himself to offset the cold damage he was taking. He readied his wings to parry as many incoming attacks as possible - but Alicia was exhibiting impressively fast movements to make herself near unpredictable. Not as good as Lina, but still dangerously good. That, and the shield projections, both Skar and Darkless were ready to block the movement of his wings. He knew he was in trouble.

As they closed in on him from all sides, a silhouette finally appeared in the sky above the smoke. Get full chapters from noⅴelfire.net

Using all his might, Darkshot had leapt into the air and gotten close enough to finally see the four combatants mixed together in the clearing, surrounded by Alicia’s smoke bombs. He saw Aegis frozen in place, and all of the enemies coming at him from all sides.

“I’VE GOT A SHOT, AEGIS!” Darkshot declared as loudly as he could, not bothering with party communications.

“VINEROPE!” Aegis replied as a last-ditch effort idea came to mind. Darkshot knew the situation was dire, seeing Aegis’ health drop below 10%, and didn’t hesitate for a second.

“VINEROPE SHOT!” Darkshot cast, pulling back the arrow as far as he could to make sure it shot at maximum speed. Skar jumped back to avoid it so that it would hit no target, but Aegis intentionally spread one of his wings out in front of the arrow to make sure it hit him. He took damage, but it caused vines to shoot out from the impact point in all directions, wrapping themselves around himself, Skar, and Darkless, whilst Alicia disengaged in time to avoid the vines.

“You wasted Spelleater on a heal,” Aegis gritted his teeth as the ice took his health down below 3%. “VIRABHADRA!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. A dome of light energy erupted from his body. Bound by the Vinerope shot, neither Skar nor Darkless was able to avoid it and were encapsulated by divine energy. At the same time, the ice on Aegis’ feet continued to burn through his health, overpowering the healing from his aura.

Combatant Skar has been defeated.

Combatant Darkless has been defeated.

Combatant Aegis has been defeated.

Darkshot had a look of pure anxiety as his feet touched back down onto the ground, landing softly despite the incredible height that he’d jumped. The moment he had landed, Alicia appeared from out of the nearest smoke bomb and dashed at him from the front, daggers at the ready.

Her fingers around the dagger hilts began to wiggle with black shadow magic - something that Darkshot only barely noticed. He knew what it meant - she’d cast something.

Her forward charge at him was a misdirect, and from behind, several daggers made of shadow had shot out from the shade of the nearest pillar. Darkshot jumped out of the way of them at the last second, causing the shadow daggers to fly past him and barely miss. He nocked an arrow and shot it at Alicia. She continued her forward charge, sidestepping the arrow enough to have it miss her.

“Redirect,” Darkshot cast, causing the arrow to spin around and come at her from behind, while simultaneously he fired a second shot. Alicia reacted to this by throwing a ball of black energy outwards towards Darkshot, missing on purpose so that it would fly past him and explode into a smoke bomb behind him. She dashed sideways to the shade of the nearest pillar, and once in its shadow, shadowstepped away from the two arrows pursuing her to enter the smoke bomb behind Darkshot.

Darkshot swerved around and fired an arrow towards the smoke.

“Multishot,” He cast, causing the arrow to split and pierce into the smoke at all points, to guarantee that if Alicia had shadowstepped into that smoke bomb, she would’ve gotten hit by an arrow. Unfortunately, the bomb was a misdirect again, as Alicia hadn’t shadowstepped out of the pillar's shade, but rather jumped up to the top-most point of the pillar on the side that was opposite to the sun blazing in the sky above them.

From this aerial angle, given that Darkshot had now turned around to face the smoke bomb, she was easily able to throw a shadow dagger at him and pierce it into his back, dealing 8,737 shadow damage and causing him to flinch forward.

Darkshot shot an arrow up at where Alicia had been, but she shadowstepped back to the ground to avoid it.

“You healed up from Aegis’ aura of healing while we were battling in the smoke, but that’s not going to matter,” Alicia said confidently, twirling her daggers around as she took a fighting stance and watched Darkshot nock another arrow in his bow. “Even the best Ranger class players in the world, like Iouen, can’t kite a Shadow Dancer, and that's intermediate. We’re playing with advanced classes. I’ve got so many tools to kill you, it isn’t even fair.”

“Oh yeah? Well…” Darkshot sighed nervously as he kept his arrow aimed at her. Seeing her confident smile only made him more anxious. “I shoot from the Darkness,” he tried to feign confidence, using his deepest, manliest voice.

“I live in the darkness,” She retorted with a demonic smile, before disappearing once more by using shadowstep.