Assassinate Wonderwind [Book 1 Completed!]

The Summoner lifted its arm, showing a staff with a skull as its tip. The coffins rattled, their lids opening. One by one, green-eyed skeletons or ghouls climbed to life, their levels ranging from 390 to 425. Five became a dozen, and more kept rising.

We’d never fought more than two of them at a time. I glanced at Veyra, wondering if she’d planned for this.

“Give me fifteen seconds,” she said. “Keep the goons busy until then.”

I was about to ask, “Are you sure,” but she was already casting free-handed ice magic. She showered the church with hail, just like she did when stacking the blessings for [Emerald Aurora]. The bits of hail still did next to no damage, but they inflicted [Heaven’s Taint] with her boots. Soon enough, the horde of ghouls all had a coating of frost particles clinging to their skin, slowing them down.

They were also enraged, rushing toward us. “Keep them busy!” Veyra said.

I bit my lip but entered the fray, baiting the first ghoul to lunge at me for an easy dodge. I slashed at the next skeleton before a scimitar from the side and overhead immediately forced me to block. A jolt shot through my feet, but The Immortal could just barely withstand a blow from a level 394 monster.

Fifteen seconds. This was a whole damn workout.

Behind me, a subtle purple tinted the ground as Veyra activated her spirits. The little specks floated around her body. The most visible spirit was Greater Moonlight, which flew to her staff, spiraling around it and a trail of dark purple particles.

Veyra pointed her staff at The Summoner, and the casting circle for dark magic appeared above the tip of her staff.

The casting circle didn’t progress as smoothly as her usual quick-casting, being a spell she wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t recognize the spell either. It wasn’t offensive dark magic, or any of the ensnaring spells that I’d trained myself to dodge. It looked more like supportive dark magic. A hex of sorts.

I dodged a tackle by jumping back, and my breath caught when I finally realized what Veyra’s idea was. She was casting [Hex Of Dawn]. Or more specifically, the upgraded version, [Hex Of Dawnbreak].

Hex Of Dawn: Summon a ritual circle underneath an opponent. After three seconds, the circle detonates, reducing the resistances of enemies inside by 10 for fifteen seconds.

At spell level 10, upgrade to Hex Of Dawnbreak.

Hex Of Dawnbreak: Summon a ritual circle underneath an opponent. After three seconds, the circle detonates, reducing the resistances of enemies inside by 50 for fifteen seconds. If Hex Of Dawnbreak hits an opponent five times, and if their resistances are at zero, resistance piercing effects break into the negatives.

She cast the spell past all the ghouls, targeting the boss directly. The ritual circle reflected from the bricks as if truly lit by moonlight. The circle blew up, breaking a smidgeon of the boss’s resistances.

[Hex Of Dawnbreak] was hardly ever used in top level play. Removing fifty resistances was decent, sure, but the number just wasn’t high enough to justify taking ten skill points from other spells. The hexes were way too easy to dodge in PvP, and even in PvE, the times when a target actually reached zero resistances were way too rare. Most times, if a monster was at zero resistances, it would die quickly enough to fire magic anyway.

The calculations for negative resistances were insane, though. I didn’t remember the exact numbers, but someone on the forums had mentioned that at negative 650 resistances, the target would already take 100% extra damage, and the number only went up from there.

Veyra repeated the hex, while the ghouls kept slashing wildly at me, forcing me to dash to a safer spot. The boss itself wasn’t shooting back, instead focusing its efforts on commanding the undead. It revived the remaining ghouls, then cast buffs on the ones that attacked me. The ghouls’ claws glowed, attacking more rampantly.

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The second [Hex Of Dawnbreak] activated, immediately followed by the third. That was when Veyra’s eyes glowed purple, and the Spirit Of Greater Moonlight blinked around her staff.

She released its effects, and three more lesser versions of [Hex Of Dawnbreak] were released from her staff without a cast time.

Five hexes had now hit. The glow of moonlight from the rings now shone on the boss’s shoulders, indicating that the effect of the fifth hit was active. The boss’s resistances would now go to the negatives.

I hardly had any space to dodge, lunging past two swords just in time, while Veyra placed a portal under her feet and next to the boss. She prepared the nuke and began casting ice magic.

Just like she did in Worlds, at the last second, she fell into the portal, and a fully charged [Time Freeze] blew up right next to the boss.

[Frozen Heaven] blew up first, taking the boss’s resistances to zero. Anything extra immediately broke to the negatives. All stacks of [Hex Of Dawnbreak], Veyra’s new ring, and her staff.

A slash resounded as The Summoner cracked like glass, freezing to death in one hit. The green eyes of the ghouls dimmed, and summons fell limp one by one, dead as the magic of their summoner stopped moving their limbs.

[You Have Leveled Up!]

Veyra, up on the altar, gained three whole levels, now at 317. She grinned down at me. “Looks like it works.”

What the fuck? was all I could think, a bemused grin on my face. I stepped past all the collapsed ghouls, which sadly didn’t drop any loot, and made it to the altar. “You got all the loot?” I asked.

“Yeah, I have a list,” she said. “Looks like the combo works as I thought. The calculation works in our favor. The ten percentages from my staff go first, and they pierce the boss’s full amount of resistances. If the boss has a thousand, it takes a hundred. Then come the two hundred from my ring and all the hits from Hex Of Dawnbreak. So when Frozen Heaven brings everything to zero, all the numbers that have already been reduced get included in the calculation. I’m also pretty sure the twenty-five percent from Tainted Heaven also applies, but that might be a bug.”

“I like how you’re talking about one-shotting a level four-hundred boss like it was just some experiment.”

She chuckled. “This one was a mage boss. The health bar wasn’t that big. I won’t one-shot actual event bosses. Time Freeze, with all the buffs and spell power, should do about five hundred thousand damage. Resistance Penetration will double that.”

“That’s still absurd,” I said. “You’ll one-shot any tank player in the game.”

“Players will know how to dodge the hex, though,” Veyra said. “Three seconds is enough time to just run out if they’re prepared. That’s the biggest problem of this build. Casting the nuke is super slow and really telegraphed. Anyone with half a brain will know it’s coming. I’m not sure if it’ll be viable for PvP. I’ll need a few months to practice, at least.”

“I see potential,” I said. “There are items that reduce the detonation time for hexes, right? If we grab one of those and keep stacking elemental penetration, I’m pretty sure we’ll be unbeatable.”

“For PvP, I think I’ll one-shot players regardless,” Veyra said. “For PvE, stacking the stats will be insane.”

“What about the drops?” I asked. “Anything good?”

Veyra opened the list of item drops on her system—a much longer list than I would have thought. “Looks like I got one legendary and a few epics. Mostly crafting materials, though. Take a look.”

I leaned a bit closer. I was just about to focus my eyes to read the details.

From the side of my eye, I caught movement.

With a fraction of a second to react, I flicked The Immortal out of its holster to block whatever had just been thrown at us.

Something heavy clinked against my dagger’s blade, rebounding off to the side. My eyes first snapped at the entrance, the direction it had been thrown from. Spotting nothing, I glanced at the projectile.

A black shuriken. Just as I thought, I spotted someone throwing something at us. It looked like a legendary item at minimum, until it disintegrated, as if being recalled by [Recall Daggers].

We snapped straight to the defensive, examining the church all around us. The entrance was empty, as if nobody at all had been there.

“That wasn’t a monster, was it?” I said.

“No,” Veyra said. “Someone’s here.”

Who? I thought, mind immediately running through the shuriken users on the top five hundred leaderboard. There were a few assassins and sword fighters who used them as side weapons, like Silkie from Warmaxx, but the guild wasn’t anywhere close to Shaltar’s castle. Zenith Protocol was the only one I knew was close, and they didn’t really use shurikens.

So who the hell?

“Show yourself!” I called at the entrance.

Nothing happened. The assassin had either decided the attempt failed, or whoever it was was trying to trap us when we came out.

Ten more seconds passed, and the in combat effect ran out. Slowly, I grabbed Veyra’s hand. This mystery just wasn’t worth it. Not when we were rocking mythic items with hardly any resistances or defence in our builds. Not to mention we were both inexperienced with our items. Best to pick our fights when we were the ones initiating them. I initiated a teleport to the guild hall.

Our opponent reacted immediately as another shuriken flew at my face. The teleportation was canceled, and I blocked the attack.

This time, I caught a glimpse of the figure before he disappeared back behind the corner.

I missed his name, but I clearly read his guild tag. It was Suburi.

Shit. That was Dragrath’s guild.