Chapter 309: Odds

Having forfeited out of the second match, Aegis’ body reappeared inside the waiting room several moments later. When his senses returned to him after being transported, he saw Darkshot, Pyri, Lina, and Rakkan all looking at him briefly before he put his head down shamefully. 

Against his will, both his left and right hands were visibly trembling. His body knew he had a small intermission before the third match, and it let his adrenaline slowly lower. After noticing the trembling, he looked up and saw that all of his party members were staring at his hands. Further, he looked and saw his incredibly huge viewership numbers and knew that they could all see the same thing.

“Are you okay?” Pyri asked him, stepping forward with an outstretched hand, but Aegis quickly stepped away from her.

“I’m fine. I’m okay.” Aegis replied hastily. “Sorry, I lost. I couldn’t keep up with him.” 

“It’s alright, we-” Lina said.

“It’s alright?!” Rakkan shouted angrily, interrupting her. “What’s okay about it? We’re about to lose. He’s about to get away with that sword and destroy ANOTHER island!”

“You think I don’t realize that?” Aegis shouted back at him.

“Then why aren’t you doing something about it?!”

“I’m trying, aren’t I? He’s so damn fast! Even with that VGN stuff…”

“What’d you expect? I told you, didn’t I? I warned you that he’s good, even without the sword. Finley told you, everyone told you! Did you think we were joking?!” Rakkan shouted, stomping towards him.

“Rakkan…” Darkshot tried to calm him down but was ignored.

“I thought you had a real plan. Did you think you were going to study him to death or something? Just because you got the shield of light, you’d just automatically win? He loves killing players like us who try to bring PvE mechanics into a PvP arena. He’s probably laughing at us right now. He’s making us look like clowns!” 

“I don’t see you coming up with any ideas to stop him. I said I’d help you. We agreed to work together, right? Where’s your contribution?” Aegis retorted. 

“I’m not the one with the artifact shield!”

“You want it? ‘Cause you can have it if you think you can keep up with his movements!” Aegis loosened the straps on his wrist and thrust the shield into Rakkan’s chest, calling his bluff.

“That’s enough!” Pyri shouted angrily, startling them both into looking at her. “You’re not going to solve anything by arguing with one another. Losing sucks, I get it, but getting heated isn’t going to change anything, just make things worse. They’re not just beating Aegis. They’re beating all of us.” Pyri explained calmly.

Aegis took a deep breath and pulled his shield from Rakkan. As he did, he noticed that Rakkan’s hands were trembling just as much as Aegis's were.

“Sorry.” Rakkan apologized while turning away and pacing through the room, anxiously scratching his head. “He just came at me, and I couldn’t dodge. I just… I thought I got better. I thought things would be different this time. But he’s doing it again. He’s taking it all away. It…” Rakkan didn’t finish his sentence.

“It’s pissing me off, too, that such a cocky bunch of kids are beating us. I want to crush them.” Darkshot tried to sympathize with him.

“I’m not even holding back against them. They really are incredibly skilled. We shouldn’t feel bad for losing to them.” 

“We haven’t lost yet, though, right?” Darkshot asked, looking to Rakkan and Aegis and seeing disheartened looks on both of their faces. “There’s gotta be something else we can try?” 

“I was barely able to take out Zuon. I got lucky. He, for some reason, stopped moving, almost like he got disconnected…” Aegis sighed.

“Probably Amlie’s doing,” Rakkan concluded. “I watched it happen and checked my friends list. She logged out just a few minutes earlier, but I doubt she’s gonna be able to do something like that again.”

“Great, so even with outside help like that…” Aegis shook his head to himself in annoyance, “If I can predict his movements better, maybe I can keep up with his charge strike. Maybe a change in formation, and I can keep everyone safe with the shield…” Aegis mumbled to himself with no confidence. He started fidgeting with his interface, starting with hiding his viewership numbers before opening his livestream viewer to go over the VGN analyst footage. 

“The other players are still in Stormtop, defending from the invasion. If we lose, we can team up with them to defeat Seraxus, maybe…” Lina suggested timidly. “Mikael, your friend, has a lot of experience fighting him, right?” She turned to Rakkan.

“Feng’s out there too, with the mithral katana. And Serenity!” Darkshot joined in.

“Seraxus’ party will just run away,” Rakkan replied enthusiastically. “They’re good at escaping.”

“OI! OPEN UP!” A voice called from outside of the waiting room. None of them immediately recognized the voice's owner, but it was enough to pull Aegis out of his viewing of the analyst footage.

“Who is that?” Pyri asked what everyone was thinking.

“Angry fan or something?” Darkshot suggested. Aegis stepped forward and opened the door, seeing the blue wall of magical energy around it that prevented uninvited players from entering the waiting room without permission.

Behind the door, a face that none of them had seen in a very long time was staring back at them. His hood was up, but he pulled it down quickly to reveal his name floating above his head. [Emerill - Level 165].

“What do you want?” Darkshot groaned at him.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Emerill shouted at Aegis with fury, banging on the outside of the blue magical barrier and causing ripples to flow out from the point of impact. 

“What do you mean, what are we doing? We’re attempting to win a tournament here.” Darkshot replied on Aegis’ behalf.

“My ass, you’re trying to win. This guy here is playing like an idiot and not even trying!” Emerill pointed at Aegis.

“I’m trying,” Aegis answered with frustration.

“Did you really just come down here to yell insults at us just because we can’t leave this room and kill you?” Lina hissed at him.

“Invite me in, and I’ll kill you idiots myself for playing how you are. Do you have any idea how much money I bet on you guys to win?”

“That’s your fault, isn’t it?” Darkshot asked him.

“The odds against you are 10 to 1. Who wouldn’t take that bet? It should’ve been a sure thing. You’re Aegis, the protector of Kalmoore. Savior of Arallia. Why would you ever lose to Seraxus?!” Emerill yelled passionately at Aegis, slamming his fists once more against the magic wall. 

“Yeah, well, the things I used to pull those feats off don’t translate so well into a match against Seraxus,” Aegis replied dismissively.

“The hell they don’t?! You’re not even trying!”

“Believe me, I’m trying!” Aegis shouted back, punching the inside of the wall in frustration and causing Emerill to take a step back. “His mobility is insane. And even when he’s not going after them,” he motioned to his party members behind him, “I can barely keep up with his attacks, even using all my weapons, wings, and limbs. I can’t keep my party members alive, and I can’t beat him in a one-on-one.”

“Why not?”

“He’s got a spell eater for my virabhadra, and my divide aid skill doesn’t work in arena matches like I’d hoped.” Aegis explained.

“So? I had a spelleater enchantment too, and you beat me, didn’t you?” Emerill replied with an annoyed tone. “You think I wasn't faster than you?!”

“That was different..” Aegis replied dismissively, shaking his head.

“I studied your gameplay endlessly, knew all of your skills, and had you made with proper elixirs prepared. Then you tried to drown me in a river and dropped a petrified berserker on me! You drank poison just to kill Finley with a virabhadra, while kiting a raid boss! Did you forget all of that?” 

“So what? I can’t do those things here. This is an arena match. It’s all formatted, fighting, and controlled; There’s no room for strategies like that.”

“Are you kidding me?” Emeril shouted in disbelief, rolling his eyes and sighing exasperatedly. “I’m your biggest fan, so don’t take this the wrong way, but if you seriously thought you were ever going to beat Seraxus in a straight-up fair fight, you’re completely hopeless. That kid is ridiculously good.”

“So then what am I supposed to do?! Drop another berserker on him?!” Aegis snapped back.

“I don’t know, if I knew, I’d be in there. But I’m not. You are.” Emerill replied, then looked over Aegis’ shoulder to the others who were staring at him through the blue transparent wall. “You all are. I don’t care how you do it, but you all better save my bet, or I’m gonna be pissed. Stop playing like they do. Don’t get caught up in the flow of all these idiot streamers and these VGN guys. Play like Aegis plays.” Emeril pleaded, his last words barely audible due to the sound of an explosion just outside of the arena.

“It’s easier said than done,” Aegis mumbled. 

“In a 5v5 PvP tournament, we have to win in a straight-up match.” Rakkan spoke on Aegis’ behalf.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Maybe…” Emerill turned to look down the nearby hallways, spotting two abysslings that had made their way into the outer halls of the arena that were charging at him. He quickly pulled a pair of daggers out of their sheaths on his belt and threw them at the abysslings, killing them both. “But if anyone can win by thinking outside the box, it’s gonna be you.” Emerill eyed Aegis intensely, but he didn’t notice as he was busy staring at his feet, pondering. 

Another explosion echoed through the halls, this time much closer to Emerill. It was followed up by the loud screeching of abysslings that began pouring into the structure. Emeril took a few steps back and drew out more of his daggers, preparing to fight while backing away.

“For the sake of me and everyone I stupidly convinced to bet on you, I’ll help keep Tarolas in the sky for as long as I can,” Emerill said before disappearing around the corridor. A moment after he had, a stream of abysslings came barreling down the hall after him, ignoring the blue wall that Aegis and his party stood behind.

“Just how bad is it getting out there?” Pyri asked. Darkshot began to fidget with his interface and pulled up a livestream of Feng to see the situation.

“Not good. I'm not sure we can count on them to help us out after our match. I mean, if we lose, of course.” Darkshot replied.

“We’re not gonna lose, right?” Rakkan asked Aegis. Aegis didn’t answer, his head was still looking down at his feet, and he began mumbling to himself while backing away from the outer door of the waiting room. Lina moved to shut it for him, and all eyes fell on Aegis. 

The timer for the intermission ticked down to just 2 minutes remaining, but none of them dared to interrupt Aegis’ concentration as they saw him begin waving his fingers around in the air. He pulled up his interface to view his character stats, then looked over the information on the skills of his companions and their statistics in his party interface to confirm the view numbers.

“Emerill’s right. We won’t win if we keep playing like this. It’s not our playstyle.” Aegis said as the timer hit 30 seconds on the top of all of their peripheral vision interfaces. “If I approach it like I’ve handled all the other tough situations in the past… even though it's a PvP match against other players, it’s still just like an exam question, right?” Aegis asked his group, looking to Pyri, who just shrugged at him.

“So in reality… I have a lot more variables to consider, but there should still be a solution. I’ve gotten so caught up in the idea that the fight is much too dynamic to work out like a problem on a test, arguably unbeatable. But if you think about it calmly, the developers of this game have never put something unbeatable in it. If you consider our opponent the sword and not the players, their abilities are extended variables of the original problem, right?” Aegis asked Lina this time, and she nodded to his question hesitantly, watching as Aegis’ eyes lit up with determination.

He opened his inventory and took out his scribing kit, which included a big bottle of dark ink and a brush. He hurriedly walked over to the wall in the waiting room opposite the three arena screens and started whipping the brush around, writing out several thoughts quickly.

“The sword kills anything it touches in one hit. He has demonstrated that he can use the piercing darkness skill, just like Finley could, so we can assume that’s a universal still for all avatars of darkness. My shield can block his strikes, but his movement with his floating weapons, charge strike, and switch is too fast for me to keep up with. If he gets to any of you, it’s already over because you’ll be out of my range if we’re split up. But if we group up, we won’t ever be able to take out the rest of his party and be too vulnerable to crowd control effects.

His armor is scaled up, and he has life steal, so I can’t kill him alone with virabhadra, but he has a spell eater enchantment on his axe. Disable the axe, or don’t fight him alone. Either way, he’s unbeatable due to his life steal enchantment and our damage output so long as the match is under 10 minutes of progression or he has his companions left alive to assist him. 10 Minutes also disables my healing as well, so it puts a timer on the match after the 10-minute mark.” As he spoke out loud, he wrote keywords down on the wall. He turned to his party members and eyed each of them carefully, noting important skills of each of them as he did and writing them on the wall as well, until finally he was satisfied with what he’d written and took a step back to look at it.

After pondering a bit, he noticed the intermission timer counting down to below 60 seconds remaining. A few more ideas ran through his head, and he nodded to himself while taking a deep breath. Slowly, he turned to face the others with a nervous smile on his face.

“You’ve got a plan, then?” Rakkan asked him.

“It’s kind of far-fetched. It’ll be really tight and require perfect execution by all of us… It will involve some stuff none of us have ever tried before, but… I think it could work.” Aegis took a deep breath.

“Well, what is it? What’s the plan?” Darkshot asked excitedly. A smirk grew on Pyri’s face, and Lina moved forward towards Aegis with enthusiasm.

“It’s simple, really…” Aegis eyed his live-streaming icon floating above his head. “If one virabhadra doesn’t work, we just hit him with two, right?” he grinned deviously before hitting the mute button on his stream.

Shinji saw this queue, used his editing skills, and decided to play an advertisement break on Aegis’ stream to prevent any potential mouth reading from any of his opponents. This gave Aegis absolute freedom in how he described the plan to his party members while they all listened intently to his words.

—

Seraxus, who was watching Aegis stream beside his live-stream chat, heard his final message before the advertisements came up and quickly waved it off to look at his party. They all turned to look at him expectantly, as all of them, too, had seen Aegis’ broadcast and heard his words.

“Two virabhadras?” Hajax asked.

“Shadowsteal,” Zuon answered, to which Hajax nodded.

“Hm.” Seraxus began pacing around the room, rubbing his chin. 

“It don’t matter much, does it? We counter all of them, just keep playing like we’ve been playing, and it should be fine.” Sylvia shrugged.

“Don’t underestimate the champion of light. Don’t underestimate the schemers. They’re looking down on you. They don’t respect you. They don’t take you seriously. You must destroy them and swallow them in the darkness.” An ominous voice rumbled out from the sword of hatred. The words reached Seraxus’ ears and his alone, the rest of his party and his livestream audience completely oblivious to its ability to talk to him.

Seraxus eyed the sword, its glowing red markings etched into the black blade, and saw the soft aura of dark mist endlessly flowing out of it and dissipating a few centimeters away.

“Every time this guy’s had people underestimate him, he’s beat ‘em. So let’s not make that mistake. Crush 'em with everything we got.” Seraxus commanded, and his companions all gave nods of acknowledgment. 

—

The intermission timer hit 0, and the doors leading into the central arena opened. Light could flow in from the outside, but there wasn’t much of it. Instead, they heard the sounds of battle. It was so loud that it no longer sounded as if the battle was just outside the arena but inside as well. 

Upon hearing it, Aegis walked out quickly with his party behind him. When they stepped out onto the arena floor and could see the skies above Stormtop and the audience stands around them, it was so much worse than he thought.

The clouds were barely visible through the endless swarms of reapers, and abysslings were rushing in and attacking the NPCs through the inner walkways of the stadium, but Serenity, Jensora, and Kenji were doing a decent job at keeping them under control.

When Aegis met Serenity’s eyes on the raised platform, she had an apologetic look on her face, motioning with her eyes to the city's state.

“I’m sorry, my music couldn’t…” She was forced to interrupt her apology to Aegis in order to fire out several musical notes from her instruments at a group of invading abysslings.

“Your music reached everyone. It’s thanks to you we even have this chance.” Aegis shouted back to her as he looked at the NPCs in the stands, then at the distant skies above Stormtop, until finally eying Seraxus and his party as they entered the arena from the opposite end.

“He’s got no wings still, even though most of the Aura of Lights have been stopped, and you have no more music playing. It’s because everyone is too busy being afraid to have any hatred.” Aegis shouted up to her. “Can you relay a message to everyone in Stormtop? Your voice amplification is strong enough, right?”

“I think so…” Serenity nodded. Her finger began to glow pink, and she tapped it to her throat, casting the spell and looking at Aegis expectantly. From here, he spoke, and she repeated his words.

“A message from Aegis for everyone still fighting in Stormtop…” Serenity’s voice carried loudly throughout the city, echoing off the walls and reaching even Mikael atop Ysil’mareina. 

Despite all players being drained of resources and fighting vigilantly against the endless foe that was the abyss, they all did their best to listen to her words over the sounds of screeching and explosions.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long, but it will take a bit longer. Please keep the island safe for a bit longer. Just a few more minutes is all I need to crush this guy.” Serenity said with confidence. A smirk grew on several faces across Stormtop upon hearing these words, but Seraxus’ face was not one of them.

Just as Aegis had reached the blue barrier on his side of the arena, a violent ripple of energy exploded out of the barrier from above. They all looked up to see that Ysil’mareina had planted her claws on top of it, standing above them so that they could all see the scales on her belly.

The reason she’d done so was made clear just a second later as a black blast of abyssal energy was fired from the dark dragon at Serenity, attempting to silence her. The blast was met by a blinding white breath attack from Ysil’mareina that collided with the dark magic just above the arena, exploding into a bright flash of darkness and light upon impact. 

The light momentarily blinded them, but once it had dispersed, Ysil’mareina launched herself off the blue dome that encapsulated the arena and flapped her wings violently, sending out powerful gusts of wind as she took off back into the air.

Once the spectacle was over, Aegis turned to see Seraxus’ party grinning at him proudly, doing a light nodding motion to the darkened skies above them.

“You ain’t crushin’ shit. This game world is ours now.” Seraxus shouted at him.

Aegis gave him no response and instead lined up with his four party members and looked around at them anxiously.

“Stick to the plan, do your best to adapt on the fly as needed, okay?” Aegis said to them.

“Okay.” Lina nodded.

“Here goes nothing…” Darkshot took a deep breath. Pyri remained silent while Rakkan looked at Aegis expectantly and held out his hand.

“Oh, right.” Aegis nodded as he unstrapped his shield from his left arm and handed it to Rakkan. Rakkan took the Star of Light shield from Aegis while handing Aegis his voidspear instead, and with these weapons in hand, they both took awkward-looking fighting stances.

Seeing the exchange, Seraxus’ face went wide with disbelief and confusion, but they had no time to contemplate it.

Match begins in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…