Chapter 306, 307:

Author note: Both chapters are in this post, editing has not yet been done yet I'll be working on that throughout the day!

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Chapter 306: Seraxus Pt. 2

“A bard and battlemaster archetype pairing, against a cleric and wizard.” Hae-won announced to the stadium, though very few players remained in person to watch the match. It was the livestream viewers that served as her primary audience now, and she became much more audible as Serenity lowered her music.

Kenji and her, being the only two remaining high level players inside the stadium, took to defending the NPCs that stood in the stands as several reapers managed to bypass the defenses forming around Stormtop and sneak into the skies above them. They were easily dispatched by the pair, given the low level of the reapers, but their frequency was increasing as the match neared its half-way point. 

The black mist that was enveloping Tarolas and pulling it down into the abyss was infecting the already dark gray clouds in the skies above, darkening them further.

Serenity’s music completely stopped just as Aegis and Pyri moved into position to engage with Seraxus and Zuon, standing across the arena from them. It allowed the sounds of battle echoing across the cityscape to reach the ears of the combatants for a brief moment before their own sounds overtook the ambience. 

Aegis exchanged a knowing look with Pyri, and she returned a nod. He then positioned himself in front of her while Darkwing remained perched on her right shoulder. 

Seraxus took a similar approach, positioning himself in front of Zuon while fanning out his hovering weapons. Zuon nocked an arrow and spread out his musical instruments behind himself, all giving off a faint magical glow which allowed Pyri and Aegis to keep track of their locations, fortunately. 

“Can you deal enough damage to beat him?” Aegis asked in a whisper, so that only Pyri could hear him.

“Even if I get a cinderbolt on him, with his armor value and health it’d take about 15 minutes to do the trick. I’d have to land a lot of other attacks as well to speed it along, and that’s not taking into account his lifesteal.” Pyri replied.

“If we wait out the match timer to 10 minutes then his healing will be disabled but so will mine.”

“Then you won’t be able to heal, and I don’t think I can out damage him before he gets through your health pool, even if you dodge and block everything. Then there is the fact that your wings won’t last much beyond the 10 minute mark.” Pyri explained.

“I’ll have to burst him with virabhadra.” Aegis took a deep breath, tightening the straps on his shield as Seraxus started moving closer towards them with his sword of hatred out. “Let’s focus on taking out Zuon first. If it’s two versus one, you could deal damage and assist in lowering his damage output on me, giving us more time to whittle him down after the 10 minute mark.”

“In theory.” Pyri said nervously. Her words were followed by a loud explosion coming from the streets outside of the stadium.

“In theory. I’ll do all I can to keep you safe, so focus on taking out Zuon.”

“You can handle it? This boy is really good at PvP.” Pyri motioned to Seraxus as he started picking up speed, power walking towards them as musical notes made of pink magic started flowing out of Zuon’s weapons despite him playing horribly offkey tunes that didn’t mesh together whatsoever. 

“It’s gonna be hard.” Aegis began walking forward to meet Seraxus, neither fully sprinting but not quite walking either. 

The battle of Stormtop raged on, with all participating PvP teams doing their best to secure the walls of the city alongside the players of Tarolas. Everywhere else across the Shattered World and real world, though, had the fans of the Shattered World Online watching the arena match.

Darkshot’s father, Lina’s parents, Rakkan’s family, Ioun, Nicholas, the dark network gamers, the Night hunters and the Shattered Pirates. Few words were being spoken, and even fewer blinks were being made.

“Come on Aegis, woof!” Ruffily shouted anxiously, being the only voice to speak in the otherwise silent, tense tavern of Erikson. All eyes were glued to the livestream viewer on display above the bar, where Chax, Erikson, Josephine and many others watched. Most notably, though, was an empty chair next to Ruffily where Amlie had been sitting, as she had watched the scene unfolding and made a bold decision to log out from the gameworld.

The music notes shot forward like bullets, soaring across the arena in all directions and warping around the pillars. Following them, a volley of multishot arrows came with them, and the weapons of Seraxus after that. 

Pyri exploded out her empowered Cinderbolt, glowing purple rather than red as it split into smaller balls and warped around Aegis to catch arrows, weapons and music notes. An explosion of colorful lights erupted around Aegis and Seraxus as they met each other at the center of the arena. 

The black sword of hatred was swung down onto the Star of Light shield, causing an eruption of shadow and divinity that was supplemented with bright flashes of purple and pink on the outside, due to Pyri successfully intercepting nearly all of Zuon’s first wave of attacks. He was able to follow up with a second wave fairly easily, though, and it clicked in Aegis’ head as he watched the hits clash that every single member of Seraxus’ party outside of Hajax had taken classes that enable high APM gameplay. 

Studying them, he’d already known this, but facing it was completely different. It was as if he was being matched up against 4 Pyri’s and a healer, and despite Pyri’s high APM and skill that seemed unsurpassable the first time Aegis’ had seen it, he was witnessing yet another player who could keep up with her. 

Truthfully though, the glances that Aegis could steal to Zuon and Seraxus’ faces showed just how focused and intensely serious they were taking this two vs two, but both had their eyes on Pyri and not him. They were taking her seriously, not him. 

In the brief few seconds that the explosion of light took to fade from his clash with Seraxus, this thought settled into his mind and he grew slightly frustrated with himself. He watched as rather than onslaught him with battlemaster weapon attacks, Seraxus sent the majority of his weapons after Pyri and instead used his real weapons on Aegis, tying him up for a few seconds. 

Aegis looked back to prepare and cast guards to keep Pyri safe, but he saw her manage to send cinderbolt fragments to intercept Seraxus’ attacks on her own. It looked, for an ever so brief moment, that Pyri would be fine and would not even need his help to avoid their attacks despite how relentless they appeared.

That feeling was short lived for Aegis, though, as Seraxus jumped into the air to get over him, completely ignoring his defensive formation to prepare and charge strike Pyri. Aegis had seen this enough times by now, though, and launched himself off the ground immediately after Seraxus had, flapping his wings of light elegantly to propel himself to the proper height needed in order to cut off any charge strikes from Seraxus without providing him with any guards to propel himself off of.

Once Seraxus had Aegis in the air, he silently used his switch skill to replace his axe with the sword of hatred. The axe appeared in Seraxus’ hand while the sword moved behind Aegis and was now barreling towards Pyri. Her attempts to redirect the moving sword’s momentum failed, as unlike other weapons it was able to ignore the force of her spells.

Aegis turned to see the sword barreling towards Pyri as she prepared to dodge it, but Aegis was able to flick his fingers and project a shield in front of the sword.

The instant that Aegis turned around to look at the sword of hatred’s movements, Seraxus threw his axe downward.

Aegis was expecting Seraxus to now only have downward momentum after his failed attempt at Jumping over him to execute his charge strike. Seraxus used a similar trick to Aegis to gain aerial momentum, however. He stopped controlling his floating spear across the arena and allowed it to drop to the ground, instead controlling his axe and using it as a stepping stone to launch himself off of it to the side, getting around Aegis.

Aegis turned around at the last second and watched Seraxus do this, and panicked. With a clear line of sight on Pyri, he could execute a charge strike and repeat what he did to kill Rakkan and Lina. 

Aegis responded fast, knowing that a shield projection wouldn’t stop it, Aegis instead used his second shield projection for himself, forming at his feet to launch himself off of it just as Seraxus had done with his axe, to match his positioning. He was a moment slower than Seraxus, though, and Seraxus executed the charge strike just as Aegis was arriving.

Aegis responded by violently batting his closest wing of light downward at the aerial charging Seraxus, knocking him out of the charge and causing him to spin out of the charge and fall towards the ground. 

“Aegis!” Pyri shouted frantically, causing Aegis’ mind to pulse with calculations. Milliseconds mattered, and he had to contemplate what Pyri would shout at him about without perceiving it. He spun around blindly with his shield at his back just in time to hear the sound of the black sword of hatred clashing with it, narrowly avoiding being hit by an unguarded strike from the sword.

Despite being hit by Aegis’ wing and falling out of the sky, Seraxus had used a switch on the axe again to swap it with the black sword and send it at Aegis as he was focused on blocking Seraxus’ charge. 

The eruption of shadow and light from the impact exploded outward from Aegis’ shield as Seraxus landed on the tiled floor of the arena, gained his footing, and prepared to charge strike at Pyri from the ground. Aegis used the momentum from the explosion of the sword of hatred to propel him down to the ground fast enough to block it, but he was too slow to keep up. The momentum that Aegis had given to Seraxus by hitting him with his wing was too much—such an easy to make mistake but quite possibly the worst one.

He watched as Seraxus charged across the arena towards Pyri as she managed to deflect Zuon’s bombardment of attacks, arrows and music notes soaring all around her as a spiral of cinderbolts swirled alongside them.

She had also managed to land a cinderbolt on Zuon and was slowly whittling his health down, but Zuon had several musical songs that induced healing which he was able to use to offset her damage. 

“He’s just so damn fast!” Hae-won shouted in frustration as she watched Aegis lose control of Seraxus for a third time in one match. “His misdirects and skill timings are so perfect. Even though Aegis is doing his best to keep Pyri safe from the Sword of Hatred, he’s finding openings.” Hae-won explained, not in an effort to be in awe of Seraxus but to be unbiased.

“As many have said before, the sword is not the only reason he’s won this many tournaments.” The VGN caster joined in. 

Aegis was desperate, he had no choice but to try and block the charge’s momentum with a guard despite knowing it wouldn’t work. A projection of Aegis’ shield formed in front of the charging Seraxus, but he perfectly timed himself to stop his charge in front of the shield, then launch himself over it and cast charge strike on Pyri again.

“Mom!” Aegis warned her.

“I got it. Just get the bard off of me.” She shouted back with a nod, turning her focus away from Zuon’s attacks to focus on the approaching Seraxus. Aegis nodded and turned to Zuon, still standing on the opposite end of the arena, and broke into a wing-propelled sprint towards him. 

Zuon saw Aegis coming and quickly veered his attacks away from Pyri and aimed them at Aegis.

“Slow dance!” Zuon shouted, sending out a pulsing wave of gray musical notes from his instruments that rippled along the floor of the arena in waves. Aegis jumped over them, only to be met by a mid-air barrage of arrows fired from Zuon’s bow. Aegis quickly identified which ones were glowing with the pinning shot spell that Zuon silently cast, and blocked them.

He at least knew that blocking pinning shots prevented the vines from rooting him in place, and despite the arrows numbering in their 20’s, his repeated practice duels with Darkshot allowed him to spot out the right ones and prevent them from connecting. He allowed the rest of the arrows through in order to beef up the damage of his virabhadra, but he still had some time left on the cooldown.

The announcement of 5 minutes passing in the match came and went, and Aegis thrust himself through the air using his wings while being sure not to touch the ground of the arena surrounding Zuon where the slowing gray music notes were flowing out of his instruments. Aegis knew that if he touched that spell, he’d get a debuff that would slow him down to the point that he’d never stand a chance at catching this bard player.

Meanwhile, across the arena, Seraxus had arrived at Pyri with all of his weapons surrounding her. He began his relentless assault on her, and she was forced to pull back all of her cinderbolts to focus on defending herself. 

She formed a water clone of herself by silently casting the simulacrum spell just as Simon had done to her so many months ago, and gave the clone her staff. It acted on its own to try to aid in her defenses briefly, attempting to encase Seraxus in water to drown him. He moved seamlessly to avoid the water clone's attempts, though, cutting through it to force it to lose its form anytime he’d needed to.

Simultaneously, Pyri was managing all of Seraxus’ floating weapons with ease using her cinderbolts, keeping them at a distance far enough away that she’d have time to dodge if one was switched for the Sword of Hatred. The sword itself was her only real threat, as she knew full well that it was ignoring her cinderbolts and could kill her in one hit.

Seraxus swapped to have the sword of hatred in his right hand, his spear in his left. His other weapons, including the axe, crossbow, maul, longsword and bladed fists, swerved around Pyri wildly and unrelentingly.

Pyri empowered herself with haste to raise her movement speed enough that she could sidestep the swings from the sword of hatred, narrowly dodging several with impeccable footwork as the sword cleanly cut through the floor of the arena. No words were spoken between the pair, and they kept their eyes locked onto one another as if trying to anticipate each other's movements while hiding their own, and both were incredibly good at doing so. 

“Pyri’s staying alive, but that sword is barely missing her, and all it takes is a single slip up and she’s gone.” Hae-won casted nervously.

“I can’t watch.” Serenity gasped, covering her eyes. Kenji stole a look or two, but his focus was on creating distracting illusions around the top of the arena to draw the attention of reapers, as more were appearing in the skies above with their flapping bat leathery wings becoming harder and harder to spot due to the darkening clouds. 

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the arena, Aegis is trying to catch Zuon, who is keeping up the pressure on him and throwing out all manner of crowd control spells. If Aegis gets hit by any of those, it’ll allow Zuon to widen the gap between them massively and provide Seraxus with time that, frankly, for Pyri’s sake, I don’t think Aegis can afford to give them. He has to take out Zuon so he can get back to helping Pyri as soon as possible.” Hae-won casted.

“I’m not even sure if peeling off from defending her from Seraxus was the right move here.” The VGN caster commented.

“It’s the only move they had. Seraxus has too many tools in his kit to allow him to circumvent Aegis’ attempts to protect Pyri. Even with the shield.” Hae-won replied.

“Yes, but, with this formation, it’s turned the battle into a race. What will happen first? Will Zuon make a mistake and get caught by Aegis, or will Pyri make a mistake and get hit by the sword?” The VGN caster countered.

All of this commentary was not heard by those in the arena, as they were too focused on their tasks at hand. 

The battle continued in this state for some time, Aegis doing his best to make sure he didn’t get hit by any crowd control as he counted down the cooldown on his virabhadra. Zuon, too, was not too focused on widening the gap between himself and Aegis for the first bit of their engagement. He instead focused on dodging Aegis’ smites, which Aegis began to fire out en-masse while remaining airborne and dodging pinning shots.

When the cooldown on virabhadra came up, though, it became clear to Aegis that Zuon had been mentally keeping track of the timer as well, because his playstyle shifted to make him play much more defensively.

With the slow music still pulsing across the ground, Aegis’ mobility was solely being created by him launching himself off of shield projections and flapping his wings. It allowed him to maneuver around Zuon to keep up, but it was clunky and made it hard to pin Zuon down. Anytime he’d almost had him, Zuon would use several bard skills to widen the gap that parred nicely with threatening waves of pinning shots.

It became clear quickly that Zuon wasn’t attempting to kill Aegis, but rather conserve his mana and kite him long enough so that Seraxus could land a hit on Pyri, and Pyri’s management of Seraxus’ attacks wasn’t going to last forever.

Pyri hadn't had a chance to study Feng’s footage of Seraxus’ gameplay like Aegis had, yet despite this she was managing him. 

One minute left before the 10 minute timer hit, and Seraxus finally played into Pyri somewhat. He thrusted his spear through the water simulacrum to attack Pyri through the clone, but the moment he did, she wiggled several fingers to infuse the water clone with earth and ice magic, solidifying the clone and sealing the spear inside its solid stone body.

The stone version of the simulacrum, with the spear inside it, took off away from their engagement. Seraxus attempted to use a switch to get the spear out of the stone and ice simulacrum, but it failed due to the weapon being considered restrained.

Pyri had successfully removed one of Seraxus’ weapons from his control, getting loud cheers from the casters, but Seraxus remained calm and broke off from Pyri to pursue the moving statue. 

It moved slow and clunky, making it an easy target, and Pyri anticipated it wouldn’t last long. What she didn’t anticipate was Seraxus’ plan to use the simulacrum as bait himself, and he stopped midway towards it to spin towards Pyri and use a charge strike on her. 

She created a wall of ice to block the charge at her feet, shards of white blue crystals piercing up from the ground to separate them, but Seraxus launched himself up over the wall and thrust his black sword of hatred at her from a distance.

“Piercing Darkness.” Seraxus cast, catching Pyri off guard. Her eyes went wide, and she failed to react as a black wave of shadow magic shot from the tip of the sword at her like a bullet.

It did not, however, catch Darkwing off guard. Still nestled on her shoulder, he fluttered his wings and activated his Fae skill to negate the damage with a flash of light. 

That flash of light was Seraxus’ target, though, and the moment it blinded Pyri, he used a switch to swap the sword in his hand with an axe off to the side while launching his body at Pyri. 

Pyri rapidly moved her cinderbolts to try and keep up with the situation, but the ice wall in front of her and the flash of light caused her, for just a moment, to lose track of the sword of hatred.

Combatant Pyri has been defeated.

Desperation rang through Aegis’ bones as he heard the arena caster’s robotic voice carry through the stadium. A slight smirk grew across Zuon’s face as he went all out in dodging Aegis’ attempts to close the gap. He no longer needed to hold back on using his mana, as Seraxus would be joining them on this side of the arena in a matter of seconds.

Two versus one, Aegis stood no chance, and rapidly mixed in uses of his wings, shield projections, and smites to lock down Zuon, narrowing him into one side of the arena. It wasn’t enough, though, and Zuon could still easily jump away as long as Aegis had to use his projections to move around instead of using them to cut off Zuon’s movement, though.

However, by some miracle, Zuon suddenly just stopped moving. A blank expression appeared on his face as Aegis got in close to him, and rather than jump away as he had been doing and fire arrows off to block Aegis, he just stood still. Aegis wasn’t sure why or how it happened, nor did he have time to contemplate it. Desperation overpowered Aegis’ reasoning and he simply took advantage of it, grabbing Zuon’s shoulder.

“Virabhadra!” Aegis shouted frantically, erupting a dome of white light out from himself.

Combatant Zuon has been defeated.

Chapter 307: Seraxus Pt. 3

“Are you kidding me, Amy?!” Zack, the player beyond Zuon was shouting through the house at his younger sister, drawing the attention of their parents who were staring confused at a connection error message that was flashing on their living room television. “Mom, dad, Amy just shut off our internet! She kicked me out of the match!” Zuon shouted hysterically as he stomped through the house.

“Amy, is this true?” His father stood up after exchanging a shocked look with his wife.

“He’s being a bad guy! They’re bullying everyone!” Amy shouted back defensively while stomping to meet him. Zuon felt vindicated in his accusation, and responded by simply motioning to her with his hands and looking at his parents with wide eyes. 

“You know how important this tournament is to your brother. How could you do such a thing?”

“I don’t care! You saw what he and his friends were doing, didn’t you? They’re ruining the game for so many people.” Amy squealed back. 

“That’s not what I saw. Your brother is just playing the game. If the game developers didn’t want to be played like that, they’d do something about it. It’s not up to you to decide how your brother plays.” Zack’s father scolded Amy.

“Sweetie, you can’t do stuff like this. Sabotaging your brother is a big no no.” Her mother shook her head in disappointment while her father sighed.

“You’re grounded, miss. You’re not leaving your room until this tournament is over, and you’re not to use your Simbox again until we say so.” 

“Fine. I don’t care. Side with him, you guys are just evil like he is.” Amy stomped away to her room. Both parents just shook their heads in disbelief.

“If we lose that match because of Amy…” Zuon muttered anxiously as he began to nervously pace around the room.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure your friends will understand. I'll reconnect the line.” His father patted him on the shoulder.

“No, no way. You don’t get it…” Zuon replied before making his way back towards his Simbox. 

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Seraxus stopped at the center of the arena, eying Aegis as he stood over the disintegrating body of Zuon.

“Huh.” Seraxus had an impressed look on his face. “Didn’t think a cleric player would ever be able to catch Zuon. Yo, you ain't as bad as we thought.” Seraxus said as he motioned to his live-streaming icon. “Still, you ain't good enough to be on this stage.” He started pacing around as his eyes wandered to the top of his peripheral vision.

Aegis did the same and determined what it was that Seraxus was looking at in his interface—the match timer, counting up to 9 minutes and nearing 10. Once seeing it, Seraxus relaxed his weapons and continued pacing calmly, making it obvious to Aegis that he was not planning on attacking until the healing penalty set in fully at the 10 minute mark. 

Considering this, Aegis began weighing his options. One on one, even with his claws of jealousy, the damage output that Aegis had was drastically lower than what Seraxus could pull off. Even exchanging blows outright, without any healing he knew that Seraxus would come out on top. The only answer Aegis had left was virabhadra, but he would need to take more damage than Seraxus could deal to him before he died to Seraxus’ damage output.

With this in mind, Aegis got to work. He began clawing himself and hitting himself with smites, and healing the damage back up while the healing was still enabled for the next minute. 

Seraxus watched him do this, but didn’t change his demeanor in any way. He continued pacing around the center of the arena as if Aegis was doing something completely obvious and expected, and instead used the time that Aegis was beating himself up to talk with his viewers.

“So, get this. These guys studied all my moves from Feng and those traitors at VGN, but, it aint gonna do this harbinger of light any good. ‘Cause even with his leather armor, he can’t keep up with a battlemaster. We all know this. How many clerics and tank class players have we fought before?” Seraxus asked rhetorically, and his chat responded with all sorts of numbers.

“Exactly. This guy, on the other hand… how many battlemasters ya’ll think he’s fought?” Seraxus asked as Aegis listened between the sounds of his smites exploding on himself. “Ahah, ya, definitely less than 5. Guy still thinks he can stop charge strikes.” Seraxus shook his head. “He’s lucky he got all those easy opponents up ‘til now. Let’s see… he got the C team of the vindicators in the final prelim match, which his mommy dearest took care of. Then he got a pass from Mikael, a gimmick match up from Skar, and a team of PvE carebears with Synopse.” Seraxus paused to sigh and shake his head to himself, then began walking closer to Aegis to make sure he’d be heard.

“I gotta be honest, I don’t even think he’d be in the finals if he got matched up with some of the other real PvP players in this tournament. He’s been gettin’ lucky, carried by his mithral weapons and his mom.” Seraxus shook his head. “Lil bro, you really think you gonna match my skills in PvP just cause you got that fancy shield? Just cause you studied some video on me?” Seraxus addressed Aegis directly for the first time, rather than his audience.

Aegis didn’t reply, though, instead glaring back through the bursts of light coming from the smites and self-healing that Aegis was doing.

“You ain't bad, but, let’s be real man. You started playin’ this game, like what, a couple months ago? And this is your first game, right? PvP aint like PvE where you can just study the game and win. Honestly, you just bein’ here feels kinda disrespectful to the entire PvP community. I gotta beat you for all of their sakes, not just mine.” Seraxus pointed his black sword of hatred at him and grinned, but still got no response from Aegis. 

“Lemme tell you how this fight is gonna go.” Seraxus lowered his weapon and slouched his shoulders, hovering his other battlemaster weapons behind him. He looked as if he was relaxing, no longer taking Aegis seriously, but Aegis did his best to not get provoked by this behavior and stayed focused on his plan, building up the stored damage in his virabhadra.

“You’re gonna keep doin’ that until the timer hits 10 and you can’t heal yourself anymore. You got enough damage to maybe one shot me through my armor, maybe not. I ain’t gonna risk finding out, so I’ll try to avoid it while whittling your tanky ass down through all the blocks and parries. Your wings might fade before you get that virabhadra set up, but we both know you’re gonna pull some trick to grapple me or somethin, ‘cause you’re one of those scheming types. Once you get me, you gonna try to pull some trick to hit me with that shiva spell, and it wont work, and I’ll kill you. ‘Cause you can’t beat me one on one. You’re some weird tank-healer hybrid class, yet you failed at tanking me, and you can’t heal your allies through my damage, so, basically, you’re useless in this matchup.” Seraxus shrugged.

“Anything I got wrong there?” He asked Aegis with an eyeroll, and Aegis continued to remain silent.

“Nah, didn’t think so. Alright, let’s get this over with. You got another shot in the next round, you only need to beat me once, right?” Seraxus laughed as the timer hit 9:58. “All this tough talk actin’ like you’re gonna show up and save the day, but in the end you’re still just a noob with daddy issues.” Seraxus finished, and the timer hit 10:00.  

`The arena announcer’s voice didn’t even get to finish her declaration that healing was now disabled for the rest of the match before Seraxus kicked off the floor of the arena with a charge strike towards Aegis.

Aegis had timed his last moments of self-inflicted damage and healing to end with him at full health, and he raised up his shield in anticipation for the first strike, but used it as a fake out and instead lunged forward to meet Seraxus’ charge strike with the black sword of hatred held forward. 

The light and darkness flashed brightly through the stadium. Hae-won continued to call out the exchanges of blows that went on between Aegis and Seraxus, but not even her bias could hide the fact that the match-up had become incredibly one sided.

Aegis was landing hits on Seraxus while defensively preventing any clean attacks through his defenses at first, but the damage being dealt was still heavily in favor of Seraxus. Aegis didn’t mind at first, as he was only trying to survive long enough to wait out the cooldown on virabhadra, but slowly, Seraxus was starting to wise up to Aegis’ movements.

Just as Aegis had studied him, Seraxus was now studying and learning how Aegis played. Even his unique uses of his shield straps with his feet, and the flaps of his wings were being played through.

Sure enough, Seraxus began to land attacks on Aegis which he couldn’t keep up with, taking unmitigated damage from Seraxus’ weapons and forcing Aegis further on the defensive to insure that none of the unmitigated strikes were made by the black sword of hatred.

Worse, though, was just how completely unrelenting Seraxus was. His character was built specifically to fight like this, whereas Aegis was built to be unkillable due to his healing. The words ‘battlemaster meta’ rang through his mind multiple times as he fought against and failed to defend against Seraxus, and he found himself filling up with the same frustrations that led Rakkan to reroll from his original class of Sage. 

It was with a great sense of relief that Aegis managed to last until his virabhadra cooldown became available, but once it had Seraxus’ started playing more cautiously. 

Seraxus had no exact timer for Aegis’ cooldowns, but from his hundreds of thousands of fights against NPCs and players, he had such a strong game sense for timings of nearly all skills and abilities in the game, that he almost knew instinctively that the skill was off of its cooldown. 

Despite this, Aegis made use of a sudden set of odd, unpredictable movements that he had planned out and held in reserve after having watched the Feng match and studied the VGN analyst footage. He was able to slip through Seraxus’ weapons and grab his shoulder to hold him in place, much to Seraxus’ surprise.

“Virabhadra.” Aegis mumbled nervously, seeing the look on Seraxus’ face after he’d been grappled. Seraxus showed no fear, and quickly swapped the sword in his hand for his axe using his switch skill.

“Spell eater.” Seraxus replied coldly, and the blue magical mouths formed all over the axe, eating up the dome of light that erupted from Aegis and canceling the spell. Once the dome was gone, Seraxus switched the axe back to the sword of hatred and took a swing at Aegis’ abdomen, forcing Aegis to release his grip and jump backwards. As he did, the wings from the Avatar of Eirene skill faded away, leaving Aegis further defenseless.

“And there we have it. You aint got nothin’ left in the tank, and you should be about dead.” Seraxus said with an uninterested look on his face. He, completely unthreatened by Aegis now, looked up to the dark clouds above the stadium and saw the reapers soaring high above, some being killed by Kenji and Serenity. “You gonna have to do better than this, lil bro.” He shook his head in disappointment. 

Aegis looked up as well and saw the reapers. He could hear the sounds of explosions and battle coming from the surrounding cityscape. Buildings collapsing, people screaming, and spells being cast were the most dominant. Hae-won and Serenity went silent to look down and see Aegis standing before Seraxus without his wings, his shield still glowing bright in the shape of Eirene’s star, but both player seemed calm and cool, staring each other down.

“Harbinger of lights ain’t shit. We are still the best. We are still the baddest. We ain’t need no VGN. We the kings of this Shatte-” 

“Divine Aid.” Aegis cast, his words interrupting Seraxus as he turned to look at Aegis in confusion. It was a spell Seraxus was not familiar with, as it had never been used before or discovered by any other advanced class player.

Aegis was fully aware of the penalties for trying to use the skill, but he felt he had no other option—everything Seraxus had said about their one vs one matchup was true. Alone, Aegis did not have the skills or abilities to defeat a battlemaster class player in an arena duel. 

So instead, his hail mary attempt was made. He called on the divine intervention of Eirene to aid him in some way, shape, or form, and a bright glowing light began to emit from Aegis’ skin. His body began to light up and surge with warm light for an instant, causing Seraxus to immediately take a defensive stance and pull his weapons towards himself.

But a second later, the light dissipated and vanished.

Spell Failed. Unable to cast Divine Aid under these circumstances[?]

Skills, spells, and abilities with cooldowns longer than 24 hours cannot be used inside gladiator tournaments.

Aegis’ heart sank as he read the message and the following explanation. He hadn’t gotten information like this before through all of his research, but he also hadn’t heard much about skills with such long cooldowns before being used in gladiator matches. WIth no precedence, the information just wasn’t available for him to study.

“Huh?” Seraxus looked around confused as he was still on edge, preparing for some sort of attack to be used and instead seeing Aegis closing out the error message. “Hah, wait. Skill didn’t work? Performance issues?” Seraxus continued condescendingly.

No response from Aegis verbally, he looked at his viewership count, to Seraxus’ viewers, then finally to Serenity and Hae-won looking at him desperately from the raised platform in the audience. He had no words, no plans, nothing— his party had fought hard to get him to this point in the match, but without any of them alive, he could do nothing, and he failed to keep them alive. He clenched his fists in frustration as Seraxus cautiously approached him with his sword of hatred out, but Aegis didn’t give him the chance to finish the match.

The only power Aegis still had left in his hands, with his measly 10% health remaining, was to forfeit the match and not give Seraxus the satisfaction of killing him.

Combatant Aegis has forfeited.

This message was followed by a loud mocking laughter from Seraxus.

“That’s it? That’s the guy that's supposed to stop me?” He shouted up to Hae-won and Serenity.