Chapter 305: Seraxus Pt. 1

The sounds of battle echoed through the skies above Stormtop, but they were barely audible from inside the arena thanks to Serenity’s soothing music and the blue dome of magical energy that provided them some level of separation from the outside world. 

Instead, what Aegis and Seraxus’ parties heard was the calm voice of the arena announcer. She counted down the final few seconds before the match started, as both parties waited up against the separating blue wall.

Aegis began by casting bless, then activated his aura skills. On the opposite side, Hajax activated auras and buffs alongside Zuon for all party members, so that by the time the announcer said Start, everyone’s weapons were glowing.

The blue walls came down, and the 10 players poised to attack each other with tension in their shoulders, yet no one charged and no one taunted. They followed each other with their eyes, but their mouths did not move—they were taking each other seriously, as both sides had so much to lose, and recognized the threat their opponent posed to them. 

Slowly, the two sides walked closer to one another in their standard combat formations. For Aegis’ side, he and Rakkan stood in front with Lina behind, and further back Pyri and Darkshot. For Seraxus, he led the charge with Hajax and Gambit, and Zuon and Sylvia stood behind them.

When they walked past the section of the arena where the pillars were lined up, Lina made the first move by shadow stepping away from Aegis’ group and concealing herself somewhere in the arena out of view of their opponents.The moment she did this, everyone began taking action. 

Seraxus launched himself into the air with incredible height, then used his charge-strike skill to rush through the space above the arena floor towards Aegis’ back line—specifically Pyri. Aegis jumped into the air with his shield up to intercept him, causing him to crash into Aegis’ shield instead with his shoulder with a great amount of force that knocked them both back to the ground, their boots skidding across the sand-covered tiled for several feet before stopping. This was immediately followed up with several converging floating weapons attempting to strike at Aegis from multiple angles, but he threw up his guards and activated his Avatar of Eirene skill to make use of his wings defensively, blocking and deflecting the initial onslaught. 

“Multicast, Cinderbolt - Empowerment, Forcebolt - Empowerment, Haste.” Pyri cast, creating her purple cinderbolts around her. She sent them around Aegis and Seraxus, soaring towards the enemies on the other side of the arena. 

This time, Gambit and Hajax positioned themselves defensively around Sylvia. Gambit activated his extra four spirit arms and took a fighting stance beside her, eying Rakkan and his echoes as they rushed across the field.

Zuon remained positioned behind them, eying Darkshot who glared back at him, both had arrows nocked and were looking at each other rather than shooting, waiting for someone to take the first shot. 

Sylvia covered her body in dark purple warlock runes, with sparks of electrical magic flying off of her. Once the runes finished forming, a stream of thick dark purple magic fired out from her palms like a beam, but it didn’t move in a straight line. It began to zigzag around the arena, and though it initially looked as if it was going for Pyri, it curved and shot down at Aegis, passing through him and dealing heavy shadow damage. Pyri made an attempt to block and redirect it, but her cinderbolts had no effect on this spell.

You take 3,325 Shadow damage.

Aegis got the message amongst the multiple others he was getting from Seraxus’ attacks. Following this strike, a volley of arrows was fired from Zuon with pink glowing bard magic warping around the arrow heads. Darkshot responded by his own volley, redirecting his arrows to collide with as many of Zuon’s shots as possible, but he quickly noticed where the arrows were heading.

“Aegis!” Darkshot called out to warn him after failing to block a few. As he did, the arrows switched to glowing with a dark green energy, indicating that Zuon had swapped them to pinning shot arrows with hand gestures.

Aegis had his hands full with Seraxus’ unrelenting attacks—trying to handle the hits from the other opponents was too much to ask of him. Lina spotted this and revealed herself from the shadows, throwing a smoke bomb behind Seraxus for her to teleport too. Once she jumped to it, she fired daggers of shadows out of the smoke at the few arrows that Darkshot failed to stop at the last second.

None of this had done anything to prevent Syvlia from continuing her channeled black beam which was now circling around Aegis and attempting to strike him a second time from behind.

“Okay.” Pyri took a deep breath of frustration. “Sylvia’s got cinderbolts figured out. It’s about time I stop being a one-trick pony.” She said while sticking the bottom of her staff into the ground, canceling her cinderbolts and causing her fingers to glow multiple colors. “Freezing Mist, empowerment: eruption, empowerment: chain lightning.”

The initial spell was misty, but once she used her magelord skill to mix in the effects of two others, its nature completely changed. The icy mist began bolting forward at incredible speed, and erupting bursts of ice out of it as it traveled, freezing chunks of the arena ground and nearby pillars and causing sharp shards of ice to explode out from the sections it touched as it did.

Sylvia, Hajax, and Gambit all saw it coming towards them with incredible speed, and Hajax jumped in front with his shield to block the front of the misty bolt. When it impacted Hajax’s shield, ice erupted out from the point of impact on the front of it and the ground below as well, causing a light blue ice to form. From that ice, razor-sharp iceshards exploded outward forcing Hajax to jump backwards to avoid them.

The mist didn’t stop from impacting the shield, though. Like Sylvia’s beam, it kept traveling and warped around Hajax to get at Sylvia behind him. This forced Sylvia to finally break concentration on her beam spell to jump out of the way and avoid it narrowly just as it crashed into the ground where her feet had been standing. 

While this happened, both Rakkan and Gambit positioned themselves in front of one another, positioning to block each other and contest their movements. Rakkan knew better than to spread out his echoes this time and instead kept them close to his main body, ready for Gambit to begin jumping around him.

Sure enough, Gambit created his circular area of spiritual energy of which he could freely teleport, but he did not use it to flank Rakkan once it had finished forming. He instead used it to teleport beyond Rakkan and across the arena in front of Pyri. Pyri noticed it at the last second, canceling her empowered mist spell to jump back and avoid the swing of several spiritual fists at her face. 

Once she did this, Gambit teleported behind her once more, and she quickly cast an instant spell with her hands that created a wave of fire between herself and Gambit to block the first. He responded by simply teleporting again to get at her from another angle. The speed of his instant teleports was providing Pyri with a challenge in how she should defend herself, and she couldn’t help but smirk as she caught a glimpse of the determination in Gambit’s eyes. 

Rakkan paused for a moment, considering running towards Pyri to help her out, but saw that Darkshot was pointing his bow in the direction of Gambit already so instead turned to face Hajax. Hajax was in the midst of repositioning himself to protect Sylvia while Sylvia was preparing another spell.

Rakkan rushed toward Hajax with his echoes and clashed with him quickly, moving his copies around Hajax’ flanks to get at him from behind his shield. 

Hajax used his guard skill in combination with his mace and real shield to protect himself and hold Rakkan back, keeping Sylvia safely behind him, but Lina threw a smoke bomb at Sylvia and jumped to her with her shadowstep skill, appearing behind her and striking Sylvia with her daggers.

Red damage numbers began to pop up all around the arena, over the heads of multiple targets.

Aegis was taking a constant stream of damage from Seraxus, which he was offsetting with his aura of healing and defenses.

Pyri and Gambit were exchanging blows. Both were playing aggressively and regularly gave up on defensive maneuvers in order to inflict more damage.

Rakkan was dealing damage to Hajax, while Hajax was retaliating with several hits of his own. Lina was striking out at Sylvia but Sylvia stopped trying to cast channeling skills and instead formed several runes on her hand that caused black blades to form over each hand, outlined with a deep purple magical glow. It was with these hands that she began striking out at Lina in relatation, landing some hits herself, though dealing less damage than Lina. Hajax, unfortunately, was close enough to Sylvia still that he was able to throw healing spells to Sylvia to offset the damage that Lina was dealing.

Hae-won, up in the stands above the arena, had her mouth moving a mile a minute. She was announcing the skills of each player that were being used, their targets, and if possible the reasoning and cleverness behind each decision being made. For anyone that was watching the match unfold from a distance, she was doing an incredible job of making sure everyone knew where they should be looking. This, in turn, helped Shinji focus his editing efforts on the vital parts of the fight so that he didn’t miss any key moments.

The result was that Aegis’ viewership continued to climb over the other broadcasts that were currently ongoing, as the Fanta-Sea networks team was making it a much better viewing experience than all of the competition. 

Darkshot and Zuon remained relatively out of the line of fire, and stood back analyzing the situation. Both of them had fired several arrow volleys at their enemies, but having little to no impact on the current engagements. Darkshot had shot at Gambit to try and pin him down as he teleported around Pyri, but he easily avoided the shots.

Zuon had fired arrows at Lina and mixed in disorienting bard spells to try and break up her attacks against Sylvia, but was unsuccessful.

Almost in unison, their mouths began to move but their voice traveled only through their party interface, both consulting with the rest of their teams.

“Aegis, what should I do?” Darkshot asked anxiously.

“Seraxus, what’s the play, yo?” Zuon spoke to his group. 

Aegis and Seraxus eyed each other, frustrated by their abilities to negate one another in this five vs five match. They inadvertently gave each other a brief reprieve as they both eyed the situation of their teammates around them, and Hae-won picked up on it.

“Both teams have engaged most of their chosen targets, save for Zuon and Darkshot. It’s likely that whoever they choose to engage will create a snowball effect. This match is looking like it will be decided in a matter of seconds, don’t blink or you’ll miss it…” Hae-won called into her voice amplification staff, gripping it tightly with her eyes open wide. 

“Multishot. Pinning shot.” Zuon and Darkshot both cast in unison. The two glared at each other across the arena briefly, their multishots fired straight into the air. Both had been instructed on how to aim for by their party leaders just milliseconds before, but the direction they shot the volleys made it hard for the enemies to predict their targets.

It wasn’t until targets broke off from their current opponents that it became clear. 

Seraxus suddenly dashed backwards away from Aegis towards his side of the arena where Zuon, Hajax and Sylvia were fighting Lina and Rakkan. 

Rakkan disengaged from Hajax to strike at Sylvia alongside Lina, while Darkshot’s volley of arrows soared through the sky towards her as well. Sylvia created runes on her feet to empower her mobility, jumping around incredibly fast and waving the black blades on her hands up in all directions to deflect some of the arrows, but this left her vulnerable to Lina’s daggers and Rakkan’s echoes.

Rakkan’s echoes were able to reach Sylvia, but his main body did not. Hajax had identified the real Rakkan and positioned himself to limit his movement, using his guard skill to hold him in place so that Zuon could easily hit Rakkan with the pinning shot.

The result was that both Zuon and Darkshot’s pinning shots landed on their intended targets. Vines burst out of Sylvia and Rakkan’s bodies. Lina threw a smoke bomb directly on top of Lina to block her vision of any further attacks, causing more hits from Rakkan’s echoes and Darkshot’s arrows to get through.

“Shadow dance, flurry.” Lina cast, quickly adding to the onslaught. 

Meanwhile, with Rakkan pinned, Hajax attempted to strike out at his main body with his mace, but Rakkan could easily deflect it. The only real threat to Rakkan was going to be Seraxus, who promptly used a charge-strike to clear across the arena and reach him much faster than Aegis could.

Aegis was not in a position this time to intercept the charge strike and instead formed a guard in front of Seraxus to try and cut him off, but Seraxus anticipated this and cancelled his charge the moment a guard appeared in front of him, them grabbed the transparent form of Aegis’ shield projection to launch himself over it and re-cast charge strike.

A second time, Aegis used his advanced shield mastery skill to block the next charge-strike with another shield projection, and Seraxus did the exact same thing, completely outplaying Aegis’ attempts to defend Seraxus.

Aegis could only sprint as fast as he could, propelling himself forward with his wings quickly. Rakkan saw Seraxus closing in on his main body and Aegis’ inability to keep up with Seraxus’ charge-strike skill, so instead of continuing to fight against Hajax’s scepter attacks he instead let the scepter swings hit him and turned his spear to the vines binding his feet, attempting to cut himself loose.

Rakkan got himself free of the bindings at the last second and attempted to Jump to the left to avoid Seraxus’ black sword of hatred as it plunged through the air towards him, but a shield projection from Hajax was created in the direction Rakkan had attempted to to dodge in, preventing his movement and guaranteeing the attack to land.

Combatant Rakkan has been defeated.

As the announcer declared this, Aegis looked to the cloud of smoke behind Hajax where a volley of Darkshot’s arrows had flown in, and Lina continued to strike at Sylvia frantically. To Aegis’ relief, another message from the arena announcer followed the first.

Combatant Sylvia has been defeated. 

Hajax spun around and threw out his light magic at the smokebomb that Lina had been teleporting around in, revealing her standing over Sylvia’s disintegrating body as she was being removed from the match. With Seraxus at his side, Hajax quickly wound up another spell of glowing light on his hands and suddenly erupted into a bright blinding flash, removing all shadows surrounding Lina. 

With this move, Seraxus aimed his black blade at her and used a charge strike towards Lina, revealing his second target. Aegis was still too far back to catch up to them, the mobility of charge-strike as proving to be too much for his class to handle—Harbinger’s of light had no mobility skills save for the wings on his back.

Aegis saw the look of panic on Lina’s face as she desperately glanced around for a shadow to jump towards as Seraxus’ next charge strike closed in on her at incredible speed. He only had seconds to make a decision on what to do. He considered trying to create more shield projections in front of Seraxus, but he already knew it was useless. Instead, he recalled his very first interactions with Lina and her shadowstep skill.

“Guard!” Aegis angled the shield off to the side of Seraxus’ charge, so that it blocked the light of Hajax’ illuminating holy spell to cast a shadow behind itself. Lina saw this, then quickly flipped up her cloak to cast a shadow of her own big enough at her feet to allow her to jump from. 

Both shadows had finished forming just in time, as Seraxus’ black blade of hatred pierced into Lina’s cloak, she was able to shadowstep into the shade of Aegis’ shield projection and avoid the strike. 

In this time, Aegis closed in on Hajax, and Seraxus glanced around to spot Lina. Aegis knew that so long as Hajax was glowing, Lina couldn’t use her skills properly.

“Pin em!” Seraxus and Aegis both shouted in unison, both glancing towards their bow-wielding teammate. Aegis did a head gesture for Darkshot to aim at Hajax, while Seraxus did it to Lina. Both fired volleys and began weaving their arrows through the air towards their intended targets.

Hajax jumped away from Aegis and raised his shield up to defend against the pinning shots, but Aegis flapped his spread holy wings outward to block vision, allowing Darkshot to sneak a pinning arrow in from underneath Aegis and hit Hajax in one of his calves, causing the vines to branch out.

Similarly, though, Zuon hit his arrow onto Lina. He did so by causing several arrows to explode with deafeningly loud musical notes that disoriented Lina briefly. That, mixed in with her inability to shadowstep and the pursuing Seraxus and his floating weapons circling around her gave her little to nowhere to run. Her daggers could parry several strikes, but not enough.

Once the pinning shot hit her, Aegus glanced between the pinned Lina and the Pinned Hajax, and had to make a decision. There was no guarantee he could save Lina, but there was a guarantee he could take out Hajax, and he made the choice.

“Virabhadra!” Aegis shouted next to the pinned Hajax. The red arms of Shiva formed out of his body as the dome of energy encapsulating Hajax, bypassing his defenses and transferring the damage that Aegis had taken from Seraxus and Sylvia onto Hajax. Simultaneously, Seraxus closed in on the pinned Lina and pierced her with the black sword of hatred.

Combatant Hajax has been defeated
 Combatant Lina has been defeated.

During the flashy distracting lights of their engagements, Zuon had suddenly broken into a sprint across the arena towards Darkshot and fired several arrows. Aegis tried to turn and look to see what was happening, but he wasn’t given a chance to look long as Seraxus turned his blades onto him. 

Seraxus and Aegis were now isolated on the side of arena that Seraxus’ party had started on, while Zuon was rushing towards Darkshot on Aegis’ side, and Pyri and Gambit were continuing to duke it out along the back wall on that side as well.

Zuon fired multiple multishot volleys at Darkshot, and Darkshot responded by firing his own, the arrows colliding with one another en-masse, some getting through. The distance between the two closed, and more arrows were fired, the pair dealing equal amounts of damage to each other until nearing melee range.

Once close, Zuon snuck a pinning shot into Darkshot, while Darkshot managed to do the same just as they’d gotten several feet from each other. 

“Everything you can do, I can do!” Darkshot shouted at Zuon as he threw out a ranger mark at the pinned Zuon, several feet away. “Except this, right bard?” Darkshot smirked.

“Or this.” Zuon grinned back as he turned his head towards Aegis across the arena. “Mimicry: Virabhadra. Virabhadra!”

“Sh– RAIN OF ARROWS!” Darkshot shouted, dumping his mana into the spell to form a thousand arrows from his bow and aiming them at Zuon. The dome of light from Aegis’ spell was unfortunately milliseconds faster than Darkshot’s attack. It copied Aegis’ spell and the damage it had absorbed, killing Darkshot instantly and removing both him and his arrows from the arena, keeping Zuon alive.

Combatant Darkshot has been defeated.

“That’s my queue.” Gambit smirked at Pyri as he saw all opponents aside from her and Aegis be defeated. Pyri was just getting into a good flow of blocking his teleportation movements and six fists, when suddenly he went completely reckless and grasped out at her through her magical defenses. He took massive damage in the process, but managed to grapple Pyri to hold her in place.

“Spiritual Release.” Gambit spoke with a grin as his entire body began to transform, all of it becoming translucent and glowing a light blue color exactly like his four extra arms. Once the spell finished, his extra arms were indistinguishable from the rest of his body, but the glowing light of his body continued to get brighter.

“Mom, that’s a suicide attack!” Aegis shouted across the arena once he’d heard Gambit’s words. From studying Seraxus’ party and their skills, he knew the ability. It would take the remaining health of Gambit and deal triple that amount of damage to any targets he was touching with any of his six arms, and in turn reduce his health to 0. Willingly sacrificing himself to take Pyri out of the match.

Pyri heard Aegis’ words and registered the danger of what Gambit was going, but this only made him tighten his grip on her with his other arms, grabbing her wrist and biceps in multiple spots. She released a burst of magic to attempt to make him let go, but he wasn’t going to do so.

Seconds later, a blast of spiritual energy erupted from the pair, engulfing Pyri.

Combatant Gambit has been defeated.

The announcer's voice carried as Aegis, Zuon, and Seraxus turned to look at the explosion of energy in confusion. The message for Pyri’s defeat never came, and a few seconds later the dust and light from the explosion settled to reveal why. A calm, strange looking pigeon was settled onto Pyri’s shoulder, letting out an anxious coo.

Darkwing had negated the damage from the attack, keeping Pyri alive, so that she remained standing strong.

After seeing this, Seraxus and Aegis both disengaged from one another and backed up to their last remaining teammate, turning the 5 vs 5 match into a 2 vs 2.