“We’ve got confirmation that abysslings, reapers, and Juggernauts are now swarming the island of Tarolas.” A VGN Broadcaster declared over the arena. His voice was hardly audible over the obscenities being shouted by the crowd.

“Everyone, please. You’re only making it worse!” Serenity cried out, but went unheard.

Hae-won, who stood behind them, could do nothing but watch. She put her hand on Serenity’s shoulder. “This is hopeless. We’ve lost complete control of the crowd and general public.”

Serenity looked down towards the arena as both Aegis and Seraxus’ group ventured out from their doors on opposite sides. The ground was not visible, as it was shrouded in a thick layer of black mist that both parties had to wade through. “I have to try…” She turned to look at the Sages of Destiny seats. Most of them were now empty, only a few hanging back alongside Lilya. The Vindicator seats were similar.

“We put your stupid island on the map. It’s not our fault you couldn’t protect one measly Prophet NPC!” Lilya snarled at some mid-level, angry Stormtop natives, who retorted foul names at her. Makaroth logged in a few seconds later, materializing in the empty seat next to her.

“There you are, finally. Explain to these guys that they can’t blame all of their problems on you. They’re mad because they are about to lose their island, and they are trying to use our guild as a scapegoat. It’s unbelievable,” Lilya shook her head in disbelief.

Makaroth didn’t reply, nor did he even so much as look in Lilya’s direction. The loud, angry shouting got louder at his appearance, as the VGN broadcasters announced his return. Makaroth ignored them as well, leaning forward to get a better look at the arena.

He was not the only one—Jensora was up against the blue barrier on the opposite end of the stands, peering down with anxiety.

Most of the audience were pissed off by Seraxus’ big reveal, glaring in Makaroth's direction. Not all, though. Some of them had the same look on their faces as Jensora. It was with fear, for they recognized the threat in the arena that they were bearing witness to as Seraxus marched forward with his black wings, but they had not given up hope yet. Just a little, they believed in Aegis.

Aegis and his party reached the blue wall that separated them from Seraxus’ team. The ground quaked violently. Aegis recalled it as a sign that an island stone had been destroyed. Four were remaining.

“How’s this for a finale, eh? Good job containing the hatred!” Seraxus yelled across the arena, followed by a loud mocking bout of laughter. “You and your daddy made it a lil’ bit too easy, honestly. You messed up, Rakkan. You teamed up with a guy who's even more messed in the head than you are. He really bought all that lore PvE carebear bullshit. He actually thought he was gonna win a PvP tournament by spreading rainbows and sunshine.” Seraxus and his party members eyed Rakkan while they began to fan out.

“You shoulda stuck with us Rakkan. We 'bout to run this entire game world into the ground,” Hajax said proudly.

“What’re you sayin'? If he didn’t leave, you guys wouldn’t have picked me up,” Sylvia pouted playfully.

“True. Sylvia’s way stronger than that wannabe battlemaster,” Gambit added, which was followed by another bout of laughter from the group.

“Stay calm. Think clearly. No mistakes.” Aegis whispered so that only his party members could hear him.

Rakkan took a deep breath and did his best to ignore their mockery. “Rune: Echo.” He spoke coolly, creating the images of himself that spread out around Aegis. Lina drew her daggers, Pyri her staff, Darkshot his bow, and Aegis his claw and shield.

Darkwing cooed from Darkshot’s shoulder, fluffing out his feathers and pulling his neck in.

“We’ll be alright.” Darkshot tried to calm him.

Match begins in 10… 9… 8…

“Multicast, Cinderbolt - Empowerment, Forcebolt - Empowerment, Haste.” Pyri cast several merged spells in succession, causing three large glowing purple cinderbolt orbs to form behind her. Rather than burning, they looked like balls of colliding waves.

Across the arena, Zuon drew out several floating instruments with pink light behind him, causing several buff spells to empower his party. Runes formed all over Sylvia’s body, Hajax activated a dark aura, and Gambit took a fighting stance.

“That’s the first time…” Hae-won saw it, whispering into her amplified staff. “It’s the first time Seraxus is taking their opponents seriously.” She cleared her throat and prepared herself for what she was about to do.

“Shut your damn mouths and stop bickering, you idiots!!” She screamed as loud as she could. “Look! It ain’t over! For the first time since the start of the tournament, all of Seraxus’ party members are pre-buffing and pre-emptively readying for the fight. You wanna know why they’re doing that?!” Hae-won said, but she continued to be borderline inaudible to the angry crowds. A few people had started paying attention, but not enough.

“It’s because he’s scared!” Serenity answered for her as she came to the realization, also speaking with her voice amplification abilities. “He’s scared of Aegis’ shield, even with his Avatar of Hatred wings. Aegis…” Serenity had tears swelling in her eyes. She looked at the back of his head as he faced away from her to stare down Seraxus’ group.

“Bless. Aura of Beauty. Aura of Light,” Aegis quickly cast, buffing his party with the spell effects as they erupted out of him. The moment she saw it, a lightbulb flicked on in Serenity’s head.

“We’ve got to keep fighting! MIMICRY: AURA OF LIGHT!”

An exact copy of Aegis’ Aura of Light spell grew out of her and overtook the entire stadium, unlike Aegis’, which was contained by the blue walls around the arena. She blasted out a wave of music, strumming heavy bass alongside a rapidly playing violin. Her drummer jumped in as soon as he could, as did Kenji with his illusions.

“Tch. Dumb ass bard.” Seraxus reacted as he’d been listening to the voice-amplified shouts. “I ain't scared, I’m just not stupid enough to underestimate an artifact.” Seraxus gritted his teeth. He took his floating weapons out of his inventory and unsheathed his Black sword of hatred with his right hand.

Makaroth watched this exchange without speaking a single word, his eyes locked onto Pyri and Aegis as they stood side by side in the arena. He watched as the black mist that coated the floor of the arena disappeared thanks to Aegis’ aura, but the black wings on Seraxus’ back did not.

“It’s not enough…” Makaroth mumbled.

3… 2… 1… Match Start.

Immediately after the blue walls went down, Seraxus lifted his black sword and did a wide vertical swing. It released the same black wave of deadly magical energy that had killed every opponent in the last match. This time, he had better control over it and sent it only forward, avoiding his party members.

“Get behind me!” Aegis ordered his party, who quickly complied. Aegis held up his shield as the black wave collided with it, triggering an eruption of light and shadow. He activated Brace, and the effects of the shieldwall prevented the damage from transferring to anyone behind him.

You take 0 shadow damage.

Seraxus laughed hysterically at the sight of the explosion and the red 0 that appeared above Aegis. “Looks like we got ourselves a real match, boys and girls!”

“Long-range attacks, wait for an opening, stay close,” Aegis instructed.

“Multishot.” Darkshot fired an arrow from his bow from behind Aegis, soaring it across the arena as it split into 20 arrows. Pyri sent her purple cinderbolts wide, splitting them into dozens of smaller orbs and swerving them wildly around the pillars.

“Nuh uh.” Sylvie wagged her finger as she stepped forward beside Seraxus, making several exaggerated movements with her arms until a large black hole formed in the air above the center of the arena. The black hole pulled up the sand from the arena floor along with any loose stones and broken tile fragments. When Darkshot’s arrows neared it, they were pulled in and destroyed.

Pyri’s cinderbolts, however, ignored the black hole and remained under her control, making it past the center of the arena and continuing onto Seraxus’ side.

Sylvia sucked her teeth. “She learned.”

“Remember, back when VGN was giving us pointers, they said that the wizard is the most dangerous member of Aegis’ group.” Hajax said to the group.

Seraxus dashed forward with incredible speed across the arena, ducking under Sylvia’s black hole.

“Everyone, offensive. Either I protect you, or you die in one hit. Play as if you’re immortal,” Aegis took a deep breath, then dashed forward to meet Seraxus. Lina shadowstepped around the arena on the sides to avoid the inevitable clash in the center, while Pyri held back and manipulated her bolts to aid Aegis. Darkshot and Rakkan split up, with Darkshot running up the right side and Rakkan moving himself and his echoes to the left.

Zuon ran to meet Darkshot while Sylvie eyed Darkshot, and Hajax held his ground with Gambit staying close, fists up and gazing at Rakkan.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

When Aegis and Seraxus met in the middle of the arena, there was no holding back. The black sword of hatred was swung downward at the Star of Light, and an explosion of darkness erupted from the point of impact, sending a blinding flash through the arena as if lightning had struck. Aegis’ aura of light was able to dissipate the formation of any black mist from the strike, but that swing was just the beginning of the onslaught.

The floating weapons of Seraxus quickly formed around Aegis and came at him from all sides. Longsword, battle axe, maul, fists, crossbow, and spear—The same weapons that Rakkan had favored were the ones that Seraxus used.

“Avatar of Eirene,” Aegis cast as he saw the impending onslaught. Another eruption of light came out of his body as the two divine wings formed on his back, and he dug his heels into the tiled floor.

As the many weapons' swings came down on him, bolts from the crossbow, Aegis made use of his training and research. His every movement was calculated, casting guards, waving his wings, and swinging his claw. He used footwork to keep angling his body so he could parry or block attacks and minimize the damage he took.

You take 820 piercing damage.

You take 735 slashing damage.

You take 904 crushing damage.

You take 0 Shadow damage.

The numbers were flowing above his head quickly, but he was managing them well. His healing from his enchantments, coupled with the aura of beauty for his stamina, was keeping up with Seraxus’ regular strikes. The information Feng had given him was accurate; he had a proper sense of how Seraxus wanted to attack, which made him somewhat manageable. The issue was something else entirely---

Every single swing of Seraxus’ weapons towards Aegis was calculated. He was only aiming for places on Aegis’ body where there were openings. Below his shield, from the back at his blind spot, above his wings. It was constant, not a single swing or shot was wasted, every strike was going for the kill.

Not only that, but some attacks were feints. Seraxus would intentionally aim for obvious openings on Aegis so that he would put a guard up, or move his wings and shield into a position to protect that blind spot, only to then redirect the strike to where a new opening was created in response.

It was unlike anything Aegis had to defend against before. Completely relentless without even a second to do anything like analyze and overthink. All it would take was a second of miscalculation, and he’d start losing control of the situation. It was harder to manage than Rakkan, Lina, and Darkshot. It was harder than even fighting the 13 players vs 2 inside the FFA battle. After just a few very long moments of it, Aegis felt as if suddenly Seraxus began to grow. Despite knowing their Avatars were relatively close in size and that this was just a young kid playing a video game, the Orcish form of Seraxus looked so incredibly imposing. It grew terrifyingly large in Aegis’s eyes.

“Hah. Yo! This is kinda fun!” Seraxus jeered. “Been so long since I could actually fight against someone without them just fallin’ over in one hit! I hope you can keep this up, I’m havin’ a blast!"

Sylvia shot out a wild black lightning attack that spread out across the arena in Seraxus’ direction, wrapping around him and going across the tiled floor in an attempt to hit and paralyze Aegis. Purple cinderbolts flew out of the sky from the sides of the arena and spread out like an explosion of spores. Despite the speed of the lightning attack, every single bolt that fired from Sylvia’s fingertips was intercepted by Pyri and blocked from hitting Aegis.

Darkshot engaged with Zuon, firing arrows at each other. Darkshot used redirects to try to catch Zuon from behind. Zuon had multiple floating instruments that shot out soundwaves towards Darkshot’s flanking arrows, stopping their flight. Combined with this, he was sending out blasts of deafening music towards Darkshot that followed his arrows, but Darkwing was able to negate damage from any of the ones Darkshot failed to dodge. It made the area on their side fill with random, loud instrumental notes. Zuon completely lacked the finesse and elegance of fighting like Serenity did with the same skills, but was equally, if not more, effective.

When Rakkan arrived at Gambit and Hajax, echoes in tow, Gambit revealed his advanced Monk fighting stance. He put the palms of both his hands together in front of his chest, then separated them and made a large circular movement around his body, with his arms outstretched. At random intervals during the circular movement, copies of his arms and hands remained behind in the circle. When the form had finished, Gambit had grown two additional arms and fists out of his shoulders, giving him 6 in total. The additional ones did not appear corporeal at first, as they all connected to the same shoulder point and the upper arms overlapped one another, but Rakkan could tell just by looking at them that the spectral fists would hurt just as much as his real ones.

Once they’d finished forming, Gambit took a fighting stance with all 6 arms in varying positions around him, knees bent. Rakkan charged forward at Gambit with two of his echoes, holding one back with the crossbow and rushing his real body around him to get at Hajax, who was not looking in Rakkan’s direction at all.

Even with 6 fists, Gambit didn’t have the mobility or target access that controlling multiple echoes had; At least that’s what Rakkan thought initially.

“Spirit stance: Realm.” Gambit swept his right foot forward over the ground, causing a light blue circle to ripple outward from his body, encapsulating not only himself and Hajax but also Rakkan as well. The circle covered a good portion of their side of the arena, and once it finished forming, Gambit’s feet gave off a blue glow that matched the circle. The ground inside the circle dimmed.

“Spirit step,” Gambit whispered, allowing him to jump off the ground and reappear anywhere he wanted within the circle. He chose to reappear behind Rakkan’s real form and strike at him from behind with his fists.

Rakkan felt the change in the wind as Gambit’s form appeared behind him out of thin air, giving him enough time to spin around with his longsword and spear in hand to deflect and parry several punches from Gambit and jump backward to disengage. Gambit reacted by spirit stepping again towards Rakkan’s echoes, forcing him to carefully control the echoes so that they could protect each other.

He’d forgotten, in all of his hatred of Seraxus, that he wasn’t the only threat in his ex-party. Sure, the others had all been overshadowed by the power of the sword, but in the beginning, when the sword was still weak, it was because of them that the sword was never destroyed.

“Where’s the shadow dancer?” Hajax mumbled to himself, glancing around the arena to try and find Lina. He caught glimpses of her in the shadows of the pillars, hiding in the flashes of light that erupted from Aegis’ shield as he fought Seraxus in the center. Before he could have his question fully answered, several smoke bombs flew towards him from random directions.

Hajax waved his scepter in the direction of the smoke bombs. “Black light,” He cast, sending out orbs of darkness that exploded into light as they hit the smoky areas, dispelling them. “There’s no way you haven’t fought cleric class players before. You know that stuff isn’t gonna fly.”

During this exchange, Sylvia sent out several more streams of black lightning from her fingertips at Aegis, the bolts branching into dozens of smaller ones as they streamed across the arena at incredible speeds. Pyri was managing to negate every single bolt with her purple cinderbolts, visibly frustrating Sylvia.

“This stupid wizard bitch,” Sylvia shouted in annoyance. She gave up on attacking Aegis and put both of her hands together, forming large purple runes on her palms before thrusting her hands forward in Pyri’s direction. She cast another spell that sent two black beams of warlock magic through the air towards Pyri. Pyri attempted to block them with the cinderbolts, but two of the bolts were dispelled just by touching the beams.

This didn’t put fear on Pyri’s face, though. Instead, she smiled. “Got her,” Pyri called into the party interface, sending the third cinderbolt out towards Sylvia’s feet to bind her to the ground, using a strange force from the bolts that was brought on by Pyri’s Magelord spell empowerments. While doing this, Pyri sidestepped the black beams, but Sylvia maintained control over them and arced the beams up into the air, curving them around to chase Pyri from opposite directions. As the beams extended, the path they had traveled remained filled with their black, magical energy, filling the arena with their presence.

This required Sylvia to focus and channel her energy to maintain it, and she had barely noticed or cared that Pyri had pinned her to the ground with her cinderbolts. Pyri made several more calculated movements to dodge the beams as they swirled around her, creating spirals and attempting to corner her.

While this happened, Hajax finally spotted the play. Lina appeared in the shadows of a pillar nearest to Sylvia and shot a smoke bomb out at the area behind her, then shadowstepped to it to appear behind Sylvia.

“Black light,” Hajax dashed forward towards Sylvia as fast as he could, dispelling the smoke bomb after Lina had already appeared there. Lina leapt into the air with her Bless-enchanted Mithral daggers, aiming them at the back of Sylvia’s head. “Guard!” Hajax shouted frantically, forming a projection of his shield behind Sylvia’s head at the last second to block Lina’s strikes. Lina was ready for it and used the darkness cast by the beams coming out of Sylvie’s hands to shadowstep to her front, striking at Sylvia’s neck before Hajax could guard it.

“Greater heal!” Hajax cast, restoring health on his warlock companion. “Syvlie, cancel that shit, you’re givin’ mobility to the shadow dancer!” Hajax ordered her. He used another guard to block more of Lina's hits, but she moved around the guard and continued her assault on the immobile Sylvie.

“Tchyaaa! I HATE HER!” Sylvia screamed as she canceled the beams, causing them to vanish from the arena. Her outburst was a result of her realizing that, even after canceling her spell channeling, she was still being rendered immobile by Pyri's remaining cinderbolt.

Sylvia grew out large black claws from her fingertips encased with purple magical energy, and used them to swipe out at Lina, but Lina was too quick, and despite Hajax’s heals, her health was being whittled down.

“Stop takin’ so much damage!” Hajax shouted.

“I can’t dodge her like this, ‘cause of that stupid wizard!” Sylvia replied.

“Seraxus!” Hajax called out as he’d been listening to them.

Seraxus had a big smile on his face as he was having a blast attacking Aegis relentlessly, but hearing Hajax say his name caused him to sigh and roll his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it.” Seraxus jumped away from Aegis, giving them a space of a few feet. Still engaging with Aegis’ defenses using his floating weapons, Aegis tried to keep up with what Seraxus was doing. He saw him eying Pyri across the arena and preparing to send out a wave of black energy at her from his Sword of Hatred. Aegis readied himself to protect her, making sure one of his guards was not on cooldown while using the other to protect himself.

When Seraxus made the swing, Aegis created the projection of his shield immediately, absorbing the wave of magical energy and negating it.

You take 0 shadow damage.

However, Seraxus saw him do this and smirked, seeing a 2-second window where both of Aegis’ guards were on cooldown. “Gotcha.”

He jumps to the side of the guard while whipping one of his wings up and down through the sky, cutting the air and sending out a second black wave of magical energy from the wing.

“Mom!” Aegis called out as he watched it in slow motion. Despite the wave moving fast, Pyri had two smaller orbs from her cinderbolt floating near her body defensively, which she attempted to use to block the wave, but it passed through them with ease.

Nowhere to move to dodge it, Pyri knew the attack would kill her in one hit, and with one final desperate act, she flicked her wrist to empower the cinderbolt binding Sylvie’s feet to the ground.

At the same time that the black wave hit Pyri and took her health to zero, the bolts on Sylvie’s feet erupted in an explosion of deadly ice shards, dealing massive cold damage to her. Lina took advantage of this burst of damage to rapidly strike her several more times before Hajax could react with a healing spell.

Combatant Pyri has been defeated.

Combatant Sylvie has been defeated.