Seraxus’ party opened the match by spreading out and walking patiently across the arena towards Aegis’ group.

Aegis’ group started off by watching Rakkan, waiting for him to form and arm his three echoes. Once finished, Darkshot took off to the left side of the arena with his bow ready, Lina shadow stepped out of sight, and Rakkan’s main body rushed forward around the right side of the arena. He held one echo back with a crossbow to stand beside Aegis and another to stand beside Pyri as she formed her empowered purple cinderbolts and stepped further back towards the arena wall opposite Seraxus’ party.

Seraxus eyed these movements curiously, primarily following Rakkan’s main body as he moved along the right wall, carrying the distractingly bright Shield of Light with him.

“What are they up to?” Hajax asked.

“Dunno yet,” Seraxus replied. “If they’re gonna leave their healer unguarded, though, I’ll just end this quickly,” Seraxus jumped up into the air with his floating weapons behind him, “Charge strike!” He cast, aiming at Aegis.

With incredible speed, Seraxus flew through the air towards Aegis with his black sword of hatred held in front.

“Switch!” Rakkan cast. His skill replaced the shield in his hand with the crossbow held by the echo beside Aegis. Aegis tossed the spear to the echo, and the echo tossed the shield to Aegis so that he could hold it up in time to meet the tip of Seraxus’s blade. As it always did, the impact from these two artifact weapons created an explosion of light and shadow that flared over the arena. The crossbow-wielding echo jumped away from their engagement and threw the void spear with incredible strength, aiming at Hajax, followed by a shot from the crossbow at the same target.

Hajax was thrown off somewhat by the interaction between Aegis and Seraxus, and by the time he noticed the spear and bolt coming at him, he had only enough time to raise his shield up to block one of them. Sylvia and Gambit were already maneuvering around the right side of the arena towards Rakkan, avoiding the center where Aegis and Seraxus were clashing. Zuon was moving to meet Darkshot, and Darkwing was flying so high up in the arena’s blue dome that it was nearly impossible for any of them to track him due to his size.

Aegis activated his Avatar of Eirene skill, causing his bright wings to glow and meet the onslaught of attacks that came from Seraxus’ weapons. Rakkan’s crossbow echo, despite standing so closely to them, continued to fire bolts at Hajax rather than Seraxus.

Seraxus eyed the echo as it stood safely behind Aegis and made several attempts to hit it, but Aegis intervened by using guards, his wings, and his clawed weapon to protect the echo. A few attacks managed to get through due to Seraxus’ speed and skillful control of his weapons, but Aegis could counteract this with his aura of healing.

“So that’s your big plan? You gonna use Rakkan’s switch skill to move your shield around the battlefield so you can keep up with me?” Seraxus asked Aegis. Aegis replied with a wink. “That just makes Rakkan less of a threat, don’t it?” Seraxus shouted loudly so that his companions could hear.

Sylvia and Gambit, who’d been rushing towards Rakkan, were preparing for his main body, wielding the sword to engage them, but instead, Rakkan maneuvered over them and used a charge strike in the air to fly over their heads to crash into Hajax’s shield.

Sylvia and Gambit both did a double take, looking from each other to the single Rakkan meeting the defensive prowess of Hajax, then shrugged. They turned to look at Pyri and saw that she was already staring them down, sending her cinderbolts their way.

Sylvia created the purple runes over her body, waving her hands forward and forming a beam of dark energy that began to snake through the skies towards Pyri. Gambit continued to dash towards Pyri as well, and the moment he got close enough so that his spiritual zone could be cast and reach the entirety of Pyri’s side of the arena, he cast it. The rippling blue wave of energy spread out from his feet and overtook both Pyri and the Rakkan echo that stood beside her.

As this happened, Lina reappeared in the shadow of a pillar nearest to Zuon, who had already engaged in a ranged attack fight with Darkshot. Arrows and musical notes were shooting across the left side of the arena as the two of them fired relentless barrages of their most carefully aimed strikes, but neither dealt any notable amount of damage to the other. Both of them were playing much more defensively than they had in the past and were keeping a distance from one another as if waiting for orders.

This allowed Lina to accomplish her goal with ease. The moment she’d appeared in the shadows nearest Zuon, she fired off black, shadowy tendrils from the darkness that caught Zuon off guard.

“Shadowsteal: Mimicry.” Lina cast, the tendrils releasing Zuon and pulling back.

“She got my mimicry!” Zuon alerted his teammates.

“Why would she steal that?” Hajax asked rhetorically.

“Don’t matter. Kill their wizard if they’ll let us 2v1 her like this,” Seraxus ordered Gambit and Sylvia, while Hajax fired a bolt of light at Lina’s location to force her away from Zuon.

Lina disappeared into the shadows again, using the pillars and the arena wall edges. She was granted absolute freedom of movement now due to how dark the clouds in the sky above the arena had become, making Hajax’s attempts to limit her movement futile.

Hajax’s attention was drawn back to the persistent Rakkan, who was violently striking at him, having reclaimed his void spear. He was dealing high amounts of damage to Hajax even through his guard, and the bolts being fired by his echo that stood beside Aegis were able to land a few hits as well. Seraxus’ attempts to kill the echo continued to be thwarted by Aegis’ defensive prowess, and the threat of being able to use Switch to move the shield around the battlefield quickly was, up until now, successfully discouraging Seraxus from attempting to use charge strike until the echo was dealt with.

Gambit and Sylvia, however, were enjoying their freedom to rush after Pyri. Pyri used her cinderbolts to try to trip up Gambit as he started teleporting towards her while simultaneously dealing burning damage to Sylvia, but her beam of darkness could ignore the bolts and swirl around Pyri.

Rakkan backed his echo off to avoid being targeted by the beam, but it never once aimed for him. Instead, it coiled around Pyri, limiting her mobility. Pyri saw it happening and tried her best to escape the coil. Unfortunately, her attempts to do so were thwarted by the teleporting Gambit. His spiritual monk skills allowed him to repeatedly appear in front of Pyri in puffs of blue smoke despite her throwing the cinderbolts at him and dealing high amounts of damage. He willingly took the damage to contain Pyri in a very dangerous situation.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Aegis!” Pyri shouted out once she realized she was in inescapable trouble.

“Lina!” Aegis responded.

Lina reacted quickly, going on the defensive and throwing a smoke bomb at Pyri, which exploded on impact, making it difficult to see her.

“Not enough, sorry, wizard mom,” Gambit grinned as the coils closed in from Sylvia’s beam and completely blocked off Pyri’s movement within the smoke. A bright flash of blue spiritual magic appeared right next to where Pyri had last been seen within the smoke that had encapsulated both Pyri and Rakkan’s echo.

“He’s got me!” Pyri called out.

“Spiritual Release!” Gambit cast.

Aegis looked up to the sky with a distorted look of worry, and Seraxus saw him do this, deciding to follow his eyes and see what he was looking at. It was Darkwing, soaring above in the skies above Darkshot. Seeing it, Seraxus understood why Aegis looked worried.

Combatant Gambit has been defeated.

Combatant Pyri

has been defeated.

Both players disappeared from the arena while in the smoke of Lina’s bomb and the coils of Sylvia’s beam.

“Looks like you missed out on using your birdy this time,” Seraxus smirked at Aegis.

Aegis made a sudden, drastic change in his blocking style against Seraxus’ attacks. After meeting the black sword of hatred one last time with his own shield, Aegis jumped back from Seraxus and turned to sprint toward Sylvia. Sylvia saw this and ended her coiling darkness spell to prepare to cast a new spell at the approaching Aegis, but before she could, a black smoke bomb was thrown at her from the shadows nearby.

Seraxus watched as he was being ignored and decided to shrug it off and let Aegis do what he was doing. Instead, he turned to face Darkshot, who stood on the opposite side of the arena.

“Charge strike!” Seraxus cast, causing his body to shoot like a bullet across the arena floor towards Darkshot.

Darkshot saw him coming and spun to the side with a nocked arrow, firing it into a multishot at Seraxus. The arrow split, and several of the 20 arrows shone with a pinning shot, but Seraxus could deflect and avoid all of the arrows by using the floating battle master weapons surrounding him.

Meanwhile, Sylvia jumped out of the smoke bomb as Lina had appeared inside of it and slashed her daggers out at her. Hajax rushed towards Sylvia despite taking several free hits from Rakkan in order to cast several heals on Sylvia. Rakkan followed him while his crossbow-wielding echo followed behind Aegis.

Within the next 5 seconds, so many of their skills were used so quickly that even Hae-won had difficulty calling out everything as she watched intently from above on the raised platform.

“Aegis throws his shield of light backward towards Rakkan’s echo. The echo catches the shield and uses Switch, transferring it to his echo beside Darkshot just as Seraxus arrives at him. The echo intercepts the sword of hatred successfully, keeping Darkshot alive! Rakkan recasts an Echo, abandoning the one near the fallen Pyri. The recast appears behind Sylvia as she attempts to disengage from Lina’s smoke bomb, leaping right into the echo's arms. The echo grapples Sylvia before she can land a spell!” Hae-won squealed with excitement as she saw Aegis and Lina closing in on the grappled Sylvia.

Lina, rather than going after Sylvia, shadowstepped behind Hajax, who was approaching Sylvia to heal her.

“Shadow dance,” Lina cast, rapidly teleporting between Sylvia and Hajax now and slashing out at them with mithral cuts.

“Damn,” Hajax grumbled as he desperately exploded out a bright flash of light from himself to shut down Lina’s movements completely. This left him vulnerable to Rakkan’s real body, who grabbed onto Hajax’s shoulder to hold him still while Aegis reached the grappled Sylvia. Just as Sylvia fired off a burst of dark magic to disintegrate Rakkan’s echo that held her in place, Aegis arrived and wrapped his wings around her, pulling her into himself tightly and throwing his hands on her arms.

“Don’t bother. My strength is way higher than yours.” Aegis said as he held her in tightly, the bright wings of light being completely misused. She looked at him with an angry snarl, bearing her fangs—but that was all she could do given that she had just used her ability to escape grapples on Rakkan’s echo and had a short window where it wasn’t available.

With her in his arms, Aegis jumped toward the now-grappled Hajax, and Hajax quickly saw what they were planning.

“Lina, a bit more!” Aegis shouted as he closed the gap between himself and Hajax. Lina nodded and ran toward Aegis rather than Hajax with her daggers out. She couldn't shadow-step due to the light from Hajax's spell, but her feet quickly made it to Aegis within a second anyway. She stabbed her mithral daggers into Aegis to deal damage, beefing up his Virabhadra, then jumped away.

“You’re gonna kill Rakkan, too, if you cast that. It’ll hit all three of us!” Hajax shouted in frustration as he cast several smiting spells at the Rakkan that was grappling him.

“Let me go, you creep!” Sylvia hissed as she fired out several warlock spells at Aegis at point-blank range, dealing high amounts of damage. Seeing this, Lina stopped with her daggers on the moving Aegis and instead turned towards Hajax and threw a dagger at him.

“Grappling shot!” Rakkan cast as his crossbow-wielding echo fired a bolt at Hajax from behind Aegis.

“Grappling shot!” Lina cast at Hajax with the dagger she threw at him from the opposite side. With Hajax being held by Rakkan’s body, he could not avoid either grappling attack. Two ropes pierced into Hajax from two differing directions. One from a dagger, the other from a crossbow bolt. Rakkan released Hajax with his main body when they connected and jumped away.

Hajax used this time and attempted to dash away from the incoming Aegis, but the two grappling ropes that had hit him from opposite sides were both pulled taut by both Lina and Rakkan’s crossbow-wielding echo, holding him in place just long enough for Aegis to reach him.

“VIRABHADRA!” A dome of white light exploded out of his body alongside four transparent red arms that grew out of Aegis' sides. The dome overtook both Hajax and Sylvia. The damage that he’d accumulated from Seraxus, Lina, and Slyvia was just barely enough to be lethal to both of them, as the damage split evenly between the two targets.

Combatant Sylvia has been defeated.

Combatant Hajax has been defeated.

While this transpired on one side of the arena, it was not going well for Darkshot on the other. Rakkan’s echo could block several hits from Seraxus’ sword of hatred by using the shield of light, but it wasn’t enough to block all of Seraxus’ other weapons from hitting Darkshot.

Darkshot made several attempts to disengage, but Seraxus was too fast and was being expertly supported by Zuon’s arrows and music notes. It was only seconds after Virabhadra had gone off that another message was called out by the arena announcer.

Combatant Darkshot has been defeated.

The voice carried to the opposite side of the arena as the light from Hajax’s spell faded, allowing Lina to shadow-step beside Aegis. Rakkan’s main body and two of his echoes also moved to stand beside him.

Before Darkshot’s body had finished disintegrating, Rakkan used Switch to call back the shield of light, replacing it with his spear in time before Seraxus could kill the echo and cause the spear to drop to the arena floor where the echo had stood.

With the shield back in the hands of his echoes near Aegis, Aegis took the shield, and Rakkan carefully redistributed his own weapons to his two echoes before recasting a third and receiving some hefty healing from Aegis to top them all up to full health.

Seraxus positioned himself next to Zuon, mixing his floating weapons in with Zuon’s floating instruments, and the two parties of players stared each other down from opposite sides of the arena.

“Aegis’ party has a numbers advantage for the first time ever! It is now a three versus two! The plan to use Rakkan’s echoes to move the shield of light around the battlefield successfully threw off Seraxus’ team enough that they were able to carve out this advantage. We may just be about to witness a histor-” Hae-won’s voice was interrupted by a violent explosion outside the arena, red flames visibly rising above the outer walls. She continued regardless, “a historical event. Hold on to your leather adventuring boots, ladies and gentlemen. This match is just getting started.”