Atop her Airship, Serenity stood leaning over the banister of the deck. In front of her were the crumbling walls of Stormtop that separated the Skyport at the edge of the mountain’s top and the city itself. The damage that had befallen it from the abyssal invasion was immense, making it trivial for her to peer through the cracks and see into the city.

Still, there were enough ruined structures between her and the Stadium to see what was going on without using a live stream. Thus, she had in her peripheral vision an open live stream viewer displaying Aegis’ stream. In combination with the violent blasts of magic she saw on his stream, she was hearing them occur in person, echoing through the barren streets of Stormtop.

Aegis’ party was holding its own. Pyri was walking forward slowly, making ground but not much. Huddled beside her stood Aegis and Hae-won. Aegis had activated his auras and Avatar of Eirene skill and was using his shield and projections to block any attack that Pyri’s cinderbolts couldn’t stop.

The cinderbolts were a wonder to observe—Pyri had multicast four separate, very large cinderbolts and broke them off into a storm of dozens of tiny cinderbolts that were rapidly rotating around Aegis, Hae-won, Darkshot, Rakkan, and herself. Looking at the dome of cinderbolts as a whole, there were plenty of gaps between the balls of flame. Despite this, no arrows or basic magic were making their way through. A closer inspection of the cinderbolts revealed that their rotation was not random. Pyri constantly made micro-adjustments as she focused entirely on protecting herself from the attacks.

Multiple attempts were made to dispel her defensive dome of cinders, but they all failed due to her infusing magic into the bolts to prevent them from being dispelled, thanks to her newly obtained Mage-lord skills.

Melee attackers were kept at the edge of the dome through a combination of the bolts and a circular formation made by Rakkan and his echoes. Darkshot was firing volleys of arrows upward to deter any aerial attackers from getting in.

They were holding their own and progressing toward their goal of reaching Skyport, but they had a long way to go. However, the focus required to hold off the insurmountable foes facing them could be seen on all their faces. None spoke a word to one another, but they knew exactly what they needed to do.

It was only thanks to Shinji’s editing skills that Yumily realized there was more going on than merely holding off their enemies. Lina was put into focus by one of Aegis’ live stream cameras, following her as she picked out the healing clerics of the Vindicator guild and shadow danced around them. She was throwing smoke bombs into the air above any healer class player she located, and Darkshot was reacting by redirecting his arrow volleys through the attacks of the Vindicators on them and aiming them at the area below the smoke bomb.

The sheer amount of Vindicators and the lack of visibility meant that Darkshot couldn’t guarantee all of his arrows hit the intended target. Still, enough burst damage was being caused that Lina was able to shadow dance into the weakened clerics and finish them off, and then get away before anyone could grapple her or shine light.

With so many players clustered together with their deep red cloaks flailing in the winds, she had plenty of shadows to work with, even when the remaining clerics began casting brightening light spells to try and counteract her. Lina’s target selection was top-notch, as well. She went after the lower-level clerics and druids first to guarantee they’d be killable within seconds.

The impenetrable defense of Aegis, Pyri, and Rakkan began to fluster the Vindicators. Some drew their attention away to focus on Lina, and some took defensive precautions against Darkshot's targeted volleys. This was a mistake, however, as Darkshot found an easy target on Xiao with a vine-rope shot.

Xiao, who’d been heading off the done and dueling with one of Rakkan’s echoes, was not expecting Rakkan to use one of his echoes as a proxy to spread a vine-rope shot. Rakkan jumped the echo through the storm of cinderbolts, pushing it into the nearest crowd of Vindicators.

Behind the echo, Darkshot fired his vine-rope shot after him. Pyri carefully moved her swirling cinderbolts away so the vine-rope shot arrow could pass through. Xiao and roughly 16 other Vindicators were utilizing jumps, dashes, and other mobility skills to get away from the arrow and the echo, but Rakkan extended the echo hand out to the Vinerope shot to catch it sooner.

On impact, the vine fired out in all directions, entangling Xiao and the 16 other nearest players. The vines locked them all into each other by wrapping themselves around their ankles, waists, and arms.

They reacted by turning on the vines with bladed weapons, but Aegis had already jumped out of the cinderbolt dome to greet them in the seconds it took them to do this.

“Don’t you dare,” Xiao said as Aegis appeared out of the flames with a big grin.

“Virabhadra,” he said proudly, causing the dome of light to explode out of him. The red arms of Shiva grew out of his shoulder, contrasting nicely with his wings of light coated in the residual flames from Pyri’s cinderbolt dome that he’d just jumped out of.

The first target hit was Rakkan’s echo, which was at the center of the vine-rope shot. The rest of the targets remained bound to the echo by the ropes and were also encapsulated by the dome of light.

Aegis had already suffered a lot of damage due to the ridiculous number of attacks sent at them by the Vindicators. Despite this, only 14 of the 18 targets that got hit by the Virabhadra died in the end. Xiao was one of them, as was Rakkan’s echo, but four higher-level, high-constitution fighter advanced-class players survived the hit thanks to the damage split.

Lina took care of that, though. The moment the light from the Virabhadra faded, she threw a smoke bomb at Aegis to shadow-step to him and cut down the surviving 4 Vindicators, then went back to hunting down more healers.

“They’re not just pushing through…” Serenity mumbled as she watched in disbelief, turning to Kenji beside her. “They’re winning?”

“That’s not going to last long. Do you see Feng’s livestream?” Kenji replied to her as he watched the action unfold on his interface. Serenity quickly fidgeted around to pull up Feng’s live stream of him standing atop the highest walls of the stadium, looking down at Aegis’ dome of flame as it made its way through the streets below, pushing through the red sea of Vindicators.

Alongside Feng stood Calikgos, Lilya, and all of the members of Feng’s arena team and the secondary arena team that participated in the tournament. Behind them stood a group of eager Sages of Destiny members, fully armed with weapons drawn but waiting for a signal from Lilya.

“They’re still alive?” Liyla asked in disbelief as she watched the scene unfold before her.

“That’s Makaroth’s son, alright.” Feng chuckled.

“Why are you gawking? I said crush them.” Calikgos glared at him and Lilya.

“You want us to go down there? Isn’t that a bit overkill?” Feng asked with a raised brow.

“Did I stutter?” Calikgos replied.

“You didn’t.” Liyla snarled before turning to face the Sages of Destiny standing along the upper edge of the stadium behind her. “If it weren’t for that spiteful lil punk, we’d still have Makaroth. If he were still here, he’d probably ask us to stand down, but we’ve all got some anger to let out, don’t we?” Lilya addressed them, and they let out a roaring cheer. “We know just who to use as a punching bag, then, right?” Lilya continued, getting another cheer. “Good, let's go. Avatar of Morana.” Liyla spoke while turning and jumping off the side of the arena. She was several dozen meters above the street below, but didn’t fall far before her spell activated and caused wings of ice to explode out of her back, with jagged shards jutting out of the bottom in all directions in place of feathers.

The moment she had, a chilling aura overtook the surrounding area. Cold and ice spells cast by the Vindicator wizards below grew intensely more prominent, and a blast of icy wind exploded out of her.

With her scepter out, she used her frozen wings to turn around and wave it in the direction of the stadium, causing a ramp of ice to begin growing out of it and forming down towards the streets.

The Sages of Destiny members did not wait for the ramp to finish forming. They started sliding down it to join the Vindicators fighting below, with the fighters, monks, and thief class players taking charge. The archer, priest, wizard, druid, and warlock class players hung back atop the stadium’s top and began their assault from there.

As this happened, Aegis pulled back into the cinderbolt dome for protection, quickly healing himself and his party members back up to full health from all the damage they’d been receiving, which his aura of healing wasn’t keeping up with.

“They’re never making it out of that…” Serenity sighed in frustration, looking around her ship in desperation. She saw the dancers watching her worriedly and the NPC Airship Pilot standing at the stern, ready to take off immediately. However, there was a very distinct lack of cannons or weapons aboard the ship that could help Aegis in his predicament.

She had no choice but to turn to Ysil’mareina, who was idly preening herself nearby on the Skyport amongst the rubble.

“Miss Silver Dragon,” Serenity called out to get her attention. Ysil’mareina stopped what she was doing, pulled in her wings, and curled her silver-scaled neck to face her head towards Serenity with curious eyes. “Aegis, the Avatar of Eirene, is in trouble!”

“Hmm…” Ysil’mareina curled her neck and raised her head over the ruined walls to peer into Stormtop. “I sense no darkness lingering within the city,” Ysil’mareina replied calmly.

“It’s not darkness like that, but the other people in Stormtop are attacking him.”

“I see… that is unfortunate.” Ysil’mareina lowered her head and looked as if she was about to return to preening herself.

“You’re not going to go and help?” Serenity asked with furled brows.

“I cannot interfere in the conflicts of mortals. Whether a dragon should intervene when the gods of darkness encroach on your lands is already questionable, for that is not our purpose in this world. Besides, an Avatar of Eirene should know best that violence and fighting only spread more anger, fear, suffering, and death. I imagine the Avatar will have his own solution, and is already working towards a peaceful resolution.” Ysil’mareina responded with confidence.

Aegis bashed his shield into the head of a Sages of Destiny berserker that attempted to break into their dome of cinderbolts, knocking him back with bludgeoning damage. It wasn’t enough to keep him back, though, and he was joined by other Sages of Destiny members and Vindicators who pushed through the dome of cinders, targeting Pyri to break her concentration. Rakkan and his echoes were tied up on other sides of the dome, and with Pyri still concentrating on the dome, she couldn’t focus on defending herself. Thus, Aegis knew a change in tactics would be necessary.

“Split up and scatter into them. They’ll be unable to use ranged attacks freely if their allies are all around us. Stay in range of my auras.” Aegis instructed them through the party interface. He got no response, but they all complied immediately.

Pyri ended her cinderbolts and tapped Darkshot on the back to cast fly on him, allowing him to jump off the ground, while Aegis knelt in front of Hae-won.

“Grab on! " he shouted. Hae-won threw her arms around Aegis’ neck from the back, after which Aegis wrapped his wings backward to curl around her protectively and then stood upright once more.

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Rakkan spread his echoes out, enlarged his void spear, and then thrust it into the crowd. The gigantic spear exploded with area damage on the first target it hit, and he pulled it back right away to switch his enlarged rune over to his maul and swung it down from above on a cluster of Vindicators. Some managed to run out of its path, and others got hit.

From above, Darkshot began to bombard the battlefield with piercing arrows, weaving them around dispel magic casts and guardian players who were projecting shields trying to block it. A dragoon lunged at Darkshot mid-air with an orange glowing spear, but he could use the fly spell correctly from all his practice with it and barely avoided the spear attack. It was followed up by some spells and arrows that he met with his arrows, and Darkwing activated his fae spell to negate one that would’ve hit. For the others who got through, Aegis began healing up.

The battlemasters and berserkers on the ground all wanted their shot at Aegis, though, and they clustered around him with their two-handed weapons, taking heavy swings at his real shield and his two projections. Lina took advantage of the chaos to continue eliminating healers from the Vindicator’s side and was doing so with great success.

The real difference maker with this new strategy was Pyri, who was no longer on the defensive. She began releasing an assortment of spells, mixing elements and types. She started by sending out a wave of paralyzing electricity across the ground, which some players avoided, and others got hit by, being stunned momentarily. She followed this with a wave of cutting wind empowered by purple force magic that cut through the air like a wide-slicing magical blade. The players, stunned by the lightning, could not dodge it and took massive damage. Any that survived were killed by the four blades she added as a follow-up behind them.

A counterattack attempt was made on her flank, but she formed a water clone of herself similar to the one Simon had used and threw it at a berserker that was rushing wildly at her to drown him and drain his stamina—she knew that even if the berserker activated his undying will skill to prevent him from dying for one minute if he had no stamina from lack of oxygen, he still wouldn’t be able to move during that one minute.

Several powerfully charged warlock spells were sent at her that she couldn’t block by normal means, but she had an answer still, thanks to her incredibly large collection of spells that she’d studied. She stomped her foot into the ground and sent a wave of earthen magic out to meet the spells, which erupted a meter away from her into a stone wall. The wall was made up of the rocky cobblestones that the Stormtop street was built from, and the wall blocked the warlock's magic, causing it to explode against the other side of it in a flash of deep purple.

From her front, though, a gigantic shard of ice suddenly came flying down on her from above. She reacted quickly, sending a net of flames up towards it to cut through the ice and slice it into smaller pieces that scattered around her as snow and water.

Behind the ice attack came Lilya, soaring through the sky down at her with her scepter and icy wings. Pyri was ruthless and didn’t hesitate to fire 20 ice lances up at her immediately, but infused the ice attack with the fire element so that the lances turned into burning spikes.

Lilya pulled her wings inward to shield herself, but the fire melted through them, leaving holes in them and causing Lilya to lose her momentum and land on the ground a few meters in front of Pyri. Upon landing, Lilya expanded her wings once more to show how her icy wings froze back over the holes that Pyri had made, then glared at her as she cast a healing spell on herself.

Lilya stomped the ground, causing a glacier of ice to erupt out from where her foot hit the floor, shooting in Pyri’s direction in the form of jagged, sharp, frozen shards. Pyri hopped backward to avoid it and sent out a bolt of lightning that zig-zagged through the air around the glacier, seeking out Liyla as she ran over the glacier of ice to get closer to Pyri. Just as Liyla crested the top and used her shield to block Pyri’s lightning attack, she jumped off it to flap her wings and charge at Pyri, but was stopped. She slammed head-first into a shield projection from Aegis, causing her to lose her momentum, and turned to glare at him. On the ground, Aegis returned the sentiment with an angry stare, but couldn’t maintain it as a mithral katana swung at him from the side.

Aegis spun his shield to block it, but the katana wielder, Feng, was quick to maneuver around Aegis and attempt to strike him from behind. Seeing Feng on Aegis, Lilya turned her attention back onto Pyri fully while Pyri was forced to divert her attention for a moment to deal with a few uppity Vindicators and Sages of Destiny members who were rushing at her from the sides.

“You’re gonna use that sword against me?” Aegis asked Feng after blocking several strikes, each impact of the katana on his shield letting out a soft ringing sound.

“You hurt my feelings,” Feng replied sarcastically. He was about to make another strike, but he felt a dagger pierce into his back as Lina shadow-stepped behind him and then jumped away.

“Suck it up, baby.” Lina taunted him. He turned to strike her down, but before his fast blade got to her, she’d already shadow-stepped away again.

“You’re not gonna get out of here alive, you realize that, right?” Feng shouted after her before turning to strike at Aegis again in unison with his gladiator teammates, who were now moving to surround Aegis. “We’re going to kill you guys here, and Daehyun’s gonna mark you all as criminals so that you respawn in prison cells. Daehyun will then make sure you’re never allowed to leave.” Feng added a few more strikes, putting Aegis on the back foot.

As skilled as he had gotten with his shield, being forced to take on so many opponents caused many skills to get through, and he could only cast healing on himself and his companions. He couldn’t go on the offensive, and they were no longer progressing toward getting closer to the Skyport.

That was until a sudden blast of bass reverberated across the battlefield. The sound was coming from the direction of the Skyport, where Serenity had climbed up onto the top of a building and had her pink weapons floating behind her, Kenji by her side. The sound turned screeching and deafening as she strummed her instruments with her magic, causing disorientation among all the players who could hear it. Some threw their hands up over their ears, but others turned their attacks onto her immediately.

The distraction did precisely what she’d hoped; it caused all of the players to look up at her briefly, and in that time, Kenji waved his staff across the battlefield and encapsulated Aegis, Rakkan, Lina, Hae-won, Pyri, and Darkshot in illusions to make them look exactly like other Vindicators.

It took a second for Aegis and the others to realize it, but they adjusted quickly. Darkshot dropped out of the sky, Aegis put down Hae-won, Rakkan removed his echoes, and Lina stopped shadow-stepping around.

By the time Serenity was forced to stop playing her screeching music to defend herself from ranged attacks, Aegis and the others used their illusions to mix into the crowds of players, and the mass of them quickly became their greatest downfall.

They began shouting at each other, including Feng and Lilya, to locate Aegis' party.

“They’re still here with us. Use true sight skills!” Lilya shouted to the others as she flapped her wings to get up into the sky, trying to spot any players acting abnormally in the mix. She specifically started to look for people who were running in the direction of the Skyport, and the moment she spotted one of the vindicators going in that direction, she fired a barrage of divine ice at him, killing him and forcing him to log out.

It was only after she’d killed the player that she received a message about who it was she’d attacked, and it was an actual Vindicator.

“Don’t just attack randomly,” Feng shouted up at Lilya in annoyance.

“How can your guild mates not tell who is real and who isn’t? Don’t they know each other?” Lilya shouted down at him.

“How could they possibly all know each other?” Feng replied matter-of-factly.

“Stupid zerg guilds…” Lilya sighed to herself in frustration.

“Just go after the illusionist. If he dies, he’ll lo-” Feng looked up at where Serenity and Kenji had been standing, and they were both gone. Pyri, in her illusionary form, had multicast invisibility onto herself, Serenity, and Kenji, while Aegis and the others had already made it out of the crowds by using the rubble and ruined buildings that lined the streets as cover.

“Forget it. We know where they’re headed. Go to the Skyport and destroy their airship!” Lilya shouted before flapping her wings in the direction of the Skyport. The members on the ground all roared angrily at her orders, frustrated with how the fight was going. Calikgos, however, rolled his eyes from atop the stadium walls where he still stood and, in an instant, disappeared.

Once clear of the crowd of enemies, Aegis and the others grouped up on a street that led directly to the Skyport. They were all still under Vindicator illusion spells from Kenji, but they could immediately tell who was who from each other just by looking. Mainly because Darkshot’s illusion still had a pigeon sitting on his shoulder, Rakkan still had his voidspear, and Lina still had her daggers. Aegis was the only one who thought of unequipping his shield, but he had taken to carrying Hae-won in his arms to move more quickly, given Hae-won’s low character stats.

When they arrived at the ruined gate leading out into the Skyport, Serenity, Pyri, and Kenji dropped their invisibility to reveal they were already there waiting for them. As a group, they rushed out from the gate towards the large Airship at the end of the nearest pier.

“Ysil’mareina, we’re leaving this land. It has gotten hostile. You should return to Kalmoore.” Aegis shouted to her as he saw her idly sitting on the port off to the side.

“Very well, I understand.” She nodded, jumping off the ground and flapping her wings.

“She listens to you without any problems.” Kenji huffed.

They managed to get just a few meters away from the boarding ramp onto Serenity’s ship, still with Yumily written on the side of it, before a figure appeared in front of them.

Calikgos, armed with several strange and peculiar pieces of equipment, had somehow moved quickly enough to cut them off.

“Makaroth really deleted his character because of you. I didn’t think he’d do it, but he did. Synopse as well.” Calikgos sighed. Rakkan was about to rush forward at him, but Aegis quickly lifted his hand to stop him as he eyed the strange armor and weapons that Calikgos was wielding.

“That’s not iron or mithral. That’s something stronger.” Aegis said with wide eyes, causing the others to get very tense.

“The fact that you could look at me for only 3 seconds and come to that realization just proves how dangerous you are to VGN. Even if Makaroth is gone, I don’t think we can just let you leave.” Calikgos replied calmly.

“There they are!” Liyla shouted out from the skies above, momentarily distracting them from Calikgos. As they looked away to stare up at her, Calikgos made his move with incredible movement speed, drawing out a black scythe and aiming it at Aegis’ neck. His movement was so ridiculously fast that not even Shinji’s editing from three different angles saw it happen, but Pyri did.

Just as fast as Calikgos had tried to cut through Aegis’ neck with the artifact scythe weapon, Pyri had blocked him with cinderbolts and stopped the scythe dead in its tracks.

“It’s clear who the most dangerous one of the bunch actually is, though.” Calikgos turned to glare at her, while Aegis turned back from looking at Lilya to see the scythe being held mere millimeters from his throat.

“Aegis, this guy is really dangerous,” Pyri warned him. Lina reacted to seeing the scythe by shadow-stepping behind Calikgos, but he had moved away before she had even appeared behind him.

The sound of clamoring footsteps could be heard stomping through Stormtop towards them—Calikgos was buying time for Feng and the mass of other players to arrive, and it was working. Liyla fired off a barrage of ice from above, but Serenity whipped around and released a shockwave of sound that hit the ice, shattering it into tiny pieces that scattered around them.

“We gotta get off this island. They’re gonna be here any second.” Darkshot said anxiously, but Calikgos remained standing between them and the ship's boarding ramp.

“You’re not going an-” His words were interrupted by a barrage of orange magic waves flying down at him from above. The attack was followed by a violent roar from a black abyssal dragon as it soared by, casting a shadow over them.

They all looked up to see Kelik’radanir soaring above, startling Ysil’mareina, who’d flown off and away from the Skyport a few dozen meters at this point. The abyssal dragon was not showing aggression towards Aegis and the others, though, and instead released a blast of shadowy black abyssal magic onto the gate between Stormtop and the Skyport, killing several Vindicators and blocking the rest of them and the Sages of Destiny members, as well as Feng, from entering the Skyport.

By the time the dragon had finished soaring by, Seraxus had jumped off its back and landed in front of Calikgos, with all his floating weapons readily glowing with orange magic, and immediately clashed with him.

“Get yer dumb asses on your stupid ship,” Seraxus shouted at Aegis and the others as he stood between them and Calikgos.

Aegis and Rakkan were momentarily dumbfounded as Calikgos attempted to use his speed and get around Seraxus, but was thwarted by Seraxus’ incredible reaction speed. They weren’t about to question his actions, so they took advantage of the situation by rushing around Calikgos to get aboard the ship.

Most of them had high enough strength to jump up onto the deck of the ship, and within seconds, the wing sails were open, and the ship was pulling away from Stormtop.

“Why the hell are you helping them? They destroyed your sword!” Calikgos shouted at Seraxus in frustration.

“That punk ass took away my title. I gotta earn it back by beatin’ him if I want to prove I’m still number one, and that ain’t gonna happen if you lock him up in Stormtop. He’s mine to kill, not yours, asswipe.” Seraxus snarled back at Calikgos.

“For such a stupid reason…” Calikgos shook his head in disbelief. “I hate teenagers,” Calikgos grumbled in pure annoyance. Lilya, who still had a clear view of the ship, fired off several more blasts of ice magic at it, but it was no match against Pyri and Serenity’s defensive spells, which they used to protect the ship.

Several Vindicators and Sages of Destiny made it through the gate as it burned in black flames and prepared to join Liyla in attacking the Airship, but Kelik’radanir made a second pass and blasted into them again. He was flying much lower this time so that Seraxus could disengage from Calikgos and jump back onto the back of the abyssal dragon.

Several attacks were made at the dragon and Seraxus from the mass of players arriving in the Skyport, but Zuon, Hajax, and Sylvia worked to negate them.

By the time the masses had gathered adequately on the Skyport to bombard the black dragon and Serenity’s airship with ranged attacks, both were far enough away that it was easy for the players on board to protect themselves. Aegis and Hajax were using guards as needed.

Lilya could only land beside Calikgos as Feng rushed forward from the crowds to join them.

“They got away,” Calikgos said in a monotone as they watched the Airship and the black dragon both shrink in size, flying in opposite directions with Ysil’mareina soaring high above the airship defensively.

“It’s fine. Makaroth said they won’t be bothering us anymore anyway,” Liyla shrugged.

“You'd better hope you’re right.” Calikgos gave her a look, then turned to place his hand on Feng’s shoulder. “It’s time we get you back on top in the number one spot, where you belong.”

“How’re we going to do that?” Feng asked him curiously.

“Easy. We unshatter the world.” Calikgos replied while looking Feng in the eyes, speaking as if this was obvious.