“You said he’d be a pushover.” Alicia paced angrily inside the blue boxed area, preparing for the next round. “We can’t leave someone like that until last!”
Darkless raised an eyebrow at her. “You’d rather deal with the wizard?”
“Or that echo knight and his echoes?” Hunger grumbled. They had trouble hearing one another amid the audience's loud cheering.
Hae-won egging them on with phrases like ‘where do we shoot from?’ and getting a loud response from all non-VGN spectators, ‘the darkness!’
“They’re all dangerous. We need to get back to taking out three with the shield we got.” Skar pointed to Darkless’ shield. “We know how they’re gonna deal with our shell now. Can we do anything about it?”
“If someone goes outside of the shell and intercepts Aegis from getting to our shell, they’ll never break through it using that strategy. We could kill all of them with the shield.” Darkless suggested.
“Good. That’s a good idea. Hunger, you think you can do that?” Skar asked.
“No problem.”
“One problem.” Alicia sighed. “You’re assuming they’re going to use the same strategy twice. And that they haven’t figured out how the shield works.”
“No way they figured it out. How could they? They were too focused on using their weird strategy. It’ll be fine.”
“AWESOME!” Lina screamed with joy as she rushed forward and hugged Darkshot tightly. He looked over to see Pyri, Rakkan, and Aegis all smiling at him as they reappeared inside the blue box in the area on their side of the arena. Darkwing gently fluttered down on his shoulder and cooed excitedly at the praise.
“Not bad, for a Sharpshooter,” Rakkan smirked.
Pyri winked. “Fake it till you make it, eh? Now you really are a badass.” Aegis said nothing, but instead locked eyes with Darkshot, and the two gave each other knowing nods of respect.
30… 29… 28…
“Should we damage you for Virabhadra?” Rakkan asked Aegis as they tuned into the sounds of the arena voiceover.
“Oh, please don’t make me do something like that again. I don’t think I’ve got it in me.” Darkshot groaned.
“Don’t worry. Your match took long enough that I think I figured it out.” Aegis replied.
“You did?” Pyri asked as all eyes turned to him.
He put his finger on his chin and sharpened his eyes in the direction of their opponents. “Nothing they do is by mistake. So why not pre-emptively cast shell and smokebomb before the match starts? It’d save them time, like how we were pre-emptively buffering my Virabhadra. The reason they wouldn’t is that they can’t - the shield has a limitation. It needs to have a line of sight of its targets that it imprints,” Aegis explained to them.
“Really? Is it that easy?” Darkshot asked.
Aegis shrugged. “I think so.”
“You’re sure?” Lina confirmed.
“Pretty sure. If I’m wrong, the loss is on me. But I don’t think I am.”
Pyri drew her staff and prepared a spell. “Well, in that case…”
10… 9… 8…
“Multicast, spell-infusion-imprint, invisibility.” Pyri mixed two spells together to allow her to multicast on all five of them, save for Darkwing, and all of their bodies disappeared from view.
“Shoo, go hide somewhere, you’re giving me away,” Darkshot whispered to his pigeon, who responded with an angry coo as it fluttered off his shoulder.
“Damnit,” Skar watched from across the arena inside his team's waiting area as all of Aegis’ party went invisible.
A look of panic befell Darkless. “Now what?”
“Aspen, mass dispel random areas, if you hit one of them and dispel their invisibility, we can still use the shield and shell afterwards. Alicia, cover us with smoke bombs and buy us time.” Skar replied.
“Got it.” Aspen and Alicia answered in unison, readying their abilities.
3… 2… 1… Match Start
The blue walls around both teams vanished, and smoke bombs shot out from Alicia’s palms. Aspen targeted a dispel in the spot where Aegis’ party had been standing, but hit nothing. He fired several more off, but still nothing.
“Finally,” Pyri’s voice came from within the midsts of their ranks, inside the smoke. “I get to play,” She added menacingly. In an instant, the smoke erupted and dissipated into red flames. She exploded multiple large, spell-infused cinderbolts from her body, revealing herself to be standing directly in the middle of Skar’s party. Her explosion dealt massive fire damage and knocked them apart, where four echoes appeared and began slashing at them. Hunger, Alicia, Skar, and Darkless attempted to parry and guard while Darkless started casting healing spells to deal with the sudden burst of damage, but she had no time to react.
A barrage of arrows rained down on them from above, fanning out in a perfectly formed circle to only target Skar’s party members, followed by Lina rapidly shadow dancing around them and cutting at their backs, all of them having Bless-empowered weapons.
Within seconds, the messages popped up.
Combatant Aspen has been defeated.
Combatant Hunger has been defeated.
Combatant Alicia has been defeated.
Combatant Darkless has been defeated.
Combatant Skar has been defeated.
Aegis’ team has won the round. 2-2
A few seconds later, Aegis’ party was teleported back to their side of the arena in the waiting box, while Skar’s group respawned inside theirs.
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Pyri sighed with a big grin on her face, stretching her arms up to the sky. “Ahhh, that was cathartic.”
Darkshot chuckled. “Way easier the second time around.”
“No kidding. Without that shield, these guys are easy,” Lina added.
“Let’s not get cocky. One more match,” Aegis tried to calm them down, but Hae-won didn’t hear him.
“ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHED, LIKE PLAYING WITH KIDS TOYS!” Hae-won shouted excitedly, getting the crowd going. “Without their cheap gimmick shield, Skar’s team doesn’t stand a chance against Aegis’ party! Never challenge Aegis to a study session. He’ll read you like a book! This match is over, folks. Pack it up, and get ready for the semis!” Hae-won continued.
Aegis’ group wasn’t paying much mind to Hae-won’s words, but Skar’s group was.
“This is bullshit. You really think you stand a chance at stopping Seraxus? Our weapon would have beaten him!” Skar yelled out across the arena at Aegis.
“Really?” Aegis turned to face Skar and raised his eyebrows. “You really think he wouldn’t have figured it out, too? And even if he didn’t, your shield effigy doesn’t bypass armor. You’d do no damage to him,” Aegis shouted back.
“So what? We could take out his party, then take him on 5v1.”
“You think you’d win 5v1 against that Sword?” Aegis replied with a serious tone.
“Better shot than you!” Alicia snapped back at him on Skar’s behalf.
“Prove it,” Aegis grinned before going invisible, thanks to Pyri’s multicast spell.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Match Start.
“Find them and kill them!” Skar roared, glancing around frantically to try and spot where Aegis’ group might’ve gone. “They’re only invisible, look for footsteps on the sand!”
“I’m not seeing any…” Darkless glanced around. As the first few seconds went by, Aspen shot off several more dispels and hit nothing, and the pressure got to Skar.
“We’re just one win away from the Semifinals. I want to be famous too, damnit!” Skar raged. He used his enlarged blue sword skill and picked a random spot in the arena to strike it downwards, hitting nothing. Aegis removed his invisibility spell to reveal himself standing beside the blue sword’s impact point.
“Then maybe next time, try training to be good at PvP, and don’t rely on some gimmick shield from your network,” Aegis replied coldly. Following his appearance, a blast of cinders erupted around Skar’s party again. Despite their best efforts to fight back against Aegis’ group with their level advantage, they stood no chance. Not a single attack landed on any member of Aegis’ group before the defeated messages rolled through the announcer’s mouth.
Aegis’ team wins the match with a score of 3-2. Aegis’ party will move onto the next round. The Quarter Finals have now concluded. A small break of 10 minutes will begin now, to give the competitors time to prepare for their upcoming matches. The side of the bracket that will go first in the Semi-finals will be chosen randomly.
Semi-finals begin in 10 minutes.
The female announcer’s voice echoed throughout the stadium, after which Aegis and his group saw and heard the sound of their doors back into the waiting area opening up, and Skar’s group did not respawn inside the arena.
The stadium erupted in cheers as the casters got to work, taking their own spin on the match, Hae-won having a borderline shouting match with the VGN casters. Aegis paid no mind to it, though, and quickly ushered his group out of the stadium back into their waiting area.
“Congratulations!” Serenity smiled and greeted them excitedly, as did her dancers and Kenji.
“Well played, Darkshot.” Kenji gave him a bow of respect.
Darkshot tried to play it cool. “Thanks. It was no big deal.”
“Just Synopse’s group left before we face off against Seraxus,” Rakkan stated proudly. “He shouldn’t be an issue, right?”
Pyri looked at the group apprehensively. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“What do you mean? Do you know something?” Aegis looked to his mom curiously.
“I used to play with Synopse. He’s been a long time friend of your dad and I. Well, I suppose not anymore, as I haven’t talked to him since everything happened. He’s very skilled at games, though.”
“Better than you?” Aegis asked.
“Mmm, sometimes.”
“Damn.” Darkshot sighed. “We’re going to have to go all out every single match, aren’t we?”
“What’d you expect? We’re in the semi-finals of a global PvP tournament.” Aegis replied. “But he’s beatable, right?”
“I think so. He’s got that artifact staff, though. Don’t really know what it's capable of.” Pyri shrugged.
“It can’t be that strong. It lost to Seraxus.” Rakkan replied.
“That’s not saying much. Hasn’t basically everyone lost to Seraxus at this point?” Lina asked.
“I’m not that worried about the staff. I’ve been studying footage of his fighting style since he got it. Thanks to him always being around Makaroth, there’s plenty of it.” Aegis explained.
Darkshot raised his eyebrows at Aegis. “You’ve been watching Makaroth’s stream?”
“It’s more important that we get rid of that sword of hatred from this game right now. It takes priority. If we hold back because of some silly, petty reason, we’d regret it. Right?” Aegis tried to justify it.
“I guess,” Darkshot said. “Just surprised, is all…”
“Uhm.” Serenity butted into their conversation to get attention for herself. “About that… Feng will be facing Seraxus next. I was wondering, should I continue to perform and help Feng out with the sword of Hatred?” Serenity asked curiously, and all eyes fell on Aegis.
“If you can, yes. We need to do everything we can to stop that sword,” Aegis replied.
“But what if that leads to Feng defeating Seraxus and not us?” Rakkan asked.
“So what? That’d save us the trouble, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t we want to be the ones to beat him?” Lina asked on Rakkan's behalf, seeing his confused expression.
“The point of us being here is to make sure that sword gets destroyed. It doesn’t matter who does it. We need to all work together to stop that guy, else this island is going to be destroyed along with countless others. If we focus too much on only caring about ourselves, we’re no better than VGN.” Aegis replied calmly.
Pyri gave Aegis a pat on the shoulder. “How mature of you,” she spoke with a hint of sarcasm as he rolled his eyes at her.
“So I should do my best to help Feng?”
“Yeah, if it’s not too much trouble. I know those performances are probably exhausting.”
Serenity clenched her fists and nodded at Aegis with determination. “No problem. It’s nothing compared to what you guys are fighting through, right? I can handle it. I want to take down Seraxus just like everyone else.”
“Great. Then let’s prepare for our next match.” Aegis said, clapping his hands loudly to get everyone's focus back on track.
Makaroth waited outside of Synopse’s waiting room with his livestream on a commercial break, after having requested permission to enter the room. Once it was granted, the doors inside opened up to allow Makaroth to enter.
Inside, he saw Synopse and his party huddled in a circle, in a deep discussion about strategy versus Aegis’ party.
“How’s it going?”
“Good.” Synopse pulled himself out of the huddle to address him. “Going over some last-minute strategic details for taking on Aegis’ group.”
“Do you need any help?”
“Nope. We’re okay.” Synopse replied quickly.
“You sure? I’ve got a lot of experience with how Pyri thinks.”
“Yeah, we’re okay. Pyri isn’t the one calling the shots - the way they’ve been approaching matches has Aegis written all over it.”
“I mean, he’s my son, I can help with that too.”
Synopse raised an eyebrow to Makaroth, and the two stared at each other for a moment as Synopse’s party members continued their conversation. "Really?"
“No… I guess not. I… I still can’t believe he’s even playing this game. He didn’t like games.”
“Whelp, he’s here now.” Synopse shrugged. “It should be a fun match, regardless.”
“Fun?” Makaroth replied, taken aback by his choice of words.
“Yeah, you can tell he really loves the game - he goes all out. So whatever happens, it’ll be fun.”
“It’s not about having fun, Synopse. I chose you to represent the guild because I need you to win!” Makaroth snapped at him, his raised tone causing Synopse’s party to go silent and listen.
“Obviously, we’re going to try to win, but we’re not going to lose sight of why we started playing this game like you did, because of that stupid contract,” Synopse motioned to the livestreaming icon above his head. Makaroth was about to reply, but he received a notification in front of his face that alerted him that his commercial break was over.
“Right,” Makaroth sighed, adjusting his armor awkwardly. “Best of luck, then. I’m sure you guys will crush it.”
Synopse shook his head in disbelief and went back into the huddle with the rest of his party.
“Synopse and his team are doing some last-minute strategizing, now that they know who their Semi-finals opponents will be. It’ll be exciting to see how well my son can match up against the mighty Synopse,” He spoke towards his audience. “At the very least, I can confidently say that whoever wins the match, I’ll be proud,” he forced a smile.