by EA Hooper
The ant pushed Vincent back several steps. Just when he thought the knight would overpower him, one of Xan’s blades floated between them and struck the monster in the neck. He glanced over, realizing Xan was fighting off several ants at once with two Light-Drain Longsword’s while controlling a third to defend her teammates.
After drinking a mega-elixir, Juniper cracked open an ant’s head with the Barrier-slamming attack she’d been using. That time, Vincent managed to Scan it before she shattered the barrier.
Barrier Slam (Requires Barrier | Upgraded) – Mana Usage: Medium | Magic Rating: 400 | Creates a barrier on the other side of a struck target, crushing it between the barrier and the user’s weapon. | Upgrades – Rating Copy: For a low+ mana cost, the user can increase the rating of this barrier to match the strength of their striking weapon (up to a rating of 700). | Fast Clamp: For a low+ mana cost, the barrier will push against the target object with force equal to the user’s attack.
Juniper finished off the ant with a fiery hammer blow that incinerated its brain.
Inferno Strike (Requires Flame Strike | Upgraded) – Mana Usage: Medium | Creates an intense fire around the user’s weapon for one strike. | Upgrade – Flame Jet: For a low+ mana cost, a short-range burst of intense fire will leap out of the user’s weapon upon activation.
Xan stumbled away from the ants, and it looked like her Paladin Armor had taken some damage. She controlled all three of her phantasmal blades at once, using them to strike at and hold back the creatures. A knight shattered one of her blades, and she pulled the other two back to her hands as she regrouped with her teammates.
Xan sacrificed both blades to refill Vincent’s mana, which allowed him to cast Black Cinder on the approaching ants. He used Tempest to direct the void embers at the legs of the ants, crippling them as their limbs melted away. With time to spare, the three players drank ethers, and then they carefully picked off the remaining monsters one at a time.
“Good god, that was impressive, Xan,” Juniper said. “You were holding off several by yourself!”
“My spells are suited for fighting them,” Xan said.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Vincent told her. “You might be the best swordsman I’ve met.”
“You haven’t seen Zhang in a real swordfight,” Xan replied. “Every time we sparred, he would find something to criticize in my form. Often because I got too detached trying to picture the fight in my head while it was happening, and then I started making little mistakes.”
“Eh, don’t worry about Zhang,” Vincent said. “Once we’re done power-leveling here, you’ll be able to kick his butt.”
“Then let’s get to that World Boss,” Xan said, grinning.
Without Builder Points to open shortcuts, the trio had to work their way through the rest of the complex maze the old-fashioned way—or at least until they’d gathered more soma from the ants. Even then, Vincent could only open a shortcut every so often. He noticed the hell ants in that region had reddish chitin he hadn’t seen before, and the farther they went, the more the monsters tried to block off various routes.
“They’re not even chasing after us anymore,” Xan noted as they left behind a group of ants blocking a branching path.
Those monsters looked larger than the knights they’d been fighting, so Vincent Scanned one to see if it was different.
Hell Ant Guardian – Monster Class: B+ | Age: 2 | Sex: Male | Personality: Mindless
“Those guardians won’t leave their posts,” Juniper explained. “They just make it really hard to press forward through the maze.”
A few minutes later, they hit their first group of guardians that they couldn’t avoid. The guardians weren’t as fast and dangerous as the knights, but their large bodies and plated chitin forced the players to burn through several ethers just to kill them all. Vincent discovered their brains were a bit smaller—and easier to destroy—and he could reliably kill them with two Void Guns each. Xan and Juniper held the guardians at bay as Vincent refilled his mana and took them out one by one.
“You two almost make this easy,” Juniper said as the last ant crumbled into dust. “One time, it took my team half an hour to kill four of those things.”
Juniper continued to compliment Vincent and Xan as they worked their way through six more groups of guardians. Their battles eventually led them on a path that converged with several others before heading toward a wall of greenish mist.
An instance, Vincent noted, equipping undamaged armor to prepare himself. Like when I fought Fayros.
They stepped across, finding a twisted marstone landscape with mountain ridges blocking both sides. Small holes dotted the entire region, but most looked too small to be used by hell ants.
“This is it!” Juniper shouted merrily. “I can’t believe we got here so quickly. That was even faster than I expected. You two are so awesome. I had doubts about taking on the World Boss with just the three of us, but now I’m pretty sure we’ll steamroll this ho. Just keep using the same strategies we’ve used on the other ants, and be sure to watch out for her acid.”
Juniper pranced along the bumpy marstone terrain with her teammates following. A small gap at the center of the swirling red cloud overhead cast a glimmer of light onto the Jump Gate sitting at the top of a twisting marstone hill.
The ground began to tremble as they approached, and a cavernous hole full of acid appeared between them and the Jump Gate’s hill. The mountainous body of the Swarmqueen rose from the acid, towering over the landscape. Streams of acid poured from her bulbous body and ran along paths carved into the terrain before draining into the holes. Her mandibles opened wide, revealing thousands of long hairs that wiggled and moved like hands reaching for the players.
Narak unleashed a piercing scream, and Vincent felt a powerful frequency shake his body and the ground. His skin crawled, and for a moment he couldn’t feel his mana reserve. Only then did he notice the dozens of other mandibles across Narak’s body, almost like she was fused together from a multitude of bloated hell ants. The snapping maws launched globules of acid at the players, but Juniper blocked them with barriers.
“Xan and I will defend,” Juniper said. “Vince, just keep hitting her skull with Void Guns until she dies.”
Xan cast World Fountain at their location, and Vincent shot two Void Guns through the boss’s head. He planned to keep his mana reserve half-full just in case he needed to stop acid attacks with Zero Field. He spotted goo leaking out of Narak’s head where he’d shot her, but it soon hardened into a whitish material.
No wonder this boss is so difficult, Vincent realized as he drank a mega-ether. You can’t get close because of the acid, her body is covered in chitin, and even if you inflict damage, the wounds seal themselves.
He Scanned her just to check her classification and wasn’t surprised to see her listed as A-Plus.
Her offensive power isn’t higher than A-Class bosses, but her resilience is unbelievable. How’d the Great Vanguard beat her without negative energy?
Vincent shot Narak in the head three more times while the women continued to raise barriers against the constant barrage of acid. A few droplets made it past, leaving small holes in Vincent’s armor, although nothing he felt worried about.
>Juniper: It’s going great so far. Just so you both know, about a third of the way through, she’ll send a wave of acid down the middle to try and split us up. Then two-thirds through, she summons royal ants that can fly. That’s when things get tricky.
Narak opened her mandibles, charging a powerful mana attack. Vincent recognized it right away as the Vaporize spell that some bosses used—and Xan must’ve realized it too, because she cast World Wall. Her white wall rose just before the powerful wave of magic rushed from the boss’s mouth.
>Juniper: Oops, I forgot to warn you two about that move!
>Alexandria: Don’t worry, we’ve seen that one before.
By the time the massive wall came down, the trio had refilled their mana. Vi
ncent unleashed rapid-fire Void Guns, then drank a mega-ether with one hand to continue his onslaught. The boss’s acid waves momentarily broke the two women’s defenses, but Vincent knocked away the next acid-spit with Zero Field. Once the girls had new barriers in place, he ducked behind them to refill his mana once again.
During the brief pauses between the boss’s acid attacks, Vincent stepped out and put a few more holes in her head. This time, the attacks seemed to irritate Narak, and she hunched over, looking like she would vomit.
>Juniper: Move left!
All three ran to the left as the boss sprayed a river of acid down the middle of the valley. Half of it drained into holes and fissures, but a thin lake formed in a crevice at the center of the area. Xan placed another World Fountain at their new location, but then the boss began to charge a second Vaporize.
Juniper seemed prepared, casting a triple-layered wall of barriers before diving for cover behind one of the marstone ridges. Vincent and Xan followed just as the attack went off and shattered all three walls. The intense wave washed over the landscape, burning off the top layer of marstone. Their cover lasted only momentarily, and Juniper equipped a basteel tower shield to hold over them.
The remnants of the blast washed over the trio, warping the basteel shield. Vincent felt his Gravity Shield holding back the intense pressure and heat, but the more exposed parts of his armor melted and broke away before the attack passed. His injuries seemed minor, so he ignored them and jumped to his feet to continue to fire more Void Guns at the boss during her downtime between attacks.
>Alexandria: My bad, I should’ve saved my mana for another World Wall.
>Vincent: You’re doing great, Xan. Don’t beat yourself up.
Vincent put a few more holes in the boss’s head, and Xan used her extra mana to send Light-Drain Butterflies to feed off Narak. The next time the World Boss tried to fire off a Vaporize, Xan stopped it with her World Wall. With their thirty seconds of protection, the Cleric sent another wave of butterflies for the boss.
As soon as the wall came down, Vincent sent three more Void Guns flying at Narak. The World Boss released a piercing cry, and frequencies bombarded them again for several seconds.
>Juniper: Phase three, get ready!
Six slender-looking hell ants emerged from larger holes at the side of the nearest ridge. The royal ants spread their wings and darted toward the players at fast speeds. Vincent had been ready and cast Black Cinder through the air, crippling their wings and causing them to crash into the ground.
Xan cast World Wall to block another Vaporize, and their team used the time to deal with the royal ants. Without the speed and mobility that their wings offered, the royals were slightly weaker than their knight counterparts. Juniper kept them held back with barriers while Xan and Vincent quickly picked them off. Vincent finished the last one with a Void Gun just before the World Wall fell.
Juniper and Xan raised more shields as blobs of acid flew in their direction. The Swarmqueen had grown desperate and aggressive, leaving very few openings for Vincent to step out from cover and attack.
They kept up their defenses for several minutes, and in that time, Vincent only managed to hit her with three well-timed Void Guns. However, the boss’s movements grew sluggish as Xan’s swarm of butterflies continued to multiply and feed off her. Narak had ignored them for most of the fight, letting their numbers snowball out of control.
The World Boss roared and sprayed an acid mist from the malformed mouths across her body, which killed most of the butterflies. Seizing the opportunity, Vincent stepped out, landed four Void Guns, drank a mega-ether, and followed up with two more.
Narak’s mountainous body fell backward, and she let out a deafening scream. The strength of the frequencies shattered the surviving butterflies and blocked Vincent’s access to mana for several seconds. He tensed up, thinking it was some last desperate attack, but as the boss collapsed sideways onto the marstone around her pit, he realized it’d been a death wail.
Narak crumbled into dust, leaving several item crystals beside her pit, and the team exploded into cheers of victory.
“I can’t frigging believe it!” Juniper shouted, shaking with excitement. “After all these years, I finally beat Narak!” She pulled Vincent and Xan into a hug.
Vincent smiled, patting the girl on the back. “Well, let’s go see if this was all worth it.” He stepped away to check out the item crystals.
Large Soma Blob (x15) – A huge blob of semi-solid material. It smells disgusting, but there is powerful magic flowing inside it.
Chitin Slab (x8) – A slab of chitin that looks perfect for making weapons or armor pieces.
Crystal Heart – A crystalline and still-beating heart taken from a majestic or divine being. You can feel tremendous magical energy with each pulse.
Vincent fed the soma into his Builder’s Tome.
Builder Points: 34,505
“Over thirty thousand,” Vincent said. “That’s not half bad. You said we can farm her once a month, right?”
“Yeah, she’ll respawn as long as no one on your team has defeated her in the last month,” Juniper replied.
“Alright,” he said. “Well, let’s go get started on that forge!”
Chapter 27 | Year 93
Player: Noah the Relentless
Location: Styxis (World) | Risegard (City) | Derelict Market (District)
Class: Ranger
Subclass: Warden
Vitality*: Lv 325
Spirit: Lv 303
Resolve: Lv 295
Perception*: Lv 326
Agility: Lv 298
Strength: Lv 300
Noah watched his body fight Fynn for more than twenty-four hours. Although the fight was weighted in the Demon Lord’s favor, the other man still managed to kill him every so often. Just when Noah’s possessor started getting bored with the fight, Ryker showed up to take over.
For the next several days, Noah watched his body chase and terrorize the people of Risegard. Unlike Noah’s previous decades as the Demon Lord, the crueler devil rarely gave players any sense of victory or hope. He killed them over and over until they lost the will to fight back, and then he went and found someone else to torture.
A few players fought with everything they had, and some like Fynn even damaged his basteel armor. Noah cheered for anyone that stood their ground against him, but he had yet to figure out any way to save himself from the situation. Like the people he tortured, he started losing the will to fight back.
Whenever his body wandered near the edges of the city, he saw that Isaac’s drones were working on a wall around Vincent’s giant trench. An army of devils captured anyone trying to leave Risegard and tortured those people more brutally than they did anyone else.
Noah heard from Jim’s devil that a small number of players had made it out of the city with a squadron of monsters at their heels. However, the possessed players were forbidden by Isaac from leaving Risegard unless an extreme circumstance occurred. Noah even noticed that the devil controlling his body would avoid sections of the city where the roadwork had been damaged—avoiding any possibility of dying where there were no restoration runes.
Anyone with a sharp eye could see the whitish lines flowing across the ground and the walls of buildings that had runes. Some of the smarter players attempted to destroy the runes, but that led to the worst of all torture Noah had witnessed. The devils literally dragged those players back to the runes to skin them alive and pick at their organs for several hours at a time. By the time the devils were done, the drones had replaced the destroyed runes, making it a waste of time. It didn’t take long for the players to realize that Isaac had some kind of system that showed him whenever his runes lost power or were destroyed.
Noah’s basteel boots stomped across the road toward a woman on her knees. Devils had already killed her several times, but they had abandoned her after she refused to fight back.
“Stand,” Noah’s modified voice commanded.
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“I can’t,” she cried. “Just kill me.”
The Demon Lord equipped a basteel longsword and threw it at her feet. “I said stand,” he told her. “Fight me.”
“No—no, I can’t anymore,” she replied.
Noah’s body took two menacing steps forward, but then the woman leapt from the ground, a Lotus Capsule in her teeth. The Demon Lord put up a wall of negative energy between them, and she exploded against it. With his basteel armor, it wouldn’t have killed him, but the devil in his body didn’t seem to take any chances.
Good on her, Noah thought. She tried something, at least.
>Isaac: Noah, would you please take a portal to the Daiglass Tower? We have a minor situation.
Even though the devil in him controlled his party chat, Noah had discovered he could still listen in on their conversations. Although, it was a lot more boring than he would’ve thought—mostly just Isaac giving directions to the possessed players.
>Noah: Be right there.
>Jim: Is something fun happening? The people in the northern outskirts are boring me.
>Isaac: Nothing for you, I’m afraid. However, please give those people a chance to recuperate. How many times do I have to say that? We want to push them to their limits, but any further is like flexing a torn muscle. It’ll do more harm than good to break their spirit completely.
>Jim: Whatever. I’ll go back to that pub where people are holed up in the basement. They were fun to terrorize, and for some reason I’m dying for a drink.
>Jeanie: I’ll join you. We can make it a date.
>Jim: My host seems keen on that idea, although he’s still whining about all the torture and killing.
>Jeanie: He’ll get over it. Mine only pipes up when I catch one of her loyal guildsmen.
The Demon Lord opened a portal with the snap of his fingers and stepped across to the Daiglass Tower. When his eyes fell on the woman by the tower, Noah’s heart sank in his chest.
The woman tried to shoot herself in the head, only to find her spell didn’t work. After multiple attempts, she used more powerful attacks, but in that closed-in area, the restoration runes were at their strongest. Nothing short of complete bodily destruction would keep her dead.