by Oliver Mayes
Half of them had returned to blocking the entrance while a well-balanced party of five swept through the area, hunting down the divided interlopers as Hammertime relentlessly chased them into the open. While he was still berserking, it was impossible for Rising Tide to form a cohesive group. It was all they could do to stay out of his reach.
At this rate, Damien would be left with an angry guild leader and approximately a dozen enemies to deal with by himself. This required a rebalance. It was time to unleash his secret weapon. He stared at the priest standing in the back of Godhammer’s party and reached out to Noigel with a single word. ‘Now’.
Damien was so invested he hadn’t realized how exposed he was standing out on the branch, staring straight at the hunting party. It became apparent when a ranger fired an arrow that whipped into his stomach, doubling him over and almost knocking him out of the tree. He stuck his back against the trunk as the second one whizzed past his ear.
He yanked the arrow free from his torso. They weren’t the hardest hitting weapon in the game, but Damien was severely under-leveled to take them head on. He’d lost almost a third of his health and it hadn’t even been a critical hit. Great. This was exactly what he didn’t need. He’d tested the range of his mental commands yesterday precisely to prevent something like this from happening. Where the hell was Noigel?
“Up there,” the ranger yelled.
Damien still had ten seconds left before he could use Demon Gate again. He reached out to Noigel with all his will and re-enforced the command as the hunting party rounded the corner.
Damien had no room to maneuver on the branch. He’d trapped himself.
The other four members stood by as their ranger nocked another arrow and held it steady, taking his time to ensure he got the head shot. His focus was interrupted by a scream from behind them as Noigel thundered into the clearing.
Damien had deliberated for some time how he might best use his remaining Soul Summon Limit. Hell hounds were great shock troops, but without imps backing them up they lacked utility. The problem was that even with their wings, the imps were too slow to keep up. The solution was simple: stick the imps on the hell hounds. And thus, the hell riders were born.
Noigel was the first to emerge, yodeling shrilly at the top of his lungs in a bid to draw attention away from Damien and onto himself. It was certainly a sight to behold. He was riding his hell hound like a surfboard, his tail wrapped around his steed’s neck and his wings pivoting for balance.
The ranger turned to see what all the fuss was about and found his vision filled with dog teeth.
Noigel’s fury knew no bounds. Seamlessly unwinding his tail, he barreled head first into the priest in a blur of flailing claws to prevent her channeling a healing spell. The moment he left the hound’s back, it ignited.
The three unaffected Godhammer members were rooted to the spot, frozen to inaction by horror and confusion. Their hesitation was brief, but it cost them dearly. While their attention was divided between the dying ranger and the screaming priest, the other two hell riders caught up.
The imps lifted off and followed Noigel’s example, sinking their claws into their enemy’s faces and scratching mercilessly. The damage was trivial, but it interrupted channeling and blocked line of sight while the two new hell hounds joined their predecessor to gang up on the hapless ranger. Then they ignited as well, frying him to a crisp.
Damien leveled up to 20. His health was restored. Most of the party were scarcely aware they’d lost one of their number in the chaos. The only unaffected member nearby was the warrior tank, who was totally unequipped to remove the face-hugger imps without inflicting more damage on the players they’d attached themselves to.
While they reeled from the unconventional tactics, Damien found his personal teleportation imp and cast Demon Gate, swapping back to his original position in the safety of the concealed bough while his imp was transported to the branch overlooking the group.
He took control of the hell hounds from Noigel, directing them to sprint out of range as he sent the Demon Gate imp to fly over the group’s heads. Then he Imploded it. All four remaining Godhammer members hurtled into the air along with the rag-dolling, burning body of their former team mate.
Despite the Implosion, the hell rider imps had not disengaged and were still clinging to their targets, clawing away like maniacs. Damien’s hell hounds wheeled around, pounded forward and leapt into the air to rejoin them, ignoring the tank to catch the more vulnerable party members in their jaws.
The tank hit the ground the hardest and was slow to rise, his armor working against him. He staggered to his feet just in time to bear witness to the full extent of his failure. The priest had already fallen, prompting Noigel and his hell hound to assist in ensuring the demise of the other two. Seconds later the mage and assassin joined their healer. Damien rose to level 23.
As soon as they were done, his hounds put out their flames and the imps mounted again before they dashed into the trees. They were unsuited to combat against heavily armored enemies, especially while Damien’s Implosion was still on cooldown. Those Rising Tide members who weren’t being chased by Hammertime moved in to finish off the isolated player.
Damien didn’t feel like putting himself at risk again, at least not until his Demon Gate was available. That didn’t mean he was going to sit and do nothing. He lay down flat on the branch and pointed at Noigel’s hell hound just before it disappeared from view. Possessing his hell hounds was certainly a strange sensation, but he’d rather that than an imp any day.
He stumbled a little as he transitioned from two-legged and prone to four-legged and galloping but managed to keep himself upright and maintain the pace. Noigel cooed and patted him heavily on the head.
“Whoosa goood booooieeee?”
Damien tried telling him to knock it off, producing nothing but a low growl in the back of his throat. Noigel squeaked out a peal of high-pitched laughter and redoubled his efforts, scratching him behind the ears while they were still on the move. Damien ignited his host body briefly and the unwanted petting was abruptly replaced with a slew of demonic curses. Justice served, Damien led his platoon behind a tree and sniffed to activate his newly acquired Detect skill.
All the players within range were now highlighted in red, even through terrain and cover. It was a wonderful skill for scouting out enemies. Not that there were many of them left. Hammertime was easily distinguishable from everyone else due to his larger profile and tell-tale weapon. He’d split his remaining forces in half again, taking two players with him while the other three continued to watch over the only exit.
On the other side of the clearing, the last seven Rising Tide members were licking their wounds, using the scarce time available to them to prepare for the inevitable onslaught. Damien didn’t like to admit it, but he’d need their help to stop Hammertime. While Damien's minions and daggers were very effective against unguarded targets with mid-level armor and low health points, he had very little in his skill set to deal with a level 38 behemoth. That was a task better suited to magic damage, which Krackle had demonstrated he possessed in abundance.
Damien followed the profiles of the three-strong Godhammer party and caught sight of them through the trees. He was relieved to see Hammertime’s berserker rage had ended, although his choice of team mates went some way toward compensating for the loss of his special ability.
The guild leader had hand-picked a paladin and a mage, both standing a short distance behind him on either side. The paladin was likely specced to heal. If something wasn’t done about him, Hammertime would be practically impossible to bring down. The Rising Tide party clearly agreed, because one of their number stepped out from behind a tree and loosed a charged arrow straight toward the paladin's chest.
Hammertime casually thrust his arm out to the side and intercepted it, the arrow piercing the chainmail and digging into his forearm. His armor level was now weak enough for projectiles to pierce him. Not that it made much
difference when his constitution was so disproportionately high.
The paladin channeled mana to restore the sliver of health the arrow had taken away, while Godhammer’s mage moved even faster, sweeping her staff out in front of her to launch a volley of arcane missiles from the tip. The enemy ranger hadn’t even finished nocking his second arrow before the projectiles locked on and he exploded in a cluster of blue light.
The rest of Rising Tide ran out to make their last stand and Hammertime stepped between them and his team mates. The mage began buffing him with an anti-magic aura. After Krackle’s first fire-bomb, Hammertime had chosen his support very carefully before moving to mop up the survivors.
The healer was bad news, but the anti-magic aura the mage was providing was even worse, countering Hammertime’s only weakness.
Damien lurched out of the trees so fast that Noigel almost fell off, the other two hell riders falling in behind him. He needed to take care of that mage if they were going to have any chance. All three players were completely focused on the party in front of them.
Noigel wisely stayed quiet this time as they approached, and Damien got his Sneak Attack in, headbutting the back of the mage’s head at full tilt. The collision hurt him as well, but the hound’s armored plates negated a fair portion of the damage. He wasn’t prepared to use his bite attacks on another player – that was just a little too weird to contemplate – but the rest of his team quickly took advantage of the opening he’d provided and attacked with full force.
Damien left Noigel to guide them and turned to charge the paladin, hoping to interrupt him before the inevitable healing undid their work. The paladin had a different spell in mind. Without a hint of panic, he locked eyes with Damien and raised his forearm up from the elbow before closing his hand into a fist.
Damien burst into the wrong kind of flames.
They flashed white and gold, searing through his armored plates faster than Damien had thought possible for a spell with no casting time. Damien had miscalculated. The paladin had the ‘Smite’ ability. Demons were little more than fodder against holy power.
Damien’s host body may as well have been bathed in acid. The hound was dead before he could even reach the paladin’s feet. Damien’s possession ended, transporting his perspective back into his human body.
He blinked and fixed his eyes on the battle just in time to see another of his hounds seared with holy fire – dying within seconds before the paladin started channeling to heal the mage. Damien couldn’t afford to lose what little he had left. He disengaged his three imps and sent them high into the air, ordering the last hell hound to attempt a last-ditch effort to kill the mage.
It did not go as well as it might have. Hammertime sprinted toward the hound, wrapped a hand around the back of its neck and squeezed, ignoring the flames as it ignited in self-defense. He wrenched it off his team mate and pelted it at the ground behind him before stomping on its head with a massive steel boot.
One of Rising Tide’s assassins took advantage of the distraction to close and finish the mage off, making good on all of Damien’s hard work.
Damien lost experience for sharing the kill, but the objective had been accomplished. The anti-mana aura surrounding Hammertime sputtered and faded. Right on cue, a fireball pounded into the behemoth's chest and he staggered back, visibly hurt for the first time in the encounter. Hammertime's health dropped by almost a quarter.
Krackle was standing at a distance with a healer by his side, providing fire support as the three remaining front-line combat players closed in on the paladin to make their last stand.
Thinking quickly, Damien took stock of the situation. He had three imps left, all of whom were being completely ignored amid the battle raging below them. His spells were all ready for use. He would use Rising Tide to gamble everything he had on a final attack.
Noigel and another imp soared upward while the remaining imp divebombed, landing on Hammertime’s head before he’d regained his balance. Damien Imploded it. Hammertime was barely affected at all, since he was in the eye of the storm.
But it wasn’t designed to pull him in. Rather, it pulled the players around him. Since the imp was so close to the ground, the range of the pull was maximized. The paladin, the assassin, the mage’s body and all three of Rising Tide’s close combat units were caught, flying off their feet and crashing into Hammertime on all sides.
The assassin and the dead mage were lightly armored. The paladin and his three attackers, not so much. They did far more damage to Hammertime as projectiles than they ever could have hoped to achieve as players. They struck him simultaneously on all sides, their assorted armor and weaponry inflicting blow upon blow.
The Behemoth toppled, landing on top of the luckless assassin with an almighty crash.
It was a huge series of hits, and even though it was entirely physical damage it still removed a good chunk of Hammertime's health, bringing him down to just under half. The rest of the players were spread-eagled around and on top of him in varying degrees of trouble, but every single one of them was disorientated and helpless.
Without hesitation, Krackle began charging a fireball to maximum power. Killing four of his own team for the chance to take out a guild leader must have seemed like a good deal. Only he and his priest hadn’t been caught in Damien’s ability, and both of them were completely absorbed by the scene in front of them.
This was it. Damien could end it, here and now.
Noigel sensed Damien’s intention and frantically moved to obey, the other imp following swiftly behind him. They glided over the pair before hurtling downward, each of them landing behind one of the distracted enemies. The priest turned too late and Noigel’s partner sprang upward, raking his claws across the player’s face. Krackle was too busy concentrating on what he was doing to notice. Noigel touched down behind Krackle just as he launched a miniaturized sun at ally and enemy alike, draining every last drop of his mana. He'd left himself completely defenseless.
Damien cast Demon Gate.
He’d learned from his mistake against the ranger in the tree. This time he made sure he got the critical hit. He thrust his left hand forward and drove Shankyou’s dagger straight through Krackle’s left shoulder blade, piercing him through the heart. As he withdrew it, scraping the jagged edge back through the wound, he plunged the sacrificial dagger into Krackle’s neck until it protruded out the other side. Krackle got a free class change, transcending his status as a fire mage to become a kebab.
It was more than enough. The moment he saw the soul energy flowing into his Sacrificial Dagger’s handle, Damien knew he had won. Out ahead of them, there was a deep whoosh as all the air rushed inward to feed the expanding ball of flame.
When it exploded, the flow reversed and Damien’s cowl was swept off his face by a scalding-hot blast of air. The terrain in front of them had been transformed into a hellscape. The lower level players were all made equal in the blink of an eye, leaving only Hammertime clinging to life at the heart of the explosion. He fought to push away the burning bodies, what little health he had left dwindling in the inferno.
He even abandoned his hammer in his rush to escape the flames, to no avail. Godhammer’s guild leader managed to stumble halfway out of the area of effect before his legs caved in underneath him and he fell face forward onto the ground, deader than the century-old song that had inspired his name.
Krackle had done the most damage and delivered the killing blow, but he was already gone. Damien had seen to that. There was only one living player who had dealt damage to Hammertime and the players scattered around him.
Damien’s screen flooded with notifications. In a server first, he had gained five consecutive levels. Three when the fireball hit, another two when Hammertime finally succumbed to his wounds. He was now level 28, around the same average level as the players he had come to destroy.
It was only when the imp next to him screeched that Damien tore his eyes away from the carnage and came to deal with the so
le survivor of his plan. The Rising Tide priest had no one to protect him and didn’t resist Damien’s daggers. His life ended in three swift stabs.
That done, Damien checked all around, hardly believing the fight was really over. The three members of Godhammer who had been watching over the exit were nowhere to be seen. They must have fled when they saw their leader perish.
Some forty players had entered the Twisted Forest that morning. Now only one remained. Damien had overseen the destruction of a raiding party, a defensive team and a guild leader who had been more than twice his level at the start of the encounter. He was nearly level 30. All of his careful planning had granted him the fastest solo leveling in Saga Online’s brief history.
He opened his menu and checked the media page. There it was. The whole fight; stored and saved on his headset. He hadn’t known when he was going to declare against Aetherius, but now the moment was here it couldn’t have been more obvious.
Move over, Hammertime. It's humble-brag time.
24
Reaching Your Target Audience
Damien positioned himself in the middle of the scorched earth, directly on top of a glowing mass of soul energy. With souls to hand, he started the long, arduous process of re-summoning his minions. He wanted to look his best for his big entrance into the competition. He minimized the menu and set it to one side, opening his Stat page with one hand while he summoned imps with the other.
Despite the damage he’d taken from the arrow in the gut, he didn’t see much point in increasing his constitution. His survivability was based on mobility, not heavy armor, so it wouldn’t count for much. His agility was already high enough to kill squishy targets. Intelligence was useless to him, since he wasn’t using spells from his Maleficium tree. Strength was even more useless than that. And he could swing his daggers around all day without running out of stamina. That left wisdom. It hadn’t failed him so far. Damien plugged his free stat points into it, pushing his wisdom to 187.