by Oliver Mayes
“Sorry, boss. I didn’t know I could lose on technicalities.”
“It’s fine, you did well. Read the banner with Aetherius. We’re working on it.”
Judgementday cleared Lillian’s field of vision and Lillian focused on her stat page, leaving the Black Knight firmly in the background of her menu.
Class: Paladin
Level: 46
Health: 1,650/1,650Stamina: 1,600/1,600 Mana: 1,100/1,100
Strength: 290 Agility: 55 Intelligence: 55
Constitution: 165 Endurance: 160 Wisdom: 110
Stat points: 15
Experience: 24,625/46,000
Lillian put all her points in strength. She could micromanage constitution, endurance and wisdom later. She was punching above her weight here, and a significant strength boost would make the most of her ‘Swift Justice’ trait. That was her overwhelming priority.
With the extra 15 points invested, ‘Swift Justice’ raised her functional agility to 208. She couldn’t get any use out of agility skills or weapons, but coupled with her high strength she was fast. Not as fast as rangers or assassins, but faster than any strength-based tank.
With Divine Might activated, her strength would hit 610 and her functional agility would rise to 360. 360 was a lot of attack and movement speed, especially with 610 strength behind it. She was level 46, so Divine Might would cost 46 mana per second. That gave her about twenty-four seconds of use.
Her opponent was a level 50, behemoth-grade warrior. As well as his huge reach he’d likely have a ton of health, since the Behemoth trait granted 30% of natural strength as constitution. Lillian’s level 40 trait would kick that pillar of support out from under him. She just needed to apply it without breaking the rules.
She returned to the Code of Chivalry and reread it. By the time she’d finished, Andrew was waiting for her to initiate talks.
“Aetherius, I’m guessing you’ve understood all this?”
“Yup. There’s a rule framew—”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t see any reason for anyone else to go in before me. Pay attention to the banner and don’t speak on voice chat unless it’s important.”
Lillian strode forward, sword and shield in hand, ignoring the calls of her teammates behind her. She had no interest in sending Andrew in next. It was unlikely he’d win, but nothing would annoy Lillian more. Aside from him dying, maybe. Throwing away his life to advance her cause, with their history? She’d never live it down.
Lillian had been waiting to reassert herself ever since the incident with Archimonde. After all those irritating riddles, this place finally had some combat to offer and she was ready for it. It would make for a good warm-up before she caught Hammertime. Lillian took up her stance not a few feet away, but directly underneath her adversary. She stared into his visor.
“Let’s go.”
The Black Knight drew his sword and raised it high above her head, the tip pointing down toward the top of her skull. He’d only have to drop it as soon as the fight started. Lillian held her place, inviting him to go ahead. There was a reason she’d walked up so close. She could draw an aggressive, highly telegraphed attack, at which point all she’d have to do was move faster.
The ‘Knightly Duel’ icon lit up in her HUD and she activated Divine Might in the same instant, sweeping her shield above her head. The sword was rediverted and her combatant’s arm was stretched out over her.
All the chinks in his armor on the right-hand side were as exposed as they could be. Without moving her feet, Lillian stretched her sword arm forward and plunged it into his abdomen. As expected, the Black Knight had a lot of health. This level 50 mob was a signpost for what a great duelist should look like. Lillian needed to establish dominance immediately. She had a trait for that.
The level 40 paladin traits were comprised of three holy seals costing no mana, each tailored to a specific subset of paladin. ‘Psalm:30’ could be applied to a target at range and increased all healing on them by 50% for thirty seconds, with a fifteen-minute-long cooldown. This skill had saved Lillian against Archimonde and was great for healerdins, but healing wasn’t Lillian’s area.
‘Psalm:23’ was applied to yourself and offered significant raw increases to all stats, based on character level, for the duration. The holy seal lasted two minutes and had a cooldown of ten minutes. Lillian had decided the downtime was too much to rely on, besides which the increases to her stats were overall less useful than her Swift Justice/Divine Might combo. She could not afford to be at maximum efficiency only one-fifth of the time. It worked for Hammertime, but to her the concept was absurd.
Which is why Lillian had chosen the last holy seal, which could only be applied on hit but was available whenever it was not currently in use.
“Numbers:14.”
Lillian’s sword glowed and the light bled into the Black Knight’s wound. A crack appeared in his character model, not his armor, over his shoulder. Light spilled out of it. ‘Numbers:14’ was set.
This was the tanking trait, although it didn’t look like it. Its value was hidden in its complications – Numbers: 14 lasted for forty seconds, over which duration the target would have their total constitution reduced by 1% per second for forty seconds. In the fortieth second, the reduced constitution would be inflicted directly to the enemy’s hit points as 40% true damage. The only way to remove this debuff was either through a high-grade cleansing spell or by killing the caster, which would immediately restore all the constitution lost and prevent any damage from happening.
It was complicated. Lillian had been forced to do some research and had eventually decided to invest in Numbers:14 after coming across a thorough, comprehensive, coma-inducingly detailed breakdown of how the skill worked by a helpful commenter in a forum.
ItsUpToYou88: Let’s imagine our target has 100 Constitution Stat, 1,000/1,000 hit points and is afflicted with Numbers:14. This is unlikely since you can only apply Numbers:14 with weapon damage, but imagine it anyway. Numbers:14 reduces their Con Stat by 1% per second, reducing their Max Health. After one second, the target has 99 Con and 990/990 hit points. After forty seconds, the target has 60 Con and 600/600 hit points. One second later, the ability is finished and the 40 Con is returned to the target, but the missing 400 hit points are not. The target is reduced to 600/1,000 hit points.
That’s the easy part. The hard part is that Numbers:14 takes from current health and missing health evenly. For example: our target has 100 Con Stat but only 500/1,000 hit points and is afflicted with Numbers:14. After one second the target has 99 Con and 495/990 HP. After forty seconds, the target has 60 Con and 300/600 HP. One second later, the ability is finished and the target is reduced to 300/1,000 HP. Numbers:14 has done 200 true damage rather than 400, because there was 50% less current health to take. In other words, the more damage the target takes over the forty seconds, the less damage Numbers:14 will do when it resets.
Did anybody understand anything I just said at all?
Lillian got the gist. In theory, this meant she could inflict 40% true damage over 40 seconds. In practice that would never happen. Using it on any entity that understood what it did ensured she’d get their full attention. Bosses and raid groups alike had access to high-grade cleansing spells, but those have cast times and cooldowns. She could tether high-priority targets with this ability, freeing up her team to enact their own strategies.
Lillian withdrew her sword from the Black Knight’s ribcage and thrust her shield upward in one swift motion. The shield’s rim smashed into his armored jaw. He reeled out of melee range, marking the end of the exchange. All of which had gone in Lillian’s favor.
She checked his health bar: the damage she’d dealt had been carved out of his hit points – 1,220 for the sword strike she’d slotted through his armor, another 610 inflicted as blunt trauma by the shield-enabled micro-stun to the head. He still had 63% of his HP. That put him at about 5,000 max HP. Ridiculous.
A white mark was creeping across the right side o
f his health bar, the true damage component of Numbers:14 stacking up. More cracks of white light had appeared on the Black Knight’s character model, a persistent visual reminder to both combatants that one of them was on the clock.
Lillian deactivated her Divine Might. No need to waste her mana while she had the upper hand. The Black Knight took stock of his situation and stomped back into melee range, swinging his sword in a broad sweep.
This was the true value of Lillian’s latest ability. It made her opponents commit to killing her quickly, prompting them to use up all their stamina early. All she had to do was stay out of range, let them tire themselves out and then finish them off when they overextended. Assuming she didn’t just bulldoze through them in the first place.
She ducked to one side as his ebony sword cleaved the air above her and a new exchange was opened. Lillian had dealt with plenty of shield-bearing enemies before, player and non-player alike. Not to mention that she was a shield main herself. There was an appreciable gap in a shield-bearer’s defense whenever their sword arm was extended, and this gap was all the more telling on a behemoth-sized body.
Lillian’s hit-and-run strategy came to an abrupt end when the Black Knight’s knee arrived in her midriff, followed by an armored elbow in the back, putting her on the floor. He’d baited her to his weak spot and had an attack specifically designed to punish her for it.
Lillian span onto her back and pulled her shield across her body as the Black Knight reversed his grip. She reactivated Divine Might and swept her shield across the blade as he drove it downward, leaving it to grate against the cold stone floor.
The longer she stayed within the Black Knight’s attack range, the easier she’d find it to remain there. Here, for instance, was a point in time when her opponent had already presumed everything was under control. This was when players left themselves most vulnerable. AIs, too. Lillian lunged straight upward, stabbing through his visor.
Lillian had achieved an armed Divine Might critical hit. 305 strength, doubled by Divine Might to 610, inflicted by a Holy Sword that did 2 x strength damage with no base damage for 1,220, doubled again by hitting a critical zone for 2,440 damage.
The Black Knight reeled backward, reduced to 15% of his max health after ten seconds of combat. Lillian had taken two unarmed attacks, and they’d hurt. She’d felt it. She deactivated Divine Might to check her hit points and found them at 1,250/1,650.
That was a lot of damage for unarmed attacks through armor. This guy could one-shot her, definitely. She could one-shot him by now as well, but she’d have to be careful about it. Which was why Lillian was so annoyed when the Black Knight dropped his massive shield directly in front of himself and entrenched his position.
“’Tis but a scratch!”
Yeah, says the guy with 20% health and fifteen seconds of Numbers:14 under his belt. He was baiting her. It wasn’t as though she had anything better to do.
Lillian approached, activating Divine Might before darting to the flank. She was looking for an opening, minding her opponent’s sword arm, when the shield swung in from behind her. She’d assumed it would be a stationary obstacle, but it was moving almost as fast as her top speed.
Lillian jumped back and the shield screeched across the ground in front of her. This was new. The Black Knight hadn’t been that strong when they’d started this fight. Now he could move the slab of metal attached to his arm as if it were a paperweight. His strength stat had increased and he was running a new defensive strategy, utilizing a zoning technique to keep danger away and pressure on.
Lillian had come across this playstyle often. Players designed to operate at peak performance under specific conditions. She always made sure to destroy these enemies as quickly as possible, before they had time to get comfortable. It appeared the Black Knight’s strength had increased as his health decreased. By how much Lillian couldn’t say, but it fit the bill. That would be a pretty excellent trait for a behemoth-class warrior.
Lillian had wanted to finesse this, but she wasn’t opposed to using brute force if he was deploying this method. He was hiding behind the shield, so she’d have to destroy it and destroy his win condition in so doing. Lillian had long searched for a way to convert her stats into raw power. Her search had ended with Hammertime’s behemoth-grade war hammer. It converted 2.5 x her strength stat into crushing damage and unlike her Holy Sword came with considerable base damage of its own. It had a very respectable strength stat bonus on top, which was also doubled by the Divine Might she had to activate in order to wield it effectively.
Only behemoth-class heroes were supposed to use their own grade of weaponry. Their character models were the only ones big enough and the strength requirement was doubled for normal-sized players. Yet so long as Lillian had Divine Might activated, she could wield the war hammer without issue. She was aware how it must look. Her small frame was holding a weapon easily larger and obviously heavier than she was without difficulty. Intimidation was a bonus perk.
Divine Might and this hammer were an ideal combination for blowing through defenses most players would regard as “impervious”. She simply attacked their weaponry directly and ground it, then them, into dust.
She ran forward, aiming her strike right at the center of the shield as it swung out toward her. The two of them struck, the unstoppable force versus the immovable object. Only one could be true.
Lillian’s hammer connected at full swing. It was a valiant attempt at handmade nuclear fission. The shockwave was enough to push back her players and rattle the shields hanging on the walls. Not that Lillian could hear it over the sonic boom she’d created at arm’s length.
In the split second their behemoth-grade armaments made contact she thought she’d been successful. The resounding clang had been followed by a give, which Lillian sensed through her weapon’s handle. Then her arms were thrown back as the shield barreled into her, striking her across the front of her body.
Lillian felt her nose flatten and break, the rest of her face squeezing in behind it. Her strike had been mighty and had taken most of the power out of the Black Knight’s swing, but the shield was immense. He was beating her at her own game.
Lillian hit the foot of the stairs far behind and lay there in a crumpled heap, just for a second. She tried to stand up, still clinging to her hammer as the stun persisted. Without Divine Might, she couldn’t pick it up.
The Black Knight was running toward her, much faster now he could carry his armaments so effortlessly. Her head was still reeling but she had to move. She released her grip on the hammer and staggered to her feet, preparing to dodge. The moment she stood up, the Black Knight stopped. In the same instant, a mark appeared through her ‘Knightly Duel’ icon. Mr. Healy’s voice came through the party chat a half second later.
“Never attack someone who’s unarmed! That works against you if he can’t attack you either. Equip something!”
Andrew cut in halfway through with his own information.
“His shield is wrecked, hit it again.”
Her team had provided her with all the information she needed. The stun finished, Lillian reset her nose, burst back into white light, took up her hammer in both hands and ran back toward the enemy that had just sent her flying.
Numbers:14 would be over in ten seconds. Lillian wanted to wrap this up before then. She had enough mana left to keep Divine Might activated for that long, all she had to do was use it. Andrew was right: the shield hadn’t done much better from the attack than she had. So it was no surprise when the Black Knight juked her, pulling the shield back against his body and bringing his claymore scything down in one swift motion.
Lillian’s hammer was cocked and ready to strike. While it wasn’t a defensive weapon, she’d done stranger things in combat. She swung into the flat of the blade on its way down, turning the sword away. She followed through and the Black Knight staggered sideways as she rotated on the spot. His shield was coming into view and he wasn’t braced behind it.
&nbs
p; Lillian span a whole loop and brought the hammer crashing into the very center. The huge clang was replaced with a loud screech as the metal gave. It was rent straight across the middle, leaving both pieces hanging uselessly from the straps on the Black Knight’s forearm and pushing him even further off balance. He was toppling over. His defense was down and he was vulnerable.
Lillian swapped between her weapons and prepared herself for the final strike. Which was when Mr. Healy blurted out two words into the party comms.
“Respect life!”
Mr. Healy had the most important attributes of any great healer: awareness and timing. Lillian planted her sword in the crook of her target’s sword arm, where there was a nice chink in the armor to allow for movement. That would give her thinking time. He drew back his shield-free arm to strike her, resulting in Lillian delivering a prompt shield bash to his face. He tumbled to the floor and Lillian stood over her downed opponent.
The Black Knight’s health was very low. Andrew was concerned.
“Lillian, the riddle. Don’t kill him!”
“He’s resisting.”
“Ask him to surrender! Politely!”
Lillian raised her shield over his head, keeping his sword arm pinned with her sword buried in the crook of his elbow, and was the very politest she could bring herself to be.
“Surrender or death?”
“Spare my life and I will yield myself unto thee.”
“...I accept.”
The portcullis standing above the stairs was raised, immediately followed by a cacophony of dings. Everyone in the party had leveled up simultaneously. Lillian had leveled up twice, to 48. It was definitely over. It felt satisfying, though not as satisfying as if she’d killed him.
She grudgingly stepped off her opponent’s breastplate and regarded him, arms folded. Then she extended her hand to him, reactivated Divine Might and pulled him to his feet. The Black Knight was a pain and a very difficult challenge but at least he wasn’t a sore loser. He took a knee in front of her, still holding her hand.