MM - Chapter 257 - LET CHAOS RAINE

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- The Divide, ZionLine -

Jerr was so captivated that he had to press a palm against his own cheek and physically force his head to turn away. The blastslits—no, more accurately, the Empowered Blasts erupting from them—were too much for him. He had named his avatar ManaJerr for a reason. He was a mage through and through; always had been, always would be. The countless layers of pulsing arcane power spiderwebbed across the massive wall would hold him spellbound all day if he let them.

The slit he had fixated on flared once more, inevitably drawing his eyes back. For five meters around the narrow aperture, intricate runes etched into the stone ignited in sequence. Violet-white energy surged along their filigreed channels like liquid starlight racing through veins of living crystal. Each glowing line fed the next, converging in a hypnotic spiral that tightened toward the blastslit. The raw Blast emerged—a sphere of compressed power no larger than his fist. The instant it crossed the threshold, the gathered energy was sucked in with a soundless shriek of ‘something’ otherworldly. 

The sphere swelled a hundredfold in the span of a heartbeat, its surface writhing with captured runes that burned themselves into its core and Jerr’s heart. What shot away from the wall was no longer a simple projectile; it was a miniature star trailing chains of incandescent sigils, tens—perhaps hundreds—of times more potent than the base skill. A gargantuan boom scattered the air pressure as it collided midair with an incoming Venom Shot. The resulting pressure wave slammed into his chest, shuddering through his bones and leaving his eyes moist with emotion.

Sizzling drops of acid rained across the ground for a hundred meters, eating the soil in hissing gulps that stung the nostrils even from afar. The acrid smoke released clung to the beasts who wandered through it, eating at their hard shells. There was no doubt in Jerr’s mind as to what would happen if he tried the same.

Only a third of the total Empowered Blasts were devoted to interception. Most of the remaining two-thirds slammed into the thickest swarms of Rabinoids, thinning them before they could plummet onto the shieldwall in suicidal waves. Those detonations were even more spectacular; the little kamikaze creatures burst in dazzling chain reactions—better than any bubble wrap he had ever popped.

Since his hand was still there, Jerr wiped the drool from his chin.

So. Fucking. Epic.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to watch the light show all day. Alaric—their guildmaster, their singular ray of hope in a world that had forsaken them—had assigned a mission. ManaJerr would rather die a hundred deaths than disappoint him. If only everyone else shared that same opinion.

Instead of accomplishing their task, Jerr’s battlemaster—SirRounded—was seizing his first unsupervised moment to preach. The man had been droning on for nearly thirty minutes about the greatness of Astra Infernum and Alaric. It was nauseating, especially while they still cowered behind the shieldwall.

At first, Jerr assumed SirRounded was waiting for the neighboring cohorts to move so he could learn from their mistakes. A sound enough plan. Except the battlemaster was not even watching the battlefield, let alone what the other cohorts were doing. His attention was wholly consumed by his own grandiose speech and the reactions of his fawning audience. Jerr had never minded the man when CrimsonNebula kept him in check. Now he despised him.

Worthless, bootlicking blowhard. Get on with it already—

Jerr’s brows shot up when a Kamikaze Rabinoid suddenly blurred with impossible speed. It shot straight past the runner who had aggroed it. The beast plummeted deep into the neighboring cohort’s packed formation and exploded, wiping out at least fifty people in an instant. With all the commotion from the Blasts, SirRounded didn’t even notice.

Instead of getting their shit together by spreading out and fixing the aggro issue, the neighboring battlemaster devolved into a screaming match with some of his surviving underlings. Jerr shook his head in disbelief at their idiocy. The movement caused him to catch a glimpse of the guilders on their other side. 

In complete disregard of CrimsonNebula’s tactics, the battlemaster led his entire cohort in a suicidal charge toward five weakened bugs, all that was left of a larger formation after a pair of Empowered Blasts landed in their midst. The roguish brute raised his sword high, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Protect the shield. For the queen! For Astra Infernum!” All his childish roleplaying did was alert the oversized bugs. It was a slaughter. The lot of them, all three hundred and seventy-five members of his cohort, died to those five Rabinoids in less than fifteen seconds.

Jerr could easily imagine similar scenes playing out across the entire guild. The number of people who had already died must be staggering. He gasped as the reality of their situation clicked into place.

Alaric wanted them to fail. 

That was the only explanation for leaving such incompetent battlemasters in command. It was a trick as old as militaries: drag your people into hell, then guide them out, utterly indoctrinating them in the process. Jerr’s slack-jawed expression turned pensive. Something was wrong. The equipment they were leaving out on the battlefield was too precious, worth hundreds of millions of credits. And Alaric’s words tumbled through Jerr’s skull, seizing his heart with terror.

“You will learn… Or, you will be left behind!”

I have to do something. But what? Disobeying orders is out. Alaric was pretty specific about following our battlemasters’ commands. Proving that I’m unwilling to follow these idiots could get me kicked from the guild. That’s a fate far, far worse than a few deaths.

To Jerr, being kicked from the guild wasn’t the only fate worse than death.

But I can’t just blindly follow bad orders; I have to survive. If I can’t at least maintain my current levels, I’ll be left behind. I refuse. I will not be left behind. I have to see where he’s taking us. I have to know if the hope he’s offered is real. I have to see it with my own eyes!

As Jerr’s convictions solidified, SirRounded was finally nearing the end of his speech. His chest was puffed out as he turned around to face the battlefield for the first time in five minutes—a sign that at the very least, the man had luck on his side. He raised a hand high. “Runners, you know what to do. It’s time to make our lord and savior proud. It’s time to prove your worth. Go forth, and show the whole world what Astra Infernum is capable of!”

Idiocy of sending out all five runners simultaneously aside, Jerr barely heard the man. Not only was he used to ignoring SirRounded’s droning, but something very odd was happening up above. A cluster of fifty blastslits that had been active since they arrived, collectively stopped firing. Considering how many were still active down the length of the wall, and the amount of Blasts still in the air, not many noticed the change. ManaJerr, however, was hyper-attuned to their activity and could never have missed something so obvious.

Just as SirRounded lowered his finger to release his loyal hounds, the silent blastslits unleashed their payloads in unison. Jerr’s jaw hit the ground as fifty Empowered Blasts—each a tightly-packed nuclear explosive—raced away from the wall. They flew right past a dozen incoming Venom Shots, their destinations much more distant. He watched in mounting horror as the Blasts slowly converged on a single, distant Siege Crandal, the very one he’d seen Alaric heading for not long ago.

Regardless of the danger their guild leader was about to be in, Jerr had already decided that he needed to survive. It didn’t take a genius to realize what would happen when those ignored Venom Shots reached the shieldwall. The resulting acid rain would leave few, if any, survivors. He’d also seen how the shield itself didn’t fully protect those standing behind it. Plenty of heat got through, and the acrid smoke would almost certainly as well.

“Incoming!” Jerr roared at the top of his lungs while sprinting for all he was worth toward the nearest gap in where the Venom Shots would strike.

They hit the shimmering shield a few seconds later, and the visible length of it turned a vicious crimson, nearly buckling entirely. A warning message that Jerr didn’t have the excess mental capacity to read flashed dangerously in his HUD. At the same time, several huge globs of acid made it through before the shield stabilized. They fell to the ground just as he’d predicted.

ManaJerr removed his backup tunic from his inventory and wadded it up, covering his mouth and nose. The last thing he saw before diving into a pile of sand was a stray drop of acid that could have fit inside a bucket. It fell in slow motion, landing directly in the center of his cohort. Anyone who didn’t run within two seconds of his warning was reduced to puddles of human goop.

What a shit-show.

Raine KongRu

- The Divide, ZionLine -

A sudden shift in the light yanked Raine’s attention skyward. His shadow splintered into a dozen jagged silhouettes across the scorched ground. He twisted mid-air and found not one new sun, but fifty. A cluster of fireballs screamed toward his wounded prey. The heat given off was already prickling his skin even at this distance.

It was obvious that Lucius was behind the attack. Fifty Empowered Blasts wouldn’t be enough to one-shot a Siege Crandal, which is why he’d cleverly waited for Raine to whittle it down. It was also obvious that they sacrificed a significant portion of the shieldwall’s integrity for this stunt. He didn’t know how many of his guilders had just paid the price for their interference, but he would make them regret every single death.

Killing the Crandal before the blasts arrived was impossible.

Raine flew not away, but directly toward the incoming Blasts. Since Soul of Reformation had run its course, Healing Burst brought his health back to full. The fresh understanding he gained pushed his completion rate higher than ever. [+8,562]

[Healing Burst: (Completion - 54% Adept)]

Free from cover, multiple Plasma Lances converged on his position. Raine’s lungs burned from the heat as he fired off a series of rapid Lunges and instant evasions that depleted his stored Spectral Slips. The Crandal, no longer in range of Bloodlust, found a large chunk of its maximum health returned. 

Ever so slowly, the largest cluster of Blasts swelled in his vision. The wait was excruciating. The moment his skin began to blister. Unassailable Aegis ripped forty percent of his health away in exchange for five seconds of invulnerability. [-5,844] Raine bodily slammed into a trio of the fireballs, and they detonated in a blinding explosion so deafening it was utterly silent.

Weave Whisperer extended his Connection, allowing him to draw the raw energy of the Blasts toward himself, where the Soul Flame of Amanesh greedily consumed it all. When the smoke cleared, the Crandal was on its last leg. It struggled to rise, then collapsed back to the cratered ground.

[Siege Crandal (Raid Elite): Level 75 (HP 1,871,213 / 19,025,000) (09.8%)]

The lingering DOT from the Empowered Blasts further eroded its health. [-699,512]

Bloodlust flared as Raine descended—a vengeful angel wreathed in a vortex of stolen fire. He unleashed the captured flames, focusing them into a searing lance that punched through the Crandal’s neck. [-24,018] The carapace melted away, and he dove into the gap.

A roar was on his lips as his dagger plunged into the soft tissue at the base of the monster’s brain. Final Gambit released a void of absolute darkness that bloomed at the dagger’s tip. It expanded rapidly, swallowing everything it touched. [-400,862] The creature’s innate Resistance absorbed half the damage, its brain too dense to be instantly annihilated. But he considered his oldest growth weapon broken for good reason.

Raine stabbed again, into the same gushing wound. Another Final Gambit tore a larger hole, this time entirely annihilating the stubborn flesh. [-400,862] And still, the beast clung to life, its body convulsing in its death throes.

[Siege Crandal (Raid Elite): Level 75 (HP 345,959 / 19,025,000) (01.8%)]

Less than a quarter of a second before the Empowered Blasts stole his kill, Raine struck a third time. Even before the first Gambit, he’d been consuming Demonic Power and Discipline at a prodigious rate, Flawed Conversion relentlessly churning through his resources. The sudden drain from four energy pools at once nearly shattered his focus.

He pushed through. He would not fail.

The instant Raine’s Elemental Power hit fifty percent, he unleashed the true, ‘Final’ Gambit. [Critical hit! -881,122]

[You have slain a Siege Crandal (Raid Elite)]

Relief washed over him. As the monster crumbled, he spared a moment of thanks that after the last round of buffs, he’d remembered to kick Varak and the rest of his retinue from the raid.

[Obtained 114,821,226 Raid Superiority (11-way split) (3,900% bonus for defeating a Raid Elite 34 levels above your raid’s highest participant)]

[Obtained 3,103.28% Raid Attunement (11-way split) (3,900% bonus for defeating a Raid Elite 34 levels above your raid’s highest participant)]

There was no time to celebrate. He blasted out of the collapsing corpse and back into the air. If they were brave enough to steal his kill, then they would not shy from stealing his loot as well. He hoped, with every fiber of his being, that they would try.

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[Innate Skill - Final Gambit: Convert 25% maximum Elemental Power into a single target non-elemental attack. 216 damage per EP converted. No cooldown)]

[Heart of Plutus (Accessory - Ring): (Heavenly Amethyst - Damaged) (All attributes +15%) Contains the last remnants of the fallen celestial Plutus. Through it, fractions of his power may be brought to bear. Only one fraction may be active at a time (Cooldown: 10 minutes)]

[Fraction of Solidity: (PTC +20%) (PHY +20%) Upon command personify the sturdiness of the Unassailable Aegis preventing all damage and negative effects for 5 seconds (Cost: 40% of maximum health) (Cooldown: 5 minutes)]

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[Weave Whisperer: (Passive) Your presence interferes with the weave, unraveling the manipulations of others within your Connection radius. Additionally, the range of your Connection-based manipulations is increased by 25%]

[Edge of Torment: (Passive) Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Physical Damage increase by .25% for every % of maximum health lost]

[Healing Burst: (Completion - 54% Adept) Lay hands upon a target to restore health equal to 500% > 270% CP. Additional 500% > 270% CP health restored over 80 > 117 seconds - stacks 3 times - each stack refreshes timer (Cost: 50 > 73 Celestial Power) (Cooldown: 45 > 66 seconds)]