Chapter 341: Bait and Switch

The thick green smog made it difficult to see his own hands, only visible thanks to the glowing bless spell outlining them with a flare of white magical energy. He held his breath for as long as he could, navigating the halls from memory, though he’d only visited the palace once since Savika had been elected Queen.

On more than one occasion, Aegis stumbled over the bodies of dead, lootable Kordas guards. He was somewhat distracted; he opened his livestream viewer to watch Feng aboard his airship as the VGN fleet moved into formation. They were preparing to all airburst back into Kordas' airspace and reduce the city to rubble with a prepared burst of magical weapons and spells.

Time was not on his side. The palace would be a pile of rubble within seconds of their arrival, and they were nearing the end of their final preparations.

The door leading into the throne room wasn’t just open; the doors were gone entirely, and the reason became clear in an instant. At the center of the throne room stood Savika, her body outlined with thick blue magic, and the interior of her silhouette glowing a dim white, almost entirely transparent. Her eyes and mouth could move, but nothing else.

Aegis took a few steps forward, which prompted her to shout. “Stop, don’t come closer! It’s a big ooze. One of their pets!” Savika’s voice was muffled, not by her phasing but by a translucent ooze that engulfed her form, Aegis had failed to notice.

He tilted his head up and spotted the name floating above the creature's body. [Noxious Ooze(Elite) - Level 150)]

This is what’s creating the poison cloud. They left it here so that the moment her phasing ended, she’d melt to death in acid. 

He clenched his fists, shaking his head in disbelief at the cruelty of VGN, even if this was just an NPC. 

“Challenging roar!” Aegis cast, taking in a breath of poison. The affliction dealt 5,321 poison damage a second, more than his healing aura could handle, but not so much that he couldn’t manage it with intermittent heals. 

The roar spell released a shockwave that rippled outward through the poison cloud, outlining the gigantic form of the ooze that filled up the entire center of the throne room, having already dissolved all nearby armor and fabrics. It did not react to his roar at all.

“They ordered it to stay here until I die. My phasing only has 3 minutes left,” Savika said with a terrified voice. 

Aegis nodded, his mind racing, analyzing the room. “You’re not going to move on your own at all, huh? And I can’t do enough damage to kill you in three minutes, oozes take almost no physical damage…” He thought out loud. The ships in Feng’s broadcast lined up in a three-row formation, the front row of airships readying to airburst in.

Savika was only level 30. A combination of the ooze’s acid and the poison, and she’d die in an instant without him having a chance to heal her. Instead, his focus turned to his architectural skill, and he eyed the supports of the throne room's construction.

He had to take advantage of the ooze’s unwillingness to move. He pulled out a sledgehammer, and some pitons and other stone-cutting tools, aiming for the floor's support structure.

His advanced architectural skills did the heavy lifting, telling him precisely which sections of the floor he needed to destroy to cause it to break in. He moved as fast as he could, but it still wasn’t quick enough.

The first row of airships burst forward, Feng and the others hanging back with the second wave. He saw it happen on the broadcast and heard the explosions outside the palace. 

Kordas’ defenders were putting up a fight, but they wouldn’t hold out for long, especially against the next wave with VGN’s big players on board. The ground trembled violently from their bombardment.

He reached the last significant floor support and hammered a hole through it with his mithral tools to crack it. The entire center of the throne room cracked, and all at once, it crumbled and broke away. 

The floor fell, along with the ooze atop it, and crashed down 10 ft to the floor below. The ooze let out an angry gurgling sound and sloshed thin blobs upward towards the ethereal Savika, who was now floating in the middle of the floor in the open air above the 10 ft drop.

“I can’t use my wings yet. Not if I want to save Kalmoore. I’m going to jump to catch you, and I’ll heal you at the same time, okay? You’re going to have to trust me. Cancel the phasing the moment I get close. Got it?” Aegis instructed her.

Savika’s eyes went from staring down at the frustrated, flailing ooze to eying Aegis. Her expression couldn't change in this state, but he could tell she was terrified.

“I need to hear you say you confirm,” Aegis said as calmly as he could, subtly casting a heal on himself to offset the poison damage.

“I trust you,” Savika cried. 

“On three. One, two…” Aegis backed up to the far wall of the throne room to get a run-up and bent his knee. “Three!” He sprinted as fast as he could, and leapt from the edge of the hole into a dive towards Savika. The ooze timed a sloshing swing attack up at him just as he connected with her. 

Aegis pre-casted a heal, timed to finish the moment he came into contact with Savika, and held his shield down below his body, forcing it into the ooze’s attack to absorb the blow.

All at once, Savika unphased, Aegis caught her, healed her, blocked the attack, and carried her with his momentum over the hole, crashing against the wall on the opposite side of the throne room. He repeated the healing cast and invited her to his party with the others, which she accepted, and he saw how violently her health was fluctuating from the poison.

Aegis jumped to his feet and picked her up in his arms, rushing out of the palace and repeatedly casting heals on her. 

The second wave of airships arrived in the skies above Kordas, carrying Feng, Lilya, Daehyoon, Calikgos, their new bard streamer named Chaewon, who looked remarkably like Hae-won. Too much to be a coincidence, but Aegis had no time to think about it.

The palace shook, pillars, walls, and chunks of ceiling collapsing all around him. He never lost focus on holding and healing Savika, using his shield as best he could to protect her from falling rubble. 

He charged out the front doors of the palace, the gas whipping around him until he got into open, clean air, and quickly cast cleanse on himself and Savika. She had her eyes widened with terror, spotting the shadows cast by the airships hoving above them, most bearing the Vindicators' emblem on their sails. 

Arrows, spells, and cannonballs rained down on them, giving Aegis no reprieve, and he continued sprinting out of the palace gardens and back out into the streets of Kordas. The rising dust, smoke, and debris provided him cover from their attacks, but his glowing auras and shield worked against him.

“There’s no point running, Aegis. You can’t take us all on by yourself,” Feng shouted down from the side of his airship. 

“Won’t know until I try, right?” he shouted back. 

Feng waved his arms at his guildmates standing at the edge of the airship alongside him, ordering them to fire. Another bombardment of high-level spells, some crowd controlling, rained down on him.

Aegis knew which ones he absolutely had to dodge and which he could block. He survived and protected Savika from harm, but that wasn’t going to last. As another wave of attacks came, Feng hopped from the ship and landed softly on the streets of Kordas behind Aegis, chasing after him.

“I don’t need all of these guys. I’ve got a properly made mithril katana now, thanks to your willingness to share your secrets with Jensora. I will repay you by killing you with your dignity intact.” Feng drew the blade with a metallic swish, audible even over the explosions around them.

“No need to pay me back, it was a gift!” Aegis replied with sarcasm. 

Feng bent his knees, his sword glowing a bright blue through the settling dust around him. Aegis hazarded a glance over his shoulder to see it, and recognized this attack. Feng was going all out, right from the start. 

Aegis waited until the tiniest movement Feng made, and used it to time a jump upward onto the roof of a nearby building. In a flashing streak of blue light, Feng shot down the street, slashing his katana past where Aegis had been standing, narrowly missing chopping his feet with the attack. 

The rooftops were not much better, as a few buildings away, the icy-winged Lilya hovered down to meet him, bearing the Sages of Destiny tabard over her armor proudly. 

“Hey there, brat. I owe you for taking my husband away,” she hissed with a glare. 

Not just her and Feng, dozens of others were leaping from the surrounding airships, all of them eager to be the one to take him down. Aegis ignored all of them, peering through the clouds to spot the only important target, an NPC, which they were all ignoring in favor of Aegis.

Jael, floating high up and visible as Aegis had instructed him. He sent a party invitation to him, and he accepted, allowing him to communicate directly with Savika and the others.

[Aegis-Party]: “Jael, the fate of Kalmoore rests in you following my next command without question, the instant I give it. Understand?”

[Headmaster Jael(Elite)-Party]: “Understood.”

Jael turned to face Aegis through the surrounding destruction. All around them, the buildings of Kordas fell into ruin and rubble. The walls and their defenders fell in seconds, with blazing fires raging all around them. The afternoon sky was pitch black with smoke.

Messages poured through from the others in Rene, panicked, giving tips, or wondering what they should do. Even Savika expressed her fear. Aegis ignored all of them and focused on two things. Jael, and the third wave of airships.

The moment he heard them arrive with their airbursts, he gave the command.

[Aegis-Party]: “Portal to Rene!”

Jael began casting, and Jael took off running.

“STOP HIM, KILL THAT NPC!” Calikgos’ voice echoed across the city. Blasts of magic and volleys of arrows flew left and right. Calikgos, with his reaper scythe in hand, appeared in the air beside Jael and made a wide sweeping slash towards the headmaster with it, but the blade was halted by a projection of Aegis’ shield from a distance.

With ridiculous speed, Calikgos warped to the other side of Jael and took a second swing at him with the scythe. Again, Aegis blocked it with his second shield projection. 

The portal to Rene opened. A blast of ice magic shot at Aegis from behind, and Feng dashed over the rooftops in pursuit, katana held ready. 

All too slow. 

Aegis dove through the portal, yanking Jael along with him, who instantly cancelled the spell after they’d passed through.

“Savika, shut down the portal altar of Kordas completely,” Aegis instructed her, setting her down on the quiet streets of Rene, while Ruffily, Amlie, Tullan, and Chax rushed to meet him.

Aegis opened his portal interface for Rene in his land management menu and altered the settings so that only NPCs were allowed to use it.

“I don’t understand,” Jael looked around in disbelief. “Why did we flee? What of Kordas, what of our forces?”

Aegis closed out his interface and exchanged looks with the others around him. “Airburst has a 10-minute cooldown. Now that they’ve all used it to get to Kordas, we’ll have 10 minutes to prepare Rene.”

Jael’s eyes went wide with disbelief, the others clueing in slowly after. “You… you sacrificed the capital city of Kordas, and our strongest military force, for a meager 10 minutes of reprieve?”

Aegis put his hand on Jael’s shoulder, but his following words were directed at all of them present. “It won’t be the last sacrifice we need to make today. Our opponents are cheating otherworlders. It’s impossible to get out of this unscathed. I need all of you to trust me, and listen to my instructions very carefully…” 

As Aegis spoke, the sound of two Airships whooshed overhead, bearing the banners of smaller VGN guilds. Aegis recognized the symbols, but not who owned them. The others flinched, looking fearful at their arrival, but Aegis barely paid them mind.

“Listen carefully!” Aegis shouted, getting their focus back on him. “Our enemies hear every word we say, so listen very, very carefully,” he put as much emphasis on very as he could. “I’ve got a plan. It’ll require us to act as perfect cogs in a well-oiled machine, and even then, still probably won’t work.”

Tullan took a sharp, anxious breath, speaking on behalf of the others. “Alrighty, let's hear it.”