Chapter 283: In the Smoke

“Synopse’s team wins!” The VGN caster shouted proudly, his voice echoing out across the arena. Aegis and the others heard it, and saw the final match of Synopse’s team conclude by watching the livestream broadcasts of the arena available to them in the waiting room.

“That artifact staff is powerful.” Pyri commented with an impressed look in her eyes.

“I’ve been watching any footage I can of Synopse. It seems like it unlocks a new school of magic, revolving around stars and space.

“It looks really cool.” Lina commented.

“Do you think you could imitate any of his magic as a Magelord?” Aegis asked while turning to look at Pyri.

“Dunno. Maybe. Definitely gonna try!” She replied while stretching her arms up above her head.

“Feng won his matches pretty decisively as well…” Aegis then turned to look at Rakkan. “Do you think he’s gonna stand a chance against Seraxus?”

Rakkan silently replied by shaking his head, causing Aegis to let out an elongated sigh of frustration.

“We should pay attention to this next match,” Darkwing tried to break up the conversation to point at the screen as the next set of combatants stepped into the arena, “if we beat Schadenfreude we’ll be facing the winners, right?”

“Right.” Aegis nodded in agreement.

“Now entering the arena, another powerful representative team and member of our VGN, Skar!” The caster shouted excitedly, followed by more fanfare and cheers from primarily vindicators inside the arena. “They’ll be facing off against a regular in these tournaments, Eerie and her guild, The Spectrals. Unlike Skar, Eerie and her team have had many chances to take down Seraxus in previous tournaments and failed, but perhaps this time they might be able to best them. Let’s see if Skar and his guildmates, the Prowlers, will be able to make a name for themselves starting here.”

Following the casters' introductions, the crowds died down and the arena slowly fell silent. On either side of the arena, both teams moved into combat formations - though Aegis looked closely and noticed something extremely odd about Skar’s formation as they started grouping up in a circle, looking inward towards each other as if completely ignoring Eerie’s team.

Eerie’s team, however, held a standard formation with a shield-bearer at the front and a healing druid class player standing in the back with a staff, and a mix of damage dealers in between.

“What’re they doing?” Darkshot asked curiously, squinting his eyes at the screen that was showing Skar’s group.

       “Match begins in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”

The robotic female announcer voice hailed in the start of the match. Once she had, the transparent blue walls that existed around both teams to keep them separated vanished, allowing them free movement around the entirety of the arena. Eerie’s team fanned out quickly, rushing towards Skar’s group from various angles, while Skar’s group remained huddled.

Instead of moving, one of their members playing a Shadow Dancer shot out a smoke grenade at their gathering, concealing the party of 5 Prowlers within the smoke. A few moments after this, the robotic female voice called out over the arena once more.

       “Combatant Eerie has been defeated.”

“What?” Aegis shouted in disbelief as he heard this, and glanced towards the 1 of three screens in front of them that was showing Eerie’s team’s side of the arena. Sure enough, her body was disintegrating as her health had hit zero. It wasn’t just Aegis who was surprised - Eerie’s team, the VGN broadcaster, and the entire audience gasped and began exclaiming words of disbelief.

“What the hell just happened?” Rakkan leaned in, trying to understand it as well.

“They did something inside the Shadow Dancers smoke bomb…” Lina commented, standing up from the bench and looking on in equal confusion.

“But they didn’t even land any attacks on her, right?” Darkshot confirmed.

“None that I saw.” Aegis replied. “How can they kill someone without at-

       “Combatant Vargon has been defeated.” The female announcer declared, as another member of Eerie’s party vanished from the arena.

“No way. I was watching that time, definitely no attacks went out.” Rakkan exclaimed.

The frustration on Eerie’s three remaining team members - the damage dealers, was clearly visible on their faces. They broke into an aggressive charge forward towards the cloud of smoke, and by the time they arrived a third member got eliminated.

The remaining two managed to get in range of the black smoke and unleash a barrage of attacks towards it, but the attacks were blocked by a grand shell that had been cast by one of Skar’s team members - a sage class player.

Seeing this, Eerie’s members began charging up powerful attacks to break through the shield, but before they could unleash them, another member was defeated. Aegis watched this all unfold intently, trying to take in every single bit of information he could, noting that Skar had turned off his livestream for the fight to conceal what he was doing. Instead, though, Aegis saw that Eerie herself had been livestreaming and started opening up her livestream through is in-game interface, furiously tapping through it to locate her broadcast and start watching it.

He saw the live broadcast of Eerie frustratedly sitting in the waiting room, watching her team get defeated. She wasn’t speaking English, but rather Swedish, but the automatic translator allowed Aegis to understand her anger. She didn’t appear to have any further insight into what happened to her, so instead Aegis quickly opened up her broadcast history to rewind the footage to a few minutes prior.

As he did this, the last two teammates of Eerie’s were defeated without being able to get through the sage's shield, ending the first round of the match. The VGN broadcaster talked up Skar’s incredible strategy, and how it might be enough to take out Seraxus. Aegis ignored this and stayed focused on what he was doing.

Rakkan and the others all quickly noticed what Aegis was doing and turned their attention from the broadcasts to him.

“See anything?” Lina asked him worriedly.

“Not yet, still rewinding Eerie’s broadcast. Here, got it, this is the moment she died…” Aegis commented as he located the point of the broadcast he was looking for.

The blue wall around Eerie’s team fell, Eerie charged forward and Skar’s team went into black smoke. Then, Eerie suddenly took several large damage numbers, almost instantly but not quite.

“Hm.” Aegis scratched his chin, watching the footage a few more times by rewinding it over and over. “Fortunately, Eerie plays while showing her UI, so I can confirm she did not receive any debuffs. Also, she didn’t die in a single hit, but multiple hits over a very short time frame. It looks like 8 powerful attacks hit her within the span of 2 seconds.” Aegis explained to his party as he rewound the moment of her death and watched it carefully in slow motion.

“Can you tell anything else about what the attacks were? Similar damage numbers to each other? The damage types?” Pyri asked inquisitively.

“The numbers seem arbitrary relative to one another. One hit is for 15 000 damage, another for 7,000. It all appears in her interface as Psychic damage, though.” Aegis replied.

“Psychic? We don’t have resistance to that type, right?” Darkshot asked worriedly.

“It’s a pretty rare damage type, it’s hard to build up resistance to it…” Lina commented.

“The second match is starting. Let’s see if Eerie’s team can come up with some countermeasures.” Rakkan said, breaking up the focus on Aegis so that everyone turned back towards the three livestream displays of the combat arena.

Once again, Eerie and Skar’s teams moved into their respective positions.

“At the very least, let’s hope they can gather more data for us to work with, in case Skar’s team wins.” Aegis added as he closed out of Eerie’s livestream to watch as well.

The second match began with Eerie’s team opening more aggressively, using movement speed skills and powerful attacks right from the get go - a gigantic piercing arrow volley was launched by one of Eerie’s team members which soared across the arena towards the black cloud of smoke that Skar’s team re-created the moment the match started.

The initial ranged attacks all hit into the grand shell of Skar’s team once again, as Eerie was once again defeated within seconds. This didn’t phase the rest of her group this time though, as they were expecting as much, and continued their assault on the sage’s shell.

This time, they broke through the shell, but not before a second member of Eerie’s team was defeated out of thin air. With the shell gone, the gig was up and Skar’s team stopped doing whatever they’d been doing inside the smoke - instead jumping out with their weapons drawn to engage the remainder of Eerie’s team 5v3.

With Eerie’s team leader and healer dead, though, the three remaining combatants stood little chance. They fought valiantly, but Skar’s team had a strong formation that revolved around protecting their healer - something that Eerie’s team no longer had to keep their health up, and they were very quickly brought to 0 health points, ending the match.

“Okay, that’s progress.” Aegis nodded as the match concluded with Skar’s team as the victors again.

“Unless they can instantly cross the arena AND get through that sage’s shield, they won’t be able to stop whatever Skar’s team is doing before losing one to two members. It’s almost guaranteed that they will have to fight at an unfair numbers advantage.” Pyri commented.

“If they use that same strategy against us, they’ll likely go after you two.” Rakkan said while pointing at Pyri and Aegis. “I mean, at least, that’s what I’d do if I were them.”

“Should we start planning on how to fight them 3v5?” Lina asked.

“Whoa hold up, hold up. You want us to fight without Pyri, our big bad wizard - AND without Aegis, our defensive and healing player?” Darkshot replied.

“We won’t have a choice if they are able to employ that strategy against us.” Rakkan shrugged.

“There might still be a way to counteract it. I’ll keep looking over the footage more carefully.” Aegis said as he once again began skimming through Eerie’s past broadcasting footage of the match.

Unfortunately, though, he gained no new information, and just as quickly as the third round began, it ended with Skar defeating Eerie’s team in a decisive 3-0.

“Man.” Aegis sighed in frustration. “I don’t get how they’re doing it. It’s not a skill from any of Skar’s team’s classes. It’s gotta be another artifact item of some sort.”

“Just how many artifact items do those VGN guys have? How the hell do they find them all?” Darkshot groaned in frustration.

“I suggest we worry about figuring that out later. Our first match is coming up soon, so we should focus on that.” Pyri said.

“Right. Yeah.” Aegis nodded as he closed out of Eerie’s broadcast and turned to Rakkan.

“Anything else you can tell us about Schadenfreude?”

“Nothin’ more than what I already said.” Rakkan shrugged.

“Alright. At the very least, we don’t need to worry about any gimmicks, just raw PvP skill and experience.” Aegis nodded in response.

       “Your first match will be beginning shortly. Please enter the arena and wait for the timer to count down.” The robotic female voice resounded throughout their waiting room. Hearing it, Aegis felt his body tense up and stiffen. He slowly stood up from the bench and looked around to see Darkshot with a look of terror on this face, then saw Lina looking nervous as well. Rakkan looked focused, while Pyri looked excited.

“That’s us.” Pyri smirked. “Everyone ready?” She added cheerfully.

“Yup. Don’t worry guys, we practiced. You guys fought plenty of times before already, this should be easy.” Aegis tried to reassure them, as well as himself. Darkshot didn’t respond, but instead eyed the livestreaming icon above Aegis’ head which quickly shot up to 3 million viewers, which drew Aegis’ eyes towards it as well.

“Never in front of this many people, though.” Darkshot mumbled.

“Let’s just try to focus, and remember what we came here to do.” Aegis said, more to himself to anyone in his party.

“Right.” Lina nodded back, as the sounds of the doors leading out of the waiting room and into the arena opening could be heard - the sound of the heavy stone grinding on the tiled floors of the arena scratching its way into their ears.

Aegis took the lead by marching down the hallway first, followed by Rakkan, Pyri, and then Darkshot and Lina.

The bright sunlight welcomed them as it crept into their waiting room from the now open door, blinding Aegis temporarily as he passed through the threshold into the arena. The loud cheers of the crowds became immediately deafening, as his eyes adjusted and he saw the full stands all standing up and cheering - or in some cases booing at him.

Across the oval arena on the opposite end, Aegis saw Mikael’s team entering as well, but the audience seemed more fixated on Aegis and his party. The VGN broadcaster remained silent, though, and Aegis looked to see that the platform from which he’d been casting the other matches was now vacant. No Yumily, and no VGN casters - as if they were going to attempt to pretend Aegis’ match didn’t exist. Aegis wasn’t sure if this was a good thing yet, or a bad thing, but wasn’t given much time to ponder it.

After walking several meters into the arena, he spotted the blue transparent wall that indicated where he and his party were meant to wait for the final countdown timer before the match began. On the opposite end, Mikael’s party had reached their respective blue wall.

“Ladies and Gentlemen…” Hae-won’s voice suddenly echoed out across the stadium. “I bring to you the final match in the first round of this single elimination tournament. Hailing from Tarolas, the brave defenders of Stormtop and warriors of Zeus - Schadenfreude, being led by Mikael. They are not members of VGN, thank god,” Hae-won let out a sarcastic huff which caused a large portion of the audience to respond with laughter, “I understand that it’s thanks to their efforts that the dragon was driven out of these lands, and it’s they who’ve been fighting and holding back Seraxus all these past months, their efforts thwarted by the naive members of VGN who were only interested in putting on a good show for you all. So ask yourselves, Tarolas, are you enjoying their show so far, as your city is in flames and reduced to rubble!?” Hae-won shouted, causing more roars to erupt from the audience stands.

“She realizes we’re trying to reduce the hatred here, right?” Aegis sighed in frustration as he heard her egging on the angry cheers.

“Fear not, though, for Schadenfreude does not stand alone. They are not the only ones here today in Tarolas who have the sole interest of bringing an end to Seraxus’ reign of terror. His name is not for show. Allow me to present to you all the Harbinger of Light, the one who will deliver you all from the darkness, and remove hatred from this land. The one and only HERO of the Shattered World! Iiiiiiiit’s AEGIS! The Shield of Eirene!” Hae-won shouted excitedly, and the crowd ate it up.

Aegis’ face went bright red from embarrassment as he panned his eyes around the arena and saw the standing ovation being given to him by the NPCs and players of Tarolas - though none of the Vindicators or Sages of Destiny members were clapping or cheering.

“She’s really layin’ it on thick, huh?” Pyri chuckled.

“These two divine teams, filled with warriors of justice, will now battle it out to decide who is most worthy to move on and tear down Seraxus. May the strongest combatants win!” Hae-won finished with, as the match start timer got down to 5 seconds.

“Remember guys, don’t hold back.” Aegis said while fastening his shield to his arm and readying his claws. Rakkan formed his echoes, Lina drew her daggers, Darkshot knocked an arrow, and Pyri prepared her cinderbolts.

       “Match begins in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”