King of Nibelung scanned the crowd, his eyes darting around. He couldn't see that demon anywhere, but he wasn't about to relax. This was a demon they were dealing with. The second you thought you were safe just because you couldn't spot him, you were as good as dead.
But when Kazehana dropped Sun-King's name, he felt the tension in his shoulders finally ease up. He caught the worried looks on the other players' faces and even managed a small smile. Sun-King was a god-tier player, one of the best in the world. With someone like that on their side, these North American guys didn't stand a chance. And even that demon wouldn't be stupid enough to mess with a friend of Sun-King, right?
The thought had barely finished forming in his head when an icy cold pain exploded in his back. He kept his pain sensitivity at thirty percent, so stuff usually didn't hurt that bad, but this felt like someone was drilling right into his bones. He tried to yell, but nothing came out. Panic flooded through him.
'It's the demon. It has to be him. He's back.'
He just stared as his health bar started melting away. When two arrows materialized right in front of him almost at the same time, a cold wave of acceptance washed over him. 'Well, shit. Dead again.'
Thwack!
Amy's Double Shot ripped through nearly thirty percent of King of Nibelung's health. Combined with Flynn's nonstop assault, his HP dropped below the thirty percent mark in seconds.
"Piercing Shot!" Flynn barked into the party chat as he broke off and charged straight at Kazehana. No way was he letting that woman get a spell off to heal King of Nibelung. He tossed out three bombs, and the whole area lit up with fire and flashes. Each of his engineered bombs had its own cooldown, but the timers for different types ran separately. That meant he could unload a whole bunch of them at once if he wanted.
The moment King of Nibelung was struck down, his nearby allies roared and rushed Flynn. The explosions worked in Flynn's favor, flooding their vision with white light and disorienting them for a split second. By the time their vision cleared and their weapons connected, a pure white glow descended from above Flynn's head and wrapped around him in a solid barrier.
It was a Cleric's signature skill, Luminous Shield, capable of absorbing 380 damage for twenty seconds or until it shattered.
As soon as Flynn made his move, Let-There-Be-Light muttered a curse under his breath. He had wanted to talk things out, to avoid open conflict. It wasn't that he feared Kazehana, but crossing Sun-King was like smashing an egg against a rock. It was the kind of decision that could ruin a studio's future. Unfortunately, before he could even open his mouth, Flynn had already gone on the offensive.
At Flynn's signal, Amy had instinctively fired her Double Shot. Any chance of a peaceful resolution vanished. Let-There-Be-Light had no choice but to commit. After casting Luminous Shield on Flynn, he quickly tossed a Heal onto Amy as enemy rangers began lining up their shots. Then he slipped behind Not-A-Bystander, using the broad-backed warrior as a living shield.
Flynn flicked his eyes to his status effects and noticed the glowing barrier. "Nice skill," he said casually. "Is it new?"
Let-There-Be-Light's nerves were stretched tight. They were outnumbered and under pressure, and Flynn was chatting like this was a dungeon run. He gave a brief, tense "Mhm" and focused on casting.
Flynn, however, kept talking even as he pressed Kazehana. "So with this, I can just tank their hits?"
"No! There's a time limit and a damage cap, so don't get careless!" Amy shouted. At the same time, she loosed a Piercing Shot that finished off King of Nibelung. Kazehana's Holy Flash landed a fraction of a second too late.
"Oh, got it," Flynn said.
The shield shattered almost immediately with a sharp cracking sound. Two weapons slammed into him at once, and his health bar dropped by nearly half. Let-There-Be-Light, still crouched behind Not-A-Bystander, frantically chained Heals, barely keeping Flynn's HP hovering around two hundred.
"Quit talking. The shield's on a one-minute cooldown. Night-Stalker, you're on your own for now." Let-There-Be-Light said, his voice dead serious.
The surrounding North American players were stunned. They hadn't expected this small group to actually start a fight, especially while outnumbered and supposedly facing allies of Sun-King. Doubt started creeping in. Were these foreigners just bullshitting about knowing the Sun-King?
They shot each other looks, all thinking the same thing. It was totally possible. Hell, they'd dropped top player names to scare people off plenty of times themselves.
After a brief hesitation, one of them saw a Ranger drop and shouted, "Screw it! Let's waste these bastards first!"
"Yeah! Hey, brothers over there, hold on! We're coming!"
A full five-man party stormed in from the side: a healer, a tank, and three high-damage dealers. In an instant, the balance of the fight shifted.
Flynn had been on the verge of collapsing. No matter how agile or skilled he was, he couldn't withstand that much focused fire. Let-There-Be-Light's heals had cast times, and he still had to watch Amy's position. Watching Flynn's HP plunge filled him with mounting dread.
Then the reinforcements arrived.
Their Cleric immediately stabilized Flynn with a heal and a shield, halting the free fall of his health bar. At the same time, their Duelist and Arcanist locked onto Kazehana and rushed her down.
"All you Americans do is gang up on people!" Kazehana screamed as she scrambled backward. But Flynn stuck to her like a shadow. His dagger flashed again and again, carving wounds across her body so quickly it looked unreal. If this weren't a game, she would have died countless times over already.
"Gang up on people?" Amy snapped, switching targets and firing another Double Shot at Kazehana. "You were doing the exact same thing!"
"Shut your mouth, you bitch!" Kazehana spat, glaring at Amy.
Amy froze. She had never been spoken to like that before, and her eyes reddened instantly. Let-There-Be-Light saw it and completely lost his composure.
"F— YOU, KAZEHANA! I SWEAR I'LL CAMP YOUR CORPSE TILL YOU'RE BACK AT LEVEL ONE!"
That did it for Flynn. Amy, sweet as she was, was about to cry, and the Cleric who always maintained a cool demeanour, was cursing out like some pirate. He flickered right in front of Kazehana, tossed his dagger in the air, and grabbed her neck with his free hand, forcing her head down as he drove his knee into her stomach. As the dagger came back down, his right hand caught it perfectly and slammed it deep into her spine, the tip bursting out through the front of her neck.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Three massive critical damage numbers erupted above her head. Already on the brink, Kazehana collapsed instantly, as her body hit the ground without resistance.
The Duelist who'd just rushed over to help Flynn stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw working like he wanted to say something. He just stared in shock at Flynn's clean, brutal finish. 'This guy is insane. And what the hell was that damage? It was one stab, how did three damage numbers pop up? And they were all white, so it counted as normal attack damage. How does a Rogue have basic attacks hitting that hard?'
Flynn released Kazehana's body and let it fall aside. He glanced at the Duelist and flashed him a grin. The man flinched and quickly sidestepped away, then frantically typed in his party chat:
"I just ran into a psycho. This Rogue dude fights like he's actually murdering people."
"Haha, idiot, that's exactly what we're doing!"
"Did ThreeHits get scared? What a coward!"
The Duelist flushed, but he couldn't shake the feeling that what he'd just witnessed was different. Watching Flynn kill felt disturbingly real. In the end, he said nothing and swallowed his doubts.
The spinal stab Flynn used was a technique he'd practiced countless times in real-life close-quarters combat. It was efficient, clean, and final.
From her ghost form, Kazehana furiously typed, "Sun-King won't let you get away with this."
"Sun-King?" Flynn replied, turning his back on her corpse. "You mean that Paladin? My name's Night-Stalker. Tell him to come find me anytime."
He scanned the battlefield. With new players flooding in, the enemy could no longer focus him down anymore. The chaos was perfect cover. He moved like a ghost through the crowd, his speed was like a blur, as his dagger flashed like silver. With every hit, another player's health bar took a massive chunk of damage.
Without Kazehana and King of Nibelung, the foreigners were now at a disadvantage. Flynn's side had two healers. They had none.
More and more players joined as word of the fight spread outside the west gate. Shouts in different languages rang out as newcomers charged in, turning the area into complete pandemonium.
Amid all of it, Flynn slipped away.
By the time Let-There-Be-Light and the others released and ran back to their corpses, Flynn was already crouched in a quiet corner just outside the gate. Once everyone regrouped and resurrected, the five of them gathered there.
"You are seriously shameless," Amy said, staring at him. She'd died once, and if not for the extra experience from their last quest pushing her ten percent past level fifteen, she would have dropped a level. Let-There-Be-Light and the others hadn't fared much better. In that kind of chaotic melee, death was unavoidable.
There was only one exception.
Flynn stood there untouched. The name above his head burned a deep, ominous red. From the first strike to the end of the brawl, he had accumulated seven PvP points without dying once. After getting the message from Let-There-Be-Light, he'd just calmly slipped away from the fight.