Chapter 154: No Fun (3)

The fireball came first, but Jaxir had already shifted out of its path when the three Golden Fleece players moved. The flames passed his shoulder and burst against the mud behind him, while an arrow came from much farther away and struck the ground directly in front of his next step. A second arrow landed to his right almost at the same moment, leaving Jaxir with only one clean direction to move.

Orsa was already waiting there.

The woman drove forward with her mace held close to her body, then put her entire frame behind the swing once Jaxir entered range. Jaxir pulled back before the weapon reached him and fired a Cast toward her chest, only for Bex to step between them and raise his shield at the last possible moment. Mana flashed across the shield just before impact, and Jaxir’s Cast broke apart without doing any visible damage.

Jaxir moved away instead of pressing, taking in the three of them while the other players continued circling around. Bex immediately settled behind his shield again, Orsa stayed close enough to punish Jaxir if he tried to rush past him, while Ilyan remained high in a tree well outside the main fighting with another arrow already drawn.

They weren’t simply stronger than the people Jaxir had been bullying a moment ago. Every action one of them took made the next action of another easier.

Another set of arrows left Ilyan’s bow, but this time they spread across a broad section of the battlefield instead of aiming directly at Jaxir. One cut off the space behind him, two more covered either side, and the others forced him toward Bex and Orsa whether he wanted to go there or not.

Jaxir grinned as he fired two Casts to force Orsa back and slipped through the smallest gap.

"That’s more like it."

Ilyan changed his attack immediately.

One arrow slammed into Jaxir’s staff before he could take another step, and the second arrived before he had finished absorbing the force of the first. Jaxir knocked it aside, only for a third to come straight down the same line, followed by a fourth and fifth without enough space between them for him to reset his stance. Each shot carried enough weight that blocking one planted him more firmly in place for the next and kept eating away at his mana every time aegis was forced to act.

But the shots oddly weren’t doing a ton of damage nonetheless.

Orsa was already closing on him again while Bex moved behind her, and the other players had finally realized that the Golden Fleece trio had created an opening. If Jaxir continued defending, Ilyan could keep firing until someone reached him, but attempting to dodge normally would mean eating one of the arrows before he built enough momentum to escape. He needed to break the sequence at once.

The next arrow came straight for his chest, and Jaxir stopped trying to resist it.

Sparkle Mana wrapped around his staff just before the arrow struck, and instead of deflecting the projectile, Jaxir let the mana catch its momentum and pull. His feet lost their grip on the mud as the force of the arrow ripped him sideways, carrying him several meters out of the line of fire before he broke the connection and landed in a crouch. Orsa’s mace crashed into the ground where he had been standing.

"Okay." Jaxir rose with a laugh and looked toward the distant tree. "You need to go first."

The problem was getting there.

Ilyan had positioned himself far enough away that even Jaxir’s Casts would lose too much control before reaching him, and charging straight through the battlefield would only invite another sequence of those heavy arrows.

Bex and Orsa didn’t even need to stop Jaxir themselves. If Ilyan pinned him in one place again, everyone else surrounding them would have enough time to pile on until something lethal landed.

Luckily, walking over there wasn’t his only option.

Jaxir fired one Cast into the chest of a nearby Melee player, then sent another curving around Bex’s shield toward Orsa. A third went farther, passing the immediate fight and forcing a Ranged player behind them to duck, while the fourth traveled farther still before losing shape and breaking apart short of Ilyan’s tree. Jaxir kept moving through the crowd while firing, splitting his attention between the people close enough to attack him and the archer watching from above.

[-108]

[-96]

Bex stepped in front of another shot meant for Orsa, but this time something changed before the Cast reached him. A faint connection formed between the two Golden Fleece players, and the damage Jaxir expected to hit Orsa seemed to shift toward Bex instead. Jaxir didn’t know exactly what Bex had done, but the Tank clearly had more ways to protect his teammates than simply standing in front of them.

That made Ilyan even more important. Whatever Bex had done, Ilyan was certainly too far away to benefit from it.

Jaxir sent another Cast toward the tree, then another from a different angle. Both fell short, but the thin tendrils spreading from his Light Mana reached farther than the Casts themselves and fed him information about the wind, distance and the way his mana lost cohesion over that space. He adjusted the next one before firing.

It went farther.

Ilyan leaned away from the shot, then immediately drew three arrows and sent them into different routes around Jaxir. Jaxir moved between the first two, fired at a nearby mage to stop another spell from forming, then twisted his staff and sent two more Casts toward Ilyan while continuing to run. One accelerated halfway through its flight while the other curved away from the tree so sharply that Ilyan ignored it.

That was exactly what Jaxir wanted.

His Casts didn’t need to fly in straight lines anymore, and Light Mana didn’t care what someone thought their target was supposed to be. Jaxir started filling the battlefield with silver-blue bullets aimed at different people and different distances, some slowing down before accelerating again while others curved around bodies, trees and shields. Ilyan could no longer tell which ones actually belonged to him.

Orsa came in from Jaxir’s left and swung low, forcing him to jump while Bex planted both feet behind his shield and blocked the Cast Jaxir sent toward her. Jaxir landed beside another player, drove a quick Cast into his stomach to clear the space, then felt one of his distant bullets finally reach the range he had been testing toward. It passed Ilyan’s tree by less than a meter.

Jaxir smiled.

"Got you."

Three Casts left his staff almost together, but only one traveled directly toward Ilyan. The second appeared to be aimed at a mage farther left, while the third curved toward the trunk beneath the archer and accelerated after passing behind it. Ilyan avoided the obvious shot, shifted away from the second, then realized too late that both movements had put him exactly where Jaxir wanted.

Jaxir cast Drain.

The Hex struck him squarely.

[-91]

Ilyan jerked against the branch as his vitality began pouring away, the effect continuing even after the initial hit had ended. He tried to draw his bow again, but another pulse of damage made his arm dip before he could settle his aim.

[-87]

[-94]

That was the difference between the L1 Hexes Jaxir had relied on for so long and the L2 Abilities he was finally starting to use freely. Drain didn’t need Jaxir to stand there peppering Ilyan with Casts once it took hold. It kept pulling life out of him while Jaxir dealt with everything else around him. Against a normal player instead of a Level 20 Region Boss, the damage was brutal.

Ilyan survived it, if only barely.

His health stopped at a sliver, and he grabbed the trunk with one hand while trying to move farther around the tree. Relief had only just appeared on his face when the Cast he had dismissed earlier completed its wide curve around the opposite side and came back toward him from behind.

[Critical Hit!]

[-142]

The Cast struck the back of his skull.

―

[You have killed player "Ilyan"]

―

+1413 Experience

+62,343 silver

+91 copper

―

Ilyan dissolved into motes of light, leaving his bow, quiver and several pieces of equipment to tumble through the branches toward the ground. Jaxir didn’t bother watching them fall, since Orsa and Bex had been trying to kill him through the entire exchange and were already closing in again. He turned toward them with his grin back in full force.

"Now that that fly’s out of the way, why don’t we have some fun?"