Spiteful Healer

Chapter 190: Rune Knight

Chapter 190: Rune Knight

“What the hell was that?” Quinn shouted as she pushed her way through the crowds of other players to get to Baffo, Sapphire and Cheryl as they stood back up from being knocked down through the portal.

“That battlemaster hit us with some weird shockwave attack.” Sapphire grumbled back in annoyance as she dusted herself off.

“Sorry, it’s because I fell…” Cheryl apologized to everyone while keeping her head turned down.

“Sorry? You mighta just lost us any chance to forge mithral before the invasion!” Artaphernes shouted at her in frustration.

“Easy…” Baffo stepped in to stand between Cheryl and Artaphernes, causing Artaphernes to let out a frustrated sigh. While all of this transpired, Pyri carefully eyed Cheryl’s behavior, squinting at her suspiciously.

“Pyri…” Quinn called her out, causing her to look up from Cheryl somewhat surprised. “Cooldown on your portal?”

“Five minutes. Once it’s up I can portal us back to Pakro’Vielle.” Pyri nodded back to her.

“I can shadow dance there faster.” Lina said with determination, but Pyri quickly put her hand on her shoulder.

“You’ll run out of mana long before you get there. We’re in Kordas.”

“But I…”

“Calm down, Aegis and Rakkan will be okay.” Pyri tried to reassure her.

“Great. Good. So that’s our plan? Wait 5 minutes until Pyri’s portal comes off of cooldown?” Artaphernes threw his hands in the air and began pacing around the other players.

“Got a better one?”

“No other sages have a Pakro’Vielle portal available?”

“Sorry, I haven’t learned it yet…” A member of his guild replied shyly from amidst the crowd.

“Neither has Yorgi. And Trexon’s down. We’ll just have to hope Aegis and Rakkan can handle that battlemaster.” Quinn replied, causing Herilon to let out a long nervous sigh. Pyri put her eyes back on Cheryl who seemed to be fidgeting with her interface, which initially seemed odd until Pyri saw that all of the players nearby were doing it - they were all opening up Aegis’ stream to watch what was happening in their peripheral vision.

“Thanks for the assist.” Aegis said to Rakkan, who simply nodded back at him. They didn’t have much time to exchange any more words as the abysslings began to swarm around Joltblade and surround Aegis and Rakkan.

“Got a plan?” Rakkan asked.

“Eh, Maybe. Make him look away for a sec.” Aegis replied.

“Hah. Cute.” Joltblade shouted after he heard this, over the sound of the stampeding abysslings. He sent his axes at Aegis from all sides again, and Aegis quickly got to work in trying to avoid and block them, using guard and his real shield, and careful movement. While this happened, Rakkan lifted his spear arm up and threw the Mosmir stinger with incredible strength through the air at Joltblade. Joltblade easily stepped to the side to avoid the stinger and smirked as he did.

“Missed, and now you’ve lost your spear.” Joltblade replied mockingly.

“Wrong, twice.” Rakkan smirked back, snapping his fingers to activate the exploding effect on the stinger just as it landed in the hide of an abssyling behind him. Joltblade heard the sound of the explosion triggering and turned to look at it as it engulfed him, dealing 430 void damage to him. A second later, Rakkan snapped his fingers again to return the Mosmir Stinger to his hand.

Joltblade, who had turned to look at the explosion, laughed after seeing the small amount of damage it had dealt.

“Hah, that’s it?” Joltblade turned back around to look at Aegis and Rakkan again, only to see a bright red glow coming from Aegis’ hands.

“Made you look away for a sec…” Rakkan shrugged, and at that time Joltblade desperately squinted to see what it was Aegis was holding. Whatever it was, it was causing flames to erupt from Aegis’ hands, and he quickly did a wide fanning, flinging motion with his hands as he released what was in his hands all around them in the surrounding cavern.

“Are those…?” Joltblade watched in disbelief as the dozens of red blast petals began to slowly flutter down towards the ground. “ARE YOU A FUCKING PYSCHO?” Joltblade shouted angrily at them.

“Eh…” Aegis grinned mischeviously back at him, flattening his hand out and wiggling it side to side. “Lil’ bit.” He then turned and began sprinting as fast as he could with Rakkan at his side, the two of them desperately running towards the exit tunnel leading back to Reltrak Forest before the petals hit the ground. At that time, Joltblade tried to do the same. He jumped up off the back of nearby abysslings to get above the swarm, carefully avoiding the falling petals all around him, but just as he got to the front of the swarm and had a clear path to pursue Rakkan and Aegis, Rakkan’s echoes jumped out at him from the sides and grabbed him. One echo grabbed his left arm, the other his right, and then the third threw its large orc arms around his waist to hold him back.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Let go!” Joltblade shouted desperately as he began struggling against the grapple of Rakkan’s three echoes, but he wasn’t going to break free nearly as fast as he needed to. He watched in horror as Rakkan and Aegis ran through the partially caved in tunnel, then watched as the blast petals began to land on the ground.

“Get behind me, my fire resistance is stupidly high from grinding those magma elementals!” Aegis shouted to Rakkan, who nodded back and dove into the tunnel. Aegis, upon entering the tunnel, spun around and held his shield up to block the tunnel entrance with it, in an attempt to brace the incoming fire explosions.

Less than a second after Aegis got into position the explosions began to trigger.

“Cancel your echoes so they don’t transfer damage. He shouldn’t be able to escape anymore.” Aegis instructed Rakkan and he nodded back, snapping his fingers to unsummon the echoes holding Joltblade in place, which was followed by a loud series of echoing, booming explosions that shook the tunnel around them violently. An intense heat, more intense than usual, blazed out from each petal, creating a chain reaction that ignited all of them and released repeated waves of flames all over the cavern.

As the fire pressed up against Aegis shield and dealt fire damage to him, he began healing himself through it and stood strong, making sure no flames passed him and got to Rakkan. He couldn’t see due to the amount of explosions and flames, but he could hear the sound of the abysslings screeching out in pain from the fire. It was a few long seconds of constant explosions before the sounds finally died down.

“Think he died?” Aegis asked Rakkan, and Rakkan shrugged back. “Whatever, let’s get out of here before more of those abysslings show up.” Aegis pulled his shield back and the two took off sprinting down the tunnel. It wasn’t long before they reached the ramp leading up back into the Reltrak Forest, but as they began ascending up the ramp, they heard footsteps running behind them.

“Get back here, you lil shits. You’re going to pay for that.” Joltblade shouted out angrily at them from behind.

“Guess that answers that question.” Aegis sighed in frustration. Joltblade was running much faster than them in his pursuit, so that by the time Rakkan and Aegis had reached the top of the ramp, Joltblade jumped up out of it behind them by leaping off the walls, propelling himself upward with incredible strength.

Aegis and Rakkan got a few meters away from the hole in the Reltrak Forest’s mossy ground before turning around and watching Joltblade land right at the edge of the hole.

“How the hell’d he survive that?” Rakkan asked in disbelief as they looked upon him. The flames had clearly hit Joltblade, his Blacklion guild tabard had been completely burned away along with other cloth components to his outfit, but this revealed his armor that he’d been wearing underneath it all.

“Dragonscale, voidsilk, high level leather. That’s some impressive armor you’ve got on…” Aegis eyed it up and down. “Quite a contrast to those plain, unenchanted iron weapons you are using.” Aegis eyed the battleaxes as they hovered behind Joltblade, then looked to the iron swords he was wielding in both his hands. “Where’d you get the dragon scales?” Aegis asked him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Joltblade smirked back. “Tell you what. Let’s duel for it. If I win, you give up the giant’s heart. If you win I’ll tell you where to find dragons.” He said while twirling his swords around in his hands. This gave Aegis pause, he looked to Rakkan, who looked back at him nervously.

“We don’t need this guy to find dragons, we can figure it out ourselves.” Rakkan said to Aegis.

“Well, I can understand you might be too scared.” Joltblade replied with a shrug.

“I’ll hold him him here, you get to Pakro’Vielle.” Rakkan instructed Aegis.

“Psh. You’ll hold me here…” Joltblade replied in annoyance. “Your little Rune Knight class can’t hold shit. Just like when you were a sage. I feel bad for you, getting humiliated by battlemasters, over and over again…” Joltblade began pacing around the edge of the hole as Aegis and Rakkan glared back at him.

“Renault, right?” Joltblade paused for a response, but he got none. “First Seraxus trashes Puagas. Now I’m going to trash Kalmoore. And both times, you fail to do anything about it…” Joltblade followed this up with a light chuckle.

“You can take him on one on one. But I don’t need to run away.” Aegis interrupted Joltblade’s laughter. “I’ll sit here and watch.” Aegis crossed his arms, causing Rakkan and Joltblade to both stare at him curiously.

“But, if I lose, then he’ll…” Rakkan began replying to Aegis, but saw Aegis’ eyes staring back at him, unwavering.

“You’re a Rune Knight, and you’re both level 150. Why would you lose?” Aegis smiled. “We can’t keep running away from these guys.” Rakkan hesitated for another second, before taking a deep breath and spawning echoes around himself.

“You’re right. I won’t lose.”

“Hah.” Joltblade began twirling his swords in his hands, bending his knees and preparing for Rakkan.

“Is he serious?” Sapphire shouted out angrily as she watched Aegis’ broadcast alongside the others in Kordas. “He can so easily get away! Why is he not just running while Rakkan fights?”

“It’s about being a man.” Baffo replied. Artaphernes, Herilon, Ren and Darkshot all nodded in agreement with this explanation, but it only angered Sapphire further.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” Sapphire shouted angrily, while Pyri smirked at the view of the broadcast she was being shown.

“Rune Knights are a rare class that have never shown up in the monthly PvP arena tournaments, nor are they commonly used by gankers. Players who gravitate towards the Rune Knight class generally lean more towards the RP and PvE aspects of the game, due to it revolving around lore, ancient runes, and research…” Hae-won explained to Aegis’ viewership of 500,000 as the camera panned around Rakkan and Joltblade, while Aegis backed away. The three were illuminated by the glowing balls that grew out of the green moss all around the floor of the Reltrak cavern.

“As a result, there’s not much we can use for reference to get an idea of how capable a Rune Knight might be in a PvP match. Battlemasters, on the other hand, are very well documented and capable PvP combatants. So much so that most believe they are the strongest PvP class in the game… so, this oughta be interesting…” Hae-won took a long nervous breath as it went tensely silent.

The beginning of their fight went slow. Rakkan slowly fanned out his echoes to the sides, while simultaneously Joltblade spread his axes out behind himself. The two’s eyes were scoping each other out, watching one another's movements of not only their echoes and weapons, but watching each other's eyes to see where the other was looking as well.

Rakkan’s nerves were slowly getting to him, but he took in a deep relaxing breath of air and did his best to recall all of the practice he’d had with Pyri up until this point in controlling his echoes. He’d learned about what they could and couldn’t do, and he’d studied everything there was to know about Battlemasters.

“Let’s get this over with.” Joltblade suddenly spoke, making the first move by dashing forward at Rakkan’s main body. It was a misdirect, though, and Rakkan had seen this plenty of times before from other battlemasters. As Joltblade dashed forward, he sent his axes forward as well and used them to surround Rakkan.

Rakkan carefully jumped backwards and tracked the movement of the axes as Joltblade stopped his dash a meter in front of him. Rakkan swung his spear out wide in front to discourage any attacks from Joltblade’s swords, forcing Joltblade to jump backward to avoid the tip of his Mosmir Stinger, all the while the 5 floating axes came in at Rakkan from all sides.

It looked bad, but Rakkan took advantage of all the axes being on the offensive to send two of his echoes forward, flanking each side of Joltblade and swinging out at him with their four weapons. While Joltblade focused on dodging Rakkan’s echoes, Rakkan jumped back, parried, and dodged the strikes from the five axes. Both of them had managed to completely avoid getting hit by any of each others weapon swings, until Rakkan used his 4th and final echo wielding the crossbow to jump into the air and fire at Joltblade from an odd angle to where his other echoes had been striking from, making it impossible for Joltblade to dodge the strike and dealing 2154 piercing damage.

“Tch.” Joltblade immediately shouted in annoyance as the bolt pierced his shoulder, then motioned one of his axes away from Rakkan’s real body to chase down the crossbow wielding echo. He then attempted to strike down at Rakkan again with his axes, forcing Rakkan to dodge and parry, but this time Rakkan avoided using his sword defensively, and instead threw the Mosmir stinger at Joltblade, who was not expecting it as he was busy dodging strikes from Rakkan’s echoes wielding the axe, bladed fist, maul and mace.

The moment the spear hit Joltblade and dealt damage, Rakkan snapped his fingers to return the stinger to his hand just in time to use it to deflect one of Joltblade’s axes. The second hit seemed to trigger something in Joltblade that pissed him off, and he suddenly became much more efficient and focused in his movements.

Rakkan had a harder time finding any openings, and a harder time dodging the four axes swinging at him from that point. Meanwhile, the crossbow echo was struggling to kite the axe chasing it around the mushrooms, but an idea jumped into Rakkan’s head as he watched the echo being chased.

Recalling that when he unsummoned an echo, enemies acted as though it didn’t ever exist anymore nor did it transfer threat to his main body, he decided to take advantage of this. He ran the crossbow echo underneath one of the nearby mushrooms with a Fisher in it, triggering the fisher to suddenly launch its worm body down at Rakkan’s echo. In the last second, just as Joltblade’s axe was about to connect with Rakkan’s crossbow echo, Rakkan unsummoned it, so that the fisher only hit the axe.

Immediately after, the fisher de-aggroed and curled back up into the mushroom, but the axe that it had hit was turned to stone and fell to the ground, breaking into several petrified pieces.

“Seriously?” Joltblade groaned as he saw it happen. “You’re gonna fight like that?”

“Gotta pay attention to your surroundings.” Rakkan smirked as he resummoned his echo and sent it to retrieve the crossbow. Once it had, it reloaded and fired a bolt, forcing Joltblade to divide his focus and block the bolt, and in that time, Rakkan threw the Mosmir stinger at him again from behind, successfully hitting him before snapping the spear back into his hand to defend himself.

“I get why you use only two weapon types. It’s easier to specialize, but, there’s disadvantages to that.” Rakkan commented as the metal of their weapons clashed loudly, echoing off the mushrooms and caverns all around them.

“Oh ho, don’t tell me the Rune Knight is going to try and lecture me on how to play battlemaster.” Joltblade groaned. “You’re not even playing a Rune Knight well. You’re like a wannabe Battlemaster. Tell me,” Joltblade suddenly created an opening on one of Rakkan’s echoes and landed several hits on it. “Is this really how you should be playing that class?” Joltblade smirked as the damage taken by the echoes transferred back to him, forcing Rakkan to pull his echoes away from Joltblade’s main body.

Rakkan hadn’t noticed, but Joltblade had drawn out a new spare axe and used it to attack his echoes from behind.

“I mean,” Joltblade pulled his axes back while Rakkan pulled his echoes back, giving each other both a second to breathe as they glared back at each other. “If this is how you were planning to play, why not just be a battlemaster, instead of going with the low budget version?” Joltblade added in a mocking tone, twirling his swords in his hands and preparing for round two. In this small reprieve, Rakkan glanced back at Aegis and saw him still standing, staring, arms crossed. Aegis didn’t say anything - he didn’t have to.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Rakkan replied with a sigh as he looked back at Joltblade. “I’m a Rune Knight, not a battlemaster. I should start acting like it.” Rakkan said before suddenly charging forward two steps, then swinging his sword in Joltblade’s direction. Rakkan was nowhere near close enough to Joltblade for his sword to hit, though, so Joltblade didn’t think anything of it at first…

“Rune:Enlarge!” Rakkan shouted, suddenly causing the blade of his longsword to grow massively long, extending its reach far enough to hit Joltblade. He still had time to react and dodged out of the way of it, though.

“Rune: Frostbrand!” Rakkan shouted afterwards, and the sound of a bolt whistling through the air could be heard. Desperately, Joltblade located Rakkan’s crossbow wielding echo and moved an axe down just in time to block the bolt, but in that time, Rakkan sent his other echoes forward.

“Rune: Enlarge!” Rakkan cast again. The moment he had, the length of his sword returned to normal, and the size of the maul in the hands of one of his echoes suddenly became intimidatingly massive as the echo swung it down on Joltblade. It was like a giant building was being swung down on him from above, and he knew there was no way to parry it - he had to dodge.

The positions of Rakkan’s echoes forced Joltblade to dodge in a very specific direction, which is exactly what Rakkan wanted, and threw his Mosmir Stringer into the open air, predicting exactly where Joltblade would jump to in order to avoid the massive, enlarged maul.

“Rune: Frostbrand!” Rakkan recast on the spear as it flew through the hair, and Joltblade jumped into it. The moment the spear hit him, Rakkan triggered the void explosion to add to the damage it dealt, in total dealing 6,302 damage, before Rakkan snapped the spear back to his hands.

“Annoying lil shit…” Joltblade shouted in frustration as he fanned out his axes to attack the echoes, but Rakkan followed each axe with his eyes and managed to maneuver them out of the way and parry the axes, while charging forward himself as the head of his echoes enlarged maul slammed into the mossy floor of the cavern, making a loud booming sound.

Joltblade glanced between Rakkan and his echoes, confirming that each echo was now preoccupied with avoiding his floating axes, thus turned his attention fully on the charging Rakkan with his longswords at the ready, but just before Rakkan reached Joltblade, he flung his spear at him again.

“Rune: Enlarge!” Rakkan shouted, and Joltblade carefully looked at both Rakkan’s spear and sword to try and figure out which would be growing in size, but instead, Rakkan put the rune on his left fist and thrust it out behind his thrown spear, surprising Joltblade and forcing him to dodge to the side and avoid the massive giant orc punch.

“Incredible. The Rune Knight skills have the battlemaster Joltblade completely on the back foot. I’ve never seen a battlemaster of this skill level forced to play so defensively. It might just be the hard counter to battlemasters that everyone has been waiting for!” Hae-won shouted excitedly to the audience watching.

“Nah… don’t get ahead of yourself there, broadcaster…” Herilon mumbled nervously as he watched the livestream alongside the others.

“What do you mean? Rakkan is totally kicking his ass.” Ren cheered excitedly.

“That’s because Joltblade isn’t taking advantage of what makes Battlemasters OP. If he starts doing that, things could get ugly.” Herilon replied anxiously.

“Having fun?” Joltblade sneered in annoyance as he took a few more hits from Rakkan’s relentless assault of attacks. Rakkan didn’t reply, but rather carefully landed another hit on Joltblade with his spear, causing him to roar in frustration. “ENOUGH!” Joltblade shouted as a black shockwave shot out from his body, knocking Rakkan and his echoes back as Joltblade’s axes retreated to him.

“You’re skilled in controlling your echoes. You musta been training hard. I gotta admit, I underestimated you.” Joltblade cracked his neck and glanced between Aegis and Rakkan. “You win, I give up.” He sighed before turning towards the hole leading back to the red river.

“Seriously?” Rakkan asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, the truth is, it doesn’t really matter whether you have that eternal flame or not. You’ll never find mithral, and you’ll never save Kalmoore. You’re all screwed anyway, so… Cya.” Joltblade chuckled before dashing towards the hole, but Aegis had already begun sprinting and dashed in front of him to cut him off, holding his shield out to block his escape.

“You’re not getting away. You’re going to jail with the rest of your blacklion buddies.” Aegis growled at him.

“Tch.” Joltblade rolled his eyes dismissively at Aegis and jumped up off of Aegis shield to get over him and land behind him. Aegis reacted by snapping his fingers and creating a guard to block Joltblade’s path just as Baffo had, and Joltblade once again used one of his axes as a foothold to propel himself up above the projection to get further in the air still. But then, Aegis jumped up off the ground to cut off Joltblades path and bashed his shield into Joltblade, knocking him backwards to the ground where he’d initially jumped from.

“Huh…” Aegis landed at the edge of the hole, standing between it and Joltblade who’d landed on his bottom and slowly stood back up, with a look of utmost anger. “Eirene doesn’t seem to mind it when I hit you. She must not like you very much.” Aegis grinned.

“Heh…” Joltblade stood back up and looked behind himself to see Rakkan closing in on him. “Last chance to move out of the way. I’m done playing nice… you two’ve managed to piss me off.” Joltblade said to Aegis in a deep, serious voice.

“We’re not afraid of you.” Aegis replied confidently.

“Well…” Joltblade sighed as he straightened his back and dropped his swords. Simultaneously, all of his axes fell lifelessly to the ground. “You should be.” He smirked. Out of nowhere, he equipped a new set of weapons. Two mithral swords appeared in his hands, while 5 strange looking, giant mithral shurikens that gave off sparks of lightning appeared behind him, rotating around rapidly like saws while making loud buzzing sounds. Worse, though, was that one mithral swords in his hands was giving off lightning sparks, while the other sword appeared to have tiny black mouths all over the blade with razor sharp teeth that repeatedly chomped open and shut.

“My original name was Balyok, but when I found this mastercraft weapon, I changed it. I haven’t had a reason to use it in awhile, so, congratulations on that at least.” Joltblade said as Aegis nervously looked over Joltblade’s shoulder to see a worried look on Rakkan’s face.