Zoe

  The enemies that had been carrying the battering ram up toward the city gates had been generally well protected by some bulkier troops that were wearing heavier armor and carried large shields. These were the enemies that had been pelted with firebombs in the group’s last attempt, as they were holding their shields over the ram bearers to defend them from arrows.

  Cass had warned Zoe that some were breaking away toward her, so when she saw them approaching, she was ready. There for three of them coming toward her, already brandishing spears in addition to their extra large shields. One of them was even dripping bits of fire, presumably from Evie throwing firebombs from the top of the wall.

  “You got them?” Cass asked.

  “I do.” Zoe replied. “Caoimhe, can you guard my side a little bit? I need to see how dangerous these shielded ones are.”

  “I’m a bit busy over here, too, you know.” Caoimhe called back. Zoe wasn’t sure she believed that, given there were swaths of enemies falling to Caoimhe's sword swinging. Though she supposed there were still hordes of enemies to take their place every time some fell.

  “I’ll guard your side,” Mellody said, slipping over a little more to favor Nyx’s side of their wedge formation. “Do what you need to do, just do it quick.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Zoe said, as Mellody popped some kind of damage booster to help clear out the enemies that she needed to now guard their position against.

  Zoe, for her part, broke away a few steps toward the enemies that were approaching. She wanted to keep them away from their little group, and hoped that she could do enough damage to the three of them to keep them aggro’d on her. If they were dangerous enough and broke away to attack Mellody, their plan might be over before it even really began.

  She took a deep breath, and readied for the fight. She debated whether this plan - which was doomed to fail from the get-go, they all knew - was worth spending a few [Poisons] on. It might be silly, because it was essentially throwing them away for no reason.

  But at the same time, this was their last pull of the night. Where was the fun in that if it ended early?

  She popped two of her [Poisons]; they were both long lasting buffs, that would hopefully help her win this immediate fight. [Frostbreath] was a [Poison] that would give all her attacks an extra [Slow] effect, which should help her manage the three-on-one fight she was stepping into. [Reaper Salve] was the second, and would add an extra 60 [Might] DoT onto each attack. It wouldn’t stack on each target, but every time she landed an attack on an enemy already afflicted, it would refresh the timer, and that was useful enough.

  And then the enemies were upon her.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  [Knife] was an interesting class that had a lot of options in melee. The basic fighting style revolved around building long combos while remaining as uninterrupted as possible. The longer the [Knife’s] combo went on, the more damage they dealt. The biggest drawback, however, was that as the combo length grew, so did the animation lock on attacks.

  This meant that [Knife] was incredibly dangerous in situations where it could be left to simply hack away at a target uninterrupted. Attacks were quick at first, but as the combo wore on, attacks could escalate to dealing upwards of 3 or 4,000 [Might] worth of damage per attack - but the animations for the attacks of that strength were 3 or 4 seconds long, and the [Knife] was stuck standing there until the animation was done.

  Balancing that was a fun part of the class for Zoe. But it also meant that situations like the one she was in could get very dangerous very fast if she got cocky.

  So, to start, she opened with [Twirling Cutter], an AoE attack that hit her three targets to draw them to her. [Twirling Edge], [Twirling Dance], and [Twirling Dervish] were her AoE follow-ups, which she was willing to risk at the start of this fight. [Dervish] was as deep into the combo as she was willing to risk, as it was a 3.5 second long animation lock for a 800 [Might] AoE.

  The three heavies were locked on her as she wanted by the end of the combo, and had hit her with a few simple attacks, leaving her at 6,000 HP. That was fine, only because Mellody was nearby to heal her.

  Her gaming instinct had been right to cut the combo at [Dervish], and she had a moment of satisfaction as all three enemies wound up for a heavily telegraphed attack, complete with a ground AoE marker. If she had gone into [Twirling Death], she wouldn’t have been able to avoid the three attacks.

  She danced back as all three enemies lunged forward and struck with a shield bash. She had no doubt that would’ve been a [Stun], too, if it had landed.

  “Heavy ones have a telegraphed shield bash. I’d guess a stun.” She said, as she moved back in after the attack ended.

  “Good to know.” Mellody affirmed.

  Zoe focused again as she moved to focus solely on one of the three targets. She glanced at their HP percentages; the one who had been on fire was around 50% while the other two were hovering a little under 70%.

  She targeted the weakest of the three, and went through a basic skill combo, without her big burst attacks. Zoe wanted to know exactly how much punishment these enemies could take, and using her full burst to bring them down seemed like a waste, when they had things surprisingly under control for the moment.

  Nyx’s single target filler combo - [Cut], [Slice], [Dice], and [Eviscerate] - was enough to bring the burning target from 50% to under 10%. Admittedly, that included her two [Poisons] as well as an ongoing [Burn] from the firebomb, but it still led her to believe that while these enemies were certainly stronger than the enemy’s rank and file mobs, they still weren’t too dangerous.

  Two basic attacks put that first mob down and Nyx immediately moved to the next. She had to dance out of the way of two line AoEs, which turned out to be spear thrusts, but that was fine.

  She didn’t bother avoiding the smaller attacks, opting to let Mellody heal the damage rather than break her combo by using a dodge skill or moving.

  This time, she used a few of her actual damage skills that came from [Shroud] and were shared with [Dirge] - [Knife Work], [Knife’s Edge], and [Dagger Dance]. Each of those three attacks had a fair amount of animation lock attached, as they were all multi-hit attacks that dealt a pretty significant amount of damage. She felt comfortable risking the animation lock, though, given the enemies had just used their marked AoEs. She should have enough time to get some damage out.

  The three skills together brought one of the targets down to roughly 15%, which she could quickly finish with a few basic attacks, before focusing down the last one.

  “Okay! The heavy boys aren’t actually too bad. They’re a little tankier than the base ones, but still soloable. And they don’t hurt that bad either.” Zoe said, talking over some chatter she wasn’t listening to.

  “Noted. Take your spot back, please.” Mello said.

  Zoe responded with a quick “Yup,” before sliding back into her point of their wedge formation. All things considered, they were holding quite well. Aleister’s kill count may not have been very high, but his HP was looking remarkably healthy for the number of targets he had aggro’d.

  Caoimhe’s little area, by contrast, was basically a pile of dead bodies. Her massive sword cut down all the nearby mobs in two or three attacks - and with such wide swings, she was regularly cleaving through six or seven mobs at a time. It was honestly quite impressive.

  Mello had also held Nyx’s corner well. There wasn’t a pile of dead bodies, but that was to be expected. Mello had successfully kept everyone in the green and kept the enemies out of their bit of claimed land, which was plenty.

  Nyx took up her spot and immediately tried to pull some of the mobs off of Aleister to help spread the pressure a little.

  “Okay. We can move over to the gate as a group now. Knowing that I can take down the heavies easily enough, I think we’ll be fine if we just jump the ram bearers.” Zoe said.

  “You sure? If we just dash over there and attack them, we’re going to lose formation.” Caoimhe said.

  “I’m sure. If we can take over that area and create a spearhead in front of the gate, that would give us about as much battlefield control as we can hope for.” Zoe said.

  “She’s right. We’re already in a suicide mission. Let’s just go for it.” Mellody agreed.

  Aleister suddenly came through on the chat, laughing maniacally. She must have been on push-to-talk rather than an open mic to avoid everyone else hearing the laughter. “On your count, Mello!” She cried. Zoe snickered; she must have been having a field day with how many enemies she was facetanking with [Zerker’s] HP manipulation skills.

  “Alright, ready?” Mellody asked, and then counted the group down. As soon as he said ‘one’, their entire little party simply stopped attacking in favor of moving to the right as quickly as possible. They hadn’t been able to drop down from right above the gate because the wall was too high to jump over, but they weren’t forced too far off from it.

  The issue was just the number of enemies between where they landed and the gate. Trying to gap close and run their way over to it could have been a very dangerous over extension if they hadn’t been able to quickly handle the enemies crowded around the battering ram.

  The knowledge that they could handle them fairly easily, even if they were harder than the average mob, was enough to make the mad dash worth it.

  Aleister was the first to reach the area. [Zerker] had a gap closer that would allow them to dash to any wounded enemy, and it could store up to three charges of the skill. Thanks to Firo and Bisky peppering the crowd with attacks whenever there wasn’t a mage to attack, there were plenty of damaged mobs among the crowd, and Aleister simply utilized all three charges to cross the distance quickly.

  Caoimhe and Nyx were a little more hesitant to simply gap close their way across the space and leave Mello without protection. Instead, they worked to clear the way together, using a few utility skills to keep the enemy at bay.

  Conveniently, by the time the three of them caught up to Aleister, he had the situation in their favor. In addition to several AoE attacks that generated [Threat] quickly, [Zerker] also had a skill called [Call the Blood], which forcefully took any wounded enemies within a radius and pulled them to the [Zerker].

  Combined with the firebombs that Evie had been lobbing from the wall, and a few quick AoE attacks from Aleister, [Call the Blood] had been able to not only gather a huge mass of enemies in one place, but it also pulled the whole group away from the battering ram - which now laid on the ground.

  “Nice round up!” Zoe said with a grin.

  “You line ‘em up -” Caoimhe began and launched into [Wild Swing], “- I knock ‘em down.”

  Zoe whistled in appreciation, as Caoimhe hurtled through the mass of enemies, bowling them all over and knocking a huge number of them down. The [Punishment] that followed looked immensely satisfying, as it wiped out most of the regular mobs in one go.

  Aleister also jumped on the downed crowd with a few AoE attacks, which finished up the regular mobs, only leaving the heavier armored ones.

  “Take them out. I’ve got the door.” Mello said, and their half-sized crew did the job. There were seven remaining armored enemies, all of which had been tenderized by Evie and her firebombs already. Caoimhe and Nyx together had no trouble wiping them out while Aleister handled the regular mobs that attempted to fill in the gap we created.

  As soon as the armored enemies were down, their little advanced force fell back into their wedge formation, surrounding the battering ram.

  “Now what?” Aleister asked, as they went back to somewhat easily fighting off the regular mobs.

  “I see the ladder bearers.” Firo said. “They’re coming from your right.”

  “Right. Ladders.”