“Camille… you have to let it go.” One of her assistants asserted as she watched her washing her hands in the women’s room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She lied, turning the knob for the water until it slowed to a drip. The assistant watched worriedly as her boss left the women’s room.
It was time for her lunch break. Stamping approval papers and ensuring everyone else had food for the weeks to come wasn’t the hardest job she’d ever done, but its awkward mix of importance and endlessness bred exhaustion. Shuffling into the break room, she opened her Vault and looked about, finding her target. Hands shaking, she snapped a loaf of bread from her inventory.
She’d decided to try again. Maybe a simpler food will be easier.
She pressed down the tab of the breakroom’s toaster and waited. Utter silence permeated the room, broken only by the ticking clock and the sound of her own heartbeat in her chest. Finally, the toaster regurgitated her lunch. Forgoing condiments like butter or jam, she simply put the hot slice of toast on a plate and sat down.
Just eat it.
An unbridled silence filled the entire world. A single lock of hair slid down from behind her ear as she slowly looked down. The bags under her eyes sagging deep, the ticking of the clock grew louder as she stared blankly at the warm bread welcoming her.
Eat it.
Each tick burrowed into her mind, the hands of the clock like shovels digging into her memories. They unearthed moment after moment of events after the System’s arrival; monsters ripping people apart in the streets. Babies and children met with violence that they should never have seen or experienced. Her murder of another human being. Each one and more lodged themselves in the forefront of her mind like abominable burs tearing at her subconscious. Their screams filled her mind for the hundredth time.
The silence of reality continued to crack at the rhythmic ticking of the clock. Pushing her chair back, she exited the room in a rush. There was more work to be done, more logistics to hammer out. More people to help. There must be.
The rejected toast steamed no more. Another untouched “meal” grew cold as stone on a plate, all the while the clock ticked away like a chisel against the quiet of the world.
An axe met a club hammer mid swing, blasting the weapon back with force. Unsurprisingly, a boss tier monster had a greater strength stat than Gideon, but he didn’t let up. As the battle had continued, it’d become clear that despite its nature as a monster, it possessed martial skill with its chosen weapons. With that skill along its status as a boss tier, it quickly became clear that it far outmatched Gideon. That was, of course, if he had been alone.
Aurora and Ema were both backing up Gideon, making what seemed like a singular duel actually a 3 on 1 fight. Sasaki Ema’s shields landed on him whenever it came off of cooldown, while she changed the buffs and debuffs on the field every few seconds, accommodating for the situation. Her contributions were wild and constant, yet mostly passive in nature. Aurora, however, was the opposite in every way.
Out of the four people in the party, half of them were currently weakened due to their environment. Out of those two, Aurora was by far the most debilitated. Her class was almost entirely dependent on her being outside, so delving into a dungeon-like area like this was especially dangerous to her. As it was, the most she could do was charge up a Lightning Weave and fire it at the boss tier monster. It wasn’t a skill meant for a single target, however, and even fully charged, it was weak. Determined to contribute, she shoved as much power into the paper sword as she could.
The other individual that was weakened by their current circumstance was, of course, Gideon Omari.
While Gideon’s class had several abilities tailored for controlling the battlefield, some of those same abilities empowered him in combat. In a one-on-one duel, one of the things that made Gideon the most dangerous was his Orbital Belt. It was a skill that caused sharp and hard rocks to cycle around him and deal damage to anyone who got near. While the different Polarities would change the nature and speed of the circuits, no matter what Polarity he chose, any melee attacker would feel their sting.
Gideon was a nightmare for mid to close range combatants because the combination of his abilities. While he could fire the rocks from his Orbital Belt out, they would deal much lesser damage than if they stayed in orbit. Therefore, the optimal choice for dealing with it would be to simply stay out of range. Force Pull, however, didn’t allow for such an easy solution. In its North Polarity, Force Pull would drag enemies toward him, and if they fought it, they would take continuous damage until they let go. This, combined with Orbital Belt, resulted in a hellish situation. If they gave in to Force Pull, they would take damage. If they fought against the Force Pull, they would take damage. Even then, this was assuming that they didn’t fail to resist the pull entirely, resulting in them taking damage from both fighting against the pull and being shredded by Orbital Belt. This was all discounting the fact that Gideon didn’t need to focus on up-keeping the skills, leaving him open to attack however he pleased while his enemies floundered in frustration.
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Gideon was currently cut off from using Orbital Belt. As a skill that required earth to be nearby, his surroundings didn’t meet the requirements to use it. Stone Grave was unavailable to him for the same reason, leaving his strongest attack and strongest synergy both on the table. The elements of his skill set that made him truly dangerous were not present.
Thankfully, while his most potent skills weren’t there, his friends were. Gideon wasn’t entirely neutered while being away from his ideal environment like Aurora was, and Ema was doing more than her part. During their fierce and repeated clashes, the Threshen warrior was accosted by more than a few empty books or binders flying into its face. When it was about to land hits, its arm would suddenly and inexplicably Seize up, leaving openings for Gideon to attack or dodge. Even with all of their skills together, however, this was a boss tier monster. Its stats outclassed Gideon by a great amount, and he took many hits, his clothes tearing and his blood spilling repeatedly. Ema was forced to heal him far more than she’d ever had to previously, often causing even further injury as she wasted precious moments patching him up instead of disabling his opponent. If there hadn’t been such a net difference in Gideon’s favor in terms of dexterity buffs and debuffs, he would likely have already been overwhelmed.
A wide swing of an axe crashed against Gideon’s club, crushing his arm and shattering bone. Blasted back, he finally landed from his impromptu flight in an unsightly tumble. Unburdened for the moment it was, the Threshen made a dead sprint straight at Ema the millisecond she began casting her healing skill on its opponent. Before it could reach her, however, it was struck by a streak of lightning. They’d been doing pitiful damage so far, so it had ignored them, but this time the electricity landed with a localized explosion directly to its face.
Level 5: If expended stacks of [Static] equal 10 or more, inflict additional explosion and fire damage.
Though the damage wasn’t that much better, it stunned the monster just long enough for Ema to leap away to safety. It waved away the smoke, fire and burning papers kicked up by the force. They fell around it like ash from a volcanic explosion, and when all the visual impairments were out of the way, it was greeted by two large filing cabinets rocking towards it from opposite sides. They collided with it in the middle, sending blank papers flying anew as it tore through the metal like it was nothing. Just after it fought its way free, it heard a voice from behind it.
“I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to use my Earth affinity skills in here…”
The Threshen was not one for mid battle banter, or banter at all, and turned with a wild yet powerful swipe of an axe. When it did, however, it was met with the sight of a large ethereal arm already swinging for its face.
[Arms of the Colossus]: Two sets of ethereal arms float behind you. These arms can hold items and weapons of any type up to a certain weight limit based on your weight tolerance. These arms can access your Vault.
As it did, the Threshen was surprised when a giant, pointed rock appeared in the ethereal arm’s palm. The arm slammed the rock against the Threshen with devastating force, causing the rock to explode into bits and sending the bracing boss tier monster sliding back. When it lifted its head above its guard, it saw Gideon, stones lifting from the floor and rotating around him as his Orbital Belt skill activated.
“So, I decided earlier to take some ‘Earth’ in with me. I hope you don’t mind the mess.”
Arthur and the scimitar wielding Threshen’s swings and blocks were faster than a normal human would have been able to perceive. Aside from the papers flying about, there was no one and nothing to get in the way of their savage clash, and they went at each other like they had a personal grudge to settle. From their very first collision, it was clear that Arthur was stronger. The Threshens they found themselves fighting against were, on a one-to-one basis, weaker than the Shartopus Horror from the Undersea Redoubt, and Arthur was vastly stronger than he had been during that battle.
The matter of Arthur versus the scimitar wielding Threshen had several points of give and take. As stated before, Arthur’s strength stat was greater. In contrast, however, the Threshen’s dexterity far outstripped his. They were creatures of speed and finesse, and it demonstrated that well against the slow and brutish strength of Arthur Lindow. Another advantage the monster had was its mastery of its weapon.
Thanks to his Miscellaneous Skill, Arthur was a master of shield combat. He could see the best angles and positions to be in to block his enemy’s attacks even before it swung, almost like a sort of premonition. However, his abilities with a blade were much worse by comparison, both to his shield technique and his opponent’s prowess. He could block and parry well, as well as attack with his shield decently, but he was distinctly bad at landing attacks with his wild and incompetent sword swings.
The confluence of factors that the two combatants brought dictated the disposition of the battle. Arthur was no slouch when it came to dexterity, but the Threshen’s entire build was about speed. Conversely, Arthur’s defenses were vast, and his capabilities with a shield seldom allowed the Threshen’s blade to find him. What this lead to was something like a battle of attrition, where the boss tier monster would look for an opening past his shield wall and then a space between plates of his armor. A game of cat and mouse turned into a battle to the death, the Threshen needed to find a way to hurt the juggernaut before he landed a decisive blow.
It wasn’t long before the cat caught the mouse. A single moment where the monster thought to have found an opening, only to realize it was a trap. A normal feint performed by a skilled warrior would involve baiting the enemy into overextending or missing them entirely, and landing a punishing blow in return.
Arthur was not a skilled warrior. He was not good at dodging and, if you asked him, he was not particularly smart enough to make such a maneuver. What he did have, however, was the Aegis Arts.
Method 2: A quick and short jab of the shield while keeping your guard up. Stuns the enemy for half a second. Short cooldown, but only usable when an enemy strikes your shield.
Where a normal warrior would need to dodge an attack to be able to punish an opponent, all Arthur would need to do is block the attack squarely and then clout the enemy with the second method. Because of its stunning effect, it would leave the enemy with much the same half second of being open to a counterattack. While it wasn’t much on paper, half a second in a fight was half an eternity.
Although their main advantage was speed, Threshens also had a hard carapace that could stop most mundane attacks. Such a thing wasn’t an issue for someone with strength like Arthur’s, however, and when the edge of his shield swung low for a leg sweep, it crunched right through its natural defenses. Hardly allowing the monster to even land on the ground, he landed a savage football punt that caved in its chest cavity. It was sent flying into a bookcase, where the eerily empty books tumbled out in an avalanche of hardbacks and paper. Lifting itself from the mess, it was too disoriented to stop the Aged Blade from crashing down upon it, reintroducing it to the ground and completely destroying its arm with a sound like a holy blade smiting a Hellspawn.