“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hae-won stepped forward to the very edge of the raised platform, the other VGN broadcaster letting her take the lead by passively stepping back and looking wide-eyed at the arena below. Serenity was standing far behind them with her glowing pink instruments, shooting a barrage of musical notes at the skies above the arena repeatedly to take out any approaching reapers. Kenji was using his limited offensive magic to target abysslings that were stampeding through the stands, and the remaining NPCs were rushing toward the raised platform to get closer to their defenders.

“The advanced bard class, Bard of Sorrows, and the advanced battle master class, War Master, are facing off against the advanced Rune Knight class, Eldritch Knight, the advanced Shadow Dancer class, Shadow Master, and the advanced Shattered Healer class, Harbinger of Light. While Aegis’ party has a clear numbers advantage and the Shield of Light, the only shield in the game capable of blocking attacks from Seraxus’ sword, this does not make Seraxus’ sword any less dangerous. The Sword of Hatred can still kill any member of Aegis’ group in a single hit if it manages to find a way through his defenses, and Seraxus has proven time and time again that he is not only fast enough but skilled enough to make that happen.” Hae-won filled in the time with her explanation as Aegis and Seraxus’ groups stared each other down. Both sides had their mouths moving, but no one could hear them as they were communicating through their party interface.

“Zuon next,” Aegis said to them, and Lina and Rakkan both nodded. Aegis started walking forward slowly but picked up speed a few seconds later. Rakkan and his three echoes followed Aegis, and Lina shadow-stepped away.

Seraxus didn’t meet Aegis’ charge this time but took a defensive posture around his last remaining party member by spreading out his weapons and glancing around to try to spot where Lina had shadow-stepped. This behavioral change was so drastic that Hae-won couldn’t help but point it out to all the viewers excitedly — Seraxus was playing defensively.

Zuon did the same, kicking up a rhythm as Aegis and Rakkan closed in on him whilst spreading out his instruments so that they formed a circle around Seraxus and Zuon. Rakkan made sure to spread his echoes out appropriately as well, positioning himself and an echo to Aegis’ left and the other two on Aegis’ right.

Once they passed the halfway point in the arena, it started. Rakkan held back his crossbow-wielding echo and cast rapid-fire to shoot out multiple bolts in quick succession, each bolt branded with a Frostbrand rune and enchanted with Aegis’s bless spell, giving the projectiles a blueish-white glow.

Another of Rakkan’s echoes threw the void spear, and Aegis waved his hand to fire off multiple smite spells from different points around his body. The diverse collection of projectiles soared from the midpoint of the arena towards Zuon and Seraxus’ defensive formation, and just a second before they were to collide, a smoke bomb was fired alongside them in the midst of their instruments and weapons, blocking their vision.

Lina shadow-stepped into the smoke bomb in the few milliseconds it was there, but Zuon had a spell readily available for this. An immediate burst of deep bass resounded from several of Zuon’s instruments, the sound releasing a shockwave strong enough to blast the smoke away and reveal Lina and the projectiles. Seraxus used his floating weapons to block and deflect all of Aegis and Rakkan’s ranged attacks, then turned around to swing his black sword of hatred down at Lina from behind.

Lina ignored the attack and dashed at Zuon with her mithral daggers drawn, both glowing white from the bless spell. She put her faith in Aegis to protect her, and he did precisely that—a projection of his shield appeared at Lina’s back and absorbed the strike from the Sword of Hatred.

Zuon jumped backward away from Lina, bringing his weapons with him. Lina pursued, as did Seraxus, by jumping over Aegis’ guard, but Aegis formed a second one to temporarily cut off his path to Lina.

Aegis knew this strategy wouldn’t work long-term from experience; it was only a stopgap to buy time for Rakkan and Aegis to reach Seraxus, and it worked.

“Charge strike!” Rakkan shouted, rushing through the air to crash into the back of Seraxus. Seraxus spun around to see Rakkan soaring towards him and readied his sword of hatred to strike at Rakkan when he arrived.

Aegis, having already used both guards, tossed his shield to the maul-wielding echo beside him.

“Switch.” Rakkan swapped the shield from the Echo with the longsword in his main body’s hand that had charged at Seraxus, so that when Rakkan arrived at Seraxus, the shield appeared at the very last second to collide with the sword of hatred and negate the attack.

Seraxus was quick to react. He used the force of his strike to push Rakkan to the side and point his sword at Aegis.

“Piercing darkness.” He fired a blast of black shadow magic from the blade's tip that fired through the air toward Aegis with incredible speed. From the sky, however, a small dark bird had flown down and landed on Aegis’ shoulder. Darkwing negated the elemental damage from the attack with a shield of green fae magic just in time to keep him alive.

“Tch.” Seraxus sucked his teeth at the pigeon’s appearance. All of this gave time for Rakkan to move his echoes into position around Seraxus, forming a circle around his floating weapons as his main body and Seraxus dropped back down to the ground, and Aegis approached from the front. “So it’s two-on-one, eh? This is how you wanted to beat me, Renault? You really think you and this clown with daddy issues are gonna be enough?”

“We all got issues here, don’t we?” Rakkan replied calmly while tossing the shield of Light back to Aegis, who caught it with ease and cocked his wings in preparation for the next engagement.

Lina continued her pursuit of Zuon, who kept jumping out of her reach. Every time she attempted to fire a smoke bomb behind him to cut him off, he used the percussion instruments alongside the wind instruments in his arsenal to repeatedly blast out shockwaves of sound and blow the smoke away.

While doing this, he repeatedly fired arrows from his bow, his fingers glowing a mix of yellow and pink as he wiggled them to control both his archer-related skills and his magic-based bard skills. Both remained silent, feeling each other's movements with utmost respect for their opponents. Not a single twitch or gesture from either of them was missed despite the speeds at which they were maneuvering around the outside of the arena.

Every time Lina so much as looked in the direction of a shadow, Zuon preemptively maneuvered his instruments to face it in anticipation of her next shadow-step. Lina picked up on this and decided to take advantage of it, feinting a glance towards the shadows that were cast by the outer walls of the arena nearby, but instead, shadow-stepping into the shadow of a nearby pillar. Zuon incorrectly aimed his musical instruments, allowing Lina to whip her hands forward and send out shadow daggers from one and a smoke bomb from the other.

Zuon prioritized the shadow daggers first, sidestepping them while readjusting his instruments to face the smoke bomb as it exploded and firing an arrow where Lina had been. Lina shadow-stepped into the smoke bomb for the short moment it existed before the loud blast of music blew it away, but she’d closed the gap enough to swing out at Zuon several times with her daggers, hitting him twice before he retaliated by jumping away and returning several musical note attacks from instruments that he maneuvered around her.

Lina backed off to avoid a few more attacks that Zuon had used to create a gap between them. Zuon breathed heavily and looked at her, confused and slightly terrified.

“You didn’t virabhadra me? You had me dead there, didn’t you?” Zuon looked at her curiously. “You’re saving my mimicry for Seraxus? No, wait…” Zuon’s mind began to race, eyes darting around has he began to figure it out. This gesture put Lina into panic mode, her eyes going frantically wide as she charged at Zuon with reckless abandon.

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“SHADOW DANCE!” Lina shouted desperately, jumping into the nearest wall shadows and pillar shadows all around Zuon. Zuon tried to follow her movements, but it was nearly impossible.

“SONG OF SORROW!” Zuon replied with equal desperation. “Seraxus, I know what they’re-” Zuon tried to speak, but Lina interrupted him by punching him in the jaw through the grey musical wave that overtook the arena floor. It slowed her down drastically, but she willingly shadow-danced into it to stop him from talking, throwing smoke bombs all around him. He quickly began casting music to stop her, but her attacks became absolutely unpredictable to him, and she repeatedly used smoke bombs with no regard for mana conservation.

Zuon’s shout drew the attention of Seraxus, Aegis, and Rakkan, who all turned to see Lina and his engagement quite some distance from them on the other side of the arena now. Rakkan and Aegis briefly exchanged looks, and Seraxus saw this as well, deciding to abandon his engagement with them and target Lina.

He broke away from Rakkan’s echoes and Aegis’ wings, willingly taking several hits in the process that did damage but were not enough to be celebrated. Rakkan moved his echoes around to keep up with him as best he could, but the moment Seraxus got close enough to charge at Lina, he did exactly this.

“Charge strike!” Seraxus shouted, but at the last second, Rakkan had gotten his maul-wielding echo in range to grab at Seraxus’ shoulder and interrupt the skill. Seraxus retaliated by swinging backward at the echo and slashing through it with his sword of hatred, killing the echo and transferring the damage back to Rakkan.

Aegis cast a heal on Rakkan to offset the damage while Seraxus charged again. This time, Aegis cut it off with a shield projection, which Seraxus predictably jumped over, then charged again. A second shield projection bought Lina more time, but once Seraxus hopped over this as well, Aegis threw his shield to Rakkan’s nearest echo.

“Charge strike!” Seraxus shouted, bolting through the air towards Lina.

“Charge strike!” Rakkan cast, following after Seraxus closely with the shield of light in one hand, voidspear in the other.

Meanwhile, Lina continued her relentless and reckless assault on Zuon, using everything she had to contain him and slash into him with mithral strikes. Eventually, Zuon saw how little she was paying attention to her defenses. Counterattacking himself wouldn’t result in him outdamaging her, but when he heard Seraxus’ charge strike and saw Seraxus coming towards him, he opted for a strategy.

Lina made it impossible to fire arrows at her due to how closely she was moving around Zuon. His slow music wasn’t doing nearly enough to offset this, so Zuon instead drew an arrow out of his quiver and, instead of nocking it, waited for Lina to appear in front of him to strike at his head and plunged the glowing green arrow into her shoulder.

“Pinning shot!” Zuon shouted as the arrow pierced her, firing vines out into the tiled floor around her and canceling her shadow dance skill to bind her in place. Once bound, she made several more frantic strikes to finish off Zuon by dealing critical damage to his head with her daggers.

Combatant Zuon has been defeated.

“Lina!” Rakkan called out, drawing her attention to the War Master soaring at her, black sword of hatred held in front. She desperately swung her daggers out at the pinning shot vines that were binding her in place, cutting herself free as quickly as possible. She managed to get down to just one binding before the sword reached her, piercing into her abdomen and dealing an absurdly high amount of damage to kill her instantly.

Combatant Lina has been defeated.

Instantly after this, Rakkan crashed into Seraxus’s back by slamming Aegis’ shield into him and piercing the voidspear into the back of Seraxus's head, dealing great damage before Seraxus did a wide backward swing at him, forcing Rakkan back to avoid it.

Seraxus became relentless as he saw Rakkan had outpaced his other echoes and Aegis significantly, leaving him in a one-on-one with the Eldritch Knight’s main body. A smirk grew on Seraxus's face as he saw the opportunity to finish Rakkan off, and he maneuvered his floating weapons around Rakkan quickly.

The strikes came out fast, in quick succession. Rakkan focused on the black blade of hatred with the Shield of Light, allowing the other attacks through and taking heavy damage. Aegis offset this damage by healing Rakkan’s two echoes that stood around him, transferring the healing to Rakkan’s real body.

Seraxus saw that Rakkan was not prioritizing his defenses around Seraxus’ other floating weapons and sent his iron spear at Rakkan from behind. A second before the spear connected to Rakkan’s main body, Seraxus switched the sword of hatred in his hands with the spear.

Rakkan, facing forward towards Seraxus, saw the spear appear in place of the sword and had a general idea of where the spear had been so that he knew where the sword had gone, and snapped his fingers immediately to reform his third echo at his back. The black sword of hatred pierced into Rakkan’s third echo rather than his main body, killing the echo in a single hit, but the maximum damage that could be transferred through an echo to Rakkan’s real health bar was limited, preventing the one-shot from occurring.

In the time Rakkan’s echo took to fade, he jumped to the side to get away from the sword of hatred. The downside of Rakkan’s maneuver was the hefty mana cost of re-summoning his echoes and how low his health had been taken as a result. Seraxus knew this, and all Seraxus had to do was repeat this maneuver several times to kill Rakkan.

Seraxus converged his floating weapons on Seraxus’ new position, waiting to see which one would find an opening in Rakkan’s defenses, then swapped the sword of hatred to that one.

This time, however, Rakkan reacted by casting Switch and sending the shield back to the echo beside Aegis, replacing it with a longsword. Aegis then took the shield from the echo beside him as Echo and Rakkan’s other two echoes finally got close enough to help out Rakkan’s main body.

“GUARD!” Aegis shouted, projecting his shield between the sword of hatred and Rakkan, then firing several smites to deter Seraxus from attempting more attacks on Rakkan while Rakkan fired a bolt from his crossbow echo. These ranged attacks forced Seraxus to block defensively with his floating weapons, giving Rakkan’s main body enough time to finally disengage from Seraxus towards his echoes and Aegis, several meters away from where Seraxus was standing.

Rakkan resummoned his third echo, dropping his mana below 25%, then positioned himself and his three echoes around Aegis as the match's timer passed the 6-minute mark, denoting that healing had already been reduced by 50%.

Seraxus stared down the two of them, repositioning his floating weapons defensively around himself and cracking his neck while rolling his shoulders. Aegis healed up the damage that Rakkan had taken so that he was back to full health, then flicked his wings out once more in a cocking motion as he took a fighting stance, preparing to charge at Seraxus once more.

Around him, Rakkan and his echoes bent their knees and prepared to lunge at Seraxus with weapons held out in front. Spear and Longsword were in the hands of Rakkan, one echo holding a maul, another a crossbow, and another a battleaxe, with the mithral-bladed fist still abandoned on the ground on the far side of the arena.

Seraxus briefly glanced upward to see Darkwing still circling in the skies above, closely watching the fight for queues, and went to intervene before turning back to stare at the two in front of him. No words were exchanged, just deep breaths and stares, and several long, tense moments of silence filled the arena.

“It’s down to this,” Hae-won whispered with intensity, turning more into a spectator than a caster as she began pacing anxiously along the raised platform, speaking to all who were tuning in to Aegis stream. Due to her enthusiasm and accurate portrayal of the match being audible in all other streams in the area, almost everyone tuned into Aegis’ broadcast rather than the others nearby. His viewership was beginning to dwarf all other top 10 streamers.

“It’s a two-on-one. They’ve got this, don’t they?” Ren asked excitedly, looking at Quinn, Herilon Sapphire, and the others who were staring intensely at the livestream broadcast floating inside their tavern. No one was willing to reply to Ren, though, nor did they let up watching the broadcast with wide eyes.

Nicholas was leaning forward on his chair within his open-spaced, wallless office simulation. All the live streams were visible in front of him, but Aegis was pulled to the forefront. He watched as Aegis and Rakkan poised to charge at Seraxus and saw how seriously Seraxus was taking them, despite the mighty sword of hatred in his hands.

Several flashing alerts and notifications appeared on screens around this display from various calls trying to reach him, but he ignored them all until one popped up from Andrew.

“What?” Nicholas asked immediately after accepting his call.

“You still watching?” Andrew’s voice traveled into Nicholas’ ear from his implant.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe, maybe?” Andrew asked, hopefulness filling his voice.

“Don’t jinx it,” Nicholas replied quickly before hanging up the call. This motion briefly turned his head to the side to catch a glimpse of the idle Samantha standing off to the side of his office simulation. He did a double-take, staring at her emotionless face momentarily.

“Eirene, huh? Is this your plan?” He asked her, but she didn't respond. Nicholas took a deep breath and turned back to Aegis’ stream.