"He's bluffing," Imperator sneered, ignoring Kael's chat bubble. He turned to Lorelei. "Get ready. On three. One, two, three—drop it!"
Lorelei cut her song. Instantly, a tidal wave of spells and projectiles converged on Kael. Targeted strikes, area-of-effect spells—the sky darkened with incoming fire.
Weighed down by over thirty debuffs, there was no way Kael could survive the barrage. Worse, he was Silenced, locking him out of summoning his simulacrums to dispel the effects. His hands were bound by a [Velthar Slime] trap, making it physically impossible to draw his bow.
But locked skills didn't mean a locked inventory. He triggered a quick-slotted item: [Warp Emblem].
Flash. Kael materialized twenty-five yards away.
The raid had anticipated the blink. Hundreds of eyes snapped to his new location, and the spellcasters seamlessly redirected their targeting reticles.
Imperator barked a laugh. "Is that it, Dawnbreaker? I thought you'd have a better trick up your sleeve! You just burned your only escape item. With those debuffs, where exactly do you think you can run?"
Kael ignored the taunt. His movement speed was gutted by 80%. Running was off the table. But running wasn't his only option. He could jump.
As the player who pioneered the two [Blight Swamp] dungeons, Kael was the only one on the server holding the Ascendant-tier [Toad Armor Set]. No one else knew its set bonus.
He triggered the active skill: [Leap].
His leg muscles coiled and launched him through the air, sending him soaring thirty-five yards.
Imperator froze, his smirk vanishing. "Since when does he have a second mobility skill? Why wasn't that in the intel report?!"
Kael was now sixty yards from his original position, safely outside the range of the main caster group. However, Imperator hadn't taken any chances; he'd brought over three thousand players, deliberately layering his perimeter defenses.
Kael landed right in front of the outer ring. These players were veterans. Startled but disciplined, they recovered in a fraction of a second and unleashed a volley at point-blank range.
But just as the projectiles were about to strike, Kael's silhouette blurred.
He vanished.
It was an emergency item he had never revealed in public: the [Soul Cloak].
Chaos erupted in the outer ring.
"Where did he go?"
"Is he dead?"
"Did he blink again?"
"That's impossible!"
Imperator reacted instantly. "Idiots, he's stealthed! Blanket the area with AoE!"
High-tier stealth mechanics removed a player's physical collision volume, rendering them immune to targeted attacks. But area-of-effect spells didn't need a target. Dozens of explosions rocked the area where Kael had disappeared.
Not a single damage number popped up.
Panic flickered in Imperator's eyes, but he barked new orders. "He can't have gone far with his speed debuffed! Spread your fire! Cover the exits!"
The casters fanned their spells outward, carpet-bombing a massive radius. Still, nothing hit.
"Damn it!" Imperator cursed, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. Who said Kael had to retreat? Running outward guaranteed he'd get caught in the blast zones. He had doubled back into the crowd! "Move! Scat—"
Before Imperator could finish the command, a terrifyingly familiar sight blotted out the sun.
A dense, suffocating cloud of arrows.
The Silence status effect had a maximum duration of five seconds. Between the blink, the leap, and the stealth maneuver, the timer had expired. The millisecond his skills unlocked, Kael cast [Phantom Barrage].
The target zone: dead center on Imperator and Lorelei.
He hadn't summoned his clones to cleanse his debuffs immediately because he couldn't afford to waste the window while the command group was clustered. So what if his attack rating was cut in half? Could they survive forty to fifty thousand raw damage per hit?
-39,320 ([Phantom Barrage])
-8,032 ([5-yard Explosive Blast])
-83,723 ([Phantom Barrage + Pierce])
To maximize their casting density, Imperator had packed his players tightly together. Over seven hundred people were crammed into a fifteen-by-fifteen-yard grid. When the rain of arrows ended, all seven hundred dropped dead simultaneously. It was a server record for a single [Phantom Barrage].
[System: You have slain a hostile player. +3 Points.]
[System: You have slain a hostile player. +3 Points.]
In a split second, Kael racked up over two thousand event points.
The surviving Orcs expected him to run. Instead, Kael dropped stealth, summoned his simulacrums, anchored his feet, and opened fire on everything moving.
-98,382 (Basic Attack)
-29,844 ([5-yard Explosive Blast])
-311,284 (Critical Strike)
-30,222 ([5-yard Explosive Blast])
Every number floating into the air was another corpse hitting the dirt. The swarm surrounding Kael was liquefied in seconds.
The players further out finally spotted his true position and surged forward.
"There he is!"
"He's not running!"
"He's fighting back! Melt him!"
Hundreds of offensive spells tore through the air, slamming into Kael. But the floating text left the attackers in despair:
-1 (Shield Absorption)
-1 (Shield Absorption)
They couldn't even break his armor rating.
By moving out of the totem network's radius and dispelling his accumulated debuffs the moment his clones spawned, his stats had fully recovered. He was virtually untouchable to the rank and file.
Support players rushed in from the flanks, desperately trying to reapply their curses. Kael didn't give them the chance, gunning them down before they got in range. A handful managed a suicide run, slapping four or five minor armor breaks on him. It was completely useless.
Kael was a machine. His arrows tore through the horde, dropping lines of players with every piercing shot. Where his explosive tips landed, entire squads evaporated in screams and fire.
He wasn't standing his ground just to farm points. If that were the goal, he would have kept kiting. His barrage seemed chaotic, but he was meticulously carving a bloody path straight back to the epicenter of his [Phantom Barrage].
His objective was singular: lock down Imperator and Lorelei's corpses.
Imperator was the strategic brain defending the village, and Lorelei was his trump card. Neither of them could be allowed to respawn. Kael was going to corpse-camp them. One man, surrounded by an army of thousands, holding a burial ground for an entire hour.
But the enemy healers had been fast. Both Imperator and Lorelei had just accepted combat resurrections.
Imperator knew exactly what Kael was trying to do. The moment his avatar stood up, he roared at Lorelei, "Run! Split up!"
They bolted in opposite directions, diving into the thickest parts of the crowd.
Kael had to make a split-second call: chase the commander, or the Choral Naga?
Pinning Imperator was the optimal play; without him, Lorelei's tactical value plummeted. But if Kael let her live, the cooldown on her [Choral Slumber] would eventually refresh. She could sleep him again and safely revive her commander.
It took him exactly one second to decide. He snapped his bow toward Lorelei's escape vector.
Boom. Boom.
A string of [Explosive Blasts] ripped through the crowd. Lorelei collapsed, dead once more. However, the distraction bought Imperator enough time to vanish into the horde.
From a safe distance, Imperator glared murderously at Kael, who was now standing firmly over Lorelei’s corpse, slaughtering anyone who came near. The Orc commander immediately opened his interface, preparing to recall the Burning Horde NPC troops from the front lines. A massive wall of high-tier NPCs would easily push Kael out.
But before he could issue the deployment order, a frantic alert flashed across the war channel:
"The eastern forest pass is under heavy attack!"