“How long is that gold going to spread?” Aegis said with widened eyes. The golden section of the wall was being quickly overtaken by abyssal forces, dark elves, and mosmir falling back into the city.
“Finley says as long as he’s touchin' it,” Joshaka replied.
Aegis went quiet for a moment, eyes rapidly darting around the battlefield. “Tullan, Ruffily, get Greed off the wall at all costs and stall him. Joshaka, Krael, Kaef’aktos, focus all attacks on Affliction with me. We’ve gotta eliminate him fast,” he said while retrieving flasks of detoxification from his inventory, and tossed them towards the wall around the Avatar of Affliction.
The glass flasks crashed into the side of the Rene walls, exploding in puffs of green and blue smoke. As the smoke enveloped the nearby defenders, their status ailments lessened, and they got back to their feet to engage the abyss fighters clamoring over them.
The Avatar of Affliction let out a chittering hiss, glaring towards Aegis. “Lightbringerrrrrrr,” his mantis mandibles clicked.
Aegis gave a moment for Krael and Kaef’aktos to reach his side, blessed them with Joshaka, and unceremoniously charged forward, the others following. Krael barked orders at the nearby dark elves, who turned their bows on Affliction as Affliction reared his form upward, growing out of his cloak to reveal his tall, mantis-like body. Rather than insectoid legs or feet, though, the boss-level monster had horse-like feet with hooves, and a serpentine tail covered in spikes that whipped out of the back of its robes. In seconds, he’d grown from a humanoid-sized opponent to that of an elephant.
With a swing of his mantis-scythe arms, waves of colorful magic exploded out towards Aegis and his charging companions. Aegis raised his wings and shield to take the hits, but they passed through, unable to be blocked.
The magic didn’t deal damage, but instead applied a plethora of debuffs to the group, including paralysis, freezing them all in place. Aegis, with more flasks still in his hand, struggled against the paralysis to drop a flask on the ground at his feet, and on impact, it exploded in a smoke that cleansed some, but not all, of their debuffs.
He had no time to read them all, but the group had a collection of penalties ranging from slower attack speed, lesser mana regeneration, a chance to drop weapons while swinging them, and so on. It was bad.
Only the most dangerous ones were removed by his flask; it was all he had time to account for when he was making them. Some poisons remained, but that was something he’d been counting on.
“Go, I’ll heal and cleanse. I’ve got to level this skill fast, and you guys need to kill him before I run out of flasks,” Aegis motioned them forward. The group, including Joshaka, struggled through the debuffs and engaged the Avatar.
Once close enough, Affliction swung his scythes and attempted to stomp on them with his hooves. From a distance, Aegis cast guards to protect them, his aura of light offsetting some of the damage.
“Cleanse!” he cast, using holy mastery to spread the cast to five targets at once.
Level Up! Cleanse has reached Level 7!
He had an urge to hit himself for leaving the skill so low. He was able to remove one poison from each of his companions. Affliction grew translucent wings out of his back and buzzed them like a bee rapidly, creating a thick black smoke that the wings fanned out in the surrounding area. It mixed in with the smoke from his flasks, fighting against it and pushing it back slightly, spreading more debuffs.
Aegis threw another flask to compensate, with only 11 remaining, and cast cleanse a few more times, getting it up to level 20 within 20 seconds. Thanks to all of his experience bonuses, it was going up quickly, particularly because the source of the debuffs was a level 200 raid boss. But he knew 11 flasks were not much.
Bless enchanted mithril weapons, Joshaka got to work on the boss, pelting him with attacks alongside the others. Krael acted as the tank while everyone else flanked, and dark elves from all of the surrounding walls rained arrows down on him while the Mosmir held back the abyssal forces swarming the walls, with incredible difficulty. Many of the dark elves were forced back off the walls while the Mosmir lost ground.
Aegis watched this happen, with only one thought on his mind.
We’ve got to kill this Avatar, fast.
The red damage numbers streamed above his head, and the cleanses continued to come out from Aegis, but there were too many debuffs he wasn’t able to cleanse. He knew from research that at level 50, cleanse would dispel two debuffs at a time, including disease. At 100, it would move to include magic debuffs, and finally, at 150, he’d be able to cleanse curses and three debuffs at once.
But as he threw the following two flasks onto the wall to keep the dark elves and mosmir flanking the boss mobile, level 150 seemed incredibly far away.
His flasks were working against the green smoke in the immediate vicinity of the boss, but it continued beyond, spreading further into the city on either side, and worse, behind itself.
Affliction was infecting abyssal creatures with debuffs, and they crumpled and coiled off the walls beyond Aegis’s view, suffering slowly and empowering the Avatar. He had too few flasks at his disposal to consider cleansing his enemies to weaken the Avatar.
Still, the effects of the spreading debuffs were becoming painfully obvious. The attack speed of the boss increased, forcing Aegis into more guards, and he rushed forward to use his actual shield as Krael took on a bit too much damage for the aura of healing to handle on its own.
“Focus on damage, I’ll tank it,” Aegis said, jumping in front of Krael with his shield and blocking a few strikes, while using his right hand to cast continuously cleanses.
It was the first time he’d felt so strained by a PvE encounter. He was reminded of the actions per minute he had to execute to keep up with Seraxus, and this was on par. Guards, blocking with his shield and wings, and repeated cleanses and healing to keep everyone around alive, all while monitoring the-
He’d lost focus on the other Avatar, and only at that moment noticed it in his raid interface.
Ruffily and Tullan were both dead, logged out of the game world.
Aegis turned his head back and saw Greed had been interrupted from spreading gold across the walls on the opposite side of Rene, but was now standing within the walls, his eyes fixated on Bihi, Amlie, and the druids.
“Shit,” Aegis gritted his teeth, tempted to jump back and do something about it, but was reminded of the current threat via two powerful scythe attacks.
You take 9,421 Slashing damage.
It was going up, slowly, but surely. The first few hits were below 7,000. The debuffs were spreading to the abyssal forces outside the walls, and the defenders further out from his flasks. It had the added effect that the pressure from the charging abysslings, fallen, and other creatures around Affliction had become non-existent, but Affliction himself was enough of a threat.
“Joshaka, you gotta pull off, keep Greed from getting to the tree. Can you kite him or something?” Aegis shouted, and Joshaka nodded from behind Affliction, where he was attacking.
“No probs, bruv, I gotcha,” he said, jumping away from Affliction with great difficulty, thanks to the many debuffs weighing him down that Aegis wasn’t able to cleanse.
Aegis sucked his teeth when he watched the otherwise competent high-level player randomly trip over a piece of rubble from one of the ruined Rene buildings. Aegis rapidly cast cleanse on him and the others a few more times.
Level up! Cleanse has reached Level 50!
A glimmer of hope hit him. He cast cleanse a few more times on Joshaka and the others a few more times, and a collection of disease debuffs that’d been building up were washed away, granting them more control of their characters.
Joshaka stopped stumbling across the battlefield and opened up on Greed with several ranged attacks, daggers engulfed in flames and ice. Aegis could only watch for a second, but saw that Greed turned his attentions from the tree to the player, much to his relief.
He turned his attention back on Affliction, blocking a few more scythe strikes and stomps with his shields and guards. Affliction cackled with chitters between the attacks, the damage rising further. A faint green outline began to flare around his body as the nearby debuffs empowered him to the point that his attacks were hitting for 10,000 against Aegis’ Star of Light shield.
All the while, above, Eirene remained engaged with the God of Darkness, their mixture of darkness and light flickering over the battlefield.
[Amlie-Party]: “The golden section of the wall is completely overrun, they’re coming at us!”
The message flew over his screen. He hazarded a glance behind him and saw it. Abysslings pushed through the defending mosmir and dark elves like a stampede, wiping them out.
“Come on and kill this guy!” Aegis shouted in frustration. By now, he was sure Affliction had taken at least half his health in damage. His cleanse skill climbed up another 20 levels, reducing its mana cost and cast time, and he was praying for it to hit 100. “Krael, Kaef’aktos, head off the attacking abysslings, take what forces you need to push them away from Bihi and the druids. Try and retake the golden section of the wall!”
They complied, darting from Affliction, who took several swipes at them with his scythe arms as they left, but Aegis was able to project guards to keep them safe.
The next minute was a blur of blocking attacks and casting cleanses. He threw more flasks out at Joshaka’s three companions, the nearby elves, until he was down to four.
Suddenly, his cleanses received a burst of extra experience from a set of casts.
Level up! Cleanse has reached Level 101!
The cause was a red shimmer of light flickering out of Affliction's eyes, and Affliction let out a low growl.
He’d hit his rage, and a mixture of colorful smoke exploded out of his body, overtaking the flasks. Aegis jumped back to avoid it; the smoke was causing a magical paralysis effect. Aegis rapidly cleansed Joshaka’s members, repeatedly removing the paralysis effect, so they could continue to attack. At the same time, they opted to hold their breath to lessen the frequency with which it took hold of them.
Affliction stomped forward to keep on Aegis, trailing the smoke and repeating his swings. Aegis kept blocking, and the damage ramped up, forcing Aegis to alternate cleanses with heals.
“Motherf- he turned my weapons to gold shit. Yo Aegis, you owe me some new mith-” Joshaka’s final words were cut off as Greed killed him, forcing him out of the gameworld.
“Kill the lightbearer!” Affliction roared towards Greed, who stood over Joshaka’s disintegrating body, where several golden weapons clamored to the ground.
Greed glanced between Bihi and Aegis and let out a sigh of frustration.
“So incompetent, hah!” A high-pitched screech came from the dark face underneath the melted crowns on greed’s head.
Greed stomped toward Aegis from the center of Rene, and Affliction pushed forward on him from the front. Krael and Kaef’aktos were pushing back on the invading forces, but were being swarmed on all sides and wouldn’t be able to assist.
Come on, kill Affliction, Aegis prayed in his mind.
Every red damage number that appeared above Affliction's head filled Aegis with hope. Hope it’s the last hit needed. If he could just take out one of the Avatars, the other might be manageable.
Level up! Cleanse has reached Level 123!
You take 17,330 Slashing damage.
He healed himself and heard the footsteps of Greed at his back. With no weapon, Greed’s fingertips shone bright gold as he slashed his fingers out at Aegis, and Aegis spun around to block the strike with his Star of Light shield. He’d only realized afterwards what could happen when those fingers came into contact with the shield.
Finley only said he ‘thought’ Greed wouldn’t be able to turn the shield to gold.
A flash of gold and white light exploded when the slash came into contact with the shield, and Aegis winced.