Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Before the Slaughter

Saber began her dance-like dashes again, inviting me to try and hit her. This time I launched the Frost Missile at her feet. It missed and hit the ground to her left.

So far so good.

I curled a finger, tugging at the Missile’s arcane aura that lingered in the air. The spin of the Missile re-calibrated subtly in response, before bouncing back upward at Saber’s flank.

It missed again, this time glancing against Saber's chest-plate.

"Almost," I panted.

"Hey, that's pretty smart," Saber said. "I didn't know you could ricochet shots off the ground."

"Well it works with walls, so it makes sense I can bounce shots off the ground too."

Which was a great thing. I essentially had two chances to hit someone. Once with the initial launch, and if that missed, the missile would land right beside them and ricochet back up for a second chance.

The ricochet worked kinda weird. The obvious part was the bounce angle being a right angle, with respect to the pre-bounce trajectory. But the tricky part was, which right angle? If the Frost Missile skidded into the ground at a glancing angle, it could bounce left, or right, or even upward, and all those would be right angles.

By now, I had noticed a very simple pattern: it bounced in whatever direction I wanted it to. As long as the angle came out to be 90 degrees, I had complete control over the ricochet’s aim.

Couple that with my 141-meter total range, and I was quite the sniper.

Vortex Shield, by contrast, seemed straightforward. I finally tried it out for the first time since learning it. I honestly should’ve tried it out much earlier, but the hecticness of the past couple days made me forgetful.

I stretched out my hand, then drew a circular twirl with my fingers.

A shield of water appeared instantly before me, startling me with its loud buzz as it spun like a disk. With a wave of my hand, I sent it shooting forth as a fierce, spiraling vortex. It reached beyond the edge of the clearing, and ripped branches and leaves off the trees in its path.

"Wowee," I exclaimed. "Not bad."

The launched vortex looked appreciably large, perhaps twice my own height in diameter. This made it the biggest area-of-effect attack my team had for now, even though it only dealt about 70 damage. Still more than my crossbow, though.

Additional sparring revealed that some attacks were easier to avoid than others. Frost Missile and Vortex Shield? Dodgeable. My crossbow? Almost impossible. Mr. Atlas's hookshot? Dodgeable. Hei's teleport thing? I saw it in action for the first time. He'd disappear in a small flash of light, then reappear and emit a shadowy pulse. The attack was only dodgeable if you were at the edge of the pulse. This ability was called Voidstep.

The whole time, Jack watched from the sidelines.

"What do you even do?" I asked. We had spent days together by now, and I still knew absolutely nothing about his combat skills.

"I'm shy, alright?" he said. "It's not easy opening up after losing everyone you knew. Jeez."

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"...You're right," I said. "Sorry about that."

"Not gonna fault ya. Anyways, I'm an assassin. My first skill, Vacuum Wave."

He thrusted his palm out at a faraway tree. A shockwave shot out, rocking the tree and then continuing past it.

"70 meters range, 8 second cooldown. Deals 60 damage to all targets in its path, and applies the Resonance status effect. My melee attacks consume the Resonance status, dealing an additional 60 damage."

Jack brandished a silver dagger from his cloak. "Second ability, Slayer's Dash. 50 meters range, 8 second cooldown. Strike at a target within range, dashing to them upon the air. 100 damage."

He leaped forward as a blur. I felt a gust. In the blink of an eye, he had crossed a great distance and sunk his dagger into the trunk of the faraway tree. Another shockwave burst out from the point of entry and blew the trunk into splinters. The tree leaned over and fell, and a host of birds flew out of its crown.

"Dang," I breathed. "That's kinda badass."

Over the next few days, Saber drilled us on additional combat tips. Stuff like surprise attacks from hiding spots, first strike advantage, and executing proper flanks.

Soon, the night before the next challenge arrived. All players inside the arena arranged to meet in front of our house at 7AM the next day, for better or worse. It was an uneasy agreement. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some teams ditched the plan in favor of doing something more advantageous for themselves. Like arriving at 6AM and hiding nearby, for example. But no one knew what the challenge would be, so trickery like that would just be stabs in the dark anyways.

"Sleep early," Mr. Atlas advised our team of five, in the one bedroom we decided to share for tonight. "I'll wake you up before sunrise. We need to eat and get ready before the challenge starts."

Of course, none of us knew for sure when the challenge would start, but daybreak was a safe assumption.

Nervousness kept me awake long into the night, but I fell asleep without knowing, and the next thing I knew, Mr. Atlas startled me awake with a shout.

"It's still dark…" I blinked.

"I know," he said. The others stirred and rose up as well.

We ate and got ready as planned, then made our way out the house. The other half of our town-hall group, Reens's team of five, slept in their bed rolls on the ground floor. Reens was laying down but awake, probably from Atlas's shout earlier. The two of us exchanged groggy waves.

Things outside seemed relatively normal. There were no monsters to be found, nor even changes in the environment. It was a day like any other.

Or so it seemed, until more players congregated in front of our house, just as we had planned. People in the crowd soon began asking around, wondering what was going on, wondering if there was a challenge today at all.

Then we realized. 20 players were missing.

And no matter where we searched in the arena, we could not find them.

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