Chương 118: Chapter 117: Triumph

The bark plates split apart and black light erupted outward in a sphere of destruction that expanded across the entire clearing. It was an untargeted, omnidirectional blast that hit everything inside the dome simultaneously. Greenveil's Reckoning. The defensive barriers shattered in sequence: the Paladin domes first, then Gaul's Aegis, then Desirae's mass shield, each one absorbing a fraction of the damage before breaking.

Even with every defensive skill active, the energy that got through was devastating, and players dissolved in waves as the blast burned through their remaining health. I was behind the tank line when it hit, and even with the barriers eating most of it, the remaining force slammed into me with enough power to drop my health to twelve percent in an instant. I was thrown backward, sliding across the scorched earth, and I drank a health potion mid-fall before forcing myself up once again.

The clearing was in chaos, the air was thick with the remnants of the attack, and scattered loot was everywhere around the ground: the dropped items of the fallen raid members. I checked the raid interface. We had fourteen players remaining out of almost a hundred, and the boss was at five percent. It looked like it damaged itself in the process of using the devastating ability.

"It's almost dead!" I shouted.

"Everyone who can still fight, get up! NOW!" The Spriggan was damaged from its own attack, the chest plates hanging open and the jade core exposed while the creature was balancing on its root-legs. It was vulnerable, but still alive, and at five percent with regeneration every second mattered. Alice was on her feet with her sword crackling. Gaul was alive, bleeding from a gash across his forehead but standing with his hammer ready. Denxy's shield arm was shaking, but he was upright.

Desirae was on her knees, staff planted in the ground, casting heals as fast as she could manage to keep the fourteen survivors from dipping into critical. Sarella emerged from behind a shattered boulder with rapier in hand, her armor scorched but still functional. A King's Glade Rogue and a Spearfighter pulled themselves from the debris as three Vanguard players — two Guardians and a Berserker — had survived behind Gaul's barrier.

The Spriggan raised a trembling arm and swept it sideways, a last-ditch attack aimed at the survivors clustering near its base. Gaul met it with his hammer, deflecting enough of the force to save the melee fighters around him, but the impact sent him flying. I saw my opening. The chest core was exposed, and the Spriggan was stationary for the first time in quite a while, its arm extended from the swing and its body turned with the chest wide open.

I planted my feet, raised the Emberwood Longbow, and drew the string past the anchor point, past my ear, to the absolute limit of the draw.

"Dead Calm." My movement speed dropped to zero and my defense dropped to nothing, meaning that if anything so much as looked at me I was dead, but the skill's power flooded through me and the amber glow along the Emberwood's body blazed with power. The Spriggan's body filled my vision — every crack in the bark, every detail along its surface, every strand of sap leaking from the wounds we had caused so far — as if time itself had slowed to let me aim.

Four hundred percent of my attack power, all resistances ignored, multiplied by an almost sure critical hit if I landed the shot on the core of the boss. I fired, and the arrow left the bow as a streak of fiery amber light that crossed the clearing and struck the jade core dead-center. -2, 784! The Spriggan's body convulsed as cracks spiderwebbed outward from the point of impact, jade light leaking from every fissure while the core flickered and dimmed.

The health bar dropped to two percent, but the creature held together and screamed again with the same, high-pitched roar as before, and the dome above us shuddered as roots burst from the ground in every direction in a final, desperate attempt to take everyone down with it. A root surged toward me, and I couldn't move. Dead Calm's aftermath had locked my feet with the stance still fading, my defense at nothing.

"Woe's Last Gasp!" The ethereal state wrapped around me just before the root struck. It passed through my translucent body harmlessly, and the three seconds of invulnerability gave me the window I needed to recover. The shockwave at the end of the skill blasted the root backward, and I was free, sprinting sideways as my movement speed spiked back to normal once again. Three more roots were also moving, and one was heading straight for Denxy.

The Guardian had his back turned with his shield raised against an attack from the other direction, bracing against an impact that shoved him two meters back, completely unaware of the second root coming from behind.

"Cheat Death!" Desirae's staff blazed with radiant light, and a barrier of golden energy surrounded King's Glade's tank just as the root struck. The impact was absorbed entirely, the barrier holding for exactly the fraction of a second it needed to before shattering. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The root whipped sideways after hitting the barrier, and the recoil caught Desirae across the torso.

The Cleric was thrown ten meters through the air, her staff falling from her hands, and she hit the ground and didn't get up. Her health bar emptied in the raid interface, and then her name grayed out. Denxy turned around, saw the scorch mark where Desirae had been standing and the staff lying in the dirt, and understood what she had done. He let out a roar of pure, unfiltered rage and charged the Spriggan.

His Mythril shield slammed into the creature's knee, and the joint shattered, sending the Spriggan toppling sideways as its massive body listed toward the ground. Alice was already moving. Lightning Steps carried her to the exposed core, and she drove her sword into the jade light with everything she had.

"Lightning Blade!" The electricity arced through the cracked core, the energy discharge jumping from fissure to fissure and burning through the Spriggan from the inside. -826! One percent remaining. The survivors converged. Gaul's warhammer struck the base of the core. Sarella's rapier found the gaps in the bark. The Rogue, called Bushwack, buried both daggers into a root-joint while the Spearfighter drove her weapon through the creature's shoulder.

The three Vanguard survivors attacked from the west, pouring every last cooldown into the dying boss. I nocked one more arrow. Guilds or not, that last hit is mine.

"Arrow of Ash & Flames!" I released. The arrow struck the core once again, and the light went dark. The Greenveil Spriggan swayed, its emerald eyes dimming and the glow in its veins fading to nothing. It stood there for a long moment, an immense shape of a majestic tree-kin, and then it fell. The impact shook the clearing one final time as the massive body crashed onto the ground in an avalanche of bark, roots, and scattered leaves.

The dome above us fizzled, cracked, and began to dissolve, branches unwinding and retracting into the canopy and letting the sunlight pour back in. Field Boss defeated: Greenveil Spriggan (Enhanced) Experience gained: 100, 000 The system notification washed over us, followed by a cascade of EXP points that pushed my bar significantly forward. Nine players stood in the ruined clearing. Alice, Denxy, Sarella, Bushwack, the Spearfighter — a woman named Halla — Gaul, two other Vanguard players, and me.

Nine out of the almost hundred who had started the fight. No one cheered or celebrated. We stood in the wreckage surrounded by the scattered loot of ninety dead players, and the enormity of what had just happened settled over us along with the dust still falling from the dissolved dome. Alice sheathed her sword and walked to the spot where Desirae had fallen. She stood there for a moment, looking at the scorch mark on the grass, then turned away. Denxy hadn't moved from where he'd charged the Spriggan.

His shield arm hung at his side, the Mythril surface dented and scratched but still held together. Gaul sat down heavily on a piece of the Spriggan's shattered body with his warhammer across his knees, staring at the clearing with exhaustion written across every line of his face.

"Nine out of ninety-nine," he said quietly.

"Practically a draw."

"No," Alice said, sheathing her sword.

"It's a victory." Gaul exhaled, then looked at Alice, and the words came out with honest acknowledgment.

"Hell of a fight, Commander."

"Hell of a fight," she agreed, looking around the battlefield once again. The loot distribution was going to be complicated, but the immediate priority was simpler: collecting the dropped items of the dead. When a player died in open world, they had the chance of dropping a portion of materials from their inventory, along with any of their items. Items currently equipped had a higher chance of dropping, too. Losing coins was also possible this way, although rarer.

The biggest hit, however, was the experience loss: regardless of where you were currently at, your EXP bar reset at 0%. If you had 500k with only a sliver needed for the next level, that was devastating. Of course, participants had all gained 100, 000 EXP for the battle, but for most, that was only a fraction of what they had lost. Alice took charge without anyone questioning it.

"King's Glade items are mostly scattered on the left. Vanguard items on the right. If you recognize someone's gear, pick it up after clearing it with Gaul or me. If you don't know whose it is, leave it right there and we'll sort it out." The nine of us spread across the clearing, moving through the wreckage and gathering fallen equipment with careful attention. I found a King's Glade Ranger's bow near the northern edge, and I recognized it immediately. He was standing right next to me during the root phase.

Sarella picked up daggers, rings, and cloaks with methodical precision, sorting them based on details she seemed to recognize, while Bushwack worked beside her, the Rogue's quick hands identifying items with a practiced eye. Denxy moved slowly, collecting shields and heavy armor pieces before going to the backline, looking at equipment dropped by the healers. The three Vanguard players handled their side with the same respectful efficiency. Nobody touched anything that wasn't theirs.

At one point, Halla picked up a sword and looked uncertain.

"This one, I'm not sure. It could be Vanguard."

"That's ours," one of the Vanguard Guardians said after a glance at the shared item window.

"Sl4yer's blade. We'd run a dungeon together when it dropped." She walked it over and handed it to him without a word, and he nodded his thanks. It took twenty minutes. By the time the field was sorted, the glade was cleared up nicely. All of the dropped items would sooner or later get back to who they belonged to. The massive losses stung a little less after knowing this fact. But for now, the nine of us stood around the Spriggan's massive corpse, and Alice walked over the pile, opening the raid loot interface.

She had talked to Gaul, and they both decided to share the whole list at once, and distribute the items together, between the two guilds. The list appeared, and I counted the items twice because the first time I was sure I'd misread the number. Twelve drops, seven of them bordered in purple, one in a shifting red light I had never seen before in Godsrealm, and two more that included a Rare growth item and something that made both raid leaders go very quiet. Alice looked at Gaul. Gaul looked at Alice.

"I know we agreed about the distribution process," he said.

"But that sure changes things, don't you think?"

"Yes," Alice agreed.

"I do."