Chương 118: Bites Per Second

They had five minutes before wave two, and neither of them wasted it pretending confidence would solve the class swap. Meno stood in Thorn's plate with the shield raised, testing how far he could rotate without moving his feet. The answer was unpleasant. Thorn stood a little away from him, trying small False Wings corrections. By the time the timer expired, both of them had regenerated to full HP. [Wave 2: Survive for 60 seconds] The four gates opened.

Rats poured out in numbers too dense to track, spreading across the arena floor until the packed dirt vanished beneath bodies, claws, tails, and open mouths. The mass rushed forward like a living carpet without slowing. rats WHY THIS NOPE way too nasty Meno and Thorn both froze for half a heartbeat, then focus took over. Meno backed toward the colosseum wall, stopping roughly six feet in front of it to create a cramped pocket behind and beside him for Thorn.

That killed any meaningful approach from the rear, which mattered because War Anchor could not turn fast enough to babysit every angle. Meno placed Dominion around the position and immediately activated Sacrificial Dominion. For 10 seconds, each pulse erased every rat that reached short range. It was not long enough. Thorn stayed in the narrow space behind and beside him instead of charging into the arena. He used Pump Infernal, spent all Chain on Madness Infernal, and stored a Detonation.

A single stored release would kill everything in medium range, so chasing more was pointless. When he tested ordinary attacks against the moving swarm, the problem showed immediately. Below maximum Chain, the sword motion dealt no damage. The rats kept advancing. Once Sacrificial Dominion expired, Meno began cycling Shockwave across the frontal semicircle, but he could only do it every 2 seconds.

Between those pulses, he used short sword cuts to remove whatever reached his boots and kept the shield angled downward in case any bite actually completed.

"I will release between Shockwaves, but Pump Infernal's cooldown is too long," Thorn said through gritted teeth. Thorn used Release. The stored Detonation wiped every rat within medium range, and for one precious instant, the dirt around them showed through. Meno planted and began rebuilding toward the next Shockwave. The swarm crossed the cleared space in roughly a second. Too fast. Rats started reaching them, and after the first bite, the problem became clear. [Gnawing Ruin: Each stack reduces maximum HP by 1%.] The first stack took 1% maxHP, and every completed bite after that added another 1%. Once Meno understood that, he stopped thinking of it as damage.

"MaxHP reduction," Meno said." Regen doesn't fix it." It was a countdown. Thorn built Chain through harmless swings, constantly switching rats because targets died under Meno's pulses. Pursuit occasionally tried to turn an attack into a projectile, but Thorn kept those targets close to Meno so the charge would not drag him outside the pulse zone. Even with Break Infernal, maintaining clean hits against a shifting carpet was ugly. Meno used Stun. Hundreds of rats froze mid-lunge, tiny bodies raised with mouths open.

He cut several rats with the sword and blocked others against the lower shield edge, but too many bite animations began at once.

"No kidding," Thorn said.

"Next Shockwave." Thorn used Pump Infernal again as its 9-second cooldown returned, then stored another Detonation. Sleepless Grip blocked the first debuff that would have applied to him. Its cooldown started, and the next rats did not care. Thorn tried building Chain through zero-damage attacks. Several bites finished before he could break the pressure, pushing his maxHP to 96%. The rules were clear now. Contact was not enough. Each rat had to reach them, rear back, and finish a visible bite.

The issue was that dozens could start the animation at the same time, and every blocked lane opened another. Meno resumed the 2-second Shockwave rhythm. Every cast cleared the medium-range semicircle, but the rats returned before his next 100 Anchor was ready. He stayed planted, killing rats in front with short cuts and using the shield to block one side. Each swing shifted the shield away from another bite lane, and by the end of that stretch, his maxHP was at 79%.

Thorn attempted a Cleave Infernal setup, and Meno wanted to scream that it was a waste. He was too preoccupied to do it, pinned in place by the need to attack, block, and not move all at once. Meno had to hold the next Shockwave long enough for Thorn to apply marks and rebuild Chain. The marked rats kept moving. Some died to Meno's sword, others vanished beneath new bodies, and Thorn lost track of which tiny enemy still mattered. The delayed clear cost them.

Rats filled the pocket around Meno's legs, biting from both sides of the shield. Thorn's ordinary attacks did not interrupt anything because they dealt no damage. At 19 seconds, Thorn abandoned the collapsing setup and used the stored Release, wiping the medium range, then used Pump as soon as it returned to store the next emergency Detonation while his own maxHP sat at 86%.

"Hit. Detonate. Store. Detonate," Meno shouted. After each clear, Thorn had to skip toward the next approaching wave before he could attack again, then immediately back. Every correction cost him timing, and his Chain slowed down. Meno used Stun as the swarm returned, then cleared the frozen rats with Shockwave. When the next layer arrived, he stayed planted and resumed sword-and-shield coverage while Thorn tried avoiding the floor and building Chain at the same time.

He jumped, began to fall, used one small False Wings kick, then another, then a third, bouncing beside Meno like an angry pogo stick. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. pogo Thorn he scared PBG paying tax land coward His downward swings generated Chain slower than optimal, but the rats could not reach him while he stayed airborne, so almost all of them chose Meno instead.

Meno blocked one cluster of bites, cut down another, and watched several more complete around the edge of his guard until his maxHP fell to 61%. Thorn detonated and cleared the inner swarm, but the delay had already made Meno pay while Thorn's reduction sat at 79% maxHP.

"Land and share bite pressure," Meno said.

"I'm building Detonation without taking stacks."

"I'm taking your stacks for you." The next stretch was a bridge built out of cooldowns and mistakes. Meno kept cycling Shockwave every 2 seconds, but the uncovered intervals were deadly. Stun was down, and Sacrificial Dominion still had several seconds before returning. He stayed planted because losing Dominion's 50 Anchor per second would make the gaps even longer, but bites kept completing around his coverage until his maxHP reached 53%.

Thorn landed beside him and stayed grounded, which finally split the bites between them. It was still absolute chaos. Thorn's swings remained useless, so he had to escape individual bites with small jumps while maintaining Chain at the same time. At 28 seconds, he used stored Release to clear the swarm, then immediately used Pump Infernal and stored another Detonation for the next transition while unavoidable bites reduced his maxHP to 68%. Then their clears overlapped by mistake.

Meno's next Shockwave and Thorn's Detonation erased the same rats, leaving a long opening behind the double clear, and the swarm returned too quickly. Thorn grabbed the back of Meno's plate and used a controlled False Wings kick to pull both of them off the floor.

"Don't move," Thorn growled.

"Clear first," Meno shouted.

"Bad drop down, instant wipe!" Meno did not move on his own, which mattered. He stayed inside Dominion while Thorn dragged him sideways, so Anchor continued generating. Thorn used a second small kick before they fell, struggling to carry the plated body. Meno reached full Anchor in the air before firing Shockwave beneath them slightly too soon. The ground cleared. They landed back in the wall pocket, and the rats reached them almost immediately.

Several bites completed, leaving Meno at 48% maxHP and Thorn at 61% maxHP. At 31 seconds, Meno activated Sacrificial Dominion for the second and final time. The first pulse erased everything within short range. For 10 seconds, they had a chance to prepare for the collapse. A third activation would not come before the wave ended, so this was the last safe zone. Thorn returned to the cramped pocket and stopped wasting time on Cleave while pulses were already killing anything he might mark.

He practiced building Chain against the edge of the swarm and preserved the stored Detonation. Meno called the final rotation in fragments.

"Pulse until forty-one. You Release after. I Stun. Then Shockwave. Stay grounded unless we both lift."

"Banked," Thorn said.

"Share bites."

"Yeah." The pulse window expired at roughly 41 seconds. Thorn used the stored Release first, killing every rat within medium range. One second later, Meno used Stun across the front, freezing the next wave of bite animations before it could fully close. Thorn used Pump Infernal and banked the next Detonation, while Meno resumed Shockwave cycles with short sword movements and a low shield protecting the most crowded left side.

Thorn stayed grounded on Meno's open side and used tiny vertical jumps without False Wings to escape bites, no longer trying to remain permanently airborne. They managed one clean Detonation into Shockwave sequence. Even with coordination, the uncovered seconds kept costing them. Meno's maxHP sat at 30%, and Thorn's reached 37% before he used the stored Release at 49 seconds to erase another full approach." Pump in one."

"Hold or clear."

"Clear." At roughly 50 seconds, Thorn used Pump Infernal, banked the final practical Madness Infernal Detonation, and released it. The clear bought them only a short respite before the rats returned at full force, forcing Meno to dump a Shockwave earlier than he wanted. Then Pursuit betrayed Thorn. It activated on a rat Meno killed with Shockwave before the projectile landed, making the attack miss, breaking Chain. Meno used Stun around 51 seconds to cover the failure.

The frozen rats filled the entire frontal semicircle, and when Stun ended, hundreds resumed bite animations together. Meno cleared with Shockwave. He drove the shield downward over the densest cluster and cut across the exposed side, but enough bites completed to reduce his maxHP to 18%. Thorn stayed grounded to divide pressure. Without Pursuit's double strikes, he could not reach Detonation fast enough to cover the next gap.

Sleepless Grip kept blocking a debuff every 10 seconds, but many others landed, pushing Thorn's maxHP to 22%. The wall pocket had started working against them. Meno controlled the broad front, but Thorn only had a narrow strip to jump, land, and swing without colliding with Meno or leaving the shared defense. Every movement was too much or not enough.

"Not going to make it," Thorn said. everything is rats thorn panic bad news almost there At 56 seconds, Meno reached 100 Anchor.

"Hold. Almost at max Chain," Thorn said. Meno held it, relying on sword and shield to interrupt visible bites without moving his feet. There were too many. The deliberate delay pushed his maxHP to 10%. Thorn stayed beside him and forced a direct Chain Detonation anyway, jumping over bites and letting others complete rather than retreat far enough to abandon Meno.

He reached maximum Chain and detonated, clearing the inner swarm, but the short-range blast did not cover the full approach, and Thorn's maxHP fell to 12%. Meno released Shockwave immediately after to save him, but the swarm crossed the cleared dirt in roughly a second, and they had nothing left. He drove the shield downward over the densest cluster, blocking multiple visible bites at once, then cut along the open side. Enough attacks completed anyway, leaving him at 2% maxHP. Thorn had only partial Chain.

He abandoned offense, started to panic, made the wrong moves, and ate too many bites. His maxHP fell to 1%. A final rat reached Thorn's boot and bit, but Sleepless Grip came off cooldown at the exact moment the debuff would have applied, saving him and stun-locking his brain in the same instant. Meno reached full Anchor and fired the last Shockwave across the semicircle, then charged the frozen Thorn and slammed him against the colosseum wall.

He used his own body to block the incoming rats while the swarm tore into every undefended gap, sending Meno's maxHP plummeting to 2% just as the timer expired. The rats vanished. [Wave 3 begins in 5 minutes] rat wave cleared thorn regrets everything BIG SAVE ONE STACK FROM DELETE Sleepless MVP"DO NOT FREEZE," Meno shouted, snapping Thorn out of his self-inflicted stun.

"Yeah, my bad. Totally forgot about the gloves and thought I was dead," Thorn said as Meno released him from the wall. Thorn started slapping himself, trying to force his focus back into place.

"Should have invited a healer. This wave would have been trivial with a dispel," Thorn said.

"Highly doubt the waves are always the same," Meno said.

"It is definitely tailored to us in some way."

"Next one is going to be magic for sure, and we have no interrupts other than the one Stun." Meno checked his view count and saw it sitting slightly above ten million. At least that much was going well, because everything inside the trial was falling apart. They had almost wiped twice. Meno was already sick of playing tank instead of his own class, his body and mind both wanting to move while Thorn's kit kept forcing him to stay planted.

Thorn was fighting Swing Master from the other direction: too stiff when he needed flow, too explosive when he needed control. He was a good player, but this was not something he could simply grasp in a few minutes. Watching Thorn play Infernal highlighted the class's core problems. The damage was too inconsistent, too AoE-coded, and too prone to overkilling small targets.

Against the golems, Pull Infernal had been a self-own, Cleave Infernal was clunky to set up, and there was almost never enough time to store Detonations properly. Most of the time, storing was a DPS loss, since it cut the damage in half and only started paying for itself after five stacks. The only thing Meno still trusted was Break Infernal, and that was not enough to carry them through however many waves the Titan Trial had left. Four made sense, since Titan IV had rewarded the key. They had to get better fast.

Meno cared less about the Titan subclass reward than the possibility behind it: finally rerolling Infernal into Titan. It had to exist. It just had to.