RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 186

“Come on, it will be a good experience. We want to participate in competitions, and this is the best way to improve our technique and teamwork,” said Sultan.

“It will be very hard with all physical classes, but we always need to be able to get close to attack them and a team made of completely based physical classes would help us,” agreed Shadow with Sultan’s words.

“Dude, we had to keep blocking the attacks continuously and half the fights involved us forcing them to deplete their mana. It was not much useful,” said Tang.

“Well, we will change our tactics then,” said Shadow. “Not tactics, exactly but impose some rules of engagement when fighting our opponents.”

“What can we change?” asked Griff who calm all this time. “I can hardly think of any method. Mages and archers keep attacking us from a distance, the only good thing is that Sultan and Tang have high defences and Sultan could heal while Tang keeps using her skill to jump among them to disrupt their formation.”

“Ok, let us make a few changes first,” said Shadow. “Let us all separate and try to attack from different sides. No one stays together.”

“Suicidal,” said Griff to which the others nodded.

“You don’t lose any experience in the damn thing. What is the problem?” asked Shadow.

“Combat points. We will lose combat points for every match we lose,” said Tang.

“How many of those did you actually use?” asked Shadow.

“None, but we are saving them up,” said Griff.

“OK. You all have shields?” asked Shadow.

“I don’t. The others do,” responded Griff.

“The fighting is quite similar to real-life. If we are to get any decent advantage in competitions, we can’t make rolls and evading jumps like we usually do in other games. Even blocking with our shields isn’t the best practice. Of course, we need to learn to block while handling monsters because there are different factors as we are not sure of their numbers and other things, but in PvP we will always have a decent amount of information about the other team,” said Shadow.

“All projectiles or magic spells follow trajectories. Just try to bend your body or move the minimum so that those attacks will only miss by a few inches and you don’t deviate from your path towards your enemy. As physical attackers, we have don’t always block with our blades but try to avoid other swords by a small amount and attack all the time with monsters, right?” he asked.

“That is different. They have patterns and they don’t make feints,” said Griff.

“It is true, but since we have already been able to do it with them, we can do it with these too. Some have already been trying to improve using those techniques. We need to be able to do it,” said Tetsujin. “Even if we don’t want to be in competitions and develop completely as an adventurer team that earns through playing the game and gaining resources, if we aren’t capable of fighting others, we won’t be able to keep anything that we find or hunt except scraps. So, actually it is not a bad idea.”

“Seriously!?”

“He ain’t wrong. There is no point in training in weaker and easier methods if we actually want to be a strong adventurer team. I am ready,” said Sultan.

“Come on, it is not bad. We will just try it and see for a few rounds. If it doesn’t work, we can change,” said Tang.

“Ok. Cool. Now that we are find with that, the second thing is that we should try to avoid helping others as much as possible at least in the starting of the fights,” said Shadow. “I mean to say that we only try to employ working as a team if someone has lost more than 80% of their health. We don’t try to finish the opponents faster by combining forces or attacking one-on-two.”

“How are supposed to improve our teamwork, if that is not allowed. If we find someone isolated and there are a pair of us, it is best that we attack together to finish them off,” said Sultan who found the second part a bit ridiculous. He was always trained by his family to use teamwork and improve his coordination with his teammates as much as possible to take down opponents faster.

“I don’t mean that way. Let me rephrase that. If we manage to kill off a member or two of the team, we will not corner the remaining together and pile up upon them. At least not as soon as we finished our previous fight. We will only rescue our teammate when he is in low health state. I am suggesting this because, if a player is unable to kill his opponent faster or giving trouble, it is a good opportunity for the player and it is best to let him have some practice before he is really in trouble. I would even suggest that we don’t help him, if he asks us not to interfere. Though teamwork is necessary, it is best to let one struggle and improve in the colosseum. Individual capabilities also need to be improved and we need to take every chance we have,” said Shadow.

“That is all nice and well, but I thought you told that it was a good way to improve our teamwork,” said Griff.

“How about changing it a bit further. We only use this when the opponent is also separated and make it something like we can’t have more members fighting at a time than the opposing team, when some of their members died,” suggested Sultan.

“Sure, as good an idea as any other. I am just suggesting these for now. We can change and modify as we see fit after every game,” said Shadow shrugging his shoulders. “Just want to use this to provide more pressure.”

“That’s right. You guys are all taking this too seriously,” said Tang.

With that they soon went into the colosseum, paid and registered as a team of five. They were given an initial team points of 10. The points are calculated on the number of wins and losses of the team similar to that of a single man PvP, but when the players lose or they decide to end the matches, they each get combat points equal to the team points that they have.

Their first opponents were a group of a warlock, an assassin, an elementalist and two guardians in a forest map called Bramble woods. They would be informed of their opponents’ names and occupations. They would not be informed of the other’s locations.

“Do we really need to stick to those rules,” asked Tang. She had kept a brave facade during their discussion but when the actually started the match and their opponents had to mage classes, she started to wonder if it was the best thing to do.

“Yes,” said Tetsujin. “I want to tussle with a guardian. I think it is time, I actually practice with my original occupation rather than use a great sword like a berserker,” he continued as he put back the weapon that Shadow had crafted into his bag and pulled out a pair of tonfas. “If anyone finds a guardian inform me, I will take him on.”

“Let us move ahead then,” said Sultan. “Spread out all of you. Inform if you find multiple opponents. As it is the first time, let us take it a bit slow.”

“I am going into stealth. Dibs on a guardian. Best of luck,” said Shadow as he disappeared into the forest. It was always hard for him to fight a high defence classes. They spread through the map informing of their general location periodically, so that more than one wouldn’t be searching in the same area.

A couple of minutes later, Griff was the one who responded with the location of the opponent. “Found an elementalist and guardian. They are at the North-west and moving further west. Others might be nearby. I can’t see anyone else,” said Griff.

“I am close. Will join you. We will attack together,” responded Sultan. A few seconds later, the opponent pair noticed Sultan first and attacked him. Griff who was observing them with a scope also got stabbed in the back by the assassin making him unable to help Sultan. He was actually in a worser situation that Sultan. The assassin continued to attack him as he was put in a stunned state by the backstab for two seconds. It was much worse than Sultan who could at least block the attacks with his shield. Moreover, Griff was one who developed a strength build and didn’t have very high health. The assassin could also have other stun skills which he could compound on him after he used a couple of strong attacks.

Just a second after the assassin started his attack, it suddenly stopped. “I used cheap shot on him. He will be in stun for three seconds after you are out of it,” said Shadow in his ear. “Use it to get rid of him. I will support Sultan.”

He ran into the elemantalist, took out an axe and locked the elemantalist’s wand with his axe and pushed him from behind the guardian cover towards Sultan who was slowly moving towards the guardian. “The guardian is mine,” he informed as started his fight.

Sultan had already started a close quarter fight with the elementalist. Once, he was close enough, he was hardly hit by any attacks of the elementalist who moved to a defensive attack Without other options, the elemantilst use skill such as light shield and flame explosion near him which would cause damage to both of them, but with Sultan’s defence and endurance, he was on the losing side.

The guardian who was covering for the elementalist was in the worst state. Shadow hadn’t even used any specific assassin skills on him and just fought with his axe. He held down the shield of the guardian and crippled that shoulder making all usual shield skill of the character useless. After that he kept hacking at the guardian’s head and when the guardian used the other hand, Shadow used the chance to cripple that arm too. The guardian player was out of commission in two seconds, after which Shadow kicked him down flat on the ground and a with four repeated hits to his neck, he killed him.

“Speed up. I am done with mine,” said Shadow to Sultan and Griff. The pair of them were still fighting with their opponents and were quite surprised. Then, they looked at the axes in his hand and were even more surprised and recalled Merlin informing them that he was an expert in real-life and would be proficient in multiple weapons. Griff who had his opponent stunned and during that duration crippled had a good chance to look at Shadow’s fighting technique. The way, he crippled the guardian before brutally killing him convinced him of Merlin’s words if he was doubtful before. But he did realize that it was a very good way to fight and him being a strength build had better chances to use similar tactics to halt a guardian from covering others.

With the assassin in stunned state, Griff was able to deal very high damage to him. As an assassin, he would naturally have more speed but low on health. Withing the three seconds, he was put in a red state with less than 20% of his health and put his opponent’s leg in a crippled state. He had a sudden urge to try to use the same style as Shadow to cripple and kill, but he felt that it was a waste when the opponent was already at the end of his life and crippled.

Griff realised that his heavy weapon might not be the best method to attack without using system provided skill for the berserker, especially if he wanted to perform at a same level as Shadow. He still was finding it hard to believe that Shadow had managed to take down a guardian in the same time he took to kill an assassin.

“I thought that you use those daggers,” said Griff come close to Shadow as he watched Sultan fight his opponent.

“I am just practicing with other weapons too. It is good practice for real-life and helps improve my control. Always using the same, wouldn’t be good for my improvement,” said Shadow. “It would also help me understand the perspective of other fighters and helpful to forge original weapons and also my success rate.”

“Hmm, I don’t know much about forging, but I think it would help me understand the perspective of other fighters. I do use both spear and great sword as weapons,” said Griff. “How about we exchange our weapons. I have silver level 15 spear that I am not using,” he said as he pulled out a spear and held in front of Shadow.

[White Splitter] (Silver Two-handed spear)

Level 15;

Requirement: Strength: 50;

Attack Power +65;

Active Skill: Light Slice: The tip of the spear is covered in a bright light which increases piercing damage by 40 and 50% increase of causing a bleed damage of 5 HP per second. Duration: 20 seconds. Cooldown: 5 minutes.

Durability: 40/40;

“This is the weapon given to the White Bane Corps,” said Shadow as soon as he saw the weapon. Their weapons have a specific design that looks like a fractal of a snowflake on their handles. He didn’t ever see the specific weapon, but the design gave it away.

“You already have this?” asked Griff surprised. He had to finish a very hard quest to get this spear and reputation from the corps and thought that he was unique in this aspect.

“No, I just know the design. I have been involved with them,” said Shadow as he took the spear from Griff. “I only have bronze grade axes. Can’t provide you with silver grade ones,” he said as he pulled out the axes and gave it to Griff.

“Iron Axe?” asked Griff as he took them. “For a bronze grade axe, somebody likes irony.”

“We cool?” asked Shadow. “Didn’t think of that when I was naming it. Just named it that way because it was made completely of iron ore.”

With them having exchanged weapons they began to move them around to get used to them and tried to perform techniques which they had previously seen. Shadow had previously fought against a lot of players who used spears. He even fought against Lucius who used a long stick and few of those moves could be applied to a spear. They didn’t care about the others and continued to practice till Sultan joined them.

“Tetsujin and Tang are fighting the last two. He is fighting the guardian and she already has the warlock at his end. It looks like their opponents managed to ambush them, but Tang used her weapon skill to crash into them,” said Sultan who had been conversing with Tetsujin in chat.

“Don’t care. I hope they kill them fast,” said Griff and a second later an announcement came that their opponents forfeited the match.

“What happened?” said Tang in the team chat. “The forfeited so suddenly. Did you guys already kill the remaining?”

“Yes. Only you and Tetsujin were fighting,” said Griff. “It is good. Let us go to the next one. We must also be careful to not be ambushed. They have ambushed all of us except Shadow in this round.”

“That is always hard. We will have to keep looking after our backs all the time,” said Tetsujin. “It isn’t possible to always be aware of ambushes especially if there are assassins. We have no way to avoid them. Without mages, these things are going to be much harder than I thought. Our opponents in this match were also quite better than the previous ones.”

“It is expected as we have a 5-man team now. Let us continue with the same rules though. It is the best way to get used to this. It is good to learn how to react to ambushes,” said Sultan. They were soon transported to another map that looked like a ruin on a hill for the next match.