SHA-BAM!
Uno landed in the midst of the void monsters, flattening many beneath the sheer force of his weight, while others got blown away by the sharp shockwave that erupted from his attack.
The Epic skill Hard Landing made the user jump into the air and angle down to smash the ground with extreme force, converting the character's weight and Strength stat into raw damage values with an x10 modifier at Rank 2.
The heavier your character and the higher the Strength stat, the more powerful this skill.
Uno's Legendary Class had blessed him with a starting stat of 100 in Endurance, but only 10 in all other categories. Since he was primarily the tank of their group the Vanguard had not put too many points into Strength, yet with all his defensive equipment his current weight had become ungodly. Once both were multiplied together, the new value got further modified by the skill's base modifier of x10 and with all of Umbra's members being Aether-Imbued, the damage values above the enemies exceeded -500,000!
With Uno opening up the battlefield in such a spectacular fashion, the other core members smiled and finally entered the fray as well.
Sublime Notion was among the first to follow up Uno's opening strike, as she didn't need to directly head into the battle. Unfortunately, the Seneschal class was built for political administration of a state, so all her passive and active class skills were geared towards that end.
However, the class yielded a shocking boon.
｢Seneschal - Legendary Class
Class weapons: Any non-physical
Class skills: Any non-physical｣
As such, Sublime Notion held up a Legendary staff in hand that boosted her magical prowess. As Umbra's 2nd Vice Guildmaster and the one in charge of Vita City-State she had learned literally every spellbook she could get her hands on. Her skill list was so long that it would overwhelm anyone but this evil loli, who was extremely blessed with the ability to make order out of chaos.
Nevertheless, Sublime was still crazy. With gleeful laughter that left no doubt that this absolutely cute girl for whom every man would slaughter a whole nation just to get her to whisper 'big brother' once was not mental firm, she equipped ANOTHER staff in her off-hand.
And as one expected, she was double-casting two different spells with two different weapons! This should obviously be impossible – otherwise why wouldn't literally everyone else do this? – but her class's loose restrictions had created a monster.
From one staff emerged a super large fireball and from the other, a crackle of scary lightning. Still screeching with laughter, Sublime cast these two spells into a mass of void monsters and watched them deal over 300,000 damage both as splash and focused targeting.
Without break, her left staff spawned a shot of acidic water and her right staff grew a large ice lance, both of which were fired out the next second. Still not satisfied with just this alone, Sublime conjured a ray of gravity that tore through all her targets on one side, and paired it with a beam of light that edified all targets on the other side, incinerating parts of them with ease.
Both higher tier Epic spells dealt almost 900,000 each.
Sublime Notion spawned more spells and fired them out into the masses of monsters, only watching her mana bar but never the results of her actions.
Deployed Soldier sighed and unsheathed his ornate sword. He had largely stayed out of battle ever since he got his new class. He felt that he had experienced enough fighting in the pocket world he was sent to during the class change quest, but as a soldier, he would obey the command of his superiors.
His passives were still active, both Commander's Aura and Commander's Wisdom. The former buffed his troops and the latter made all tactics useless against him. That was how the allied army under his banner had largely survived the battle, though it was not enough.
One could pair trashy food with high-quality cutlery to increase the former's value, but it would not change the taste.
Since he was fighting personally now, he turned off all his Commander buffs. It would not work on the core members of Umbra anyway, as they could not be made into troops under his banner.
His class skills didn't state that 'all allies would benefit from X', it specifically stated that 'all troops under his command would benefit from X'.
｢Great Commander - Legendary Class
Class weapons: Any non-magical
Class skills: Any non-magical｣
Similar to Sublime he had also used his class's crazy freedoms to learn a bunch of physical skills of all types. Additionally, he had spent his time learning different weapon types such as the spear, bow, sword, and more. Naturally, Deployed Soldier, still preferred the blade due to his own character and due to his skill with it.
He had been of average skill, but years spent in that class change quest fighting battles non-stop without the ability to use skills as he wanted had turned him into a swordmaster who might even last a couple of rounds against a monster such as Draco.
As such, the moment his Legendary ornate sword came out, he disappeared from where he stood as the eyes of onlookers traced him to a spot in the middle of the battlefront.
Deployed Soldier was calmly staring into the glowing red eyes of a humanoid void monster, his blade impaled in its neck. It received over 1,500,000 damage due to the severity, but it was Deployed Soldier's sudden appearance that spooked the monster.
Well, it was the work of an Epic skill called Seek and Destroy. It was basically a sword thrust + blink skill with high accuracy. A definite sure-kill skill in any fight, but here it only shaved off 10% of this monster's HP.
As the void monster sought vengeance by clawing at Deployed Soldier, he simply withdrew his blade and stepped back. Then, with shocking speed, he brought up his sword and parried the claw strike of the void monster with disgusting ease.
Unlike Draco, Deployed Soldier did not dual wield. Dual-wielding was for ambidextrous swordsmen with extremely high Dexterity and Strength. Deployed Soldier preferred to have stable control over a fight, not too fast, not too slow.
Powerful, steady, deliberate. He did not use any sort of flashy acrobatics or overly exaggerated somersaults, only remained methodical, sharp, and to the point. With one hand folded behind his back, he continually controlled the void monster before him with ease and shaved away its HP over time.
He would block, parry, or distract, then slash, pierce or bisect the enemy during the lapse in the response. It was a beautiful thing to watch for actually skilled combatants compared to jumping about with two swords like a monkey whilst shouting longwinded names of some sword techniques like they meant something profound.
Deployed Soldier was always in control.
On the other hand, Happy Saint found himself quite overwhelmed by the fervor of battle. He was an old man and quite refined at that. Outside the game he was actually one of the few remaining French noblemen in modern France, so he had grown up cultured and well-groomed even though he practiced as a blacksmith in the real world.
His upbringing was also why he preferred crafting, specifically Blacksmithing and Alchemy, because combat wasn't really his thing. However, his new Legendary Class afforded him the power to switch between being a crafter or fighter with a flick of the finger.
｢Combat Form – Active skill
Effect: Switch to the Combat mode of this class, which increases the defensive and offensive power of manipulated metals by 30%.
Duration: continuous.
Cooldown: none.｣
｢Metalmancy – Passive skill
Effect: The user can manipulate any metal at will. This can be used as an offensive or defensive method for combat, or to assist in crafting for Tradeskills.｣
｢Metallurgy – Passive skill
Effect: The User is able to sense the presence of metals within a range of 2 miles. The User gains knowledge about all the properties, characteristics, and possible transformations/combinations of all metals.｣
With these two passives and his Combat Form skill, Happy Saint was Magneto on crack. He opened his inventory and tossed out hundreds of swords, daggers, spears, arrows, etc at the Common or Trash-tier Rank.
Immediately, he extracted the purified metallic content in these weapons, leaving only debris and waste behind. A veritable sea of pure metallic essence floated around Happy Saint, which he then further split into smaller orbs.
With a wave of his hand, they zoomed into the battlefront and swarmed the enemies. Immediately, they changed into different weapons based on the situation. One would turn into a spear or sword and handle frontal attacks, a second would become a bow or crossbow to fire ranged attacks while a third would become a shield that protected the attacking weapons from retaliation.
Their tag team was so perfect, especially against the poor void monsters, that they were draining away the HP of these beasts in the hundreds of thousands per second.
Only Happy Saint looked strained because he was reaching the limit of his ability in controlling that many weapons, yet some of the void monsters tried to target him. As such, he used one of the skills he received at Rank 2 to cover himself.
｢Summon Metal Golem – Active skill
Effect: Channel pure metallic essence from the land to form sturdy metal golems that obey your will.
Note: Can only be used in areas with minerals.
Duration: 10 minutes
Cooldown: 1 day.｣
Beside him, a large metal golem spawned and remained steady. It let out a silent roar as it stretched out its arms and received the incoming void monsters, tossing many of them back with sheer force while engaging the ones remaining.
The earth shook from the tremors of the sheer physical battle. The metal golem was a monster of great strength and defense, and its speed was shockingly above what one would expect for its size.
Jada and Jade surveyed the battlefield together. They both held their Fire and Ice Wands which boasted far greater power and utility after their evolution.
｢Wand of Eternal Fire – Wand
Rank: Legendary
Effects:
Passive 1 – Eternal Flame: All fire-based magic, skills, techniques, and whatnot channeled through this weapon gain the 'Eternal' trait, becoming unblockable and inextinguishable by anyone but the caster.
Passive 2 – Eternal Strike: The user's auto-attack magic can be fired at a rate of 100 attacks per second. The auto-attack does fixed damage of 1,000 and ignores magic defense.
Active 1 – Flame Explosion: Send out a fireball ball that deals 1,000% flame damage over an Area Zone. Cooldown: 1 day.
Description: A weapon made by an Immortal Adventurer of the {Mas<*7=== ERROR?|} Rank that possesses a unique construction and powerful enchantment tailored specifically for Fire Lord Jada. It has reached its pinnacle state and can no longer be upgraded further, but its full potential has yet to be brought out by its owner.｣
｢Wand of Eternal Frost – Wand
Rank: Legendary
Effects:
Passive 1 – Eternal Frost: All ice-based magic, skills, techniques, and whatnot channeled through this weapon gain the 'Eternal' trait, becoming unblockable and cannot be liquefied by anyone but the caster.
Passive 2 – Eternal Defense: The user's auto-attack magic is modified to a defensive skill. Each defensive barrier spawned through this modified auto-attack has 10,000 HP and 90% damage resistance.
Active 1 – Field of Ice: Send out a wave of ice that traps all enemies over an Area Zone. Cooldown: 1 day.
Description: A weapon made by an Immortal Adventurer of the {Mas<*7=== ERROR?|} Rank that possesses a unique construction and powerful enchantment tailored specifically for Ice Lord Jade. It has reached its pinnacle state and can no longer be upgraded further, but its full potential has yet to be brought out by its owner.｣
Now with their weapons at the Legendary Rank, all their attacks would gain the Eternal trait. This was seemingly useless, but it only made the Fire and Ice Twins much more broken individually and even worse since they always fought together.
The lovely twins held hands as Jada raised her Wand of Eternal Fire and cast her auto-attack out. She now fired off 100 attacks every second, each of which was unblockable and ignored magic defense, dealing a fixed amount of 1,000 per attack.
Basically, Jada could deal 100,000 damage per second as long as she did not miss any shots. This put her slightly behind the likes of Deployed Soldier and some other core members in terms of damage, but it was the absolute lack of any type of cost that made Jada better than them.
These 100 attacks did not use mana, only her guidance. One could look at it as if Jada was holding an assault rifle with unlimited mags. She could fire 100 bullets per second and was quick enough to reload to fire off that many shots the very next second.
The only weakness she faced was accuracy. Controlling so many bullets with such a high recoil was hard. Unless they were a slow hunkering mass, it was hard to land all these attacks, especially against a swift or nimble enemy.
Jada faced this problem with the Rank 2 void monsters here. Her barrage of small fireballs crashed into the mass of them, creating a scary and moving visual. However, apart from the first 70 shots that hit random void monsters unprepared, the rest had managed to dodge out of the way.
However, that was why Jada had Jade with her, as the cyan-haired cutie raised her Wand of Eternal Frost with a neutral expression.
