Charge, which was formerly called Shoulder Bash, was a basic classless skill that Uno had used long before, when Riveting Night had made them fight those Feral Pangolins as Rank 0s in order to teach them the fundamental difference between skills and techniques.
It had a short stun and heavy stamina costs, but all Uno wanted it for was the speedy charge that got him to his target quickly. From there, he raised his Epic Rank bell hammer and brought it down using the active skill of his weapon.
｢Justitia – Hammer
Rank: Epic
Durability: 500,000/500,000
Passive 1 – Diffusion: Strikes from this hammer diffuse equally over any surface while maintaining original force, pressure, and intensity.
Active 1 – Hammer of Justice: Smash down on an enemy with the infusion of Justitia's light. This deals 150% holy damage to a single target. Cooldown: 30 minutes.｣
This skill was truly quite good as it allowed Uno to deal one of the rarest and most potent forms of damage, holy damage! The only two people who could ever hope to use this kind of thing were Warm Spring or Eva, yet neither was fully at that level yet.
It had an even greater effect on a monster like the Void Devourer, which were naturally classified as evil beings alongside Demons, Undead, and the various bug races.
Once Uno struck the monster, he quickly followed up by using his shield like a pan to lift the beast up and smacked it with his hammer, passing it like a tennis ball over to Boyd. One should note that the Void Devourers were slightly bigger than the players, especially the bestial ones.
Boyd roared and leapt up into the sky before using the Uncommon Skill he had acquired from the master Package, Harrowing Chop!
His poleaxe greatly cleaved into the side of the Void Devourer, and managed to almost cut it in half even. However, Boyd wasn't done. Still in mid-air with the enemy, he activated one of his most powerful skills to date.
Ultra Colossus1!
Like a beyblade that had been rightfully ripped, Boyd spun on his own axis with his poleaxe's blade edge forming his rotor. This meant that Boyd was currently achieving the dream of every young lad into axes, the fabled spin of death.
Boyd's speed alone was crazy. He was moving so fast that he remained in mid-air, even as his poleaxe struck the Void Devourer for great amounts of damage each time.
Since the skill lasted an entire 10 minutes, Boyd happily went to town on it. With the buffs from Hikari and the others, as well as his own Bide passive that let him build up momentum, he was currently bringing down the health bar of the Void Devourer at noticeable speed, a feat which was rare in this battle.
After 2 minutes, the Void Devourer's HP finally reached 30%. Boyd immediately used the force of his swings to propel him to the specific Void Devourer that Eva had taken aim, abandoning his current one.
For it was already dead.
｢Ultra Assassinate – Active skill
Effect: Stab into an enemy with less than 30% health with a 15% chance to execute them if they are within 1 Rank of yours. If the execution fails, deal 500% damage.
Cooldown: 30 minutes｣
Cobra came out of Extreme Stealth1 and stabbed his stiletto into the back of the Void Devourer. Immediately, its movements came to a stop as it weakly fell to the ground, the life and vital energy within it bleeding away rapidly.
With his Blood Aura1 passive's base execution chance of 60% at 30% HP coupled with Ultra Assassinate's boost of 15%, the AI would have to face a quick Impartial Arbitration if Cobra actually had failed to kill his target.
With one Void Devourer dealt with, this left seven more at varying states of health. The closest one to death among them was at 55% HP, far too high to make a difference straightaway.
Well, that was to be expected. They did not have 1.5 billion HP but 15 billion. Even if these bombardments were dealing millions of damage, they still needed to deal around and above 20 mil damage 750 times to kill one.
Since their attacks were spread out between their foes, it was obvious that it would be difficult to kill one in particular unless you used a combo like the one the four males of the Five Generals had just performed.
However, Eva's plan was not so banal and simple. Right after Cobra had used his Ultra Assassinate on one foe, he quickly re-entered Extreme Stealth and went behind the Void Devourer with the most HP.
It was sitting at 85% HP, precisely because it was one of the mist-type foes. This one had the craziest resistance of them all, so the players hardly focused on it after seeing how fruitless their efforts were.
Cobra's eyes flashed as he remembered the command Eva gave him, before unleashing his most powerful class skill.
Sure-Kill Strike1!
Just before Cobra struck, a heal from Hikari landed upon the mist-type Void Devourer and brought it to 100% HP with peak condition, all debuffs and stuns removed.
It initially displayed an… expression?… of rage for having its and its fellows being brutalized like they were rats, but soon its visage became one of horror and panic.
For behind it, plunged right into its vaporous body, was a stiletto. The problem was that while this stiletto would normally only barely graze it, its HP was falling rapidly every second.
The Void Devourer felt the life leave its body slowly. That was the description of the skill, and Cobra was forced to watch a special animation where the literal life energy of the Void Devourer dissipated into the air slowly.
The two were in their own world, but Uno actually came to Cobra's side and defended him. They had definitely tried this overpowered one-kill skill many times over the past 6 months, which was how they were so close to Rank 3 compared to the previous timeline when it had taken them 3 years after reaching Rank 2.
Cobra could be interrupted through this skill, and he would take a severe backlash while the enemy would regain all lost HP as if nothing had happened, and would even be given a free berserk by the system as a penalty.
They could NOT afford to allow a Rank 3 Void Devourer to go berserk on them. As such, Uno dropped everything else and took the necessary precautions. Even though the other Void Devourers were busy, who knew what was slinking around in the darkness?
......…..
Just a few minutes before the Five Generals had executed one monster and tried to kill the next, three fellows were working together as they found a neat new synergy that was working for them.
Tunder hung back and unleashed all his elemental arrows. Archers like him only bothered to Aether-imbue their best arrows, while using the normal ones to just harass the lower-ranked void monsters.
Against the Rank 3 Void Devourers though, such a thing was an utter waste. Tunder took a deep breath, and with his Gene activated, his already beautifully intense eyes became brighter.
The floating lights within that looked like playful fireflies instantly converged and changed into a crosshair spanning his entire eye, on both sides. This wasn't all, for he activated one of his other skills that had been waiting to be used all this time.
A Thousand Bows1!
This was the only active skill of the Epic Ranked bow, Gandiva1. It had long sat aimlessly in the Guild Shop after Fitter Cleric had drawn it for the Evil Duo, but Eva had granted it to Tunder in light of his talent.
Now, he was making good use of its skill after biding his time for so long. This skill made his currently nocked arrow glow with a strange light. He was holding a destructive arrow, something specially crafted by Draco with his Destruction Energy that he had tossed into the Guild Shop for the archers of Umbra.
Tunder gathered his power and combined his innate wood elf ability to perfect his aim temporarily with his passive skill that granted him the Supreme Accuracy buff permanently.
As such, the arrow that was fired out faced no penalties to accuracy. This was crucial, because it split from one arrow to two, two to four, four to eight, and more until it eventually reached a thousand!
Tunder watched silently as almost all of his 1,000 arrows struck one of the Rank 3 Void Devourers in vital areas, unleashing their miniscule destruction damage onto them. This greatly lowered the collective HP of the bunch, and Tunder sighed as he turned off his Wood Elf gene.
He had turned it on for too long in this battle and had exhausted himself. As such, he waited for the White Light Healing from Hikari that refreshed his stamina, but didn't turn it back on.
He was beginning to feel an uncomfortable pain in his head, likely due to the feedback loop between his brain and the VR helmet. It would not be a good idea to continue abusing his heritage, so he stuck to normal Archery as a Ranger for the rest of the battle.
Fitter Cleric, who was nearby, was currently battling by using the first passive of Pandora's Box to harass the Rank 3 Void Devourers. Even though the damage was absolutely random, he was more interested in the different effects that manifested.
When he realized he could use the active skill once again, he grinned and activated Lucky Draw.
This time, the skill he drew was much milder and more sensible.
｢Thunderstorm – Active Skill
Effect: Unleash the rage of the heavens upon the earth, calling down every bolt of lightning down onto foes. This deals 2,000% Lightning damage.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: ?｣
The ultimate spell of the Lightning path was now in the hands of the vile Luckmancer. He alerted everyone to his acquisition in the Raid Party Chat and activated the skill before anyone could stop him.
"Fiat caelum fulgur percutiens!"
That next moment, the sky suddenly darkened. Black clouds hovered in the sky, turning the Area Zone slightly dim as the various players looked up to see bright spots in those clouds.
This time, there was nowhere to run, so they dropped their weapons in defeat. If they were going to be bombarded to death, then let it be over with! No need to waste precious energy resisting…
However, they were left stunned and speechless by the fact that the bolts of lightning they thought would end their existences actually avoided them all and instead focused on the 8 Void Devourers.
By the time the 10 seconds of intense lighting strikes that would make even Pikachu hide its face in fear, the frazzled Void Devourers were revealed to the public, who took in a deep breath.
Damn!
Many of them had lost a lot of HP, with almost 10% across the board. Compared to what they were doing, Fitter Cleric had clearly improved upon his craft greatly.
When they turned to look at him, the Luckmancer was once again gazing into the distance. His soft eyes told that he was not in the present, but likely staring into the future.
Lips twitching, the other players collectively cursed him, then ignored him and continued their bombardment the next second. As for Slim Fatty, she gazed at Fitter Cleric with rosy red cheeks and murmured: "So handsome…"
…Sigh.
In the forefront of their synergistic battle was Essence Stalker. He had largely kept himself at bay during the earlier parts of the battle, but he now went all-out against his foes.
How did he do so? Definitely not with his trusty halberd and exemplary combat skills. No, the fellow was in his full Void Dragon form, his purple eyes and scales gleaming with mystery.
Initially, he was beating up the Void Devourers leisurely, since his transformation time had been magnified due to specific rewards and circ.u.mstances while in the Ancestral Dragon city.
However, around the time Cobra used his Sure-kill skill, he paused and almost froze. His expression became dark and warped, as he gazed behind him.
Essence's purple, serpentine eyes roved over a spot that was seemingly empty, but his eyes eventually locked onto a specific point of space that was cordoned off in a familiar way he felt he had experienced before.
With a roar, he shot out an Orb of Void towards that location while rushing over for he had seen that his target had noticed his recognition. When Essence saw who they were going after, he was stunned then furious.
"BIG SIS EVA, LOOK OUT!" ｢Gandiva – Bow
Rank: Epic
Durability: MAX/MAX
Passive 1 – Indestructible: This bow cannot be damaged or destroyed.
Active 1 – A Thousand Bows: Fire one shot that replicates into a thousand, dealing stacking Area of Effect damage. Cooldown: 6 hours.｣
｢Blood Aura – Passive skill
Effect: An air of murder surrounds the User, granting 30% increase to damage and defense when using small bladed weapons. The User's execution chance is fixed at 60% per strike when an enemy is below 30% HP.｣
｢Sure-kill Strike – Active skill
Effect: Thrust your blade into the core weak point of an enemy, taking their life away while you watch their soul leave their body.
Note 1: Enemy must be at 100% HP.
Note 2: Enemy must be within 1 Rank of yours.
Note 3: Enemy must be unaware of your presence.
Cooldown: 1 week.｣
｢Extreme Stealth – Passive skill
Effect: Remain invisible to all enemies below your level. Those at your level have a 20% chance to detect you while those above you have varying chances to do so. Does not consume stamina.｣
｢Active 1 – A Thousand Bows: Fire one shot that replicates into a thousand, dealing stacking Area of Effect damage. Cooldown: 6 hours.｣
｢Ultra Colossus – Active skill
Effect: Spin your axe in a clockwise motion with almost impossible speed and precision, like a spinning top. This deals 30% axe damage per swing.
Duration: 10 minutes
Cooldown: 1 day.｣