‘Fuck, I hate math, ok, so to kill them, it would take roughly 28 bullets, and it only costs me a minute amount of MP per attack,’ Brance thought as he dove out of the way of a swift tail strike and countered with a hail of bullets.
Thwap thwap thwap
The sound of stone on skin followed by angry growls of pain was like a symphony as Brance darted around and peppered the RaptorBasilisk’s bodies.
One after another, a flood of notifications indicating he had dealt 800 static damage to the opponent flashed in Brance’s eyes. Still, instead of reading them, his vision was locked onto the HUD, indicating how much HP each enemy had left.
After another wave of bombardments, Brance pulled away from the creatures and checked the overhead timer. Only a minute and a half had passed, and feeling that he had things under control, Brance looked over at Gabby and noticed she had chosen to cripple her enemies.
Unable to contain his grin, he watched as she jumped around, retrieving her ammo from the creatures’ bodies before shooting the same bolt back at them. Nodding in satisfaction, Gabby would hop back a few paces and observe their reactions, something she had figured out independently since she couldn’t see how much HP beings had left.
Tilting his head to the side and dodging a tail strike, Brance grabbed the attacking dino, gripping it by the feathers and scales, and with bulging muscles, picked it up before slamming it into the stone ground.
“Stop it,” Brance grumbled as he released the RaptorBasilisk and kicked it in the ribcage, sending it sailing through the air several meters.
Meanwhile, Cynrik was in a world of his own, jumping around, narrowly avoiding Affinity skills, claws, and tails. Glancing up at the clock and checking how much time was left until he had to kill the creatures, he spun his dagger in his palm before hacking into the nearest enemy.
-You have dealt 1387 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 912 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 1255 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 1493 damage to your opponent.-
[*Yawn* 45 seconds, get ready.] Yawning as he repeatedly landed slash after slash quickly on the dinos, Cynrik kept swapping between watching the clock and monitoring the enemies’ HUD. His grazing dagger strikes had stacked up over time, and now both his dinos were sitting at below 3k HP.
‘The fun begins next round. Gabby should be able to handle four no problem, but once it hits higher numbers, she will struggle.’ Dropping to one knee, Cynrik spun around, gripped his shortsword in a reverse grip on his right hip with his right hand, and drew the weapon while slicing through the nearest creature’s Achilles tendon.
Smirking as he watched the creature fall down in pain, Cynrik bounced back to his feet and put some distance between himself and the injured RaptorBasilisk.
’24 seconds,’ he thought and narrowed his eyes, targeting the spot behind each dino’s neck. Cynrik had already done the hard part the last two and a half minutes. By hitting them with his blades, he could control his damage output nearly as easily as if he were using Mana.
This action was all for the sake of managing his resource stats. Just like using Affinity skills would drain his MP, swinging his sword and dagger would drain his Stamina. Thus, by swapping between the two different attack methods, he could double his damage output while reserving his strength for more prolonged battles.
“NOW!” The instant his count hit one second, Cynrik screamed and lunged forward, severing the heads of both dinos. In response to his signal, and just like he had wanted, Gabby and Brance instantly killed off their injured RaptorBasilisks, triggering a chain of notifications.
|You have successfully Killed a Level 10, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisk.|
|You have successfully Killed a Level 9, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisk.|
|You have received 20 Obelisk Kill Points.|
|You have received two KCPs (Kill Counter Point).|
|Total KCP = Five points.|
|You have received two 10000 Essence, XP Crystals.|
|You have received 12 Merit Points.|
|You have triggered the Respawn Timer; (4) Virtual opponents will be generated in one minute.|
Ignoring the notifications for the moment, Cynrik charged back to his corner and started counting down from 60. Upon arriving in his predetermined spot, he looked over and saw that Gabby was back at the starting location, and after activating [Mana Sight], he could tell that Brance had arrived back in front of the trap.
[Tell Gabby she did a good job, but crippling both of her opponents was unnecessary. If she tries doing that every time, we will have slip-ups. It isn’t wrong to do that to one of them so that the pressure she is under can be reduced, but she can’t make that her primary objective.] Spinning his dagger around the back of his hand, Cynrik chided as he sheathed his shortsword back onto his hip.
Scoffing out loud, Brance took a second to walk around the confinement area and meet Gabby.
“Hey, how are you holding up? See, it wasn’t so bad.” Smiling as he spoke, Brance placed a hand on Gabby’s head, who seemed ok after moving around so much in such a short timeframe.
“It was fine; my biggest problem is figuring out how much health they have left. But I think my method is working fine.” Gabby said as she reloaded her crossbow.
“Keep it up; your movement during battle was clean. Plus, the idea of reusing your bolts was smart. You are doing great out there, and if you keep doing so well, you’ll get a present later. The thing I want you to focus on more, though, is not crippling every enemy. You aren’t a crazy person like Big Brother, so keep that to a minimum and just take angled shots like you were doing.”
When Brance mentioned a present, Gabby got excited for a second, but when his following words weren’t continued praise, she nodded and accepted them with a grain of salt.
Whenever Brance gave constructive criticism, it wasn’t like Cynrik’s, which would always be harsh and uncaring of the other parties’ feelings. Instead, Brance was gentler and would always lead with praise before getting to business.
“Got it, no more crippling every dinosaur, and more pew-pew!” Giving a salute, Gabby smiled and nodded, making Brance laugh.
[Ok, love birds, 19 seconds, get back in place; the wave of 12 is inbound. Four targets each; I will pull aggro first this time, you are second, and Gabby gets the remainder. I want to put as much of a target on us first. That way, she can see how the group reacts to simultaneous attacks.] Cynrik said while flexing his back muscles to untighten them.
“Gabby, real quick, Big brother is pulling the aggro first this time, followed by me. He wants you to attack the central group again, but hold for a couple of breaths to see how they react to the ambush.” Looking from Gabby to the countdown timer and back to his girlfriend, Brance quickly filled her in before sprinting off to his little ambush point.
“Got it, good luck!” Gabby chirped as she watched her boyfriend’s muscular back and strong legs. Just as he rounded the corner, Gabby got a good view of his butt, blushed slightly, and patted her own in response.
“Tsk, he’s got a better one than me,” she said with a pouty face and then went about channeling three disks and pointing her weapon at the particle storm as it once again made its way down from the ceiling and broke apart, only this time instead of six clusters, there were twelve.
‘Four each this time, pause for the Big bro and hubby, then take my shots.’ Gabby repeated in her head several times.
Soon the particle clusters touched the ground and shifted into a large pack of ferocious RaptorBasilisks.
When choosing her four targets, Gabby noticed a black flicker out of the corner of her eye and could spot four baseball-sized black orbs traveling almost too fast to see as they flew silently through the air toward the chirping creatures.
TSSMP TSSMP TSSMP TSSMP
With perfect accuracy, the four orbs smacked into the heads of their corresponding targets with a strange sizzling popping sound, enraging a third of the group, who sniffed the air, spotted Cynrik waving at them, and took off running in his direction.
Shifting her eyes to the right, Gabby noticed four puffs of dust followed by loud cracking sounds; these resulted from Brance’s [Stone Bullets] colliding with his chosen targets’ skulls. Instead of a sizzling pop, the rocks emitted a cracking sound as bone and stone met.
The remaining four RaptorBasilisk kept turning their heads at an angle and looking around in confusion. From the left, they were attacked by fire and the right stone; this left the last four creatures in a predicament, and their lizard brains had trouble comprehending what had transpired.
Unfortunately, before they could figure it out, three of them had their shoulders ripped open by translucent disks, leaving the last one to lose an eye as Gabby shot it in the face just like the first one in the previous group.
“ANNNK ANNK” The newly one-eyed dino yelped as it bent forward and tried digging the foreign object from its face. When it couldn’t, It looked up and found the rest of its small pack rushing toward a little being with a metal object in her hand. Sensing that this was who hurt it and forced it to lose its right eye, the RaptorBasilisk grew enraged and took off after its companions.
—
While the third group of dinos began their fight, sitting in another realm, Yennifer and Headmaster Rivia had stern expressions on their faces while watching the battles.
“Although I have to admit Ivar’s strategy is solid, he is relying too heavily on whether or not his brother and Student Gabriella can keep up with his pace.” Headmaster Rivia stated with crossed arms.
|”Indeed, it is interesting, but the question is if Student Gabriella Sanford can sustain fighting against so many enemies to begin with. By my calculations, by the time the timer runs down, there will be 48 of the Virtual Creatures on the battlefield, meaning they will each only have one minute to kill off 16. That is something I am not so sure she can handle.”|
Yennifer was skeptical, but since she had observed all the fights up until now, something told her that if Gabby continued using the hit and run strategy she had witnessed during the earlier waves, then it would be possible to achieve her goal.
“I only worry about her mental health, she is the youngest of the group, and the fact that she immediately went for crippling the creatures concerns me. Ivar’s attitude and way of thinking may have rubbed off on her a little too much.
Yennifer didn’t answer but simply shook her head; her son was underestimating the girl who was smitten by the younger and purer of the two brothers. She didn’t think for a second that Cynrik would so easily corrupt Gabby.