Chương 123: Chapter 122: Battle of the Quarry

Two Elite-level summons from a Rare skill. That shouldn't have been possible. Animate Stone was a Rare rune. I remembered the tooltip: the power of the animated object varied depending on Intelligence. The base duration was thirty seconds plus one second per point of Intelligence. The constructs below had been standing for well over a minute already, and they showed no signs of fading. Which either meant Mädusa's Intelligence stat was absurd, or the skill was somehow modified. I was guessing the latter.

To animate two Elite-level constructs separately, something definitely needed to be changed. Then I noticed something else. Mädusa hadn't moved. Not a step, not a gesture. Her staff was still planted in the ground, and her eyes were closed. The violet crystal at the top of her staff pulsed in rhythm with the movements of the two stone guardians below, each pulse syncing with an attack, each flicker matching a step. She was channeling. The rune said nothing about channeling.

The skill rooted her in place, making her focus solely on keeping the Golems up. Which meant she couldn't do anything else. No movement, no dodging, no casting, no defending. Every resource she had was feeding into those two stone monsters that were currently tearing apart King's Glade's defensive line from behind. Behead the snake. If I killed Mädusa while she was defenseless, the constructs would fall, and the Court force would lose their Vice-Guild Leader in the opening minute of their own assault.

The psychological impact alone would be devastating. I drew Spriggan's Will and aimed at the Conjurer standing motionless behind her army. She was about two hundred meters away, surrounded by players who were charging down the hill toward Denxy's position. At this point, none of them were looking at the ridge. The wind was calm. The shot was clear. She was standing still. This was what Dead Calm was made for. I planted my feet, locked my stance, and activated the skill. The world around me emptied.

Spriggan's Will responded to the skill differently than the Emberwood had. Where the old bow had glowed amber, the Unique weapon's jade veins blazed with green-white light. The draw was easier, as if the bow itself assisted me with what I wanted to do. Mädusa's motionless figure filled my vision. I could see the rise and fall of her breathing, the pulse of violet light from her staff, the slight furrow between her brows as she concentrated on maintaining her constructs.

After all that I've been through, this shot was a walk in the park. I exhaled and released. The arrow left the bow as a streak of green light. It never reached her. A golden shield erupted from the ground directly in front of the Conjurer, materializing in the arrow's path with a timing so precise it could only have been prepared in advance. It was dense and bright, made of pure holy energy. The arrow hit it, and detonated.

The impact was enormous, jade and gold energy colliding in a flash that turned the hillside white for a split second. The shield cracked, splintered, and shattered outward in golden fragments that dissolved before they hit the ground. Mädusa stood untouched behind it. Her eyes were still closed. Her channel hadn't broken. I smiled. It was about time we fought. I opened the message interface. Orion: Nice catch. The reply was almost instant. Lothras: It's easy when you know it's coming.

In hindsight, I would have been disappointed if he was here and didn't expect my attack. The brief stillness following the blocked shot broke all at once. Sixty Court players had seen a streak of light come from the ridge, and half a dozen heads turned in my direction. I could hear orders being relayed, and a group of about fifteen peeled off from the main assault to deal with the Ranger on the high ground. Good. Fifteen fewer on Denxy's team.

I started moving, abandoning the sniping position and heading northeast along the ridge at a sprint. Lune ran beside me, low to the ground, ears pinned back. Below, the battle for the quarry had begun in earnest. Denxy's team was fighting on two fronts. The two stone guardians rampaged behind their defensive line, their massive fists cratering the ground and scattering their formation, while the Court vanguard, about forty-five players strong, hit the front in three coordinated waves.

Denxy had adapted faster than most players could. The moment the constructs appeared at his back, he'd made his call.

"I take the big one! Geb, Aware, take the other! Everyone else, face front and hold!" He threw himself at the larger of the two stone guardians with his Mythril shield, and the impact of his charge stopped the construct mid-swing. It turned toward him, recognized the threat, and committed. Denxy braced, his feet digging into the quarry floor, and absorbed a blow that would have killed a lesser tank outright. The construct hit like a siege weapon.

Each punch shook the ground, sent tremors through the stone underfoot, and Denxy's health dipped with every impact. But he held, cycling defensive cooldowns with a discipline that kept him alive. Bulwark Stance bought him eight seconds of reduced damage. A health potion in the window between swings brought him back from the brink. The Mythril shield absorbed impact after impact. Two of his Guardians had engaged the second construct together.

They were less experienced than Denxy, and the coordination between them was rougher, but they traded aggro with a rotation that kept both of them alive while the rest of the team fought the Court vanguard. The rest of the team was twenty-one players against over forty. It should have been a slaughter. Then the traps went off. The first Court wave hit the terraces at full speed, a group of melee fighters leading the charge with ranged support behind them.

A Berserker in crimson-trimmed armor was three steps ahead of his squad, axe raised, when the ground beneath his feet erupted. A ring of iron spikes burst from the earth in a perfect circle, driven upward by a mechanism buried in the soil. The Berserker caught two of them in the legs; the damage staggering him and applying a Bleed debuff.

Behind him, a Rogue triggered a different trap: a net of woven steel wire that launched from beneath a flat stone and wrapped around her torso, rooting her in place for three seconds. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Three more traps detonated in the first wave's path. An explosive charge hidden beneath a boulder sent shrapnel into a cluster of ranged DPS. A pressure plate activated a wall of spikes that forced an entire flank to detour around it.

A snare caught a Cleric mid-cast and dragged her forward into the kill zone where King's Glade's melee fighters were waiting. Denxy hadn't just been farming golems near this quarry for days. He'd been fortifying it. The blacksmith had spent hours crafting traps from the same materials he used for weapons and armor: tempered iron, shaped stone, coiled springs, and alchemical charges. He'd buried them across the terraced fields in patterns designed precisely for these kinds of situations, on Alice's orders.

The traps didn't win the battle. They were single use, and they bought seconds rather than minutes. But those seconds mattered. The first Court wave arrived scattered rather than unified, their momentum broken, their formation full of gaps. King's Glade's defenders met them at the quarry edge and held the line long enough for the second wave to pile into the chaos rather than flank cleanly. I had problems of my own. The fifteen-player squad sent to deal with me was faster than I'd expected.

They'd split into two groups, one cutting along the ridgeline to intercept me and the other dropping below the tree line to come up from the east, trying to pin me between them. I let them chase. The ridge was a terrain favoring me. I ran northeast, a little held back, fast enough to stay ahead of the western group, but slow enough to keep them interested. When the gap between the two groups widened to about forty meters, I stopped, spun, and fired Verdant Arrow down the ridgeline.

The shot tore through the undergrowth and hit the lead chaser, an Arcanist who'd gotten ahead of her group, passing through her and continuing into the three players behind her. Vines erupted from the arrow's trail, rooting all four of them as the nature damage ticked and the slow debuff crippled their movement. I followed up with Arrowstorm, placing the zone directly on the rooted cluster. The arrow sailed skyward and disappeared. Three seconds. I turned and put two basic shots into the Arcanist.

The first triggered Entangle, locking her again just as the initial root faded, and the second dropped her to half health. The three players behind her were struggling against the vines, hacking at them with weapons while the slow debuff made every movement sluggish. The rain arrived. Mana-arrows blanketed the designated area, and the sustained damage over four seconds turned the rooted cluster into a kill zone. The Arcanist dissolved into light.

The rest were finished by a well-placed Burning Arrow before they could pop their defensive cooldowns. My damage is insane, I thought. Sure, I burned through three skills, but the opposing players folded like paper. At this point, anyone not at least remotely on my level meant no challenge for me. The eastern team was still coming. Seven players, moving uphill through the forest in a loose spread, trying to catch me from below. I dropped into the undergrowth, activated Mistveil from the Shrouded Mask, and vanished.

Six seconds of invisibility. Enough to reposition behind a boulder and set up a shot that the eastern group wouldn't see coming. I broke stealth with a fully charged Piercing Shot aimed at a Cleric at the back of the group, the 50% bonus damage from Mistveil multiplying the impact. -823! The healer dissolved. Six remained.

They scattered, diving behind trees and rocks, and for the next two minutes I played a game of cat and mouse through the forest, using Quick Step, Shadow Travel, and the terrain itself to stay ahead while picking off anyone who fell behind or lost their group's protection. A Guardian who over-committed to a charge caught a Burning Arrow in the gap between his helmet and pauldron. He survived, but the fire DOT forced him to burn his potion and fall back.

A Berserker who tried to chase me through a narrow gully ate a Web Trap that locked him in place long enough for three basic shots to the face, and a Withering Light as icing on top. By the time the group reformed and started a proper coordinated push, I'd killed three more and forced two others back, pulling back toward the main battle, unwilling to chase a Ranger through unfamiliar forest any longer. I turned south and started circling back toward the leader. The battlefield had changed while I was gone.

Alice had arrived. She'd come from the east with eighteen King's Glade fighters, hitting the Crimson Court flank while they were fully committed to the quarry assault. The impact was immediate. Alice's Lightning Steps carried her into the Court backline, her sword crackling with energy as she carved through a cluster of ranged DPS who hadn't expected an attack from behind.

"Second Division!" she called.

"Push them back!" The eighteen reinforcements fanned out along Crimson Court's right flank, and the dynamics of the fight shifted. It was still forty-something against forty-something, and Crimson Court still held the numbers advantage with their reinforcement waves, but King's Glade had terrain and traps, while the opposing side had two stone constructs that were slowly becoming a problem. I watched from the ridge as Alice engaged a Court Swordsman who'd turned to meet her charge.

He was good, at least level 20, but Alice was something else. She parried his opening combination with efficient movements, stepped inside his guard, and used Lightning Blade at point-blank range. The electricity arced through his armor, and the follow-up strike dropped him before he could activate a defensive skill. Sarella was with the reinforcement group, and she went to work on the Court melee fighters trying to hold the flank.

Her Phantom Riposte created an afterimage that drew three Crimson Court players into attacking thin air while the real Swashbuckler flanked them and dismantled a Rogue with Dazzling Strike. Mirage Waltz sent three illusory copies fanning into the Court formation, sowing confusion as players swung at the shimmering mirages. But Crimson Court was adapting. Their officers were competent, and the initial shock of Alice's flank attack was wearing off.

I watched their formation compress, tightening around the quarry from the north while a reserve group of about ten players swung wide to counter Alice's flanking position. In the center, a Court Berserker had fought the core of Denxy's team. The big man, easily the best fighter on Crimson Court's side on the field from what I'd seen, carried a two-handed axe he swung with violence that came from hundreds of hours in PvP. He was carving through King's Glade's mid-line, and nobody had been able to stop him.

A KG Spearfighter tried to intercept and got knocked sideways by a Cleave that took a third of her health in a single swing. A Guardian raised his shield and the Berserker simply went through it. The overhead strike cracked the shield and staggered the defender long enough for a follow-up that dropped him. I quickly put a Piercing Shot into his shoulder from distance. -302! The Berserker stumbled. He looked up toward the eastern ridge, trying to find me, but I'd already moved behind a boulder and repositioned.

My second shot was a basic attack aimed at his knee, and the Entangle passive triggered, jade vines erupting from the ground and locking him in place. Alice saw the opening. She Lightning Stepped to the Berserker, and engaged him while he was rooted, her sword connecting with his exposed side before the vines broke. The Berserker roared and swung back, but Alice was already out of range, and I put another shot into his back.

Between the two of us, we dropped him to a quarter health in six seconds, despite a potion being used, and he quickly fell under the relentless attacks of King's Glade's Vice-Guild Master. The fight was grinding; both sides had losses, both sides rotated their wounded to the back and their fresh fighters to the front. King's Glade's traps were spent, and Alice's reinforcements had stabilized the line.

The two stone constructs were still active, but Denxy and his Guardians had learned their attack patterns and were containing them. Still, it was at the cost of three dedicated tanks who could have been fighting players instead. And then I saw it. A third construct was pulling itself from the quarry wall. This one was bigger. Stone Guardian Level 30 Elite What in the world is that woman? Mädusa's eyes were still closed, her face tight with concentration, but she was smiling again.

If I was going to do something about her, it had to be now. I descended the eastern ridge and started cutting through the outskirts of the battle, staying low, using the chaos and the dust clouds as cover. The approach took two minutes. I circled wide around the northern edge of the quarry, passed behind a collapsed section of the old mine shaft, and came out on the western side of the battlefield, two hundred meters from Mädusa's position. She was close now.

Close enough to see the strain on her face, the cost of maintaining three Elite summons at once. I drew Spriggan's Will and nocked an arrow. Dead Calm was on a six-hour cooldown, which meant I'd have to do this the usual way. Multiple shots, sustained pressure, hoping to break her concentration before the constructs overwhelmed Denxy's team entirely. I raised the bow, sighted on the Conjurer, and stepped out from behind the collapsed shaft. A sword was waiting for me.

Lothras stood between me and Mädusa, his Shield of Failed Triumph raised, his longsword drawn. His white armor was unmarked; he hadn't been fighting. He'd been standing guard this entire time, watching the approaches, waiting for exactly this. Waiting for me. We looked at each other across fifteen meters of rocky ground, the sounds of battle echoing off the quarry walls around us. The Paladin's expression was calm, unhurried, as steady as it had always been.

"You're going to have to go through me," he said. I kept the bow raised, the arrow nocked, and met his eyes.

"I know."