Chương 153: Chapter 152: 2v5

Meno released the Quadrillionator shot he had already been holding, and the glowing Massive projectile screamed straight into Northwatch at the front of the group. The tank reacted exactly as expected, bracing behind his raised shield and triggering a defensive cooldown that coated the shield face in pale light. Under normal circumstances, it probably would have been an excellent answer. Weapon Master did not care.

The ranged Quadrillionator attack was Unblockable, so the projectile tore straight through Northwatch's guard and dropped the Level 65 tank to 19% HP in a single hit. [Chain: 1100 | Damage: +11, 000% | Total: 111x] Everything moved at once after that. Pike lifted both hands and started channeling an Earth spell, stone already pulling away from the cavern floor, while Karmabeast vanished from behind Moon and shadowstepped onto him before the cast could build.

One dagger interrupted the channel; the other flew past Sereth and detonated behind her a heartbeat later, spreading green poison around both Sereth and Northwatch. Karmabeast tried to finish Northwatch, but a transparent sphere snapped into place around him and launched him backward on contact. He used the rebound instead of fighting it, turning the knockback into a hard pivot toward Sereth. Pike recovered just as quickly.

A second skill lifted him from the cavern floor while he began another Earth channel, stone gathering in front of his hands. The rock started fist-sized and kept growing as Pike flew toward the ceiling. Oxy still had not committed. She stood beside Moon with her shield raised, watching the fight break apart around her while looking like she was trying to decide whether she actually wanted any part of it. Meno did not have time to solve that for her. He activated Quadrillionator again and jumped toward Northwatch.

The tank clearly expected the same attack. His shield came up, and the transparent bubble around him brightened as he layered another defensive cooldown over the first. Meno held the line long enough to sell it, then landed, twisted his whole body, and turned the Massive weapon into a sideways sweep toward Oxy instead. Dreamchain Aegis barely reached the angle before impact.

Oxy's eyes widened as the blow landed and carved a heavy chunk from her HP through the successful block, forcing Moon to patch the damage while Meno jumped away again. Only ranged attacks got Weapon Master's Unblockable, but Meno's damage was so high that the Legendary I shield still could not fully stop it. [Chain: 1200 | Damage: +12, 000% | Total: 121x] Northwatch's bubble was still keeping Karmabeast away, but it did nothing against what came next. Meno canceled the Massive weapon and activated Annihilator.

Vervenzal's Verdict fused with Marcel's Reacher into the elongated crimson spear-sword, and the doubled Attack Speed made the weapon feel much closer to the old Swing Master pace he was used to. Pike released his growing boulder from above at almost the same moment. Karmabeast shouted a warning. Meno turned into the projectile and met it near the tip of Annihilator, guiding the impact sideways rather than trying to stop the entire mass.

The boulder smashed into the cavern wall, and Meno used the same follow-through to throw the fused weapon straight at Northwatch. The tank raised his shield again. The crimson spear-sword spun through the block anyway. The hit drove Northwatch below 10% HP, and the mods from Vervenzal's Verdict made the damage even nastier. Meno was already moving before the weapon returned. He kicked forward with Airwalk, folded his legs sideways through the last few feet, and drove one heel into Northwatch. Titan triggered.

The tank died instantly. Meno turned toward Moon while Northwatch disappeared, but the fight had already split into separate problems. Karmabeast had Sereth pinned down on the other side of the cavern. She tried to blink out of the poison cloud and create enough room for a channel, but he shadowstepped after her almost on the same beat. Her Mana shield flared as the Prismatic Infuser dumped multiple elemental damage types into it, forcing her Mana bar to absorb the punishment.

She started channeling a frost ray which Karmabeast avoided by circling her clockwise. Pike sent another stone projectile toward his back from above, but Karmabeast spun, caught it on a dagger tip, redirected it past himself, and went straight back to Sereth without surrendering the pressure. Her Mana had already dropped below half because she was spending too much of it defending. Oxy finally stepped in when Meno moved toward Moon, placing her shield between them.

Meno jumped at her and let her brace for the hit, then kicked against the air in front of her and reversed himself instead. The burst launched him backward and upward, carrying him toward Pike. A second kick put him beside the flying mage. Meno attacked with Annihilator the moment he entered range, but Pike blinked away after the first hit. Meno switched to Sinseeker, and the bow did not care where Pike blinked. The arrow curved after him, hit for 27% HP, and Moon immediately healed almost all of it back.

"Healers." Meno kept firing anyway. Below them, Karmabeast continued chewing through Sereth's Mana rather than chasing HP directly. Every channel attempt got punished, every defensive response cost more resource, and every time she tried to create space Karmabeast followed. By the time she dropped to 11% Mana, she had contributed almost nothing offensively. Oxy still stayed near Moon, protecting the healer without ever fully committing to Meno. That suited him.

Meno used his third Airwalk kick to descend, touched the floor just long enough to reset all three charges, then launched again as another Earth projectile came from Pike. Pike's flight was better than Meno had expected; it had lasted far too long to be a simple burst skill and let him cast while repositioning. Sinseeker still made the range mostly irrelevant, so Meno kept firing while Moon kept healing Pike through it. That was fine. Meno had no Mana bar, and Moon did.

Sereth was almost empty, and Pike's larger channels had to cost something even if his resource still looked healthy. The real problem with using Xenocide was that Meno still wanted the option to swap to a melee weapon to deflect Pike's projectiles, so he kept it unused. The group was also spread too far apart for the shardstorm to gain much value. Sereth solved one of those problems by finally exhausting herself.

Karmabeast had pushed her Mana almost to nothing, and the moment Meno saw the shield weakening, he switched targets. Quadrillionator came up as he changed elevation until Sereth became the closest hostile target, formed the siege bow beneath himself, and pulled the string back while hovering directly above her. The Massive projectile hit her in the face and immediately shoved her below 50% HP.

[Chain: 1300 | Damage: +13, 000% | Total: 131x] Golden-white light wrapped around Sereth before Meno could follow up, restoring her HP to full. Moon again. Meno landed, swapped to Annihilator, and turned just as Pike sent another large rock toward him. He caught the projectile on the oversized blade, redirected it away, then carried the rotation straight into Sereth. Karmabeast joined from the other side. With Sereth's Mana nearly gone, there was no longer enough shield to blunt the combined pressure.

Annihilator's doubled Attack Speed turned Meno's long weapon into a blur while Karmabeast's Ancient dagger carved into every opening. Moon tried to hold Sereth up, but the damage came too fast and Karmabeast refused to let the mage complete another defensive channel. Sereth died before the next big heal could stabilize her. Meno switched back to Sinseeker immediately and started firing at Pike again while Karmabeast kicked into the air after him.

Pike gave up on his current cast rather than let Karmabeast reach melee, flying higher and turning the cavern into an aerial chase. Karmabeast's Umbral movement was faster in short bursts, but Pike had more freedom to steer and kept changing direction whenever a shadowstep angle opened. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Meno kept shooting from below until Pike summoned a floating stone hand.

The construct caught Sinseeker's first arrow, deflected the projectile, and broke Meno's Chain. [Chain Broken | Chain reset to 1000] [Indignation: Chain has no effect for 3 seconds.]"Oh, that's annoying." Meno fired again, and the stone hand slapped the next arrow aside too. Then the next. Even with doubled projectile speed and Sinseeker correcting its path automatically, Pike was controlling the construct well enough to meet each shot at the final angle. He was good.

The downside was that he was now spending most of his attention making Meno do no damage. Meno stopped feeding him arrows and waited out Indignation while Karmabeast continued the aerial chase. Pike still had more than 80% Mana, which was ridiculous given how much he had already cast. Either Terra Channeler had serious sustain built into it or Pike's gear was doing something ugly. Probably both.

When Quadrillionator came back, Meno shifted attention to Moon and Oxy instead, forming the Massive weapon during the descent and firing at Oxy. Her shield came up, but the projectile still punched through. Oxy flashed red as the hit landed, and Moon restored the damage almost immediately. [Chain: 1100 | Damage: +11, 000% | Total: 111x] Then Oxy's body started pulsing with dark-red light. A wide aura expanded from her in repeated waves while her own HP dipped with each pulse.

The first effect tried to attach to Meno and got blocked by Sleepless Grip. [Sleepless Grip Blocked: Blood Reprisal] The next pulse landed, then another, and red stacks started appearing as part of the damage Meno had dealt to Oxy came back as a bleed. Karmabeast got clipped by the edge too, but shadows wrapped around him almost immediately, purging the first effects and preventing new applications while the cloak stayed active. Meno stayed inside just long enough to understand the mechanic and regretted it.

Six stacks meant the bleed was tearing 12% of his HP away every second. He waited until Oxy's aura stopped pulsing so she could not immediately reapply the effect, then used Crownmind and wiped every stack at once. Pike used the distraction to re-establish space. Meno swapped back to Sinseeker and kicked away. A new spell formed overhead instead, chunks of rock gathering above Meno before raining down across a wide section of the cavern. That was easier.

He used Airwalk to leave the marked area and finally activated Xenocide. Sinseeker burst into the black shardstorm around him while Meno closed toward Pike. The death zone followed him and could not be slapped aside by the stone hand, forcing Pike to keep flying instead of settling into another long channel. Meno stayed close through the full 3 seconds, then let himself drop as Sinseeker rebuilt. Below him, Karmabeast was back on Moon and Oxy.

Moon had spent a huge amount of Mana cleansing poison from the group, and Karmabeast was exploiting it by applying more every time she removed the previous stack. Oxy stayed defensive, body-blocking approaches and trying to keep him away from the healer instead of chasing anyone, but Karmabeast kept using feints to ruin her angles and slip through to Moon. Meno looked back toward Pike. Annihilator formed as Meno launched toward him again, and the 100% Attack Speed increase immediately forced a different response.

The floating stone hand could stop arrows, but once Meno reached melee range, it was too slow. Meno landed several attacks before Pike erupted with Earth energy and blasted him backward. Without False Hero's Sticky Titan, the knockback actually worked. Pike used the separation to begin his biggest channel yet. A stone appeared between his hands and grew from the size of a basketball to something larger than his body, finally draining his Mana fast enough that the resource bar visibly moved. Then he fired it.

The boulder was far too large to deflect, so Meno flipped backward into a somersault and kicked diagonally for speed. The rock still crossed his path, and instead of trying to completely clear it, he stretched one foot toward the moving surface. His boot touched stone. That counted as landing. Airwalk reset. Meno immediately pushed off the boulder with a fresh kick, escaped sideways, and landed against the cavern wall as the projectile continued past him. Then he launched himself back toward Pike.

The fight settled into that rhythm. Pike controlled the upper half of the cavern with flight, blinks, Earth projectiles, and the floating hand. Meno answered by constantly changing elevation, forcing melee with Annihilator whenever he could, without risking his Chain getting broken to another deflect. Below them, Karmabeast steadily bled Moon's Mana away. Every dispel cost resource, every heal cost more, and whenever she tried to conserve Mana by leaving poisons active, Karmabeast made those poisons worse.

Eventually, Moon fell to around 30% Mana. That was the opening Karmabeast had been waiting for. He abandoned the healer and shadowstepped onto Pike, catching him with a stun midflight. Pike dropped from the sky. Meno was already above him. Quadrillionator formed, and this time Meno drove the Massive weapon into Pike as a melee strike instead of firing the bow. [Chain: 1200 | Damage: +12, 000% | Total: 121x] The moment the stun landed, Pike's skin turned to stone.

Meno and Karmabeast attacked anyway, but the damage reduction was ridiculous. Moon's healing from below easily kept pace with what little made it through. Then the stun expired, the stone skin vanished, and Karmabeast had already thrown his dagger. Pike tried to reactivate flight, but the weapon detonated behind him and shadow chains dragged him backward into the poison cloud before he could get any height. Now there was no stone defense.

Meno activated Annihilator and attacked at full speed while Karmabeast dumped his entire burst rotation beside him. Moon healed as fast as she could, but Pike's HP dropped faster than she could restore it. He tried to blink, got pulled back into the cloud, and only managed to begin another Earth defense before his HP dipped below 10%. That was enough. Meno kicked him, and Pike got deleted by Titan. Karmabeast did not celebrate. He disappeared from beside Pike's corpse and went straight back to Moon.

Meno turned toward Oxy as Quadrillionator came up, fired, and watched her shield rise again before the Unblockable hit punched straight through the block. Oxy flickered red. [Chain: 1300 | Damage: +13, 000% | Total: 131x] Blood Reprisal started pulsing immediately. Sleepless Grip ate the first application, Meno let a few more stacks accumulate while moving away from the strongest part of the aura, then used Crownmind once the pulsing ended and cleared everything in one cast.

At that point, there was no reason to make the fight complicated. Northwatch was dead. Sereth was dead. Pike was dead. Moon had around 30% Mana left with Karmabeast sitting on top of her, and Oxy was the only meaningful defensive line remaining. Meno equipped Sinseeker and turned the fight into PvE. He fired continuously, letting the homing arrows curve into whichever of the two women was closest.

Moon had to spend Mana healing instead of contributing anything else, while Karmabeast kept switching pressure between them. Every time Moon tried a larger cast, Karmabeast threatened an interrupt. When she changed to smaller heals, Meno simply kept shooting until the resource cost piled up. Oxy tried to create space for her by stepping into Karmabeast's path and absorbing several hits, then nearly died before triggering a major Blood Juggernaut cooldown that restored her to full HP.

The healing came with an offensive payoff. Oxy detonated in a wide red cloud in short range. Karmabeast had committed too deeply and took almost the whole blast. He barely escaped by shadowstepping directly to Meno, appearing beside him with almost no HP before immediately disengaging to recover. Meno never stopped firing. Oxy tried to deflect Sinseeker herself, but the arrows were too fast and corrected too aggressively.

Moon's Mana kept dropping until Karmabeast recovered, went back in, and interrupted another heal. Meno launched himself into melee range of Moon with Airwalk before firing again. At point-blank range, the next Sinseeker arrow punched straight into the healer. Oxy looked tired. Meno liked that much less than if she had shouted at him. He hesitated for barely a fraction of a second, but Karmabeast did not. He went straight into Oxy, and with Moon gone there was nobody left to undo the damage.

Oxy died shortly afterward. PEACE MY ASS WAS WORTH IT KARMABEAST IS A MENACE PBG JUST FARMED TWO GUILD LEADERS PLUTO IS PLANET PIKE WAS ACTUALLY COOKING OXY DRAMA INCOMING GRAVEMISTAKE IS A PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUE Karmabeast shouted and started doing backflips through the spot where Moon had died.

"LET'S GOOO!" Meno watched him complete another one before answering.

"Great. Just great. More negative Karma, no gold, and now we have an XP debuff because we need to watch our backs." Karmabeast landed with a splash in the calf-deep water and spread his arms.

"Who cares? That was sick, man. Two-v-five. Good clips, good content. That one's going on my website." Meno had nothing useful to say to that. Karmabeast did not have the ladder mindset because he had never cared about the ladder in the first place. Winning the fight was enough for him. Meno had expected them to win once the engagement started. The interesting part had been executing it cleanly.

The annoying part was everything that came after, because five potential stream-snipers could now interfere with every elite pull they attempted. Or at least Meno assumed they could. While waiting for the next Balvath respawn, he opened Pike's stream to see where the group had ended up. The game feed was completely black. Pike's camera was still active, but he sat beside the capsule with his stream muted, talking to someone over the phone while looking strangely calm for a player who had just lost a five-on-two.

Meno watched for a few seconds before the explanation clicked. The Excrino buffs.

"Oh." Karmabeast looked over.

"What?"

"If you got the killing blow, they can't resurrect for an hour. If I got it, two." Karmabeast grinned. Meno no longer remembered exactly who had landed every final hit. Northwatch and Pike were obviously his because Titan had executed them, but Sereth, Moon, and Oxy had died inside enough overlapping damage that the exact credit had disappeared into the fight. He opened Oxy's stream next, and her game feed was black too.

She had not made much of a reaction after dying, mostly looking annoyed while doing something off-camera. That bothered Meno more than a dramatic outburst would have. Oxy knew how to turn almost anything into content for her viewers, so the restraint felt off. He did not know what to make of it. The next Balvath pack spawned before he could think about it much longer, and without five players trying to interrupt them, the farm felt almost relaxing.

Meno and Karmabeast ran the same split route, Xenocide erased the pack on schedule, and Karmabeast reached Level 69 while Meno moved frustratingly close to 73. The loot was junk. Again. They waited through one more full cycle, partly for the XP and partly to confirm that the anti-resurrection effect was really holding. Pike's game feed stayed black. Oxy's stayed black. Nobody came swimming back through the passage. When the orange eyes opened again around 15 minutes later, the next clear went even faster.

Karmabeast's higher level and Ancient dagger made controlling four Balvaths almost routine, while Meno burned the isolated target from the air and brought the pack together only when Xenocide was ready to end it. The death notifications arrived with the level-ups. [Level Up! | Level 73] Meno's XP bar rolled comfortably into the new level, and Karmabeast hit Level 70 with his face already lighting up.

"Augment time! Which skill would you go for?" Meno looked at him.

"I don't know your skills. How am I supposed to know?"

"Well, you usually don't know anything and still find a way, so bless me with your unholy wisdom and pick one."

"Upgrade the stun so we can farm easier." Karmabeast recoiled.

"Yiiikes. You would never pick that. I'm one thousand percent sure."

"Above one hundred percent, the extra percent doesn't mean anything." Meno considered the parts of the Umbral kit he had actually seen.

"Fine. Obviously the movement skill that lets you run through the air like Airwalk." Karmabeast smiled.

"Good. That's the one I already picked. Now I'm almost at PBG speed."

"What did it do?"

"Open my stream." Meno started toward the passage.

"Don't care that much." Karmabeast put one hand over his chest.

"That hurts, man. You're about to restream Scuzzy. Where's my plug?"

"You are literally on my screen."

"That's not how ads work, but whatever." Karmabeast followed him toward the next cavern.

"Let's go hunt some elites. Maybe we can finish your bucket quest and cheer you up." Meno glanced toward the routes where they had found the Rift portals. The surface players had discovered Layer 4 now. Pike and Moon knew the shortcut worked, and the hole would spread through every major group soon enough. The Balvath farm could wait.

"Let's finish the Excrino quest before Layer 4 gets swarmed by everyone on the ladder."