The blue tabard wearing Demon Guild Alliance members quickly rallied as Karl brought up all his buffs.
This time there was no alarm, possibly because there was already a Guild War going on. But the members of the blue faction were looking terrified to see Karl standing there.
“How about you run away and go fetch your Champion?” Karl suggested.
A young woman, dressed in black leather armour that Karl associated with a Rogue, nodded numbly, then threw a smoke bomb on the ground and fled with a movement skill.
Most likely Shadow Step.
“Sir, you’re with us? Why didn’t you identify yourself on the road? We would have greeted you with full honours.” The Acolyte whispered as she got out of the carriage to heal the wounded guards.
“I am not from here. I’m not even certain where this is. So, I had no intentions of getting in the middle of anything, until the war notification came up.”
They waited at the gates, with Rae on the wall above the gates, crafting a comfortable web to wait in, while Hawk scouted the city overhead.
One of the guards from the carriage looked at Karl with concern. “Are you really going to wait right here for their champion to arrive with his bodyguards? We should be headed for the safe house.”
Karl waved. “Go, get to the safe house and I will wait for their Champion. It’s not like any of you are ready to get in the middle of what comes next.”
The guard nodded, and they abandoned the carriage to run off through the city, headed for whatever safe house they had prepared.
A few minutes later, a warrior in black plate armour and a demonic mask jogged into Karl’s sight. He stopped five metres away and glared down at Karl.
He was a solid 250 centimetres tall, and built a lot like Professor Tank, huge in every direction.
He was also definitely a Monarch Rank warrior.
“Does this place have a warrior fetish? Did you not think that maybe a mage or two might be useful?” Karl asked.
A few of the bodyguards with him laughed, but the Champion simply continued to glare at Karl.
“The Darklight Host thinks that some little kid with his pet lizard can take the city from me?” He eventually demanded.
“I will have you know that he is the goodest of good boys. And I didn’t come here to take the city from you, your boys declared war while I was bringing refugees to the guard station.
But now that it is started, we might as well get things settled. It would have been a shame if I had to flatten the city to find you.”
[I can still do it.] Hawk reminded him.
The buildings weren’t reinforced, a single barrage of fireballs would level half the city.
The huge man suddenly launched himself at Karl, who drew his two-handed sword to parry and activated all his buffs.
Then he cast [Chain Lightning] to slow the Monarch Rank warrior’s reactions.
The lightning hit an instant before the two blades clashed in a flurry of sparks as [Flaming Body] met a [Flaming Blade] ability.
The two men were at a stalemate, and the majority of the bodyguards began to circle around Karl, looking for an opening, while four of them went to block Thor and Remi from joining the battle.
But they quickly learned that Thor’s bags were the perfect platform for Totems, and that a Lightning Cerro was not easy to deal with when he was backed against a wall. Especially a wall that fronted a room full of children he wanted to protect.
Karl broke away from the stalemate of locked blades, and darted backwards before lashing out with [Bone Crusher]. The warrior on his right took the strike on his shield, stopping the blade with ease, but [Shatter] and [Sharpness] took effect, and the shield split clean in half.
The man dropped to the ground, spitting blood and cradling a pulverized arm.
“Oh, you’re a dirty little weasel, aren’t you, Darklight Scum?” The Champion snarled.
“You have no idea.” Karl replied as he stepped away from the guard station and put his back to the city, moving further into the gates.
[Hawk, find where the blue tabard team is fighting the Darklight Host and bombard any reinforcements they try to send this way. Just distract their stronger fighters. Don’t hurt the city.]
Karl fell into a defensive stance, and the warriors moved forward again.
That was when Rae summoned her Golems behind the Champion, letting them lash out at his back.
He responded almost faster than Karl could track, parrying the first four leg strikes as Karl switched to his maul and stacked [Chain Lightning] five times.
But he didn’t go for the back of the champion as everyone expected him to. Instead, he went for a Rogue type fighter, crushing his chest, which let [Chain Lightning] spread through the whole group, and brought half the warriors to their knees as Karl moved to attack again.
The Champion intercepted him, forcing Karl into a stalemate for a second time, before the Monarch’s superior speed let him break free and land a hit on Karl’s barriers.
But that meant he wasn’t stopping the Golems, who were tearing apart his stunned and electrocuted bodyguards.
“You bastard. Fight me properly.”
Karl laughed. “Now you want a proper duel, but you brought bodyguards? You didn’t think this one through.”
Karl stepped back and switched to his blade, which was better for parrying attacks.
The Monarch Rank warrior was close in physical strength to him, even with his buffs, but the enemy champion was faster than Karl was, so there was bound to be a lot of traded damage.
Fortunately, the warrior classes didn’t have much for barriers, just [Guard], but this warrior wasn’t even using that.
Three fast attacks were parried, and the return strike caused [Flaming Body] to waver for a moment before Karl stabilized it.
The Champion was beginning to get frustrated, and Karl realized what was happening. Karl had taken a new bracelet from the bandit leader, and it reduced damage by a set amount. None of the smaller skills that the Champion was using were registering to Karl because they were all being negated.
Because the smaller damage was being negated and not stacking, Karl’s barriers had time to recover between attacks.
The Demon Guild Alliance Champion must have had a skill like [Shatter] that did damage which caused lingering damage to barriers and enemies on hit. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the damage reduction.
[The big fight is almost over now. They’re too close together to attack.] Hawk informed Karl as he tried to find an opening to attack with something other than [Chain Lightning] which was doing very little to his opponent.
[I get it. He’s not using Guard, because he has a better version. It’s on all the time.] Rae declared.
Her study of the opponent with [Offensive Adaptation] had paid off, and she now understood why he wasn’t trying to use Guard against Karl’s attacks. His version was always active.
That was why [Chain Lightning] wasn’t doing much. It wasn’t a physical attack, so it didn’t apply Shatter, meaning that there was no secondary damage passing through to the target.
Karl’s attacks weren’t strong enough to break through a Monarch Rank [Guard] ability with a single spell.
Karl added [Chain Lightning] to his blade, intending to add damage to [Flaming Body].
The Champion laughed, and his eyes turned a bit crazy.
“So, you’ve realized it. But if you can’t hit me with that armour bypass, there is no way you can hurt me. It’s only a matter of time before you are exhausted and ground to dust.” He laughed.
“There is only one problem with that logic. You’re all out of bodyguards, and I still have Golems. Do you think that you can deal with all three of us at once?” Karl asked.
From Karl’s left, power surged, and Thor’s scales began to turn gold.
His body began to grow, not much, but enough to be noticeable. However, it was the greenish gold that his scales turned, while his horns changed to deep bronze, that made it obvious that he had advanced.
At this point, he barely looked like a Lightning Cerro anymore, other than his general shape. The deep green lustre that they were famous for was gone, streaked through with thick veins of gold. The bone white horns that crackled with blue lightning were now a rich bronze, and the lightning was as golden as the streaks on his scales.
He looked glorious and regal, but very little like a common Lightning Cerro.
The building behind him was coated in [Eternal Lightning] as the Cerro had been protecting it from the area attacks that had been hurled at him. Ever loyal, Thor had not allowed the building to be damaged while the Elves were still inside, and it had triggered him to break through the Royal Rank bottleneck.
With the advancement, both [Eternal Lightning] and [Circle of Protection] advanced to Royal Rank, and Karl felt a new space begin to form in his mind as the existing ones reached their limits.
Remi was still at Commander Rank, and that was the limiting factor for the spaces right now, so a new one was formed to accept the overflow of energy from Thor’s breakthrough.
The Champion got a sly look on his face, and made for the Cerro, aiming a blow for the back of Thor’s neck. The loss of what was obviously Karl’s support pet should cripple his combat ability, and leave him vulnerable.
But he wasn’t the only one that had realized that, and as he leapt forward, a wall of stone spikes formed in front of him, bringing him to a crashing stop before a streak of blue struck out and hit him in the face, then retreated.
His scream of agony echoed through the city as blood poured down the demonic visor of his helmet.
Remi had bitten his eyeball, blinding him on one side, and he had never even realized that she was on Thor’s back.
The warrior ripped off his helmet and poured a vial on his face, then downed a potion as pain wracked his body.
“Have you had enough?” Karl asked.
The strange voice had warned Karl that these were real people, and while he had killed the bodyguards, and had most likely let Hawk slaughter a small group of them to prevent reinforcements, he didn’t want to have to kill every member of their alliance to end the battle.
“I forfeit. The Demon Guild Alliance forfeits the war.” He moaned as he clawed at the side of his face, where black streaks were spreading from his eye.
Whatever potion he had used had been ineffective on Remi’s poison.
[Remi, heal his face, would you? Or at least neutralize the poison.]
