Chapter 31: 31
The magical 'bomb' landed right in the midst of the hamlet . It seemed harmless overall, just a trifling ball of black fire that burned with a passion .
However, once it landed, it became a whole different ballgame . The fire rapidly spread with a fervor, quickly encapsulating the mud houses as well as anything and everything in its path .
Heck, even earth, a totally inflammable material, was torched as fuel for the fire .
Screams resounded in the area .
Bodies covered with black fire scrambled about, seeking any way or means to quench the flame robbing them of their lives .
However, it was futile .
After all, Armageddon, aside from being a rare spell, was a large scale active spell . This differed from your typical fireball or ice spike spell that was meant to target individuals .
A fireball spell would be absolutely useless in a group fight unless it could be made big enough as well as strong enough . But once it reached that point it was no longer a single-target skill, was it?
Large scale active spells were rarer types of magic that allowed one to combat many, but with the caveat as being absolutely useless against a small group .
A perfect example would be the current spell . Its damage only increased based on the number of targets . The part about INT was useless .
After all, Draco's current INT was a measly 10 .
20X where X was INT meant that his base damage was 200 . That might kill some level 1-3 Private Rank monsters, but against enemies that were all Rank 1, it would do nothing than irritate them a lot .
As such, the key to explosive damage was a higher target count . 20N where N was the number of targets meant that against one guy, it would be less than shit, even with the addition of the INT modifier .
However…
Against a hamlet with over 1,000 residents…
It formed a scary sight . Only when the number of targets was high would the spell deserved to be called Armageddon . This spell was essentially a city killer .
Just throw it in a populated city and watch everyone weaker than it die .
However, there were more than a few limitations for balancing purposes . The first was that Armageddon required an extremely high mastery of the fire element .
For scale, Rina the Mage Queen could only use this spell at Rank 4, level 175 in their old timeline . It was not because of a level restriction, but because mastery in an element was so hard to grind . It took her that long to achieve the minimum requirements for the spell .
Yet Draco, at level 14, could also do same .
Even if you beat the old Rina to death with a cucumber – her eternal best friend – she would never believe anyone could attain such a feat .
Nonsense, she was the Mage Queen! She had dedicated herself solely to fire magic yet it took until Rank 4 to get this skill . Which dog could get up and claim to be able to cast this spell at Rank 1?
Clearly, this fellow here was the dog in question .
This meant that ideally, the Armageddon spell should do more than 20,000 damage!
However, the second limitation came into play here . Armageddon was a spell that adhered to the logic of power with momentum . In other words, it needed to physically consume a new target for that person to be counted into the damage modifier .
So if it started out with 2 people, it would sting enough to hurt . If it hit 3 people, it would become a lot more painful for the third person as well as the two people still on fire . As it continued on, the damage will increase to both the new targets as well as the old instantly .
Naturally, if you could move faster than its advance, or possess some means to withstand its damage in the early phase, you could survive this spell . It wasn't a sure-kill skill until it hit the truly scary numbers .
Another facet within this limitation which balanced its slow advance was that assuming it reached the 10th target, the first target might be burned to death already . So did the count increase to ten or dropped to nine?
The answer was that past targets still counted .
Otherwise, all people would have to do was distance themselves well and this skill would be useless . This was a skill that was obviously born for wars and large conflicts . If it could be so easily countered, who would bother?
Draco had paid a terrible amount of gold for it, a little more than 3 platinum . That was roughly 300 gold, which equated to $9,000,000 . That was no small sum!
Still, its worth paid off . As the two stood there, the fire had reached the outskirts of the hamlet, in which some lucky indigenes had managed to escape to .
However, the final limitation of the spell showed itself .
The fire stopped exactly at the border of the hamlet, spreading no further than that . The Armageddon spell would be unable to spread beyond clearly defined territorial margins . It could jump from house to house, but upon meeting walls of a suitable nature, it would stop .
Even walls were a vague term, it would stop when it was obvious that a clearly defined limit had been reached . After all Boundless was a game after all, so the code could recognize code .
Where the coding defined that there was a prominent boundary, the spell would stop . Otherwise with the speed the black fire spread, forget the hamlet, within the one minute duration, the whole of the Paradise Lands might be fried to oblivion .
"What do we do with the stragglers?" Riveting Night asked with a cold tone . She dexterously flipped a scarily serrated dagger over the tip of her fingers while asking the question .
Draco was feeling a bit exhausted . Casting a spell that was ideally meant for Rank 4 at Rank 1 had its toll on his mana . Mana, like Stamina, was a stat that wasn't quantified at this stage of the game . Only after a few more updates would such things be revealed to the playerbase .
He had the Source Origin of a high rank Dragon with his armor set on, so he could afford to cast such a spell, coupled with his high mastery in fire . If it were a large scale ice spell, Draco would have to humbly behave himself and suffer like Rina did .
Each field of magic had only one large scale spell . Any more would see too much chaos in future Guild Wars .
"You'll have to deal with them for me…haah…" Draco spoke while panting a little .
Theoretically, he could fight, but since he had Riveting Night with him, there was no need to stress himself out . As it were, she was slightly better than him due to his weakened body and crippled bloodline .
Of course, in Boundless, he was too powerful to be stopped by any player . Riveting Night's only real advantage was her knowledge of his fighting style as well as whatever access she had to her bloodline skills .
She was still a bit overwhelmed with all that had happened in the past hour, so she undeniably wanted to put up a good display for Draco and prove her usefulness to him .
She was standing beside him the next moment but suddenly disappeared from his senses . He had to activate his Void of Perfection in order to vaguely grasp where she was, but it was delayed by a few seconds, sort of like a sonar .
If Draco could easily spot her with his abilities of Control, she could have only been his punching bag in their past life . Riveting Night had used these same cheat like abilities to tail the fellow to this area .
Even though she had her memories of her past life, they had only fully developed in the hours that Draco had spent crafting . Before that, she only remembered a bit of her skills, segments of memories as well as emotions .
A native stood outside the hamlet with an overwhelmed expression, staring at the blaze in his former home with a scared expression . However in the next instant, he felt a surprising lightness . Like a weight that had been tying him down was released .
This very weight was his body, as his head slid off its former host .
He was only the first and certainly not the last . Riveting Night was very surgical in her attacks . She used her Body of Godliness to maximize her strength and speed beyond what her stats provided .
The next target was a female like her, a svelte figure that was average in terms of looks . She was sobbing while thinking of her deceased friends and clan mates one moment, while choking on her blood as she fell to her knees in another .
Riveting Night didn't stop the check . She hardly even cared . She just moved onto the target in almost a flash of movement, ending the fellow's life instantly .
She tore through the survivors like a cutlass through weed, cutting them down faster than they could respond .
Eventually, she reached Kwaku, who was a survivor . His housing should have been nearer to the center of the hamlet, which was where the spell was launched, yet he managed to make it out .
Draco was surprised by this .
Could there be more to the fellow? Or had he been nearer to the exit when the spell had been launched .
However, such a question was now irrelevant, as Riveting Night had set her eyes on him . The blackness under her hood seemed ominous to anyone standing before her .
Her face was totally obscured, leaving a seemingly bottomless abyss of shadow in its place . Her slim body was the only hint to her gender or any detail about her really . One could only imagine what she looked like under that hood .
Heck, even Draco had found her whole getup to be a bit eerie back then, much less Kwaku .
However, despite this sight, Kwaku's reaction wasn't the terrified expression and begging for his life that Draco expected, but rather a fierce roar as well as a pointless charge .
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login