Chapter 115.2: A Pair of Guards
PART 2/2
Ripley charged at me, unfazed at her partner’s being shot. She seemed purely focused on her fight. I ducked underneath her swing and leapt to her side. Thankfully, since I’d already gotten used to two stacks of Expedite, raising that number to four wasn’t too bad. At least, I was beginning to become used to it. With two Expedites active, my Dexterity would be 86, meaning the new score of 148 was only about double what it had been before. Still an extreme increase, but not as bad as going from zero Expedites to two of them.
I sidestepped a strike and ducked below another, focusing every piece of my mind on just dodging the fast and powerful attacks of such a high-Level Classer.
Index, I thought as I dodged, what can you tell me about her?
“Well, I can tell you the basic way the Berserker Class functions,” it said.
I ducked below another swing of the axe with the help of a pulse of Gravity Well on Ripley to temporarily throw her off.
“It’s actually a bit similar to Minute Mage in a sense,” Index continued, “in that it has a single, signature Talent that it gets at Level 0 and will get more powerful as the Class Levels. That Talent is the appropriately-named ‘Berserk.’”
I shot Ripley with a Ray of Frost to distract her as I backed away some more.
You have struck Level 25 Human Berserker for 59 damage using Ray of Frost.
You have cursed Level 25 Human Berserker with Ray of Frost. For the next 5 seconds, her Dexterity score is lowered by 7.77.
14.2 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 342.
“I can’t tell you the exact numbers, but the Talent is technically free to activate at any time, as often as the user wants. And what it does is increases all of a person’s physical Stats, general fighting abilities, and especially Health regeneration.”
I re-cast two Expedites on myself as the older two stacks of the Spell wore off. 281 Mana left.
“There’s a reason Berserkers use their Talent sparingly, though. In return for increasing their fighting abilities, it has a couple costs. First, it costs some Stamina every second it’s active, which does physically limit how often someone can keep it active. But the second thing it does—and this is the more well-known downside—is it impairs the user’s sense.”
Ripley tore her axe through the air, and it grazed my arm this time, re-activating its Burning Blood curse on me.
You have been sliced. 3 damage.
Your Health is 44.
You have been inflicted with Burning Blood.
For the next 10 seconds, you gain the following effects:
You lose 1 Health every second.
Whenever you take damage from a physical source, that source deals an additional 50% damage, up to a maximum of 25 additional damage.
“Basically, when someone’s under the effects of Berserk, they’re completely filled with rage. To an inhuman degree. They still have decent battle-sense and can tell friend from foe and everything, but while that Talent is active, a Berserker wants nothing more than to end the life of their opponent.”
She swung her axe straight downward, threatening to split my head in half, and a well-timed sidestep was all that saved me. Every second that passed regenerated a bit more of my Mana.
“The way this is relevant to you is that it’s functionally impossible to reason with that woman, in her current state. She understands language just fine, but she won’t listen to anything you say. And she won’t really act in accordance to basic principles like self-preservation, either. She’d be happy to die if it meant you died, too. Regardless of her feelings about all this while the Talent isn’t active, she hates you more than anything else for now.”
Ripley suddenly began moving in a completely unnatural way—a classic sign that she’d activated another Martial Art. Her arms moved faster than I could see, swinging the axe down at me in what felt like five directions at once. In a split-second decision, I charged forward and tackled her, just barely dodging the lethal attack. I got in half a second’s worth of Noxious Grasp with that, too, but nothing else before I was forced to flee from her once again. Mana had regenerated a bit, though, up to 294.
“There are a couple ways the Talent can deactivate. One is that, after a bit of time, it’ll just turn off on its own. It’s on a set timer. But, like I said before, the Talent is free to turn on and doesn’t have any limits like yours about how many times in a day it can be activated. So the only way for it to turn off and stay off is if this woman runs out of Stamina. The Talent can’t be used if its user’s Stamina levels are below five percent of their maximum, since the Talent has a natural cost of Stamina every second it’s active.”
Ripley screamed in rage, sounding more like the Infernals I’d fought than an actual person, and charged at me with her axe glinting in the setting sun. I shot off a pair of Rays of Frost, careful not to use too much of my Mana, and used that moment of distraction to dodge to the side and avoid another of her strikes. 51 damage and 54 damage, but Mana was back down to 266.
“So, basically, you’re up against a super-powered Melee-Type with an insatiable lust for your blood. And until that Talent shuts off, you’re not going to have much luck in killing her. The boosted Health regeneration really is quite ridiculous. In fact… yep, I’m just now getting that I can tell you this, she is literally missing around eighty Health from her maximum right now. Out of hundreds upon hundreds. That’s all the damage you’ve actually managed to deal to her in this fight, with your slower means of dealing damage. And most of it came from the two Rays you just hit her with. That damage will go away pretty shortly.”
I ducked under another swing of her axe.
“But she is at around half Stamina. So you’ve been doing quite well in that department. Let’s see… what do you have available to you… Your Health is 34, Stamina’s 61, and Mana’s down to 270. I guess you could activate Regenerate for a bit more Health, but that’d leave you with so little Stamina I’d be worried about your ability to keep fighting. So let’s not do that.”
I backed away from Ripley, breathing heavily.
“Seems like your best friend in this fight is gonna be your Noxious Grasp Upgrade, Venomous Grasp. It doubles all Stamina loss for five seconds after hitting them with the Spell, and that counts the natural Stamina cost every second from the Berserk Talent. It also counts all Stamina costs of Martial Arts.”
Ripley scowled and charged.
“So Stamina is going to be the bottleneck for her. You need to abuse that as best as you can here. She’s using up a bit more every second she fights, all you have to do is make sure those seconds pass by without you taking damage.”
Just as she swung at me, I re-cast Crippling Chill, which had worn off at some point during the fight. With the sudden loss of Dexterity she was stunned for a fraction of a second, allowing me to escape her swing alive one more time.
“So, uh, yeah. You got all that?”
Yeah, I thought. By some miracle, I managed to listen to everything Index was saying while not dying to Ripley. I’d taken a bit more damage than I’d have liked—and definitely spent more Mana than I’d have wanted—but I also got a bit more Mana back every second, so spending it to keep myself from dying was a pretty good use of it, in my opinion.
Erani and Asmo were still battling in the background, taking long-range shots at each other, with Erani using Angelic Shield to shrug off all of the hits that weren’t direct, and Asmo abusing her teleportation to avoid being hit by the Firebolts.
But between me and Ripley, we were both looking much worse for wear. Even with just the couple grazing hits she’d managed to get on me, the Enchantment on her axe tore through my Health all the same. Just a couple more like that and I’d be dead. But she was also low on Stamina, and all I had to do was rid her of the last bit she was clinging on to.
And that was what I’d do.
It was time for me to finish this fight.
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