Spiteful Healer

Chapter 206: Duel in the Streets

Rakkan ran out of the throne room in the direction he’d seen Quiver and Darkshot leave, and attempted pursuit around several corridors until arriving at the large hall that Darkshot was once in. Zekor followed closely behind him without saying a word.

Rakkan spotted the discarded shield that Darkshot had tried to use to knock Quiver’s arrow down, and knew he was still going in the right direction, but saw no other immediate signs of him. He squinted carefully, taking advantage of his party interface to track the location of his party members, until he finally spotted Darkshot's name floating above his head, visible through walls outside the palace, far off in the distance amongst the city’s buildings.

Seeing this, Rakkan eagerly ran for the open door in the hall with sunlight shining through it, to get outside of the Palace. The moment he stepped through the door's threshold though, Darkshot began speaking through the party interface to him.

“No, Rakkan! Get back inside!” Darkshot shouted urgently as Rakkan stepped out onto the wall of the palace. Near him, he saw nothing, and heard nothing but the sounds of battle from the southern walls of Kordas far off in the distance. Due to not seeing anything, he didn’t react quickly to Darkshot’s words, and as a result, a few moments later the sound of arrows whistling through the air could be heard. Rakkan spotted a multishot barrage of arrows flying towards him from an undetermined location, and quickly jumped back through the door into the palace hallway, with Zekor anxiously running as far away as possible as well.

Rakkan took out his weapons and created his echoes quickly, expecting many of the arrows to just crash into the palace walls, but instead, all 20 of the multishot arrows managed to make their way in through the doorway and followed Rakkan back into the palace hall. From there, Rakkan engaged with the 20 arrows and began slashing at them carefully with his echoes, cutting most of them down as Quiver began prioritizing control of just a few that swerved around Rakkan’s weapon swings and attempted to hit him from behind.

The maneuvering of the arrows was on par with Joltblade’s shuriken control, but they were more fluid, faster, and therefore harder to deflect. Once Rakkan got it down to three arrows, he was forced to unsummon his echoes one by one to avoid having them get hit by the arrows he was failing to dodge. First, one got through under one of his longsword swings, hitting him in his side, then the second got through and hit him in the back, bringing his health dangerously low as the mithral arrows were dealing large amounts of damage.

Finally, the third arrow hit Rakkan in his chest, dropping his health below 1000, but not killing him as he thankfully had higher defenses than Darkshot did, as well as higher base health due to his class choice.

“Fuck, what’s with these arrows?” Rakkan shouted in frustration after having failed to block them, but as he said this, the third and final arrow that had hit him suddenly grew two tendrils, and pulled its sharp head out of Rakkan’s body, then grew wings and began flapping and flying away back from where it came at incredible speed.

“He’s got a mimic pet, he keeps turning it into an arrow and shooting it with his multishots, then using his familiar eye skill to basically see through the eyes of the arrows. It’s increasing his accuracy and attack range far beyond what is normally possible. No matter where we are in this city, he can still hit us.” Darkshot explained through the party interface.

“Damn, that’s OP.” Rakkan replied as he grasped the concept. “What should I do to help?”

“Nothing.” Darkshot replied as he took a deep breath to calm his own nerves, as he came to realize the situation. “The moment you step outside of cover, he’ll barrage you with attacks and you won’t even know where they’re coming from. I’m the one that has to take him out.” Darkshot explained.

“Do you know where he’s shooting from?” Rakkan asked as he shuffled out of the hall into a sideroom to change his location and hide from further potential attacks.

“No.” Darkshot replied. “Just hang tight. I’ll figure it out.”

“Aite. I’m countin’ on you.” Rakkan replied.

Darkshot was crouching up against the wall of a random building within the streets of Kordas, in an alleyway surrounded by empty crates and barrels he was using to stay hidden. Darkwing remained anxiously alert on his shoulder, and the two tried to stay as still and silent as possible.

Darkshot was deep in thought, trying to figure out a plan in order to locate Quiver, while simultaneously watching as his health bar slowly filled back up thanks to Aegis’ healing wind enchantments on his new armor. Eventually, his health hit its maximum amount, but Darkshot still had no ideas in mind on how to locate Quiver without putting himself at risk.

As he straightened his back and stood up in order to take action, he felt an impending sense of oppression and fear, mixed in with intimidation. A never ending feeling that the moment he moved out from cover, Quiver’s arrows would be on him and follow him endlessly. The fear quickly caused him to slouch back down into the safe cover of the crates and barrels around him.

“It’s like playing first person versus third person in a shooting game. It’s not fair…” Darkshot mumbled to himself in frustration, receiving a quiet coo back from Darkwing. But his own words finally sparked an idea in his head, and he quickly opened up his livestream viewer. He went into the broadcast of Samathara and panned through her stream history, to see if she caught a glimpse of the palace - she hadn’t as she was too focused on the battle for Kordas as well as the sage scrying on the Black Lions battle.

Darkshot didn’t give up, though, and he quickly went through the other network broadcasters, as there were several of them streaming from atop the Skyport Tower of Kordas. It wasn’t long before finally, he found a broadcaster that caught a glimpse of their battle in his playback footage. Darkshot felt a jolt of excitement and hope as he sped up the playback and watched through the broadcasters point of view to see where Quiver had ran after he shot at him from the streets - inside a bakery lining the street a few meters down from where Darkshot was.

After fast forwarding through the footage, as far as he could see it appeared that Quiver hadn’t left the building yet. Seeing this, Darkshot closed out of the livestream viewer and let out a nervous sigh, standing upright once more. He felt his knees shaking from the fear, glancing down both directions of the alleyway to make sure no arrows were coming at him.

“Alright Darkshot. You can do this. You are the one who shoots from the darkness.” Darkshot said to hype himself up, and got a coo back in response. “We got lucky that a livestream caught him, but it probably wont happen twice. Can’t lose track of him again no matter what.” He mumbled to himself before pulling his longbow out in front of himself and nocking an arrow.

Once he was sure he was ready, he sprinted out of the alleyway into the streets of Kordas. The moment he did, he heard the sound of arrows whistling through the air from the direction of the bakery. A barrage of 20 arrows flew straight at Darkshot, but Darkshot ran directly at them.

Just as the arrow barrage was about to hit him, Darkshot fired his arrow up at a nearby 5 story building, casting grappling shot to extend a rope out of it, then yanked on the rope to propel himself up out of the path of the arrows and into the air. Quiver wasn’t expecting such a maneuver and failed to swerve most of the arrows fast enough to follow Darkshot, abandoning 17 of them in favor of controlling three and chasing Darkshot with them.

Darkshot dropped back down to the paved streets and continued sprinting towards the bakery, nocking another arrow as the three arrows of Quiver pursued him from behind, until finally Darkshot reached the front door of the bakery and kicked it open, firing his arrow into the building.

“Multishot!” Darkshot shouted before even properly taking in the interior of the structure. Sure enough, hiding in the back of the bakery behind the counter was Quiver, looking at him dumbfounded.

“How the hell’d you find me?” Quiver shouted at him in annoyance as he dashed away from the multishot, abandoning control of two arrows pursuing Darkshot while the third revealed itself to be the mimic and continued to pursue Darkshot even without Quiver controlling it.

With Quiver fleeing further into the building, Darkshot had a choice to attempt to pursue him and keep redirecting his multishot, or - instead, Darkshot abandoned control of his multishot arrows and instead turned on the mimic arrow still chasing him.

“Darkwing, don’t let that arrow out of your sight!” Darkshot shouted at his pigeon, who cooed back with determination. Darkshot then leapt backwards and fired the arrow as he stood in the street in front of the bakery, this time the shot was aimed at the mimic arrow. “Pinning shot!” Darkshot shouted, after connecting his arrow with the mimic arrow. Vines shot out from the arrow and pierced into the paved stone streets of Kordas, locking the mimic in place.

The mimic arrow immediately grew out tendrils, wings, and a small mouth in place of its arrowhead, screeching out angrily at Darkshot as its name became visible to him for the first time. [Milo(Elite) - 150] floating above its head. With it locked in place, Darkshot nocked another mithral arrow and pointed it directly at the helpless, bound creature and prepared to shoot.

“Wait! STOP!” Quiver shouted out at him from the back of the bakery, desperately running forward through the building with his bow out and pointing an arrow at Darkshot. To his surprise, though, Darkshot listened and stopped.

“Bang, your pet is dead.” Darkshot declared, while holding his arrow pointed at the bound creature. “But…” He glanced to Darkwing on his shoulder, “As a fellow Ranger, I can’t bring myself to actually kill it. So, let's leave our pets out of this and finish it man to man.” Darkshot said while seeing a look of fear on Quiver’s face. “After all, it’d be a pain to have to tame a new one, right?” Darkshot asked with a slight grin creeping up on the side of his face.

Quiver didn’t reply immediately, he maintained his look of fear while glancing between his pet and Darkshot’s arrow pointed at it, until finally Quiver lowered his arrow and let out a long sigh.

“Man, you’re way too cool.” Quiver shook his head. “Okay. Fine with me. And thanks.” Quiver said as he stepped out of the bakery onto the streets of Kordas. “Milo, go hide somewhere, don’t interfere with this fight.” Quiver explained to his pet as the pinning shot wore off. Darkshot maintained his arrow’s aim on the mimic as he watched it morph its body back into a level 50 hawk. It let out a few annoyed squawks before flapping its wings and taking off into the distance.

Once Darkshot was sure he was sight, he turned to his pigeon.

“You too, you go hide. It’s gonna get dangerous here.” Darkshot instructed Darkwing. With little resistance, the pigeon cooed and flew off into the distance as well, leaving the two rangers standing in the streets several meters away from each other.

“You know, I bet we’d get along if we got to know each other. All this island sinking stuff, it’s just a way to pay the bills.” Quiver shrugged as he began stepping backwards away from Darkshot, bow still in hand with an arrow in the bowstring, but it was pointed at the ground while Darkshot’s had turned his from being aimed at the mimic, to Quiver.

“I doubt it, the first time we met you shot me.” Darkshot replied.

“Oh, yeah, forgot about that.” Quiver laughed half-heartedly. “How’d you find me, by the way?”

“Just lucky.” Darkshot shrugged back.

“Hah, right, you shot into the building before you even saw me. You somehow knew I was there.” Quiver sighed as now Darkshot too was taking a few steps back, so that they were roughly 8 meters from each other on the paved street, with nothing but shops and residential homes flanking them on either side. “Well, whatever, doesn’t matter now. Your buddies took out Emerill, Joltblade and Cheryl, so… Vagosh’ll be pissed if I don’t find where you hid the King.”

“You won’t find him.” Darkshot replied back cooly, but in truth his adrenaline was pumping through his body and his breathing was anything but steady. Quiver eyed Darkshot up and down and saw it.

“First time having a one versus one duel? You look a bit nervous. You ready?” Quiver asked with a raised eyebrow, but following this question, he immediately pulled his bow and arrow up and aimed it at Darkshot, firing into a multishot.

Darkshot did the same, and their arrow barrages collided with one another. Darkshot jumped off to the side of the street, while Quiver jumped as well, and the pair wiggled their fingers frantically to redirect each other's 20 arrows into each other, or beyond the barrages to aim at the other player.

“Piercing shot!” Darkshot shouted, firing another arrow while still controlling the redirecting arrows. Three of his multishot arrows remained as his piercing arrow grew large and shot through both barrages at Quiver. It caught Quiver off guard and hit him, but simultaneously Darkshot lost track of one of the redirected barrage shots and took a hit, both of them losing a 3rd of their health in the exchange.

Quiver then retaliated by firing his own piercing shot, but Darkshot quickly shot a grappling arrow up at a nearby building and used the rope to pull himself up over the piercing shot, swinging through the air. Mid-air, he released the rope and nocked another arrow from his quiver and fired it.

“Multishot!” Darkshot cast, morphing it into another barrage of 20 shots.

“Multishot.” Quiver replied as he aimed up at the barrage pouring down on him.

“Grappling shot.” Darkshot cast, turning one of his multishot arrows into a grapple and causing it to leave a trailing rope behind, which Darkshot grabbed. As his multishot mixed in with Quiver’s, he used the rope to yank himself through the arrows while cautiously avoiding the ones that Quiver was redirecting, in order to close the distance between them.

Darkshot redirected his grapple arrow to penetrate the ground at Quiver’s feet while Quiver jumped backwards and nocked another arrow. As Darkshot yanked himself forward on the rope once more and landed on the ground in front of Quiver, both players abandoned control of their multishots in favor of nocking an arrow and aiming at one another, now both only a meter apart.

They both released their arrows, aiming at each others heads, and tilted their heads respectively out of the way to dodge in almost completely synchronized movements. The only difference was, following both shots, Darkshot jumped forward and swung his bow out at Quiver, while Quiver jumped backwards to avoid the swing. Darkshot followed it up with a side kick which Quiver lifted up his shin to block, but still took the unarmed damage from.

“Yo, we’re Rangers, not monks.” Quiver grumbled in frustration, but Darkshot ignored this and continued forward at Quiver, taking one hand off of his bow and swinging it out at his head as Quiver attempted to reload his bow with a backwards hop, then fired it at Darkshot.

Darkshot closed the gap and ducked under the arrow, landing a punch into Quiver’s stomach before Quiver could create distance again.

“Multishot!” Quiver shouted, causing the arrow he’d fired beyond Darkshot to split into 20, of which Quiver redirected three of the arrows backwards to come at Darkshot from behind. Darkshot reacted by firing an arrow up at the tallest nearby building and spawning a grappling rope out of it, then yanked himself up into the air just in time to avoid the three arrows flying at him from behind.

Quiver took advantage of this by redirecting the arrows upwards to pursue Darkshot while midair, but Darkshot nocked an arrow and aimed it down at Quiver from above.

“Game over.” Darkshot declared with a smirk. Quiver saw the confident look on his face and was confused for a moment, but he glanced down at his stomach where Darkshot had landed the punch and saw the red ranger mark on his chest.

“Shit.” Quiver sighed in frustration.

“RAIN OF ARROWS!” Darkshot shouted, dumping the remainder of his mana to fire dozens of arrows that all converged on the red mark. There wasn’t any immediate cover available for Quiver to utilize, and he could do nothing but take the arrows to his chest, while abandoning control of the three arrows he had sent after Darkshot.

Darkshot easily dodged the arrows using the grappling rope, yanking himself to the side and eventually landing back down on the paved streets a few meters away from Quiver’s disintegrating body.

“I remembered back in Rene, you were shocked by the unarmed skills I used to fight the gnolls. Figured you weren’t so good at close combat.” Darkshot shrugged at his fading body.

“Heh.” Quiver’s final word before he was forced to log out for 24 hours. The moment he was gone, Darkshot’s knees gave out and he collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily.

“I got him. I got him, it’s safe to come outside now.” Darkshot declared into his party interface.

“That’s all of ‘em, Aegis.” Rakkan spoke into the party interface, of which Pyri, Aegis, Lina, Darkshot and Rakkan were members.

“Good job, guys!” Pyri cheered excitedly to them.

“Tell Yorgi to open a portal so I can get back to Kordas please!” Lina joined in.

“Yep, yeah, I’ll go track him down.” Rakkan answered her.

“Nice work guys. Just Finley left, but as long as he doesn’t know where the fifth stone is, we should be okay. If we can hold off the abysslings until the juggernauts are down, we can group up and challenge that Raid boss with the White Flames.” Aegis spoke to the group. “Gather up around Yorgi and portal to Rene, so we can help out with the Juggernauts.” Aegis instructed them as he himself redirected Snowflake to fly in the direction of Rene.

“Yes, sir.” Darkshot replied playfully.

“They’re all fucking useless.” Finley shouted in frustration as he flew through the skies of Kalmoore with Jealousy behind him. He was eying his party interface and saw all four of his party members were dead, and left the party in annoyance. After letting out a long sigh, he opened up his friends list and navigated down to Simon, then sent him a party invite. As if Simon was expecting it, he immediately accepted and joined Finley’s group.

“Simon, I need your services again.” Finley said through the party communications.

“Hmm… There’s a lot of cameras though. I don’t like publicity.” Simon moaned back at him like a whiny child.

“I’ll give you 50% of the profits from this island. I can take it out of the share of the four morons.” Finley replied coldly.

“Oooh, that sounds like a lot of money. Oki-doki!” Simon cheered. “What do I gotta do exactly?”

“Find the King, torture him until he reveals the location of the 5th island stone, then kill him. Bonus points if you can kill Aegis’ pals, or the Arallian Princess.”

“‘Kay.” Simon replied, followed by him promptly leaving the party.

As Rakkan was stepping out of the Palace and walking out into the palace gardens with Zekor trailing behind him, he saw a young boy prancing through the hole in the wooden palace gate. Long blonde hair waving around, with extremely long sleeves dragging down to the ground blocking view of his hands. He had a majestic staff that remained strapped on his back.

“Oh, goody! I found one already!” Simon cheered playfully as he spotted Rakkan, and Rakkan eyed him up and down, including the [Simon - Level 164] floating above his head.

“Yo Aegis, we have a problem.” Rakkan said through his party interface.