Spiteful Healer

Chapter 210: Snowflake

“I should be there. I should be helping him!” Selena cried out as she paced around her basement, watching Aegis’ livestream with her parents. They sat at a table with a small television mounted on the nearby wall, glancing between her and the screen.

“Selena.” Her mom called out, but got ignored as Selena ran her fingers through her hair erratically. “SELENA!” Her mom shouted, snapping her out of it. “Why are you talking like it’s over?” Her mom asked.

“He’s against a level 200 raid boss, and an advanced class player. By himself!” Selena shouted with tears building up in her eyes.

“So?” Her mother replied.

“Look at him. Does it look like he’s given up?” Her dad added, motioning to the screen of Aegis standing firmly between Finley and the Avatar, and the island stone. Aegis chat log was full of messages chanting ‘FIGHT!’ and ‘YOU CAN DO IT!’ all zooming by as Hae-won stood silently in front of the broadcast, on the edge of her seat without commentating.

“So that’s your friend, huh?” Renault’s dad asked as he took a seat on the living room couch next to Renault. Renault was silently sitting at the edge of his seat, elbows on his knees so that his chin could rest on his fists. Renault didn’t reply, but rather began nervously tapping his foot as he watched Aegis’ live stream intently on the living room television.

Derrick sat with his father, both watching in their living room with wide eyes, not speaking a word. The silence was broken only by the sound of Derrick’s dad biting into a handful of chips.

Jillian stood in their living room, glancing between Eli’s Simbox, and their television hanging on the wall displaying his livestream. She let out an elongated sigh as the scene unfolded before her.

“There’s no chance this guy wins. Clerics are shit at solo PvP.” Seraxus commentated the stream using his livestream viewer, still sitting in the gladiator arena with Hajax. “What, you guys still rootin’ for him? He’s Renaults boy.” Seraxus eyed his chat, seeing words of encouragement on Aegis’ behalf. “Whatever.” Seraxus chuckled. “My money’s on that harbinger guy. Those wing attacks are pretty sick.”

“Forget the harbinger, that’s a level 200 elite raid boss bro.” Hajax laughed. “He’s fucked.”

“It is fortunate that Aegis is a tanky class player.” Feng spoke to his audience as he sat in a tavern on the island of Lanusk, watching Aegis’ broadcast through a livestream viewer with dozens of his guildmates. “Even though he stands no chance, we’ll likely see him live long enough to force the Avatar to show more of her skills. It will help us prepare for future battles we may have against such a foe.” Feng explained to his viewers.

Makaroth, on the other hand, watched silently in a tavern on Savringard. His guildmates were commentating and cheering along with Aegis’ stream, but Makaroth stood glaring silently at his livestream viewer, watching as Aegis’ viewership number began to climb rapidly.

“Come on, Aegis.” Quinn whispered to herself, leaning over the back of the couch that Ren sat on, within their office simulation. The other broadcasts were now closed, and she and Ren were now watching only Aegis’ livestream.

“You’re pretty annoying. The odds are so heavily stacked against you, but for some reason, it still feels like I gotta take you seriously.” Finley sighed as he tilted his head back. “I saw you fight Joltblade and Emerill. I know you do some crazy stuff, so I won’t underestimate you. I’ll go all out and end this quickly. Jealousy, let’s kill this Priest of Eirene.” Finley said to her, and she nodded back with a big smile.

The tendrils on her head began to stick up and wiggle around, and within a few moments, mouths opened up on the ends of them and they began to hiss.

“Eyes shut, Snowflake. Step back.” Aegis told his gryphon who quickly complied, lowering his head further and shutting his eyes tight, while Aegis remained glaring at the pair. Much to Finley’s surprise, Aegis was not immediately turned to stone and was able to stare back at her without any issues.

“Hm.” Finley squinted to look more closely, spotting oil dripping off of Aegis’ body. “So the de-petrification oil you made doesn’t just remove it, it prevents it. But it only lasts 5 minutes, right?” Finley asked, but got no response from Aegis as he pulled a vial out of his inventory. “Smart to apply it beforehand, but that only gives you 5 minutes to stop us. And your only real source of damage is Virabhadra. It requires you to take damage first.” Finley explained as he stepped forward and put his hand on Jealousy’s shoulder to prevent her from charging at Aegis.

“Literally all we have to do is not attack him for five minutes, and he’ll lose by turning to stone.” Finley told her. She looked back at Finley with a look of annoyance and disgust, but seemed to be listening as she lost her aggressive demeanor and went back to standing idly, rather than posturing to lunge towards Aegis across the fields they stood on.

Aegis, on the other hand, ignored Finley completely in favor of popping open the vial he had in his hand as Finley eyed the clear liquid that was inside.

“Poison? That’s your plan? You realize you can’t force other people to drink poison in this game, right? It’s against the gamerules. Even if that is the potent poison you made for the Dark Elves, it won’t help you kill us…” Finley’s voice trailed off as he watched Aegis drink it himself. “You’re fucking psycho.”

Red damage numbers began to tick above Aegis head as he took roughly 10,000 poison damage a second from the debuff he got upon drinking the vial. He began healing himself up from the damage repeatedly while stomping forward towards Finley and Jealousy.

“You talk too much.” Aegis replied before breaking into a sprint towards them. Finley, now seeing how dangerous Aegis was and how far he was willing to go, had a look of fear in his eyes. He quickly cowered behind the safety of the Avatar of Jealousy, who spread her wings and extended large claws out from her fingertips, the tendrils on her head hissing aggressively in Aegis’ direction.

As she pulled her arm back and prepared to swing out at him, he showed no signs of slowing his charge, as if he was planning on running straight at her. She grinned demonically as Aegis glared back at her, but the moment he got in range of her claw swipe, he projected his shield like a flat platform in front of himself and jumped up on top of it, then launched himself further up to fly over her head as she swung her claws out at him. He flew through the air above her to land behind her, then lunged forward at Finley.

It was made clear from this move that Finley was his target, not Jealousy. Finley saw Aegis’ lunging movement as Aegis extended his right hand out at Finley and attempted to grab the collar of his armor. He jumped backwards to avoid Aegis’ hand, then swung his greatsword down towards Aegis.

Aegis sidestepped the swing, then jumped back as Finley slashed his two large shadowy wings down at Aegis as follow up attacks. Aegis managed to dodge them and was preparing to lunge at him again, but Jealousy, too, took a swing out at Aegis from the side with her claws. He dodged one swipe by jumping back, but wasn’t expecting her tail to shoot out at him from the side like a spear, the end of it sharp as iron. He reactively lifted his shield up and braced it, but her damage, added on with the poison damage he was taking, dropped his health dangerously low.

Aegis was forced to disengage and heal himself up rapidly to offset it and get back to full for a moment, but Jealousy wasn’t giving him room to breathe and Finley was using Jealousy’s aggression to get further away from Aegis.

Her attack speed was unreal, she repeatedly swung at him from left, then right, then tail strike. Her claws looked deadlier than her tail, so Aegis prioritized avoiding strikes from them, and was forced to use his shield to block the tail strikes. Unlike non-elites, though, she wasn’t using any predictable attack pattern but rather was attacking Aegis erratically.

It wasn’t long before Aegis accepted he needed to make a compromise in his plan, and pulled out the antidote for the poison that he’d made back in the City of the White Tree, and drank it.

“If you were planning to kill her with your Virabhadra, you needed that poison.” Finley commented as he watched Aegis dispel the poison from himself, to lessen the amount of healing he needed to do drastically as he blocked Jealousy’s tail swipes. Aegis didn’t reply with words, but instead just glared at Finley, who smirked back and continued to step backwards further from Aegis and Jealousy.

Once fully healed, Aegis gave up on dodging one of her strikes in favor of lunging past her swipe and charging at Finley once more.

You take 43,140 Slashing damage.

You take 9,329 Shadow damage.

Due to the poison being gone, he had more time to heal her damage despite how high it was, and he ran at full speed to get away from her and close in on Finley who panicked and launched himself up into the sky, flapping his shadow wings to escape from Aegis.

“Aura of Light!” Aegis shouted, releasing a shockwave of holy energy which caused Jealousy to wince for a moment, and as Aegis had hoped, dispelled the black misty wings that were growing out of Finley’s back and causing him to begin free-falling back towards the ground where Aegis was waiting for him.

“Tch.” Finley reacted as he fell, taking his greatsword and aiming it down at Aegis to strike him as he landed. Aegis jumped to the side to avoid the sword attack, then lunged at Finley while he was still in the air and unable to dodge, grabbing the collar of his armor with his right hand. Once he had a firm grip, Aegis smirked at Finley and Finley looked back at Aegis with eyes of fear.

“Gotcha. Virabhabra!” Aegis shouted, intentionally mispronouncing it, but Finley didn't realize this and used a spell as a reaction, the same spell he’d used to escape the druids roots back when he fought against the Night Hunters. Black magical energy erupted around Aegis’ hand and allowed Finley to pull his armor out of Aegis’ grip with ease, and he quickly jumped back away from Aegis to avoid the explosion of the Virabhadra spell.

Finley clued in a second too late, though, that Aegis had said the spell wrong and instead lunged forward after Finley, this time pulling a pair of manacles out of his inventory into his right hand - the same manacles he’d gotten from saving Luryala. He slapped one end on his wrist, and the other on Finley’s, linking them together. Finley looked down at the manacles in horror, then looked over Aegis’ shoulder to see that Jealousy was charging forward but wouldn’t get to them in time to do anything about it.

“I looked it up, that escape spell has a minute cooldown. You're stuck here now. Virabha-” Aegis began to cast, but was interrupted by a panicked shout from Finley.

“AVATAR OF DARKNESS!” He yelled out frantically, creating a blast of black energy out of himself that knocked Aegis back, dispelled Aegis’ Aura of Light while simultaneously forming Finley's black wings again. Finley then bent his knees and launched himself up off of the ground and began flapping furiously into the sky, carrying Aegis along with him due to the manacles they now had linking one another at the wrist.

Within seconds, the ground faded beneath Aegis’ feet and he was taken up into the sky.

“As long as I keep flying at this speed, even if you cast the spell, I’ll be out of its radius before it reaches me.” Finley laughed as if he’d triumphed over Aegis’ plan. Aegis, however, lost no focus. He glanced back down to the ground and saw that Jealousy was now flying after them, her claws ready to strike. She was gaining on them quickly, flying much faster than Finley was, but Finley was right.

Aegis quickly judged the speed at which Finley was flying upwards, carrying Aegis along with him by the chain of the manacles. The distance the chain was providing and the speed that Finley was flying would indeed keep him safely out of range of Virabhadra as long as he stayed in motion. If Aegis were to try and cast it in this state, he knew it’d be wasted, but Jealousy was closing in on him quickly and the oil was wearing off - he was running out of time. With his free right hand bound, Aegis waved his left hand with the shield strapped on his forearm out at Jealousy, casting guard in front of her flight path to obstruct her.

She, like other raid bosses and elites, crashed into the projection and shattered it, dealing minor bludgeoning damage to Aegis and teaching him that the guard skill couldn’t be used to impede her movement much. Aegis sucked his teeth and instead turned to look up where Finley was flying, and projected his shield in front of him to cut off his flight path instead.

Finley was ready for it though, and the moment Aegis’ shield projection appeared in front of him, Finley used his hands to launch himself off of it and keep up his forward momentum, to make sure he stayed as far from Aegis as possible despite them being manacled together.

“Hah. It’s over. Like this, you won’t get me. She’s faster, she’ll slice you to pieces.” Finley shouted with excitement as he looked down and saw Jealousy closing in, preparing to strike out at Aegis. Aegis wasn’t giving up, he desperately unstrapped his left shield using his right hand and whipped it down at Jealousy. Unlike his projection, this worked in halting her flight as the sharp sides of the mithral shield slammed right into her face, causing her to wince and momentarily pull back.

Now, with his left hand free, he reached out at the chain of the manacles and pulled himself up, climbing up to get closer to Finley.

“You just threw away your mithral shield?!” Finley shouted in disbelief. Aegis gritted his teeth, closing the gap as he yanked himself up the manacle chain with his left hand with a quick pulling motion, then released the chain and whipped his right hand out to grab Finley’s forearm with his left hand. “Get the hell away from me!” Finley shouted out frantically as Aegis then pulled his right manacled hand up and grabbed up to Finley’s shoulder. Finley stopped flying upwards in favor of swinging his wings down at Aegis to try and knock him off, but Aegis took the hits and healed through it with ease as he reached out and grabbed Finley’s armor by the collar with his hands, and held on tight.

Aegis grinned as he prepared to cast it, knowing full well now that Finley couldn’t escape the damage of the spell, but a sudden burst of black energy erupted around Finley’s right arm where the manacles were, as his shadowy escape skill came off cooldown. It allowed Finley to free himself of the manacles, and following this, he rapidly rotated to spin himself free of Aegis’ grip, knocking him off.

“Hah, too slow!” Finley cheered triumpantly as Aegis looked on in frustration. Finley flapped his wings to maintain altitude, while Aegis began falling down out of the sky, now several dozen meters above the fields with Jealousy soaring up towards him. “That’s it. Times up. It’s my win.” Finley cheered as he saw the look of defeat appearing on Aegis’ face.

Then, suddenly, a flash of white feathers shot up from behind Aegis, catching him mid-air while soaring upward towards Finley.

“Snowflake? NO!” Aegis shouted as he quickly oriented himself on the saddle of the gryphon he'd landed on. He felt it - immediately upon touching Snowflake’s feathers, they began to solidify into stone. Snowflake continued to flap his wings furiously while his body began to turn to petrify, catching Finley off guard as the gryphon flew up at him with incredible speed, delivering Aegis while simultaneously throwing his large yellow talons around Finley’s ankles and gripping them tight. A second later, the wings and talons of Snowflake completely turned to stone, solidifying their grip onto Finley and dragging him down out of the sky with Aegis on his back.

“Fucking gryphon!” Finley shouted as he prepared to strike his wings out at Snowflake and shatter the statue. Aegis watched it happen in slow motion - he knew what would happen as a result of his next actions, but had very little time to contemplate them.

“Virabhadra.” Aegis said with little enthusiasm, as the white dome of light erupted out of his body, encapsulating both Finley, and the statue of his gryphon pet Snowflake. Indiscriminately, the spell did damage based on damage Aegis had taken within the last 5 minutes, split among all targets within its range. It didn’t matter that Snowflake was his friend, and companion.

You have slain the player Finley

You gain 1000 Favor with Eirene.

You have slain Snowflake

You lose 1000 Favor with Eirene.

Aegis watched as the light of his spell cracked Snowflake's statue into dozens of tiny fragments, and Finley’s body began to disintegrate from the game world. He hadn’t time to properly process it, as he began to free fall down out of the sky with Jealousy still flying towards him. She took a swipe out at him as he flew past her, and he took the full amount of the damage, then desperately healed himself up through it and frantically pulled out an old iron shield from his inventory and equipped it.

Once equipped, Aegis projected the shield beneath himself to slow his fall, then released it as Jealousy turned to soar down out of the sky after him, a rain of statue fragments showering down alongside her. Aegis quickly launched himself off of the projected shield to get out of her path and avoid her diving claw strike, and fell a few more meters before casting another projection to catch himself midair and heal up the fall damage. He did this two more times before finally reaching the ground, and looked across the field to see his Mithral shield laying near the petrified head of Snowflake, surrounded by stony fragments of the rest of his body.

Aegis ran over towards his mithral shield, while simultaneously discarding the iron shield, and quickly picked it up and re-equipped it. Just in time, too, as Jealousy dove down at him from above with her claws extended, slashing into Aegis’ shield and creating a loud metallic clunking sound from the impact. From there, Aegis picked up Snowflake's stone head and jumped away to create distance between himself and the Avatar, while she softly landed on the ground where Aegis had been standing.

“Good. The useless other-worlder is no longer here to get in my way. I will devour your light, and destroy this stone. I will sink this island into the abyss, where it belongs.” The Avatar of Jealousy spoke as her tendrils hissed and whipped around atop her head.

Aegis wasn’t listening to her, nor was he looking at her. Instead, he found himself looking at the petrified head of Snowflake that he held in his right hand. An image flashed in his mind of the moment he met Snowflake, cowering in the back of the iron cage within the poachers camp, and how eager he was to eat Aegis’ food. The times where, even against Aegis’ commands, Snowflake dove into danger to try and help him.

“Why’d you do that, lil buddy.” Aegis said with tears filling up in his eyes. Jealousy, seeing Aegis distracted by the head of the statue in his hand, instead turned to face towards the island stone in the grove of yellow trees a few meters away, and extended her hands out towards it. Black mist began to form in her palms as she prepared to attack and destroy the stone, but luckily Aegis snapped out of it in time and quickly dashed across the field to stand in front of the beam, and blocked it with his mithral shield. The black beam exploded out from the impact point once more, and took a moment for the dust and debris from the explosion to settle.

“It’s cute, seeing an other-worlder get sentimental about his pet. I’ve never heard of such things. I can smell the negative emotions swelling within you.” Jealousy spoke as she watched Aegis add Snowflake’s statue head to his inventory. “You should accept them, and embrace them. That is what it means to become one with the abyss. Don’t deny the darkness within your heart any longer.” Jealousy said as she took a few steps forward towards Aegis, sniffing the air in his direction.

“Interesting. It is not despair I smell. No, it’s not suffering, or jealousy… Ah… there… that delectable, repugnant scent of my greater half. You are filled with Anger.” Jealousy grinned at him. Aegis, once again, dug his feet into the dirt and lifted his shield up, now facing the level 200 Raid boss by himself. He looked up into the corner of his peripheral vision and saw the de-petrification oil buff wearing down, to its last few seconds, and was forced to shut his eyes as he faced her.

“Like I said before. You’re not getting past by shield.” Aegis said with determination.