章節 36: Pk Squad Wipe

Just as the enemy players started rushing the trio, Kirou placed his hands on both of their shoulders before the trio vanished from the encirclement of the enemy players. They then appeared on a tree branch of a tall tree a few meters away when Kirou gave them a message.

"Do your best to protect yourselves while I take care of the rest." Before either elf could make a comment, Kirou sank into the shadows once more before appearing on another side of the battlefield, engaging the enemy players in a melee.

Seeing that Kirou had rejoined the fight, both elf women glanced at each other and did a nod before Reya took out her short bow and notched a few arrows while Navi climbed down the tree and disappeared into stealth as well.

On Kirou's side, he was currently taking on over a dozen players. These players were attacking him from all angles but Kirou was making them look like a bunch of amateurs if all of those near misses and friendly fire attacks were anything to go by. Since he wanted to make sure he wouldn't suffer from any infamy, Kirou made sure to get hit from a few of those near-miss attacks. Unfortunately for him though, they were stronger than he expected.

[-120]

[-95]

[-70]

Just from those three attacks, Kirou lost a bit over a third of his health, causing him to furrow his brows while making sure to dodge the rest of the attacks. From the looks of it, all of these enemies were either at the level cap or very close to it.

Feeling that he's taken enough attacks from the group he was in, Kirou decided that it was his turn to attack, so he used his gunblade tonfas to fire out charged shot which pushed him into the air, above the entire group of players. Just as the group was forming up to take advantage of his apparent bad situation, Kirou dropped something from his hands while using his enchanted chain to pull him towards the end of the group where he started rolling as soon as his feet touched the ground, with the sounds of explosions going off behind him.

[-250]

...

A bunch of [-250] damage figures appeared above the heads of the players that were in the blast radius. This stunned the group of players momentarily before they regained their senses and pursued with renewed vigor.

"Was that a bloody grenade? Where the hell did he get that?" asked one of the pursuing players chasing after Kirou.

"It wouldn't happen to be an item he made, right?" asked another player within that group.

"You better hope that it isn't, otherwise he can just bomb us to death," said a third member of the group. This one just so happened to be in the center of the group when the grenade went off. Although it dealt the same amount of damage to everyone within range, it put great fear into him that he was that close to dying.

Unlike what the third member of the group said, Kirou couldn't just bomb the group to death with his handcrafted grenades. One of the rules imposed on them after he crafted them was that they had a five-minute cooldown. This was due to its lethality potential, especially when you consider that it does flat, defense ignoring damage.

Following the explosion, Kirou was now leading his group of players away into the forest, which surprisingly comprised of over 40 members. As for the girls, they were currently stuck dealing with the leftovers.

**************

The stalker player was currently in a very foul mood. He was issued a simple mission from his boss to hunt down and retrieve an item from a member of their guild when they were returning from their trip. He was told to make sure that they couldn't be recognized so the stalker and the squad under his command left the guild so that they couldn't be identified when they did the job.

The simple job took on a change when he noticed that the target had now teamed up with two other players. At first, he contacted the boss to see if he had a change in orders and he did, which was to kill the target's party members as well.

To him, this job seemed pretty clear cut and quite simple. Who knew he would be facing such freaks. The target herself had managed to reach level 20, three levels higher than the info given by the boss when he assigned the mission. This alone wasn't much of an issue since he had an entire squad of players with him.

Next came the female elf the target was with. He wasn't sure how but in the time it took for the entire party to vanish from their encirclement, the female elf archer was currently perched on top of a tree branch, completely out of reach from the squad of thieves, and was having a field day sniping at the heads of the members of his squad. This gave him a big headache as he had no idea how to deal with her, but even then, she wasn't his main concern.

The main concern came in the form of the Lycan. This Lycan had a bunch of weird weapons and items on him that he's never seen in the game before. Not counting those weird tonfas that can fire off energy bullets or that possessed chain of his, just those damn grenades that he's got in his possession has proven to be a match for the entire squad. And this isn't even counting the fact that the Lycan himself is so good when it comes to dodging that a group of a dozen men at a time find it hard to even scratch his robe.

"Just what the hell did I agree to?" asked the stalker to himself while doing his best to dodge the arrows aimed at his head while fighting his mission target, Navi. The stalker had a few players with him, trying their best to hold Navi in place long enough to land a hit, only to either be interrupted by an arrow flying towards their head or Navi herself dodging the attacks by a hair's width.

'It's almost as if she's learned to dodge from that blasted Lycan.' This was the stalker's current thought process, shared by the players currently with him, as they try their best to cut Navi to pieces.

Navi was her part wasn't having it any easier than them as she was secretly cursing up a storm in her mind at the moment, 'Bloody hell! Motherf***ing bastard. What in the ****ing hell? Just how the hell does that guy do it? I'm struggling with just six people yet he's doing this with over three dozen. And he's making it look so damn easy since he has time to toss out a grenade every few minutes or control that weird chain of his. One of these days I'm gonna cut open that head of his to see just how it operates.' Those were Navi's thoughts as she continued her struggle against the stalker and his group, doing her best to stay alive.

As for Reya, she currently had a birds-eye view of the entire fight. She could see Kirou leading around his large group of enemies while Navi was currently holding off her set of players. As for the rest, they were trying to climb the try Reya was on, only to fail due to them having nothing to hold on to or Reya gifting them an arrow to the head whenever they got too close. Out of everyone in the area, it could be said that if Kirou was the most relaxed player, then Reya would solidly hold second place on that list since she was essentially an arrow tower at the moment.

"It doesn't look like it was random for him to have dropped us off on this tree." Those words escaped Reya's mouth as she loosed another arrow towards the group surrounding Navi, forcing the attackers to take evasive actions.

******************

From Kirou's perspective, he could currently see that Navi was going to be in trouble soon while Reya was as relaxed as can possibly be. Figuring that he's allowed them to get enough practice in when fighting players and he's more or less robbed each player around him at least once with his pickpocket skill, he figured that it was time to end this farce of a battle.

Following an attack he allowed to hit him on purpose, Kirou now propelled himself towards the group where Navi was fighting. His movements were swift and by the time he had circled the group a few times using his shadow teleportation skill, the group was only now noticing his presence. One player immediately turned around and tried to stab Kirou, only to realize that he no longer had his knife in his hand.

A few other members of the group soon noticed that they had been disarmed as well and were quite bewildered over it. Kirou didn't allow them to stay like that for long as he dangled one of the missing weapons before this group of players.

"Damnit. He's got my knife," shouted one member.

"He's got my short sword as well," shouted another.

"Get him," shouted the third who happened to be missing parts of his armor.

The group that was originally encircling Navi was now reduced to one, the stalker that was originally following the trio. As for the rest, they made it a point to chase down the bandit that had robbed them of their weapons and armor, Kirou.

Kirou, for his part, now was surrounded by roughly 70 players, each gunning for his life, yet he was surprisingly calm as can be. Just as the group of players got close enough to Kirou, he used his gunblade tonfas to shoot himself into the air, once again. Since they saw him do this trick before, the group was wary and some backed off from directly beneath him. Instead of tossing out a bomb as they had expected, Kirou used two skills in succession; eagle stomp and tremor. Eagle Stomp was the skill Kirou got from the skill book he received when he visited Apothecary Redwood less than an hour ago.

Skill: Eagle Stomp

Skill Level: 1/3

Rank: A

Cost: 50mp

Skill Creator/Generator: N/A

Description: Allows the user to fall with a devastating force that can be used on a target beneath the user. Damage scaled from 100% to 500% of the user's attack based on the height of the drop. The skill also allows the next foot-based attack to deal double damage, especially if chained with this attack mid drop.

Since Kirou wasn't dropping a bomb, the group rushed back to gather beneath so that they would be able to maul him to death. Unfortunately for them, they never knew this was what Kirou wanted them to do, nor did they expect what happened next.

<Fatal>

[-3988]

<Fatal>

[-2175]

<Fatal>

[-2175]

[-1870]

[-1650]

...

Besides the person that Kirou directly stomped to death, taking damage from both skills, the rest of the surrounding players were dealt a devastating AOE attack from the tremor, practically stripping their already low health points in their entirety. The damage was so high, especially for that first one, that the system gave it another modifier, signifying just how powerful the damage was in comparison to the target's health pool.

It was a first for Kirou, the girls, and the remaining members of the squad. The stalker squad leader looked at this new modifier and was scared out of his wits. It didn't matter that members of his squad started fleeing in terror as the stalker himself turned tail and ran, cursing the fact that he lacked a few extra legs to take him away faster. In less than fifteen seconds, only the two elf women and Kirou were left in that area of the forest.

Both women were looking at Kirou like he was some sort of demon that just escaped hell and was enjoying a meal for the first time in years. Kirou, for his part, was quite shocked as well as he never expected his damage to be that high either. He didn't even have to turn around to picture the looks of shock and fear plastered on the faces of the two girls. He could clearly imagine it. It also didn't help that he was seeing through the eyes of his clones at the moment.

Kirou had no words for his actions and he had no idea how he would defend himself. Since that was the case, he decided not to defend himself, or even talk. He just started walking down the path the trio originally decided on, completely ignoring the looks he was being given by both girls and the damage he specifically dealt to the area, especially with that last attack.

The girls only shared a look with each other before they too started walking down that path, all the while many thoughts about the battle that just took place kept going through their minds. After getting into step with him, the two women couldn't stop themselves from sending curious looks towards Kirou, all while wondering who the hell is he.