Max had almost made it to the fire when the sound of a cracking branch startled him from behind. He instinctively dodged to the side and rolled away, narrowly avoiding the ax of a berserker who was rapidly chopping at him, hitting only trees as Max dodged.
This player still hadn't worked out a proper combat style without using his skills, it was likely that he had never held a weapon in real life. In most games that wouldn't matter, all your actions were skills-based and automatic. In this one, they were only a supplement to your own skills. It occurred to Max that this was likely deliberate, an attempt to build up the combat skills of young players and soldiers that were going to be the primary customer base.
If you learned to emulate the skills inside the game while outside of it, you would inevitably become a more effective warrior for the Kepler Empire. That was something that couldn't be done in a typical game, where muscle memory wasn't necessary to complete the skills in a series.
He was beginning to get the hang of it though, and the few spells that Max managed to get off weren't doing nearly as much damage as expected. The berserker class must be magic resistant, Max decided, moving to recover the improvised hammer he dropped.
Just as he got up though, a blade cut across his shoulder, throwing him back to the ground as the second ax came down at his head.
'I wonder what the respawn animation is like?' Max thought, but the blow never came.
A black streak came racing down out of the trees and the berserker's head snapped forward, then his body crumpled and the head was pulled free of his shoulders as a small form in a tattered black lolita dress danced on his back.
There were shrieks of horror nearby and Max realized that their fight had been about to be interfered with.
Nico jumped off the berserker with a wink in Max's direction and raced off toward the screams. She had used most of her points to increase her speed, not her damage, and instead relied on novel and improvised ways to take out opponents.
Max recovered his weapon and headed in her direction in case she needed help, finding that the scream was a trick and she was outnumbered five on one by warrior classes. But the Street Rat class was incredibly agile and they were having a hard time catching her.
She also didn't fight fair, using her shorter height to go for more 'critical' targets and cripple her opponents while she avoided the others.
After she killed a knight class, she squatted above him and wiggled, the classic 'Teabagging' taunt, that brought rage to the player's eyes before he respawned and vanished. Max's laughter brought the attention of the others to him and they realized they were in trouble, the Street Rat had distracted them too long and now others had come to take advantage of the fight.
Against opponents that weren't berserkers, Max's improved Magic Arrow combined with his targeting skills was a deadly combination, taking out enemies one after another while Nico kept them distracted and off balance.
"Has anyone ever told you that you're truly evil?" Max asked as she threw her poisoned dagger into the back of the last fighter and gently cradled his body, lowering him to the ground as his avatar died, paralyzed.
"Once or twice. Do you think it was enough to make them rush right back here so we can farm them without taking the spawn camping reduction to points?" Nico asked hopefully.
"Probably, the guy you teabagged looked pretty upset." Max agreed.
"Perfect, come this way, I found a good spot for you to hide and ambush anyone who comes our way." She instructed.
"Wait, how did you know it was me? Your character is pretty distinctive, but mine was meant to be neutral." Max asked.
"I saw you fighting the big berserker and knew right away, it's in your technique. If you didn't recognize me you would have known it was me after only a few seconds I'm sure."
She has a point, there really is no way he could have mistaken her fighting style for anyone else.
Nico led him to a small rock pillar left from a broken statue, overlooking open grassland, with a border of trees at the foot of the hill. If he lay down flat on it, nobody would know he was up here. In the distance was the starting area, but they were looking at it from a different angle than the one he first left it from.
The plan was that Nico would head to the starting area and taunt targets out, while Max could help finish them and kill anyone who tried to sneak up on her. For now, it was working very well, she had lured a dozen people out who wanted to get the last blow on one of the current point leaders. This early in the fight the differences were small, but later in the game, your player would get a Halo and Wings to show their increased power level, both a warning and a target for the enemy.
The visual effects helped even the playing field and would prevent things like he was doing now as they got closer to the end of the game.
One of the players was definitely one that Nico had taunted because he was going wild trying to attack her as she backed up into Max's casting range and laughed. The game area was large, but not enough that you wouldn't be able to find enemies, even if you tried to hide you would quickly be found. On the first day you might hide for a long time, but after the game was released the various maps would quickly be memorized by the hardcore gamers.
The moment they were in range, Max prepared to put spells into the back of the heads of the ones who had circled Nico and were facing away from him.
He let the first one loose and Nico made a sudden turn, pulling his target to the ground with her. The spell flew wide and hit the enraged fighter in the face, causing him to respawn instantly. Nico finished the caster that she had taken to the ground and used the body's last few seconds to shield her from a barrage of incoming spells.
The slower ones to cast still hit her, but none hit anywhere critical, and her avatar survived to run into the woods and hide, while Max picked them off from above.
In the judge's box in the arena, the developers sighed at this development. "Letting the two Majors work together was a mistake. The average gamer doesn't stand a chance, even at the same power level."
"They will adapt and gain more useful skills soon. The Street Rat is the hard mode character, she will start falling behind unless she can find more people to work with her." Another said confidently, but Uncle Lu shook his head to disagree.
"Even without skill activations, she won't have a problem with them if she keeps increasing her character's stats like that. You forget that they're both Alpha Ranked, this standard movement rate is practically a crawl to them. She's over three times faster in real life. Without training, I'm not sure that the warriors will have a chance. The mages will have to use area magic to take her out so she doesn't dodge."
"But with her partner there to take out the more powerful mages, they won't be able to attack her." The developer nodded as he realized the strategy they were using. The Gamers were sure to find a workaround for it in an hour or two, but for now, it was unassailable.
