"That wasn't very nice of you," Merlin remarked while stabbing LordKyle in the back, an attack that triggered the backstab passive's multiplier.
LordKyle screamed in surprise, but Merlin wasn't sure if this was because of his sudden appearance behind him, or the sudden disappearance of most of Kyle's health bar.
Merlin dodged a panicked strike that was aimed at his head, which caused him to stagger backwards a few steps. This gave Kyle enough time to scamper off and create some distance between the two, and he was now hiding behind one of his minions, a man armed with a spear.
That action had caught Merlin off guard for a moment, Kyle's irregular movement was something Merlin didn't expect. It seemed as though Kyle, along with most people participating in the fight, had finally decided to turn off combat assistance. Although it seemed that most of the ranged users and everyone who was utilising a wand had kept combat assistance on.
"That's annoying, I enjoyed the easy fights," Merlin muttered to himself. "Oh well."
He barely caught a glimpse of an arrow being fired towards him, yet before he even bothered dodging, the knight from earlier came to his rescue, parrying the arrow away with his kite shield.
"Thanks!" Merlin yelled out before dashing past him, making a beeline towards Kyle once more while the knight seemed to immediately charge at the archer that had shot at Merlin.
Merlin watched briefly as arrows bounced off the knight's shield, and the archer attempted to run away at the last second but was met with another shield bash.
Merlin's attention was brought back to his own fight as he barely dodged a spear that was thrust towards him, the goon that Kyle was hiding behind quickly pulled back to thrust once more, but Merlin twisted his body out of the way, essentially dancing around the spearhead before he closed the distance within an instant.
The spearman found himself in a world of pain as he received an elbow to the face to start, which seemed to break his nose but didn't do much in terms of damage. It seemed as though Merlin was adding a little bit of flair into his attacks to entertain his stream, but he almost immediately returned to his usual efficient fighting style and delivered several slashes aimed directly at the spearman's throat.
Merlin began chanting his cloak's skill, "Overheat", causing his cloak to begin warming up. This seemed to be a pointless action at first, but what followed quickly gave the action context.
He pushed past the spearman's corpse and dashed back into melee range with LordKyle. He reached into his inventory, pulling out a blade that made the surroundings drop in temperature almost immediately.
Even with his cloak's overheat ability in effect, an ability that boosted his cold resistance by an additional fifty percent, on top of the ten percent that his cloak already granted him, the blade's freezing aura was quickly encroaching up his arm and it wouldn't be long before his arm was frozen solid once more.
"Do you mind holding this for me?" Merlin taunted, before dodging a wide swing from LordKyle's hatchet. Before Kyle could recover his swing, Merlin quickly plunged the freezing dagger into Kyle's chest.
「Passive skill ⟪Rending Strike⟫ has triggered, target is now suffering from severe bleeding.」
'That's not very useful when you immediately freeze the wound.' Merlin couldn't help but think to himself.
Another swing from Kyle's hatchet made its way towards Merlin's head, and he was forced to leap back to avoid it. Instead of taking his dagger with him, he decided to leave the dagger in Kyle's chest and let it do its thing. He could clearly see that the freezing aura was already ravaging Kyle's avatar, and what little health of his remained was quickly dwindling down to nothing.
Kyle had realised he was about to die a few moments too late, and when he reached for the dagger to pull it out of his chest, his health had bottomed out and he had died with the blade in his hands.
The freezing field continued to freeze the rest of the corpse, and Merlin decided that he would leave it for now in hopes that the annoying energy that had been imbued within it would eventually dissipate.
He tightened his grip on his remaining dagger and inspected the state of the battle.
It seemed that most of Kyle's group were dead, and those remaining seemed to be focusing down the orange named users. And the orange named users themselves were fighting both the red named users and any white named users who got too close.
'Right well I came here to kill Kyle again, but I'd rather not pick a fight with another group.' Merlin thought to himself.
One of LordKyle's group, an individual waving around a mace, was coming close to beating down an orange named user who was cowering behind his shield. It looked as though the shield user was about to be pummeled to death when three vines flew towards him.
One of the vines wrapped around the user's neck, the others took a wrist each, and as the thorns of the vines dug into the user's skin Merlin received a notification message.
「Passive skill ⟪Rose Blight⟫ has triggered, target's stats have been reduced.」
The mace user was quickly overpowered by the vines as Merlin began retracting them. He had tripped over his own feet and was now being dragged by the neck towards Merlin who was looming over him with a dagger in hand and an evil-looking grin.
The user tried fighting the vines, rather it looked as though he was terrified, but it wasn't enough to get away and his fate was eventually sealed as Merlin's blade made short work of his health bar.
As the user succumbed to the damage, Merlin noticed that his leather breastplate had begun glowing faintly, meaning it was a lootable item.
"Ah, the benefit of killing red named enemies," He muttered with a happy tone while storing the armour away in his inventory. He quickly inspected the item while looking for his next victim.
┌───────────────────
[Tattered Leather Breastplate. (Common)]
An old leather breastplate that has clearly seen better days. It appears as though this breastplate was once the property of a goblin.
• Defence: +2
└───────────────────
"Garbage, but it's to be expected," Merlin sighed before equipping the armour. "I guess it's better than nothing."
After looking around, it seemed he didn't have much else to do, the wizard girl's group and the knight had destroyed what little remained of Kyle's group in a short timeframe and were now attacking the orange members.
'Yeah, alright time to go.' Merlin thought to himself, turning back to the ice sculpture of Kyle.
The air surrounding the statue wasn't as cold as it once was, informing Merlin that the energy had probably dissipated.
"I guess it would have sorted itself out if I just left it in the tree longer," He mumbled to himself. "Well, that probably would have caused trouble in the city..."
He reached in to take the dagger out of Kyle's corpse, but the frozen corpse had a tight grip around it, he also noticed a faint glow on Kyle's gloves.
"Ooh, more loot," Merlin hummed.
He chanted a command to return his dagger to his inventory since it would have been a pain to try and dig it out from the corpse's grasp.
While blinded by loot, Merlin took the back of his dagger and slammed the hilt on the sculpture's wrist, causing it to shatter and his hand to fall to the ground. He repeated this action with the other hand, retrieving the other glove.
"Thanks for giving me a hand," He chuckled to himself before throwing both hands in his inventory.
Much like what would happen if he threw a backpack full of unstorable items into his inventory, only the gloves were sent to the inventory, while the frozen hands themselves flew right through the window and shattered against the ground.
Merlin inspected his new item, and he couldn't help but sigh when he read it.
┌───────────────────
[Studded Leather Gloves. (Common)]
A pair of tight leather gloves, brass studs have been embedded within the glove and serve as an extra layer of defence against attacks.
• Defence: +1
• Unequippable
• Currently frozen solid, must be thawed out before being equipped.
└───────────────────
'Yeah, no more messing with dimensional rifts for the time being.' He sighed internally.
Merlin glanced back towards the fight that was starting to come to an end as another orange named user was slapped with the knight's shield.
He quickly ran towards the road, fortunately, nobody seemed that interested in attacking him. Merlin quickly remembered to swap his cloak back to his old one before coming up close to the city walls.
He greeted the guards before entering the city, and after jumping into the crowd he began slowly wandering towards the slums.. He was unsure as to when he wanted to pause his stream temporarily, but as he approached the slums he found it to be crawling with town guards.
