Jack continued to kill more players as he escalated the disturbance within the crowd. The rate of Trustaide's healing could not catch up with Jack's slaughter. By the time he healed one player, another had fallen to Jack's sword.
Jack himself continued to lose HP due to the skill, but the extra defense allowed him to tank the crowd's attacks. So in the end, the rate of his HP decreasing was roughly the same as before. His speed had also increased much so the others had a harder time trying to hit him.
"Get your ass down now!" Trustaide yelled to Faithstooge, he couldn't care less if the pretentious guy outranked him.
Faithstooge turned and was about to rebuke him, but he held back himself after considering the situation. He took out his mace and kite shield and jumped down among the crowd.
Jack noticed the Knight finally came down from his lofty height. He purposefully slowly moved away from him. The Knight class did not provide much dexterity. In fact, it was one of the two slowest classes among the advanced class. Both Knight and Mage only receive an increase of 1 point of Dexterity for each increase of level.
Faithstooge found more corpses strewn on the ground as he proceeded forward. He was having difficulty moving as the useless players he had brought here were obstructing his path. He started shoving them aside angrily, trying to clear the way. The ones that got pushed initially thought a new enemy had appeared from behind.
Several magicians had turned frantic as they saw their comrades falling, so they started shooting out spells without reservation. The spells and attacks in this game world did not have a friendly-fire setup like other more aged VR RPG games, so they would still be hurt even though the spell caster was in the same party as them.
Jack had known about this hence he was utilizing the crowd. He went to the back of the player closest to him for cover whenever he saw a ranged attack coming. Sometimes he even used his overwhelming strength to shove his opponent into an oncoming spell, thus adding to his damage output.
Trustaide was shouting from above to give them instructions as he continued to heal, but it was futile. The players were too unorganized. That's the problem with this lot, they were too lousy. The guild was only using them for their dirty plan of robbing the masses. If things went out of hand, they could easily just discard this lot and feigned ignorance. Hence, Corporate United could not use their experts for this operation. The ones here were at the bottom of their list whom they had no intention to include as their official members.
Jack had killed a total of eleven people when Faithstooge arrived in his vicinity. The knight pushed a fighter in front of him who was blocking his way, and found himself face to face with Jack. He grinned viciously as he swung his mace at Jack. Jack blocked the mace with his shield while parrying an attack from another player with his sword. Faithstooge responded by slamming his shield onto the undefended Jack. Jack stumbled back from the blow.
'Was that a skill?' Jack still had the time to asked.
"No, it was a simple hit," Peniel answered. "Can't you tell from how little HP you lost from it?"
'What's a knight first skill?'
"It was a passive skill called Thick Skin. It increased the knight's defense. Oh, and Knight also receives an inherent skill that increases their HP by 10%. So Knight is the hardest to kill amongst advanced class."
Passive skill? so the Knight in front of him should have no unknown offensive skill to worry about. Jack used his speed to overwhelmed the knight, but other players were assaulting him at the same time, so he was having a hard time with them even with his attributes boost.
The timing was almost over, Jack thought as he kept track of time. He had prepared a precaution when he saw the group of blue dots which now had changed to black dots since the fight started. The precaution's time limit would be off soon. He glanced at the Healer at the back of his opponents' line. Trustaide was coming down the hill.
Since Jack was moving away, the crowd following him was getting further from Trustaide. He had difficulty in healing his team as his healing spell also had a limit to its range. He had to move forward if he was to continue healing. As he came down the small hill, he didn't notice a figure approaching from behind. The figure looked exactly like Jack.
The figure was a doppelganger created using Jack's Body Double spell. The spell was a precaution that Jack had taken before he engaged the robbers' group. He originally intended to use the spell as a means of escape, just like when he was dealing with Warriors of Solidarity, by sending his copy as far away from his position before changing place with it during the critical time. But after fighting the group for a while, he thought he should have no problem running away physically if the needs arose. So he commanded his doppelganger to return and approached the healer sneakily.
The five minutes duration time limit of the Body Double spell was almost up at this time. He activated the switch place ability of the spell and disappeared from the crowd. They were shocked by the turn of events. Did the guy use another unknown skill again? Did the skill turn him invisible? The crowd wondered. Faithstooge made sure by attacking the place where Jack was a second ago, only to have his mace passed through empty air.
They were all still wondering what was going on when they heard a painful scream from behind. They turned back and saw Trustaide being impaled by Jack's sword. They were bewildered, why had Jack appeared so far behind there suddenly?
While the enemies were dazed, Jack did not stop his attacks. He followed up his attack with two more rapid slashes. Despite the healer was an advanced class, it was still a fragile class. Especially since Trustaide just changed the class recently, he had not yet received the benefit of extra attributes from when an advanced class increased in level. Trustaide soon found himself losing all strength and falling to the ground unwillingly.
Faithstooge was especially enraged. He didn't care about these other louts, but Trustaide was an official member of Corporate United, and was assigned under him. An advanced class was still rare at this stage, losing one would be a great blow to the guild. He would get blamed once what happened here was learned by his superior, not to mention that he also failed to get back the loots that were stolen.
Thinking about all this, Faithstooge was even more furious. It was all this abhorrent player's fault! What was his name again? Oh, yes, Storm Wind. He swore he would not let this man leave here alive!
After getting rid of the healer, the others could only depend on their own potions to replenish their HP. Jack jumped forward to continue his assault. Due to the fight originally was happening on the other side, the current side which Jack was at was filled with Magicians. The magicians had been moving away from where Jack was and only attacked from afar, they were terrified when they suddenly found that Jack was behind them.
Jack used Swing accompanied by a few slashes and took down another two magicians before Faithstooge and the other melee players came to their aid. The Rangers did not dare to engage Jack alone knowing his high damage hit, so they waited until Faithstooge and the other Fighters to arrive before they started engaging. However, Jack surprisingly turned around and fled.
They were flabbergasted by their opponent's action. Why did he suddenly run away? And would they allow him to escape after killing so many of their brethren? Faithstooge would not have it, he yelled furiously, "do not let him get away!" They chased after Jack at once.
Jack was still using his Life Burning Art, so his speed was faster than any of them, even the rangers. He canceled the art after putting a certain distance, no sense to let the skill continue to eat away at his life when he was just running. He had lost more than half of his life from all that fight. He took out another basic healing potion and drank it to recover a portion of his missing HP.
He looked back and saw everyone was chasing him, but due to the difference in stats between classes, the rangers were the ones at the front. He smiled playfully after seeing this. "Idiots," he muttered under his breath as he continued to run.
